So Written

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Tag Archives: Cooking

Recipe; Spinach-ricotta pie

One of our favourites, it’s an easy meal and very tasteful. The biggest bonus? The Tweedles love it. My children actually eat spinach in disguise! The original recipe is from Donna Hay (the Fast, Fresh, Simple book), but I adjusted it a little. As usual, I don’t measure and I don’t stick to recipes.

A fair warning, I went for the lazy option today. So, there is some frozen stuff involved. And no baking tins (less washing up to do…).

Ingredients;

1 bag (750 grams) frozen, chopped up, spinach (so here’s the cheating… When I use fresh spinach, I have to blanch it well in advance, let it cool and THEN squeeze it…)
500 grams of ricotta cheese
A good handful of freshly chopped mint
2 large eggs
100 grams of feta cheese
8 sheets of puff pastry (the original recipe uses filo pastry, but The Man prefers puff pastry) and okay, I cheated here too… I used to different brands, because I didn’t have enough of either.
1 large clove of garlic, finely chopped
Salt
Peper

Instructions;

1)    Defrost the spinach and squeeze out the excess liquid (this prevents the filling from becoming soggy) and place in a bowl.

2)    Add the ricotta, chopped mint, eggs, garlic, salt and pepper to the spinach and mix.

3)    Place the puff pastry on a baking tray lined with baking paper, create a rectangle.

4)    Put the mixture on the middle of the pastry and spread out evenly.

5)    Fold the edges of the pastry over the filling and put in the oven for approx 20 minutes on 220 degrees Celsius.

Cut in pieces and serve with a light, fresh salad (which I totally forgot to do today).

The Tweedles love it, I love it, The Man loves it… It’s a winner!

Few tips;

  • If the mixture feels to dry add an extra egg.
  • If I feel up to it, I fry some diced bacon and add it to the mixture for some extra salty flavour.
  • I sometimes use dill instead of mint (which I should have done today as my dill plants are taking on bush-like appearances in my herb garden). Or coriander… Same story by the way.
  • I sometimes replace half the ricotta with cream and add an extra egg (or two) to the mixture. If you do this, you will need to use a baking tin, as the mixture is runnier and might run out of the pastry.
  • I, honest to God, prefer filo pastry. Try it, do it! But yeah, well… The Man loves puff pastry (especially the buttery kind) and I do like to spoil him once in a while.

Enjoy!

*SoWritten

 

 

Perfectly roasted veggies, SoWritten style!

Just remember before you read this that I am, really, a very humble person. Except when it comes to cooking. I am a kick ass cook :-D

Remember the little pic that accompanied my previous blog on Low Carb food? This one. Well, I had half of my Twitter timeline drooling over it, apparently. And yes, it doesn’t only look good. It tastes good too.

So I decided to share with you, my secret to a tray of perfectly roasted veggies. Lucky you!

Before I start I always preheat the oven to the highest temperature and warm the grill. If your oven doesn’t have a grill or a combination function, don’t worry. You’ll get great roasted vegetables by only using the oven function. Just ALWAYS line your baking tray with waxed paper.

Usually when I make roasted veggies I just open the vegetable compartment in my fridge and see what I still have lying around – I hate grocery shopping, so I try to limit my runs to the grocery store – and use what ever I find. Today’s score;
* 1 tomato
* 9 cherry tomatoes
* Half a zucchini
* 1 aubergine (eggplant)
* 4 sweet peppers

Pre roasted

Then I rummage through my herbs and spices and grab whatever I can find that will suit the meal. Salt, pepper and good quality extra vergine olive oil are standard. Usually I prefer fresh herbs, but I am a bit low stocked on those at the moment. Today I kept it simple and used dried coriander (cilantro), ground cumin seed and a small pinch of ground ginger.

The trick is to make sure that you slice everything in even pieces so they are done at the same time. I put the whole lot in the oven at once. The zucchini and the aubergine slices have to be about 8 mm thick, the tomato chopped in half and the sweet peppers cut in half and the seeds removed.

Ready for the oven

Lay out the vegetables on the baking tray and drizzle them with olive oil, don’t be shy let it flow. After that sprinkle the herbs and spices over the veggies and they are ready to go in the oven. I usually leave them in the oven/grill with the temp around 200/225 for about 25 minutes. Yah, I still don’t do measurements and times… Just keep your eye on things, once they get a glint of black it’s time to pull them out.

After they are done roasting, plate ‘m up!

