Chicken Soup Time!

The Traveler's Republic of Tofu from The Perennial Plate on Vimeo.

How to prepare carrots and potatoes

I just love this commercial!

Lurpak - Lightest from Blink on Vimeo.

Miso Maple Salmon Recipe - this is delicious, try it!

Fresh Rice Salad

What you need (serves four people) :

- a handful (or mug) of rice, per person

- pickled red peppers (a jar), and one small, fresh red bell pepper

- parsley, ruccola, dill

- peanuts (preferably unsalted)

- sweet corn

- a handful of black olives (if you can get the ones with the kernels removed, it helps)

- some good old extra virg, vinegar, salt and pepper

Boil your rice the usual way, salting it lightly. Meanwhile, you need about 4 pieces of pickled pepper from the jar - chop them up finely, and set aside. Chop up the herbs and the fresh pepper. I should probably mention all the quantities were to taste, so everything is rather arbitrary :)) either way, prepare your ingredients (corn, peanuts, pepper etc) to taste, but make sure they won't overpower the rice. Once the rice is cooked, drain it and let it cool off a bit. Then throw it back into a bowl or pan, add the peppers, peanuts (i used a handful), corn (i added 3-4 spoons to my salad), olives and herbs. You need to dress the salad as you would a normal green salad, but you need to increase the proportion of the acid in the dressing for this one, as the rice soaks up much of the vinegar. Season the dressing to taste, then add to the salad and mix. Taste it, make sure there's a hum of vinegar in each bite, but it shouldn't be overpowering. You can probably use the seasoned vinegar inside the pickled pepper jar (if it's good quality) to make the dressing, too, or just use some of it to top up the salad if the vinegar isn't strong enough.

This, of course, is just the basic version. Feel free to add cucumber, tomatoes, really anything you fancy as long as you keep it fresh and delicious.

Enjoy!  S x

Making Lasagna

My Sunday Chicken And Pasta Curry

First of all, this is not a curry per-se. But it's a great example of what you can do with a little improvisation and ingenuity in the kitchen. I was hungry and wanted something comforting, and my mind was on mushroom and cream chicken, but I didn't have everything I needed. So I looked around the fridge and the pantry: I had pasta, chicken, some veg, and my trusty supplies of spices. So I decided to combine a little of each and make a rich, delicious yet light and comforting food. When I started to prepare the pasta and defrost the chicken, I had only a general clue as to how I was going to combine them. But as the dish progressed, it began to take shape as a personal twist on a tomato-sauce based chicken and pasta dish.
 Hope you'll enjoy it!

What you'll need:
- a pack of chicken breast
- a couple of sticks of celery
- a small white onion
- a couple of cloves of garlic
- a thumb-long piece of zucchini
- a handful of frozen vegetables (I used cauliflower, peas, green beans and carrot)
- 150-200g of penne rigate
- olive oil (a couple of tablespoons)
- one chilli (however hot you want it to be)
- half a cup of cream
- a can of tomatoes
- spices: curry powder, a bit of nutmeg, dried thyme and parsley
- salt and pepper, ofc

First off, defrost the chicken if you have to. Put a pan with water and salt on the stove, to boil the pasta. While the chicken is defrosting and the water is warming up, wash and chop the celery, the zucchini, the onion, the chilli and the garlic.
Once the chicken is defrosted, and the veggies are chopped, the water should be boiling. Add the pasta and cook for a bit shorter than the package instructions (i cooked mine 6 minutes instead of 8). Put another large frying pan or non-stick pan on the stove and let it heat up. Add oil when it's nice and hot.
Meanwhile, halve the chicken breast and then cut each piece diagonally, in piece about a finger in thickness. Season the chicken with sea salt and pepper. Put the veg in the pan, stir for about a minute, then add the chicken pieces and mix and turn them until the meat is white on all sides. Stir frequently.
By this time the pasta should be cooked. Drain it very quickly and add it to the pan, then add the handful of frozen veg. Stir for 20 seconds.
Next step, add the cream, the can of tomatoes and spices (to taste; I used about 2-3 teaspoons of curry powder, a tablespoon of nutmeg, a tablespoon of dry thyme and about a handful of chopped parsley). Stir and simmer for about 5minutes, until sauce is reduced and you achieve a nice, rich thickness to it.

