Simple Curry

Hey there :)

Dou you guys like ladybugs? As a Kid I loved them. I remember being happy when one landed somewhere close to me, or on top of my finger if I was lucky. Today we are having like a thousand ladybugs on our balcony. It’s crazy. You open the door for like 5 minutes and Hello 20 ladybugs in your living room. Drives me crazy nowadays. They smell bad. I have never realized this until recently. Any ideas how to deal with them? Because I am sure soon they gonna start eating me ^^°

Anyway, to the recipe. It’s a pretty simple curry. As with every curry I know the ingredients are more of a suggestion than a must-add. Feel free to omit some stuff or add any other. Like ladybugs for example ;)

You could also turn this into a curry soup just by adding more water. I think this is also a nice recipe for batch cooking as the flavor gets more intense the next days. So if you have a busy week ahead of you making something like this the weekend might help you get through the following days :)

Recipe

prep time:about 40 minutes +++ serves: 4-6

Ingredients

• 1 big onion
• 2 big carrots
• ½ Cup chopped broccoli florets
• 1 medium sweet potato
• 4 bunches baby pok choi
• ¾ Cup cooked black beans
• 1 apple
• 2 Cups / 500ml vegetable broth
• 1 can coconut milk
• 4 Tbsp. curry powder
• 2 Tbsp. turmeric
• 2 tsp. cayenne pepper
• 2 tsp. cumin

Instructions

Wash and chop the vegetables into bite-size pieces.

In a big pot heat some coconut oil over medium heat. Add the onions, carrots, broccoli and sweet potato pieces and sauté them for about 3 minutes. Then add the spices and stirring frequently sauté together for another 2 minutes.

Then pour about 1 Cup / 250ml of vegetable broth into the pot. Stir until well combined.

Wash, and grate the apple and add it to the curry. It adds some sweetness without being overly dominant and enhances the flavor.

Cook the Curry over medium heat for about 5 minutes, so that the liquid reduces a bit. Stir occasionally After 5 minutes add some more broth. Depending on how liquid you like your Curry you might need more or less. So don’t add all at once.

Add the can of coconut milk and stir until combined. Let cook for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. While it cooks you can check and decide to add some more broth. I have used exactly 2 Cups / 500ml.

Add the black beans and the pok choi and let it cook for another 5 minutes. Then turn off the heat, but you can leave the pot on the stove.

Serve with some rice, quinoa or naan.

Spinach-Mushroom-Galette with a Chickpea-Crust

Hey there :)

You know what? Sometimes I am a little angry at pizza. Okay, I have to admit it is tasty and cheesy. You can totally add whatever you like and mot whatever you don’t. It really is a nice food, easy-peasy and crowd-pleasing. But then again, that is just the problem. Because almost every other food loses to pizza. Especially if it somewhat close to it. Everyone is having pizza like once a month, or even more often. And no one tries some nice savory tarts. But they are good, too! Forget about pizza for a while, have a tart! With a flaky crust and nice satisfying filling. Just once in a while so the tart knows its not forgotten. And guess what, call it at galette and you don’t even have to worry about a proper round form. Just roll it out free-style.

Galletes rock! Here’s the thing.

Recipe

prep time: about 20-30 minutes + chilling time + baking time +++ yields one tart

Ingredients

for the crust:

• 1½ Cup / 170g Chickpea flour
• 8 Tbsp. / 115g cold coconut oil
• 3 Tbsp. ice-cold water
• pinch of salt and pepper (maybe about ¼ to ½ tsp each)

for the topping:

• about 4 Cups / 120g spinach
• 3 Cups / 215g cut mushrooms
• 2 medium tomatoes
• ½ big red onion
• 1 Tsp. sugar
• salt, pepper, thyme to taste

Instructions

About one hour before starting fill a glas or bowl with water and place into the freezer so it’s very cold when starting to prepare the dough.

Start with the dough: In a bowl mix the flour salt and pepper. Then add the cold coconut oil in small pieces. Working fast, use your hands to incorporate the oil into the flour until it has a coarse, crumbly texture. Take out the prepared water. Then add 3 Tbsp. of the ice-cold water to the dough and mix again. Do not overmix, but the dough should be quite smooth now, with some parts of coconut oil that are not completely incorporated. Form the dough in ball and loosely wrap in foil. Press down into a disk. Put in the fridge for at least one hour. When working with the dough it has to be cold.