Plate 'm up!Now this is more of a side dish which you can eat with anything, just adjust the spices you use. Today we had a Moroccan style meal. I combined the veggies with couscous and home made kebabs;

Serving suggestionEnjoy!

*SoWritten

Note; You didn’t think I leave you dangling like this right?

Other veggies very suitable for roasting; Fennel, carrots, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, butternut, bell peppers (any colour), onions, garlic bulbs, potatoes and many more. Don’t be afraid to try new stuff. The worst thing that can happen is that it tastes terrible and you end up eating grilled cheese sandwiches. Been there, done that.

Other herbs/spices very suitable for this; Rosemary, thyme, fennel seed (ground), nutmeg, paprika powder, chilli powder, Marsala, curcuma (tumeric), dried basil, cardamom, garlic, marjoram, oregano (now this is the only herb I prefer dried) and many more. Same goes for this as with the veggies. Just give it a try!

Recipe: ‘Linguine con Salmone alla griglia’

When a friend of mine asked me for a couple of recipes she could use, I did not doubt my choices at all. As I love to cook and consider myself a foodie I am honoured to share my love for food with the world.

One of the first recipes that came to mind was my kick ass pasta with grilled salmon. But hey, it needed a fancy name so I went Italian. Sorry for the strange style of writing for this, but my chaotic head is not allowing otherwise at the moment. You’ll just have to excuse the lack of photos for this one. I have none at hand…

Dear friend (you know who you are), this one is for you! “Buon appetito!”

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Linguine is a type of pasta, which is flatter and wider than Spaghetti but not as wide Tagliatelle.  Mostly served with seafood. (Italians use each type of pasta for different dishes.) Or just simply with some pesto… I went with the seafood option… Linguine with salmon.

Linguine con Salmone alla griglia

So for this recipe I’ll assume you’ll be making your own linguine as well. *insert foodie nerd factor*

The linguine;

I always make bigger portions, use what I need and freeze the rest. Fresh homemade pasta is easy to freeze and defrost. As long as you have a good airtight container.

For approx 6 portions;

7 eggs (I usually use medium sized eggs, organic)
approx 9 oz of 00 flour (which is the finest ground flour you can get)
approx 9 oz of fine semolina

I use a stand mixer and pasta machine to make my pasta.

  • Crack the eggs in a clean bowl and lightly beat them. Just so the yolks and whites mix.
  • Poor the flour and semolina in a clean mixing bowl and switch on the mixer. Make sure that the flour and semolina are mixed before adding in the eggs. Let the mixer knead the dough till it’s smooth and elastic. (If you were to do this by hand, mix the flour & semolina in a bowl, create a ‘hole’ in the middle of the mountain of flour and pour the eggs in. knead it as if you were kneading bread until it’s a smooth elastic substance.) Wrap it up in cling film and leave it to rest for about an hour (half an hour at the least) in the fridge.
  • Once the dough has rested take it out of the fridge. Flour your work surface and pasta machine. Slightly flatten the dough it before feeding it through the pasta machine. Start out with the thickest setting and go to the thinner settings each time you feed the dough through (flour the machine every time before feeding the pasta through). When it gets too long to handle, cut the sheet in two and start feeding them through separately. It takes a while to figure out the right thickness. I usually feed it through around 6 times. It should be thin, but no too thin. It will tear when it’s too thin.
  • Once the sheets are the right thickness trim the edges and put the linguine cutter on the pasta machine. Dust the machine with flour again and feed the sheets through, the dough will roll out as linguine. Lay it flat on a plate and dust it with some more flour (oh yes, lots of dusting going on here…). Leave the pasta in the fridge until you’re ready to use it.

The Sauce;

Approx 7 fl oz of Cream (full fat, it tastes the best!)
1 squeezed lemon or lime (I prefer lime, the taste is more refreshing)
Finely chopped basil to taste (I usually use around half an OZ)
1 glass of white wine.
1 clove of garlic (or more if you are a garlic lover like I am)
approx 1 tbl spoon of olive oil
Salt to taste
Peper to taste

  • Put the oil in a small pot. Crush the garlic and add it in once the oil is hot.
  • Once you start to smell the garlic (BEFORE it turns brown) add the wine, the cream, the lemon/lime juice and the basil. Bring it to the boil.
  • Once it’s boiling turn down the gas and let it simmer. The sauce should thicken just a little but not to much. The simmering is mostly for the flavours to infuse.
  • Taste once in a while and add salt and/or pepper if needed.