Serve with a nice sprinkle of fresh or dry parsley and a refreshing lemonade.

Enjoy, S X

Fantastic...

awesome spinach and ricotta cannelloni | Jamie Oliver Recipes (UK)

awesome spinach and ricotta cannelloni | Jamie Oliver Recipes (UK)

incredible sicilian aubergine stew (caponata) | Jamie Oliver Recipes (UK)

incredible sicilian aubergine stew (caponata) | Jamie Oliver Recipes (UK)

Jamie Oliver's Birthday Challenge

LINGUINE WITH LEMON, GARLIC AND THYME MUSHROOMS | Recipes | Nigella Lawson: Nigella Lawson's official site for recipes, books and latest news

LINGUINE WITH LEMON, GARLIC AND THYME MUSHROOMS | Recipes | Nigella Lawson: Nigella Lawson's official site for recipes, books and latest news

This is crazy delicious!

Rocket And Radicchio Salad

Radicchio is a bitter salad leaf (think of endives), but it can be properly prepared to balance that bitterness with sweet or flavored aromas, or salty or peppery ingredients. Whenever you have endives, or radicchio, or treviso, balance it out with balsamic vinegar instead of lemon juice and mix in other herbs and salad leaves that complement the taste: crunchy iceberg, peppery ruccola, orache (french spinach), spinach leaves...
What you need to do for this basic salad is get yourself a radicchio head and quarter it, then chop it finely - just slice the radicchio quarter thinly and then wriggle the strips free. Get yourself a handful of fresh rocket (every supermarket these days has bagged rocket that stays fresh for about a week) and mix it in, together with some salty crunchy cheese like parmesan (or pecorino, my personal favorite for this recipe). Then get a jar and prepare a quick dressing for the salad: 1 part balsamic to 3 parts extra-virg. Add salt and pepper, shake, and then mix it in with the salad (just enough to coat the leaves, not to soak it).

This is of course the basic version of this salad. You can add different things to complement the radicchio and rocket: smoked meat such as bacon or salmon is a nice companion, but so is anything roasted or toasted. Grilled ciabata (you can even plop the salad onto a grilled piece of italian bread and turn it into a dressed radiccio crostini), pangratatta, grilled fish, grated walnut, fresh thyme... You can add other salad leaves as well (spinach, endive, iceberg, bok choi, french spinach).

Am I a food geek?

Last nite's bad dream included the shocking realization that my folks had used up most of my extra-virg olive oil.

Cauliflower Risotto

This is an absolutely delicious recipe. It’s quite unusual, and the best thing about it is that it makes a hero of the much-underloved everyday cauliflower. If you’re down the farmers’ market, or at the supermarket, have a look around for a Romanesco cauliflower – it’s a similar size to a normal cauliflower but spiky and green. It also has a delicious flavour. The reason I love this dish is because it takes some all-time classic ingredients and puts them together in a great way. In Britain we normally eat cauliflower baked with cheese, and in Italy it is baked as a parmigiana with cream, cheese and anchovies. All these flavours are in this risotto, with the added bonus of really crunchy chilli pangrattato sprinkled on top – it gives an amazing kick.

Whiz the bread in a food processor with the anchovies, the oil from the tin and the chillies. Heat a frying pan with a splash of oil and fry the flavoured breadcrumbs, stirring and tossing constantly until golden brown.

Trim the coarse leaves off the cauliflower and cut out the stalk. Chop the nice inner part of the stalk finely. Start making your risotto bianco, adding the chopped cauliflower stalk to the pan with the onion and celery at Stage 1. Add the cauliflower florets to your pan of hot stock.