While the dough cools in the fridge start preparing the filling. In a frying pan add some oil. Cut the onions and add to pan together with a tsp. of sugar. Sauté over medium-high heat, about 2 minutes.

Meanwhile if not done yet cut the mushrooms. Add the cut mushroom to the pan and fry for another 5 minutes, adding some salt, pepper and thyme to taste.

Meanwhile wash the spinach thoroughly. Cut coarsely and add to the pan. Fry for another 2-3 minutes, until the spinach is weltered.

There should be some liquid in the mass that we do not want so add the filling in a sieve and let the excess water run off.

When the dough is chilled enough take out of the fridge and put on slightly floured surface. Again, the dough has to be very cool!

With a rolling pin roll out the dough to thickness of about 0,5 cm.

Put the filling in the middle and leave some space around the edges, about 4-5cm. Wash and cut the tomatoes into rounds and add in top.

Fold the edges up around the filling.

Bake at 180°C for about 35-40 minutes until the crust is crispy.

Enjoy still warm :)

Creamy Cauliflower Sauce

Hey there :)

If you want to sneak in some extra veggies into your daily meals, here’s an idea for you: Turn them into a sauce. I know, not re-inventing the wheel here, but anyway. This sauce is super easy to make and it mainly consists of cauliflower, so it is some real veggie-treat here. And you might not even feel like eating some vegetable here as it is disguised as some nice creamy sauce. Perfect for some noodles, or potatoes or some veggies like roasted broccoli and carrots. This sauce recipe makes enough to cover all choices, it will yield quite a lot ;)

It also lasts for some days in the fridge and you can easily reheat this in a pan, so it’s also nice to make it ahead for more stressful days. Although the recipe itself actually doesn’t take that long either. And it is super easy as it basically is like making smoothie, jut blending everything together. And you’ll get one of the creamiest sauces thanks to the cauliflower. Way better than whipping cream etc. :)

By the way, the noodles I have used here are black rice noodles. They give a nice color contrast, but next time I’d go for some with nuttier flavor. Or, as said, just for some more veggies :)

Recipe

prep time: about 20 minutes +++ yields: about 3 Cups

Ingredients

• 1 small cauliflower or ½ medium one (about 4 Cups chopped)
• 2 medium onions
• 1 Tbsp. sugar (optional)
• 2 Tbsp. tahini
• 1 glove garlic
• ½ Cup rice milk or water + more as needed to thin out
• 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice
• ¼ Cup nutritional yeast
• salt, pepper, nutmeg, curcuma, cayenne to taste
• Pasta or potato or broccoli to your choice
• some sesame seeds and chili flakes to sprinkle on top

Instructions:

Wash and coarsely chop the cauliflower. In a pot bring some water to simmer an either place the cauliflower directly into the water or steam it over it until it’s done (about 5-8 minutes). Let cool a bit.

Meanwhile cut the onions and in a pan over medium heat sauté them with some oil and sugar (you can omit the sugar if you don’t eat it) until they are nicely brown. Let cool a bit.

In a blender (Or you could also use an immersion blender) place of all of the ingredients except for the spices and blend until you have a smooth, creamy consistency. If you need some more liquid feel free to add as much as the desired consistency is achieved.

Add spices to taste. If the sauce isn’t warm enough you can heat it up again in a saucepan over medium heat.

Have with some pasta or potatoes.

Risotto with Herbs

Hey there :)

Last time I went to have some dinner I had a nice creamy risotto with herbs in it. It had a nice green color and a tasted like early summer. I totally loved it. That’s why I wanted to make it myself and I wanted to try a vegan version of it. But well, turns out the restaurant had a special fancy tool to turn the herbs into some very fine herb-powder. I clearly don’t have anything alike but I still wanted to make something alike. So my brother gave me the tip to use pesto instead. And this idea was worth gold – or should I say green? I worked perfectly fine and even added some more creaminess to the risotto. So hooray for my brother :) Sometimes he can be such a genius with those small things :)

As the pesto is the main ingredient her (next to the rise obviously), choosing a good one with pleasant taste is key here. You can basically use very pesto you like. Just make sure it isn’t a too dry one. I went for a parsley pesto and this was really nice. But if you prefer basil or arugula or nettle go for them. Or even some dried tomato pesto for a red risotto. Just make sure to use a vegan risotto if you want to keep the recipe vegan.

