Ground Beef and Spinach Thai style

This is a recipe from "YT Aaron&Claire ", but I changed it to my preferences heat wise. It is a Thai dish.

Ground beef is so versatile and you can find it in almost every kitchen of the world, except the countries that don't eat beef. 

A huge mountain of fresh spinach goes in the pan last. It barely fits. After a couple of stirs and 3 minutes it has dissapeared. Use even more fresh spinach and put it in the pan in two batches.

I used a homegrown habanero as the heat element, I did not have any Thai or Korean chilis at home. And a red bell pepper for color accent.

Recipe for 4:

500 g ground beef

7 garlic cloves

2 green onions

1 tbsp oil

125 or 250 g fresh spinach

1 red chili

1 red bell pepper

Sauce:

2 tbsp fishsauce

2 tbsp mirin

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp light soy sauce

1tbsp rice syrup or sugar

1 tbsp cornstarch

2 tbsp water

Pepper

1 tsp Sesame oil

Basmati

In a wok heat the oil to high. Put the beef in and let it sit to take good color, then start to flip it and break it up more. Add garlic and the white of the green onion. Don't forget the chili.

Start the basmati.

After a couple of min the red bell pepper is next. While everything cooks prepare the sauce.

Add the mountain of spinach and let it wild while stirring it with the beef. Now in with the sauce. Let it thicken and finally add the green of the onions. 

Serve with rice.

Air Fryer Cheese Hot Dogs

There are food hacks on the Internet that look interestin and good enough to try.

A hot dog with a cheese pull made in the air fryer sounded like an easy evening snack.

All ingredients on hand and the work started. Toast is bread, so wholegrain toast is bread too.

It started with flattening the slice of toast with a rolling pin. Then one side was spread with butter. 

But when you turn it to fill it and then try to roll it up, butter sticks to the plate and then to your fingers. 

Put a toothpick to prevent the rolled up toast to open again.

Put it in the air fryer at 180 C for 8 min, then turn the rolls over and give them 3 more min.

It them with pickles and ketchup.

3 slices of toast

Butter

3 slices cheese

3 tiny wieners

Some dry rosted onions

Gherkins

Ketchup

Chia Coconut Dessert

I am not a huge fan of Chia seeds.

Having some in tupperware sitting around does not make it any better.

Now I found an easy dessert that can be made without lots of work. So I've got rid of 50 g of it.

Recipe for 3 large glasses:

400 ml coconut milk

150 ml water

4 tbsp maple syrup

1 tsp vanilla ectract

50 g chia seeds

60 g shredded oats -these come later!

6 tbsp Blackberry jam

4 tbsp toasted desicated coconut

The chia seeds have to soak in the liquid for 2 hours, no cooking required. After 2 hours in the fridge I tasted it. 

FROG SPAWN

Now I had 2 solutions for the bowl: 

1= toss it

2- improve it

To improve I added fine oats and heated the bowl in the microwave for 5 min on 800 watts and stir. Then I let it sit and cool down.

Tasting it while it was cooling down showed the improvment. I decided to keep it.

Filled in 3 tall glass jars, spooned the blackberry jam on top.

Put the desicated coconut in a dry pan and heat it up. Stir often and keep an eye on it. Some minutes nothing happens, then they get brown quickly. Get them out of the pan in a bowl, otherwise they burn.

Put them on top of the blackberry jam. Let them sit in the fridge. When you serve it, tell everybody to stir it.

It even was nice for breakfast the next day.

Cauliflower Bulgour Soup with Shrimps

Cauliflower florets still in the fridge. A soup on a Saturday sounded good. 

While I baked my Spelt Bread in the morning I had found an opened package of large bulgour in the pantry where my spelt flour sat. 

From a kilo package just 160 g were left. Enough for 2 portions in combination with other ingredients. The fridge showed cooked cauliflower, an open bag of Emmenthal cheese, some leftover homemade chicken stock and some ready to eat shrimps.

Combining the chicken stock with some vegetable stock the bulgour cooked for 20 minutes. Then the cauliflower went in, the cheese and last but not least the shrimps and a little green part from a spring onion.