The Salmon;

I prefer to use salmon fillets for this. You can either use it as a whole and grill it or dice it and add it to the sauce just before serving after frying it. I prefer the first option; you’ll need fresh fillets for this. Dice and fry it when you use frozen salmon.

1 fillet per person when grilling (2 fillets for 3 adults when dicing).
Some olive oil
A grill pan/griddle

  • Oil the griddle by rubbing olive oil in with a paper towel or a brush.
  • Once griddle is HOT (test this by splashing a few drops of water on it, if it sizzles, it’s HOT) you can lay the salmon on it. Always on the skin side (if the skin is taken off put it on the flat side).
  • It depends on how you want the salmon cooked. If it’s fresh I’d always go for pink. You’ll notice the salmon change colour from orange-pink to salmon-pink and you’ll see it get ‘dry’. You should flip it when it starts to look dry, to grill the other side. It’ll only need a couple of minutes on each side. If it gets to dry it’ll fall apart.

At the same time boil the pasta;

  • Put the linguine in a sieve and lower the sieve in a pot of boiling water (with salt and some olive oil in it) use a lot of water for a little pasta to prevent it from sticking and not cooking properly. Because the pasta is fresh it will only need 2 to 3 minutes before it’s done. I prefer ‘al dente’, it will still have bite to it.
  • Once the pasta is cooked lift the sieve out of the pot and drain the water from both the pasta/sieve and the pot.
  • Mix the sauce in with the pasta.

Serve on a plate and lay the salmon on top.

You can decorate the plate with some fresh basil and although I don’t like cheese over my pasta when it is served with fish, you can put some grated (fresh of course) Parmesan on the table for people to add. (It actually is weird and not done to eat cheese & seafood in my world, that’s why I always just put out on the table for others to grab.)

I usually serve this with a simple green salad with Rucola (I think you call it rocket or arugula in the US it has a nutty flavour), red tip leaf salad (for colour), pine nuts, olive oil and some balsamic vinegar.

(And The Man always urges me to serve it with bread, so he can use it to soak up the left over sauce from plates and pots…)

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If you have come this far, please let me know if you enjoyed your meal ;-)

*SoWritten

TD2 made pizzas

A blog or two ago I introduced my Junior Master Chefs to you. Today we made pizza.

Now the good thing about pizza is that;
1 It’s easy
2 TD2 love it
3 The Man and I love it
4 Making it keeps them busy

So this afternoon, while they were napping I prepared the dough so it could rest for a good amount of time before we’d make the pizzas. When they woke up we chopped and sliced the toppings together and after a quick run to the post box we flattened out the dough with the help of a rolling pin. (I once tried tossing the dough like Italian pizza bakers do in movies. It got very messy as it stuck to the ceiling.)

That’s were the fun started!

And after all that work (and cleaning up) they finished the pizzas in ten minutes. And that’s why it’s worth it. Because they actually eat the food THEY prepare!

*So Written

Recipe: ‘Felafel’

About a week ago a friend asked me for suitable recipes to prepare for her husband. He tries to keep up with some traditions in Judaism and therefor does not mix meat and dairy. When I asked her if she ever made Felafel she admitted she had not and lacked a recipe. Coincidence has it, I do. And *insert bragging rights* it’s pretty darn good!

Now this recipe might seem like a lot of work, to me it was intimidating at first too. After making it a couple of times you just start doing things on autopilot. And if you are like me, you’ll start modifying thing too. Adding ingredients, etc… Maybe take some things out. I can’t remember where I got the original recipe from though.

When I make Felafel I always start of with a basic mix/dough and add spices to about half of it so I have a child friendly and an adult friendly version. Now there are many alternative ingredients you can use, but I prefer to use chick peas. You can also use broad beans and I now somebody uses lentils. Not my cup of tea.

I always prepare a huge amount at once and then freeze whatever I don’t need. Just make sure you roll the Felafel into little balls before freezing it. Naturally you can make things as easy or as hard as you like. I am a diehard and prefer to make/cook everything from scratch. If you are short on time and/or not a freak like me you can buy quite a few things instead of making them.