Recipe

prep time: 30 mintues +++ servings: about 3

Ingredients

• 1 big red onion
• ¾ Cups / 190g Arborio Rice
• ½ Cup / 125ml white wine (can be replaced by vegetable broth)
• 2-3 Cups / 500-750ml vegetable broth
• ¼ Cup / 50g pesto + 1-2 tbsp. to taste (I have used parsley pesto)
• 3 Tbsp. freshly chopped herbs (basil, thyme, rosemary etc.)
• 1 Avocado
• 3 Tbsp. olive oil
• 8 Tbsp. nutritional yeast (if you eat it you can also use parmesan)
• salt and pepper to taste

 

Instructions

Cut the red onions into small pieces.

In a pot heat about 3 Tbsp. of olive oil. Add the chopped onions and sauté for about 2-3 minutes. Then add the rice and sauté together with the onions for another 2 minutes. Keep stirring while doing so.

Then add ½ Cup of the white wine. Stir until the liquid is absorbed by the rice. Then add another ½ Cup of the vegetable broth and let the rice absorb it. Continue to add vegetable broth ¼ Cup to ½ Cup at time and let the rice absorb it. Continue to do so for about 15-18 minutes. After minute 14 only add a bit of broth to insure the rice can absorb everything and the risotto won’t get to liquid-y.

You may not need all the vegetable broth. Just add as much as is needed for desired consistence. I used about 2 ½ Cup. Keep stirring the risotto time by time.

During this time smash the flesh of the avocado and chop the herbs.

When the rice is as soft as you want it to be, add the smashed avocado and stir into the risotto. This will give the risotto an extra creaminess.

Then add the herbs and the nutritional yeast and stir.

Serve with some more herbs.

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

Hey there :)

There are those days when you have nothing but time on your hands. Those are the perfect days to try and attempt this recipe. Don’t do it if you don’t have time. Because I did and I burnt my hands and still didn’t make it in time to go to the cinema. No, really, this takes quite a while. Mostly because you will get quite a mass and you have to cook those little bastards sort of twice, once as the whole potatoes and then when they have their endform you have to heat them in the pan again. And let’s not forget about all the rolling and forming… I really can’t remember anymore how the hell I thought I could make them within one hour. I’m dumb I guess. But that’s okay. Dumb is good in this case because they are totally worth it! It’s so strange since there really isn’t that much to them, only four ingredients and all of them are not known for their highly intense flavor or anything. But nonetheless those gnocchi were good. Way better than I thought they would be. So although my hands still hurt a bit and instead of going to the cinema I just had to watch TV on my sofa, happy I could ate sweet potato gnocchi. Nomnomnom.

Yaah.. I wanted to make some gnocchi for a while now. But we don’t have a potato ricer or anything. So instead of smashing them into puree or so I just grated the sweet potatoes. That worked perfectly fine.

This was my first attempt of making gnocchi on my own so I don’t know if it makes much of a difference, but I don’t think I will change this technique. It worked and the result was some nice texture, most likely more so than when working with puree. Also our kitchen can’t hold any more utensils I’m afraid. If you face about the same problems, this might be the answer. I like grating stuff anyway, feels like working out (I always hope It will increase my muscle mass – never has though I fear ;) ). Anyway, those were really good, some of the best gnocchis I have ever eaten so far, allthough I also have to admit these were the first that were not store-bought. Makes quite a difference. Yumm :)

Recipe

yields: 3-5 servings +++ prep time: about 2 hours

Ingredients

• 2 big sweet potatoes (mine were about 700g before grating, after that they were reduced to 660g / 2 ¾ Cup… I don’t know where the rest went ^^°)
• 2 ½ Cups / 325g flour
• 1 Cup / 180g durum wheat semolina
• 1 -2 tsp. salt, or to taste

Instructions

Wash, peel and cook the sweet potatoes until they are soft (mine took about 25 minutes, but it depends on size, so just check with a fork time by time)

When the potatoes are good, let them cool slightly so you won’t burn your hands when grating.

When cool enough to handle, grate the potatoes and place in a big bowl. Add flour, semolina and salt and with your hands mix everything together. The dough might still be kind of sticky. You can add more flour if you want to, but I left mine a bit sticky and just sprinkled some flour on top so I was able to work with it.

