Aguadito de Pollo Peruano or Peruvian green Chicken Soup

This is my version. Usually made with fresh cilantro/coriander, but that is not available in our supermarkets in the moment. I used the alternative spinach and parsley.

 

This green looking soup with lots of veggies does not only look comforting, it looks healthy too. For you guys, who love to promote Veganuary, eat lots of veggies and fruits and not so much highly processed food all year long, is a much better way to eat healthy. 

This soup needs a bit of planning. I am lucky to have an Induction stove top with timers on all for heating elements. The base of the soup is cooked in 4 steps, 3 of them are timed at 10 minutes.

These intervals can be used to prepare the veggies, as in sautée 2 of them and blend up 3 others. Only the defrosted peas and the parsley do not need work.

Recipe for 3 or 4:

4 chicken thights with bone and skin

2 tbsp oil

1,5 liter chicken stock

150 g longgrain rice

3 medium potatoes

50 g defrosted peas

1 red bell pepper

1 ear of sweetcorn

1 small onion

3 garlic cloves

100 g spinach defrosted

Parsley

Fajitas spiceblend, pepper

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Heat up 1 tbsp oil in a big pot and fry the chicken on both sides for 3 min. Add chicken stock and cook 10 min.

Wash the rice and put it in the pot, cook for 10 more min. Peel the potatoes and cut them in 1 cm cubes. Add to the pot and cook for 10 more min.

Cut off the corn fron the ear and chop the bell pepper in 1 cm pieces. Heat up a pan and sautée them for 5 min. Add to the soup with the defrosted peas. Cook on low heat.

Now pick out the chicken thighs and let them cool a little to take the bone out and cut in bite size chunks.

Take a mini chopper and add onion, garlic and spinach and blend it. Pour in the soup and finish with adding the chicken and the parsley.

Check the seasoning again and add the lemon juice for more freshness.

Bavarian Winter Burger

There are so many different varieties of this kind of burger on Pinterest. I used a Reel vom c.o.l.l.e and made it my own way.

Fleischkäse is a cooked seasoned sausage meat in loafform. It comes in different seasonings and can be fine or more coarse. Slices from this loaf are either eaten cold as deli meat or in thicker pieces hot on breadrolls. The loaf can contain onions or Pizza ingredients or lots of other stuff the butcher thinks about.

It is kind of a second breakfast to have a breadroll with either mustard or ketchup and a warm slice of Fleischkäse.

I used a lye Danish style bread triangle for my bun and cut the meat slice in the same triangle. The sausage meat piece was seasoned with Fajitas seasoning for more umami and went in a pan with oil. The breaded camembert needed the same time in the pan and went in too. A couple of times flipped over and cooked for 7 min on medium high heat.

The bun was toasted on both inner sides in the pan too. Then came the build of thr Bavarian Winter Burger:

Bun - sweet mustard - Fleischkäse - 1 slice American cheese - hot breaded camembert - cranberry sauce (Preiselbeeren) - sweet mustard on bun.

Well, it was nice, but not soo goood. Too much processed food.

  

Soba Noodles with Perilla Oil or Deulgireum Makguksu

A Korean cold noodle salad, a recipe from YT Aaron&Claire.

I bought Perilla oil a while ago. It is high in Omega 3 and healthy. But I haven't used a lot of it yet. The recipe was last week on YT and I thought it the right one for New Years Eve. 

The usual Fondue or Raclette are so boring.     

The preparation is very simple and easy to do in advance.

Ingredients for 2:

200 g Soba noodles

4 hard boiled eggs

2 packages toasted Korean seaweed Sesam or BBQ flavour

2 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

green onion tops

parsley or microgreens

Sauce:

3 1/2 tbsp soy sauce

1 tbsp agave syrup or sugar

1 tbsp Perilla oil

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

Cook the Soba, drain and wash out the starch, drain very good.

In a mini chopper add seaweed and sesame and blend it fine. Toss over the Soba.

In a jar mix the sauce and add it. Chop green onions very fine and add herbs or microgreens.

Mix well and set the halved eggs on top. Keep refrigerated until serving.

 

Bruschetta "Caprese"

Mozzarella and Cherry tomatoes on their last leg. 

What is a good idea to prepare them? Some bread went in a pan with olive oil and Herbes de Provence and was toasted.

The cherry tomatoes in halves went on top. Seasoned with Bruschetta seasoning and fresh ground pepper and topped with slices of Mozzarella de Buffalo. 

I still have fresh basil in a pot on my window sill that was on my balcony until October. Some of it went on the bread as well. More pepper and a helping of good quality balsamic vinegar de Modena.

Absolutely amazing to have this as dinner, with ingredients that were no longer in prime conditions.

Thai Beef Curry

My spice Advent calender gave me a package with Thai Curry Powder today. 

I bought some ground beef to cook a Bolognese, but I wanted to use some of my small spiceblend packages. I changed my flavour profile from Italian to Thai in one go. The veggies I used were the same as I would have used in the Bolo. I just added fresh ginger and some lemon juice.

A bag of coconut milk had taken residence on my kitchen counter for a while. This change of plans gave me the reason to use it finally.

For the right Thai flavour fish sauce and oyster sauce were a must. Some palm sugar and lemon juice for balance. The Thai curry flavour package pushed the beef and veggies in the right direction.

Recipe for 4:

500 g ground beef

1 Thai curry spiceblend 15 g

1 tbsp coconut oil

3 green onions, 3 garlic cloves, 1 Thai red chili

1 red bell pepper, 1 carrot, 2 celery stalks

200 ml coconut milk

1/2 lemon

2 tbsp fish sauce, 2 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tsp palm sugar

Pepper

1 hand full roasted cashews and some coconut chips

Heat up the coconut oil in a wok and brown the beef. Pour it through a fine mash sieve to get rid of too much moisture.

Add chopped onion, garlic and chili and give that 2 min. Now in with all the other finely chopped veggies and stir.

The Thai curry seasoning comes next, then fish sauce and oyster sauce. Give it 3 more minutes.

Add coconut milk and palm sugar and lemon juice (lime if you have).

Cook until the veggies have the right consistency. To finalize the dish and have some more crunch, toss in Cashews and coconut chips.

Serve with Basmati or rice vermicelli.

 

Sweet Pasta with Poppy Seeds

Poppy seed dishes are very common to me. My Mom was born in Slesia, today Poland and poppy seeds been used there a lot.

This dish is from Hungary, but can be found up North too. It is a very comforting dish. The only problems are the black dots between your teeth after the meal.

It is a very easy dish to prepare. Cook the pasta in good salted water. They need to soak up the salt a bit.

Mix poppy seeds with icing sugar in a bowl. Add a good piece of butter to it and stick it in the microwave to melt the butter. Drain the pasta and mix in the poppy seed cream.

Eat it with some fruits. I had some pomegranate seeds for some crunch and sourness.

Avocado Cucumber Pistacchio Salad

This is not a shaker salad!

Cubes of avovado and cucumber are mixed with red onion slices, chopped pistacchios and a slightly minty dressing.

The wet middle of the cucumber gets removed to prevent the salad from getting soggy. The cubes of avo and cucumber are the same size.

Very fine strips of red onion, soaked in boiling water for 1 minute rounds the salad up.

The dressing is made from:

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 lemon juiced

1 tsp agave syrup

3 tbsp Skyr

1/4 tsp dried mint

Smoked salt and pepper

Salad ingredients:

1 cucumber peeled and deseeded

1 avocado

1/2 red onion

2 tbsp chopped pistacchios