For the basic dough;
1 kilo of dried Chick peas
5 cloves of garlic (less if you are not a garlicky person like I am)
Big bunch of fresh coriander (cilantro for my North American readers)
Big bunch of fresh (flat) parsley (seriously flat parsley tastes better than the curly one.
2 teaspoons of baking soda
3 teaspoons of powdered paprika.
1 teaspoon of dried cumin (Honestly, go easy on this. I don’t really like it, but it does add a zing.)
Pinch of salt

Extra for the ‘grown up’ dough;
150 grams black, pitted, olives
2 red chilli peppers
1 teaspoon of chilli powder

Now the first tip I am going to give you for this is NEVER EVER use anything but dried chick peas, because if you use canned ones they have been cooked already and melt when you put them in the fryer. (Been there, done that!)

Leave the chick peas to soak in lukewarm to hot water for 24 hours. Refresh the water once in a while to prevent gasses from forming. Once they have soaked, drain them in a colander and leave to let the excess water drain for a while (I usually drain in the morning, make the Felafel in the afternoon).

Grind the chickpeas as fine as possible (the finer, the better).
Now this is the tricky part, because you will need a decent quality food processor, blender or handheld blender for this. I have ruined quite a few while doing this. Oh, and STOP when they start to feel warm or smell…

Once all the chickpeas have been ground I usually throw the garlic, baking soda, spices, olives (yes, TD2 dig olives, so they go in my child friendly dough. Double the amount of olives needed though.) and herbs into a bowl and grind them to, then mix them through the chickpea dough by hand. This gives me the possibility to fish out the whole chickpeas that have somehow managed to escape being ground.

After this I separate what I have in to bowl. One bowl contains the child friendly Felafel dough, the other bowl the adult version.
I then grind the chilli’s and mix them through, together with the additional chilli powder by hand as well.

Once both doughs are done I start rolling little balls with a diameter of aprox. 3 cm which I flatten before putting them on the plate. Always role the none spicy dough first before the spicy stuff.

Leave to rest till you are ready to fry the Felafel.

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For the pita rolls (although you can easily use store bought Pita or Naan bread);
(The amounts are for about 8 medium sized rolls, which is sufficient for one Felafel meal in my household.)
350 grams of all purpose flour
210 ml of lukewarm water
5 grams of dried yeast
1 tablespoon of (extra vergine) olive oil
1.5 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon of sugar

Mix the yeast, water and sugar in a bowl and leave for about 10 minutes.

Mix the flour, olive oil and salt in a bowl before adding the water/yeast mix. Knead the dough till it’s supple and elastic. Divide the dough into 8 even balls and leave to rest under a damp tea towel for about 45 minutes.

Flatten the balls (about half a centimetre thick should do the trick) and leave to rest for another 10 minutes. In the mean time, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.

Sprinkle some leftover flour over the rolls and bake for about 10 minutes in the oven, till they are golden brown and slightly ‘swollen’. Leave to cool on a rack.

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For the garlic sauce;
150 grams of yoghurt (full fat, preferably Greek or Turkish yoghurt because of it’s thickness)
100 grams of mayonnaise (more or less is fine, depending on what you like. I sometimes only use yoghurt)
2 to 3 cloves of garlic
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste
A pinch of sugar
(If you have some coriander or parsley left over you can always use that too)

Put the yoghurt and mayonnaise in a bowl and add the garlic (crushed), salt, pepper and sugar. Stir it together, cover and leave it in the fridge till you serve dinner.

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For frying the felafel;
A deep fryer or a high pot (I always use my soup pot as I don”t have a deep fryer.)
Approx a gallon of sunflower oil

Make sure the oil is hot enough. You can easily test this by dropping a few drops of (cold) water into it. If it bubbles and sizzles, it’s hot enough. Turn down the gas, but check once in a while to see if the oil is still hot enough.

Drop the Felafels into the oil (I drop in max 10 at the time) and leave to fry for a couple of minutes. I never time, I always just look at them. If they turn golden brown I take them out of the pot and put them in a bowl dressed with kitchen paper to drain excess fat.

If you have made a spicy and non spicy batch, always fry the non spicy batch first.

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Extra condiments to dress your Felafel, just a random list of what I have on the table during the Felafel meal;
Feta cheese
(Mixed) lettuce leafs (rucola/rocket always gives a nice nutty taste)
Cucumber
(Cherry) tomatoes
Garlic sauce (homemade)
Sambal (an Indonesian spice paste made from chilli’s)
Olives
Red sauce (a mix of ketchup (1 part), sweet chilli sauce (1 part), a drop of Worcester sauce and a little sweet soy sauce) for The Man.

Bon appétit!

*So Written