Divide the dough into 8 smaller parts, form them into rounds and then roll them out into long small rolls. Flouring them slightly will make everything a bit easier. They should be more or less the same size.

Cut the rolls into small pieces, about 1 inch / 3cm. You can shape them if you want or use a fork to get some ridges in them, but it’s not really necessary.

In a pot bring water with salt to boil and cook the gnocchi in batches (I had five rounds I think). When they are floating on the top they are done. Remove them from the water and put in a sieve so the rest water can drop.

Like this you can already eat them, but fried in a pan they are even better.

I had mine with some crispy sage and parmesan and this really went well together :)

Asparagus Tarte Flambeé

Hey there :)

So it has finally started. The asparagus season. For the next two months our pee will smell funny, we will see all those little stall selling them and our purse might suffer a bit. Hooh-ray.

I actually worked a stall selling asparagus some years ago. Back then we (my sister and I) often were given the left over asparagus (and strawberries, we had those, too :D). So back then I think I had asparagus 6 days a week. In all varieties I could think of, as soup, as gratin, as pesto, as salad … I think I almost turned into an asparagus myself. I was veeery close. I even dreamt of them.

Anyway, nowadays I have to buy them again. Or in this lucky case, my lovely grandma gave them to me. And then I had to think of what to do with them and because the weather was nice and sunny I wanted something that felt like spring to me. I went for asparagus tarte flambeé.

The thing I learnt here was if you are making something considering to also use for a blog it has to look pretty. At least a little bit. So I decided to leave the asparagus in whole spears. And yeah, it looked pretty to me. But it was hard to eat. It took a lot more effort to eat it them whole than when I would have just cut them into smaller bite size pieces. I don’t know… this feels like a dilemma. I want it to be nice to look at, but I also want it to be easy to eat… Also the fact that I had to count the number of spears used instead of just using as many as the dough allows… Cooking really becomes more work ^^° Still, I might be done with pretty ;)

Anyway, enough talking. Here’s the recipe. You decide for yourself whether to go for pretty or handy (I think handy still would look good) :)

Recipe

prep time: 40 minutes + baking time 15 minutes   yields: two tarte flambeés

for the dough

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup / 140g whole spelt flour
• 1 Cup / 140g whole wheat flour
• pinch of salt
• 4 Tbsp. walnut oil
• ½ Cup + 2 Tbsp / 155ml water

 

Instructions:

Place all the flours and salt in a bowl and mix.

Add the oil and the water and work with your hands until you have a smooth dough.

Divide into 2 parts and form into balls. Cover with a damp towel and set aside

for the topping

Ingredients:

• ¾ Cup / 180g Sour Cream
• 2-3 Tbsp. of herbs (I used chives, parsley, thyme dill)
• 20 asparagus spears
• 2 small rods of leek
• 2 carrots
• 14 cherry tomatoes
• 3 Cups / 120g spinach
• 1 big red onion
• Parmesan to taste
• honey, sugar, salt, freshly cracked black pepper

Instructions:

For the cream mix sour cream with herbs. Add some salt, pepper and honey to taste.

Wash all the vegetables.

Preheat oven to 220°C.

Quarter the leeks lengthwise and if necessary cut into smaller pieces. Set aside.

Peel the asparagus spears and cut off the ends if necessary. (Cut into pieces if need be). Peel the carrot and quarter it lengthwise. In a pan over medium heat with a bit of oil and a splash water and cook the asparagus and the carrot for about 7 minutes. Turn around frequently.

In the meantime roll out dough into to 2 flat rounds. Smear equally with the sour cream.

When the asparagus and carrots are done, divide equally and put on the dough together with the cut leeks. Arrange a bit.

Cut the cherry tomatoes in half and also put on the dough.

Salt and pepper lightly and drizzle about 2 tbsp. of honey over the assembly.

Put in the oven and bake for about 15 minutes. ( I chose to bake them separately on the upper rack)

In the meantime cut the red onions in very thin rings. With a bit of oil or a knob of butter and a teaspoon of sugar sauté in a pan over medium-high heat for about 3-5 minutes. Set aside.

In the same pan put the spinach. Cook until tender and wilted on medium heat, about 3-5 mintues.

Take the tarts out of the oven and evenly put the onion rings and spinach on top.

Grate some parmesan on top.

Serve still hot :)