Continuing the Trend with Chicken

This one is ALSO chicken :P
Had to use som ricotta, so I tried to use it in a sauce. kind of thing.

Details:
Chicken, onion, broth, lemon zest and juice, and redwine cooked in pan. Mixed with a little tomato paste, basil leaves, and ricotta afterwards. Served with boiled rye kernels.


Result:
Nice purple color, nice mouthfeel, but could use a little more "filling" taste. But really munchy :P

MORE Chicken!

Time for an old time favorite

Details:
Chicken with yellow pepper, carrots, leek, and a sauce of peanut butter, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, sugar, lime juice, and chicken broth. Served with basmati rice with pandan


Result:
This was as always really good! It is really easy, quick, and tasty. Easy to find a recipe like it. I really recommend it.

Tortilla Wrap In a Different Style

Opened another bag of tortilla wraps, so again, this is what will be shown.. Sorry...

Details:
Chicken fried on the pan with honey mustard.
Chinese cabbage and slices of carrot. 
Ricotta with spiced olives, some of the spices and oil, garlic, kapers, and a tiny chopped onion.


Result:
Once wrapped and lifted, it could not really be put down again. But it was tasty, fresh, and not as messy as expected.

Everything but the Kitchensink

I am going away on a small trip tomorrow, so just threw together everything I had in the fridge.

Details:
Some salad mix, some cottage cheese, the rest of the tagliatelle, snack pepper, an orange, two hardboiled eggs, some roasted pumpkin seeds for the toasty flavor, some dried cranberries for something sweet, and a dressing of honey, lemon juice, olive oil, and the last of the fresh herbs.


Result:
No special "taste experiences" but it was a good and filling meal.

When You don't have a Grill

This should have been bbq'd, but the grill on the terrace turned out to be useless (Which I found out AFTER spending over an hour getting materials for it home).
A nice big lump of clarified butter and plenty of heat yielded some really good results on the pan anyway.

Details:
Rib Eye Steak seared in ghee on a hot pan, seasoned with salt and pepper.
Boiled haricot verdes and small potatoes, fresh tomatoes, and a mixture of porcini-tapenade, roasted chopped hazelnuts, rosemary, and salt.


Result:
This time around I made sure I had "elbowroom" to handle the steak, and that the side was easy to just munch into. The steak was dark red inside, but nicely browned on the outside.
Potatoes, haricot verdes, and tomatoes were a good combination. Especially with the added cream.

Omelet

Well I wish I had some pictures of the thin omelets I made this weekend, but instead I made this one.
I have grown up with an omelet being a deep pan dish with lots of ingredients. This is my attempt af something like that, but with the ingredients prepared by itself, and added on top of the not-yet-coagulated egg mass.

Details:
Omelet of 2 eggs and an eggwhite, with a splash of milk and salt. Topped with mixed mushrooms, fried in the fat from the rind of a piece of smoked ham. After a bit of time a leek and the lean of the smoked pork was added along with garlic, salt, pepper and fresh sage.
It was all topped with a puré of tomatoes, snackpepper, and bird's eye chilies grilled in the oven, mixed with garlic, salt, sugar, and vinegar. This was thickened with a bit of corn starch.
Homemade sour dough pumpkin seed bread on the side...


Result:
It was the best omelet I've made to date! Only problem was that the puré did not really taste as I'd like it to. Should have heated it to a boil in a pan after adding the starch, adn should have used less sugar.

Summer!!!

And for that a nice salad!

Details:
Bottom of halloumi-like cheese and butterbeans.
Salad with chopped apple, blueberries, dried cranberries, roasted pumpkin seeds, and roasted cashew nuts. Drizzled with some lime juice and acacia honey.


Result:
The whole idea with the butterbeans and cheese was not good, that should have been in a completely different dish! Rest was really good though :)

Gumbo

This was me going for a "gumbo", with a darkened roux.
A roux is a thickener from french cuisine, and the dark version is the predecessor to "brown color" for sauce. It is a basically flour that has been fried in butter.. Or, it IS flour fried in butter ;)

Details:
More of the purple tagliatelle, with a gumbo on, made by frying peppers, onions, garlic, chilies, and minced beef. Added rosemary, thyme, oregano, chili powder, paprika, chipotle, liquid smoke, and caramelised onions and mushrooms. Sauce was part port wine, part stock, and thickened with the roux.
Topped with corn from cob. Cooked in microwave and just cut off the stem.


Result:
It was kind of flat tasting, but spicy! Gumbo is good, but I should use less roux next time. This was about 1½-2tbsp of flour and same of ghee.


And yea, tagliatelle and gumbo? Quite a bastardisation :P

Pesto pesto!

Did you know that you can't buy a real Pesto Genovese in stores?
Ok, maybe some specialty-store somewhere, but not in the supermarket, not at all...
Unlike Bearnaise the problem is not that it won't stay fine in glass. The problem is the price.
Basil is not the big issue here. Instead it is the pine nuts. It is the ingredient you will almost never find in any real quantity in store-bought pesto.

But why is that a problem? Why not just make it yourself? Well for me, the problem with that has been that the taste has always been thin and salty.

I thought that couldn't be true, so I looked through the standard process, and adapted it to blending. Worked like a charm!

Details:
Smoked cured pork slices. Grilled "grilling cheese" (sort of halloumi-like, probably called something else because of regional protection). Oven-grilled tomatoes with salt and pepper. Boiled small potatoes with skin. Pesto made by blending garlic, salt, and roasted pine nuts to a paste. Then adding basil leaves, blend, scrape, add, blend, scrape. Then added grated Pecorino at the end (because Parmesan is a bit too salty I think). It was slightly diluted with olive oil, which I also used a drop of to loosen the paste before adding basil leaves.