Continue to follow the basic risotto recipe, adding the stock bit by bit until the rice is half cooked. By now the cauliflower florets should be quite soft, so you can start to add them to the risotto with the stock, crushing them into the rice as you go. Continue until the rice is cooked and all the cauliflower has been added.

At Stage 4, when you add the butter and Parmesan, stir in the parsley, taste and season. Sprinkle with the anchovy pangrattato, grate some more Parmesan over the top and serve. So, so good!


From jamie's website
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/risotto/cauliflower-risotto-risotto-ai-cavolfior

A Lesson In Bruschette

Bruschetta is a lovely, lovely Italian food. It's basically grilled bread rubbed with garlic and topped with olive oil, seasoning and various other toppings, a kind of open sandwich.

What you need is some nice round, rustic style bread that is stale (fresh, moist ones won't work). If you can get Italian sourdough bread, that would be perfect. Otherwise, feel free to use any kind of stale bread - including baguettes which you can turn into crostini (similar to bruschette but they're smaller slices).

The best way to get good bruschette is to toast it, 1cm thick, on a barbecue. You can of course do it on a griddle pan at home. Once they're nice and done, with wonderful black char marks across them, take them out and rub them gently on the top side with a halved clove of garlic, then drizzle it with good quality extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle some sea salt and pepper to taste.

Now, on to the topping. You can make it either very simple or lush and rich - it's up to you. You can just add chopped herbs, or tomato and basil, or vegetables (cooked or fresh), or cheese, or prosciutto, or sea food, or... There are no rules - except that you should always use fresh food.

Now, here are a few of my favorite toppings:

My Classic Tomato Bruschetta

This is, in my opinion, the basic bruschetta. This is a stepping stone to the more complicated ones and it's a good basic recipe to master. All you need is your crostini or bruschetta (crostini are smaller slices), a couple (or more, depending on how many people you serve) ripe tomatoes, fresh or dry basil - fresh works better though) and the usual other ingredients. Toast your bread and in the meantime chop the tomatoes and the basil, add them in a bowl with s&p and extra virgin double O and mix them up. If you like it more rustic, chop the tomatoes in larger pieces and scrunch them up with your hands while dressing them. Then add to the garlic-rubbed warm crostini or bruschette, and serve immediately.

Alternatively, you can also grate some parmesan or tear up some mozarella on top and pop them in the oven for a couple of minutes (or nuke em in a microwave) until the cheese melts. Top with some more basil or double O if you like it flashy. It's simple and always gets the job done. Try it for breakfast or before a comfort lunch.

Aubergine Bruschette

You're going to need the usual ingredients plus some white wine vinegar, a handful of parsley, mint, 1 clove of garlic and 2 medium firm aubergines, which you have to slice lengthwise decently thin (a few mm). Grill the aubergine slices on the griddle pan or barbecue and put them aside in a bowl until all are done. Meanwhile, grab another bowl and add the about 8 tablespoons of double O, 3 tablespoons of vinegar with the chopped parsley mint and garlic and season it with s&p. When the eggplants are done, toss them in with the dressing then divide on among your bruschetta or crostini slices. Be sure to push them into the bread with your fingers. Enjoy!

Peas, Broad Beans and Cheese Crostini 

Get yourself some fresh peas and broad beans, together with a handful of mint and mash them up in a pestle and mortar (or food processor), then add a handful of grated Parmesan or Pecorino (or any salted, sharp cheese), double O and a little lemon juice and s&p. Spoon it on your crostini and (honestly, i just do this for looks) grate some more cheese on top. Totally delicious.

Spicy Mozarella, Red Chilli and Basil Crostini

This one's easy and delicious. Tear some mozarella balls or pieces into smaller chunks, then top the crostini with them. Chop a red chilli and sprinkle it on top, add some s&p and double O. To finish it, grab some basil leaves and tear it over the crostini - or chop it up and sprinkle it. Try it x

(Sometimes i add dried oregano or grated lemon zest to flavor - you could give that a go too)

Love, S x

(some pics taken from jamie's website, btw)

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