The tastetest showed a lack of seasoning. Some pepper and Vegeta helped.

Ingredients:

160 g large bulgour

500 ml chicken -+ veggie stock

350 g cooked cauliflower

40 g Emmenthal cheese

100 g cooked shrimps

1/2 green onion

Salt, pepper, Vegeta

Spelt Bread - no kneading

On a cold Saturday morning thinking about walking to the bakery or baking yourself is the question.

I decided on baking myself. The ingredients are at home, no supermarket needed. The recipe is from "gaumenfreundin.de

There are two interesting things about this bread: it is just stirred together and no kneading is required. If you are someone who often forgets to preheat the oven, no problem: the loaftin goes in a cold oven and then you turn it up.

Recipe:

500 ml luke warm water

7 g dry yeast or 21 g fresh yeast

1/4 tsp sugar

250 g spelt whole grain flour

250 g spelt 630 flour

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar

Linseeds and oats for topping

Use a 25 cm loaftin and spray of oil it.

Get everything together in a huge bowl. A wooden cooking spoon is all you need. Make sure no lumps of flour are left.

Pour it in the loaftin and sprinkle with seeds amd oats.

Put in the cold oven, turn the temp to 200C

Bake for 60 min. Take it out of the tin and check if it sounds hollow. If not put it back in the oven without the tin for 5 to 10 min.

 

Cauliflower "Carbonara style" Pasta

After root to stem cooking I had to use some of the cooked cauliflower florets. 

A pasta dish with a creamy cheese and eggs sauce was a good idea. The pasta type was Malfadine, the long wide curly sides pasta.

While the pasta was cooking, I started with the green onions and after 3 min added the cooked cauliflower. On my balcony there was the last beet plant sitting in the pot. The leaves grew plentiful, but no beets in sight. 

The chopped leaves went in with the rest as additional color.

I grated Pecorino Romano and mixed it with 2 egg yolks. To get that a bit smooth, I hold the bowl over the boiling pasta water. Then added 3 tbsp pasta water to it.

When the malfadine were ready they went directly from the pot to the pan, a bit of water was great.

I took the pan off the heat and added the cheese egg mixture. Stirred in and then ready to serve with some fresh grated Pecorino on top.

Ingredients:

120 g Malfadine pasta

300 g cooked cauliflower florets

70 g Pecorino romano

2 egg yolks

25 g butter

2 green onions

1 bunch beef leaves

Salt, pepper, smoked paprika

Root to Stem Cauliflower

This is an Indian recipe I can't pronounce. I saw it on YT "Beryl Shereshewsky"

Today I bought a cauliflower. The head was no longer good covered in leaves, but I worked with what I had.

Root to Stem was new to me. Nose to Tail is something I use myself. But only with chicken.

Cutting the cauliflower in halve and seeing the huge stem was eye opening. Usually you first take the cauliflower out of its green cover, then you cut off the florets. Greens and stem are waste.

But not this time. The center stem was cut in matchsticks, the leaves and thicker parts were just run through with a big knife. I washed both parts seperately.

Recipe for 2 to 4:

1 cauliflower - leaves and stem

1 large potato

Ghee or Indian mustard oil

1 tbsp brown mustard seeds

2 tbsp garlic- ginger paste

2 red dried chilis

Salt and pepper

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp tumeric

1 tsp garam masala

125 ml cauliflower cooking water

While I was still chopping all the parts, I cooked the florets first and scooped them out to cool down to be packed away for other dishes.

In the boiling water now went all the stem and leave parts. They cooked until nearly done. Keep a good mug of cauliflower cooking water.

The potato was washed and cut in matchsticks. The wide pan with hot Ghee, mustard seeds, ginger garlic paste and chilis was cooking 2 min and then the potato went in. Since they are raw, they need time.

After 5 min add a bit of cauliflower cooking water and put a lid on to steam the potatoes for 5 min. 

Now in the the stems and leaves. Put in all the spice powders now. Add more water. Stir well and cook until everything is done. That can take a little while.

To bulk it out, people in India eat that with rice.