Sweet Corn Cream Sauce with Chorizo on Pasta

After a long drive you need some comfort food. Pasta is one of them.

A sauce is always the star of any pasta dish. Since I was not out getting groceries on my way home, i checked for staples. A medium can of sweet corn is a basic ingredient. Combining that with onion and garlic is a good start in the right direction. 

For seasoning I used "Balkans" favourite: VEGETA and lots of fresh ground pepper. The creamyness came from pasta water, a stick blender and a good helping of creme fraiche.

The short pasta was folded in and fresh chives for some green deco.

A while ago I bought a mild Chorizo sausage. That is a keeper for month in the fridge. I cut off a couple of slices and they went in a dry pan to crisp up and loose some bright red fat. They were the topping on the pasta.

Ingredients:

200 g short pasta

200 g can sweet corn, drained

1 tbsp butter

1 medium yellow onion

3 garlic cloves

2 tsp Vegeta

Pepper

4 tbsp creme fraiche

Chives

80 g mild chorizo

Apricot Compot with Semolina Porridge

Buying great looking apricots does not protect you from disapointment. They were sour and hard. 

But I was leaving for a trip the next day and I did not want to throw them in the organic waste. Fruits that are unripe and hard can be transformed when they are cooked and made in a compot.

I used apple juice and vanilla sugar and cut the apricots in bite size chunks. They needed more than 10 minutes to soften. 

A semolina pudding or porridge goes well with all kinds of stewed fruits. That was the solution to my food problem.

Recipe for 2:

500 ml whole milk

1 tsp butter

6 tbsp soft wheat semolina

Pinch of salt

1 1/2 tbsp sugar

1 egg

1/2 lemon zest and juice 

COMPOT:

6 apricots

2 tbsp vanilla sugar

200 ml apple juice

Destone the apricots and cook the fruits first. They should cool down.

Heat up the milk with butter, salt and sugar to a boil, whisk in the semolina and continue whisking until the porridge thickened. Reduce the heat while it boils.

Take the pot of the heat and break an egg in and whisk. Then add zest and juice from the lemon. Stir in the apricots.

Paysanne Pizza meets Flammkuchen

Food served at a racetrack can be a challenge sometimes. But I am in France in Alsace and they are known for good food.

A long morning of driving fast in circles makes hungry and pizza sounded good to me. I was here on this track last year and still remember the good quality pizza I ate then.

A bacon and onion topping on a pizza is here called "farmer's wife" style pizza.  But these ingredients can be found on most Flammkuche in the Alsace region.

The bottom of the pizza was very thin and crispy like the Flammkuchen.

But it was a tomato sauce base with the toppings and some additional cheese on top.

The Flammkuchen comes with a white creme fraiche base and no cheese on top.

All things considered I will call it a Pizza.

Yogurt Peach Cake with Coffee

After a 285 km drive South I needed a time to breeth and relax. A cup of coffee and a slice of some cake helps.

I needed to get groceries for my stay at an AirB&B and the supermarket came with a bakery up front.

It was pretty busy, because the next day was a church holiday. Many people bought cakes anf bread.

It took a while to get my coffee. But that gave me enough time to decide what kind of cake I wanted.

A light yohurt mousse on a thin chocolate spongecake base with peach slices. 

Lemon flavoured Milk Ice Cream

I was not so sure what to expect when I took the KOMET dessert package out of storage. 

The picture on the front showed a lovely cup of ice crem scoops and a dessert bowl. The powder package was good for two versions.

But I wanted ice cream.

The preparation was pretty easy. Just mix 250 ml of fridge cold whole milk with the powder for 3 minutes on high speed and you get a foamy and creamy bright yellow dessert.

I filled it in two containers to freeze it for 4 hours minimum.

The remaining cream I licked out of the bowl. Good as a mousse too.

Air Fryer crispy filled Pasta on Salad

Cheese topped Swabian Maultaschen (filled pasta) made crispy in the air fryer.

A large bowl of lettuce, tomatoes, bell peppers and cucumber as the filler for the dish.

The dressing is Greek yogurt based, with fresh herbs from my balcony, mustard and the usual parts of any good salad dressing.

Prepare the pasta in the air fryer first. It needs 10 minutes at 180 C cut in 1,5 cm slices, sprayed with oil and sprinkled with Parmesan. Let them sit not on top of each other, but in a single layer. I air fryed them in two batches.

Dressing:

5 tsp Greek yogurt

2 tsp grapeseed oil

2 tsp lemon juice

2 tsp mild white balsamic vinegar

1 tsp agave syrup

Lemon salt, pepper

Chopped parsley, oregano, lovage, basil

Houmous aux Carottes

The newest GOURMAND magazine issue, this time Sans Viande, has lots of nice vegetarian recipes.

This is the first one I found. It is a little different approche to prepare a hummus, but the carrot as the main ingredient does not mush smoothly when it is raw. And using canned carrots is a no go for me and in any kind of French kitchen.

The carrots needed a time in some olive oil in a hot pan with some seasonimg and after 5 minutes with a bit of water to steam and get a bit softer. Let them cool down before mixing them with the other ingredients of the hummus.  You can use the remaining liquid from the carrots and add it to the blender. 

Ingredients:

2 carrots

3 tbsp olive oil

75 ml water

130 g canned chickpeas

3 tsp tahini

1 lemon juiced

Fresh parsley

Sesame seeds

Salt, pepper, piment d" Espelette

Serve with in olive oil toasted bread