Result:
Smoked pork was good with the grilled cheese and potatoes.
Maybe the potatoes could have used a light frying, but that would propably have gotten a little too greasy. Pesto was very round in flavor, and almost lacked salt this time. Next time I need more basil...

Steak!!

Beeeeeeeeeeef!!! Nom nom nom!
First time I make a steak, and it was gooooood!

Details:
Roasted potatoes and bell peppers, with cumin, garlic and lemon (juice + zest).
Salad with sliced tomatoes, and a dressing of lemon zest, chopped basil, lemon juice, and oil.
Portobello mushroom and half a tomato, with cheese and rosemary between.
And finally, a hereford rib eye steak! With a ball of butter, blue cheese and garlic :P


Result:
Salad was good, portobello was... a little dry.
The potatoes didn't get cooked, despite getting 40 minutes in the oven! Sucky oven...
Also, cumin didn't quite match the rest...
Steak was niiiice! But could use some more elbow-room for cutting that beef :P
And the butterball was perfect ;)

Canned Thai

Is it just me, or can you can more asian foods than european? Or is it just that we have no idea how it should taste, so we just go with all the conserve and frozen?
Anyway, this was to use my instant coconutmilk powder, and try this galanga paste.

Details:
Thawed cooked chicken, boiled with a bit of premade bouillon, with organic coconut milk powder.
Added galanga paste, garlic, and lemongrass. Then added baby corn, mushrooms, and adjusted with fish sauce, lime juice, and a bit of syrup. Added whole grain noodles at the end.
It is a very standard recipe. I even have it in a very generic cookbook. Otherwise one that is precisely like this one can be found here: http://blog.seasonwithspice.com/2012/04/thailand-chicken-galangal-soup-recipe.html


Result:
Creamy and spicy. This is really some of the most awesome tasting dishes you can throw together in less than an hour. Never tried with mushrooms, really good! Couldn't taste the galanga. Might as well use ginger.. Lemongrass is nice (and you can freeze it)...
And really need a bigger bowl! What a mess!

Purple Pasta and Coffee-Molasse-Porkchops

Only thing I really knew about this dish before I started was that it would be with porkchops marinaded in molasse... I found a good recipe for this here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/molasses-coffee-marinated-pork-chops-recipe/index.html
My last potatoes had turned green, but luckily I bought this wonderfully weird beet tagliatelle yesterday.
The rest was what was left in the fridge...

Details:
Purple tagliatelle, with a little butter for taste, and some rosemary (again).
Raw, chopped onions, red and green peppers.
Pork chops with molasse, sage, ginger, garlic and coffee (see recipe). Marinaded for almost 24 hours.
"garnished" with chopped spring onions and roasted salted almonds.

Result:
Everything here was perfect, except for the pepper and onion. It just doesn't mix with the tagliatelle. Definitely not the right was to use tagliatelle. Some small pasta would have been better...



A little lesson: Molasse (Melasse) is the end product from sugar refinement. It is the byproduct of when you take naturally brown sugar and turn it into pure sugar. It has a burned, liquorice-like, bitter taste, and is what you mix with pure sugar to get processed brown sugar... Don't ask why...

Another Tortilla...

So yea, repeatative, but I had less than half an hour to prepare at consume this...
It was good though! Wild smoked salmon is just really good!

Details:
Smoked wild salmon sliced thinly and put in a whole wheat tortilla wrap with steamed asparagus, smoked cheese, thinly slice snackpepper, and a salsa with tomatillo, chipotle, ketchup, and some things I can't remember...


Result:
Asparagus and salmon is a clear win. The peppery addition was a really good complement to this, and the whole package was very hand-friendly :P

I'm sorry, Global Conscience...

I was craving something with walnuts, and went hunting for ricotta. I wanted to make some kind of dip with roasted walnuts and walnutoil. Didn't find it, but found cheap tuna!
Tuna is actually blacklisted as a fish you should not support the fishery of. But I thought I saw the MSC logo on this wonderful steak, so kind of just thought "Oh that's nice! I can actually lend myself to buying this". So without looking closer, I grapped it and went to the counter...
Turned out the package was just cleverly designed with a logo for "no dolphins harmed" designed like the MSC one... So damn you impulsive shopping!

Details:
Tuna steaks seared on both sides till browned, with a bit of rosemary.
Folded whole grain tortilla heated in panini iron.
Mixed salad with walnut oil, topped with fresh raspberries, and roasted walnuts.
Chopped orange grapefruit with strawberry/balsamico glaze.

Result:
Everything was really good here, but wanted a more intense walnut taste.
Walnut goes well with raspberry though.
Tuna is really tasty, too bad it's threatened :(

Cold dish

Summertime! And salmon again... Bought some wild MSC-approved low fat bright red salmon, so just awesome... Except it expires soon, apparantly...
So today I made a nice sandwich to go along with the sunshine outside :)

Details:
Whole wheat bun, toasted in the panini iron. Salad with lime. Thin slices of salmon. Egg salad with mayo, mustard, dried tarragon, and fresh rosemary.


Result:
Mmmmmmmmmh, creamy egg salad, how come I haven't made it for a year! Goes well with salmon!

Leftover noodles

I'm sick... And have no drive to really cook. So this time it was chicken from the fridge, and some of the teriyaki from last time.

Details:
Simple whole wheat one minute noodles.
Teriyaki sauce from last time. Marinated, cooked, thawed chicken cubes that I got from a buffet leftover at work, fried on the pan to give the a little charring. Blanched fresh spinach. Some different mushrooms, like shiitake and button mushrooms.


Result:
Nothing special, but a good easy meal.