April 22, 2011

Food For Grown-Ups and Babies: Part 1 - Fried Asparagus with Pasta

Hello everyone, last night for the first time we cooked something our little man could eat with us...mashable, low on salt, easy on babies stomach!


you need
Tagliatelle, enough for Two and a little extra...(you know best how big your appetites are). Boil them according to the back of your package.
Then wash your
green asparagus (500gr) and cut off any dried and woody looking ends. Cut them length wise in half (thicker ones even quarter!) and then cut the halves into 3 cm long pieces.

Melt
80 gr butter in a frying pan, add
half a teaspoon of sugar and caramelise it in the melted butter, then add
1 tablespoon of olive oil, add the chopped asparagus, and fry on medium to semi-high heat for 10 minutes, keep stirring. It doesn't matter if they get a little brown. After the time is up taste one to make sure they are done! Add
a little black pepper,  and
100 ml fresh cream, let it simmer until the cream starts to get thick, add about 2-3 table spoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice, and
4 leaves of chopped fresh wild garlic, just before you serve the dish.


After taking out a portion for your littlest family members (blend before serving) you can add
a little salt to the portion left for the grown-ups.

Happy Easter Egg Hunt...





April 19, 2011

My wee garden on the balcony - part 2

Hello guys, I just thought it is time for a gardening update.



Most of my seeds were doing well, and showing some more or less green through the soil, but then a hot hot weekend day hit them, and I wasn't there to water them...or to get those poor little babes into the shade...and there went my thyme, my salad...so far a tough tomato survived and all of the coriander and parlsley..., my chives (they came back up all by themselves in the pot where I had them last year) are doing really well, and in the mean time I bought some strawberries, and planted some of them in my hanging balcony baskets.




I am not sure how the rest will survive, as from coming friday we are gone for nearly 5 days, and no one around to water them. I just hope for my plants that this heat wave comes to an end in time...

Keep your fingers crossed for my little green oases..

Thank you








April 12, 2011

2 ways of using up left-overs

There weren't many food posts lately, because I just didn't get the time to cook creatively never mind bake...
But I did think that these two rather fast made dishes from left overs were tasty enough to share them with you guys! I came up with both recipes last week, while I was in a hurry and only had a rather empty fridge, so be prepared for rather strange choices of ingredients!
For the first one I used left over Pasta from the night before: In my fridge were a ready to use pizza-dough, 1 pepper and half a zucchini/courgette, and to make it a bit more filling, I added some minced soy.
Here is what I did: Rolled out the pizza-dough on baking sheet, prepared the Soy according to the instructions on the back of the pack, plus added a little cayenne pepper , veg stock and oregano and basil, black pepper..stirred in the tomato sauce that came with the pizza dough, and poured the whole lot over the dough, then I added a layer of the left over pasta, a layer of chopped peppers and a layer of sliced zucchini and topped the whole lot with cheese (for a vegan pizza, you could try this, but I haven't tried it myself yet) and put it into the oven according to the instructions on the back of the package from my pizza dough...

the Picture does the greatness of my pizza no real justice...


For the second one my fridge was even emptier...it was rather late already and oh boy I was soooo HUNGRY....and all I had was rice and these veggie sausages also I found a bag of mexican vegetable-mix in the freezer and our kitchen cabinett was kind enough to supply me with a jar of mexican salsa....I think this dish actually took less then 10 min to be prepared and cooked!
I fried the rice (left over cooked rice from day before) and added the frozen veg, then I chopped the sausages (two of them) into slices and added them into the mix, once all was fried I added the salsa, some cayenne, ginger and black pepper...oh and I even found a rest of sour cream in our fridge still within a respectable UBD...strike! And I dont know if it only tasted so nice, because we were soooo hungry or if it would have tasted just as nice not half starved, but I really enjoyed this dish!