Spaghetti with Creme fraiche and Vegeta

I saw a short YT video about kid's favourite pasta dishes. This one was from the Balkans.

Kaymak was used as the rich cream. But for that you have to go to a Turkish or Balkan supermarket. Our standart ones don't sell it. But creme fraiche is a good substitute.

Vegeta is a powder to season everything in the Balkans. It has the Umami taste, like Maggi. I just bought a small package at the Eastern European store and wanted to learn what it is all about.

Cream and Vegeta are going well together. A strong kind of seasoning, when used too much. Mixed in with spaghetti, great idea.

Since I had leftover green asparagus, I sauteed it with a bit of green onion and tossed that in with the vegeta cream spaghetti

Ingredients:

140 g spaghetti

60 g creme fraiche

1 tsp Vegeta

5 green asparagus

1 green onion

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Lemon Balm Lemonies or Blondies

This is a variation of a lemon thyme blondie recipe from "labsalliebchen". The lemon balm on my balcony has come up after this strong winter even bigger.

I baked a lemon balm cake in fall last year, blog is on, and looked for an other way to get rid of some of it. Lemon thyme and lemon balm are similar in their lemon flavour, so I used the one on my balcony to bake with.

Use an electric handmixer for this recipe and 3 different bowls, one large, one medium and a smaller one.

Recipe for a 23x23x5 cm baking dish, buttered and lined with baking paper:

3 eggs

200 g very fine granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

300 g AP flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 organic lemons, one of them zested, both juiced

3 tbsp chopped lemon balm leaves

125 ml olive oil

170 g 10% Greek yogurt

Topping:

90 g icing sugar

Juice 1/2 lemon

Smaller lemon balm leaves

 

Preheat the oven 180 C.

In the big bowl whisk eggs, sugar and salt until very foamy. In the medium bowl sift flour and baking powder together. In the small bowl, zest one lemon, juice from both, oil, yogurt and chopped leaves together.

Get flour and lemon mix in 3 parts in the egg mix to prevent knocking all air out. Pour it in the baking tin and bake for 20 min. Use a wooden skewer to check. After 5 min lift the blondie out and get it on a wire rack to cool down.

Mix icing sugar with lemon juice and maybe some drops of water and spread it on the cold surface. Stick some leaves on top and use a toothpick to press them down. Cut in small quarters to serve.

 

Leek Soup Turkish style

This is an other recipe from the cooking magazine from Istambul.

Leek cream soups here in Germany are mostly eaten as starters. I told a neighbor what I was cooking for the day and she asked me: that wont fill you up, it is a starter!

But with the topping and the croutons this soup can easily eaten on its own and will fill you up.

Ingredients:

500 g leek

3 garlic cloves

1 red long pepper

7 tbsp olive oil

100 g Pastirma or Beef ham

4 slices of bread

3 cups beef broth

1 cup heavy cream

2 tsp mustard

Salt, pepper and nutmeg

Chop up the upper green part of the leek in small pieces and give them a good wash. Sands sticks everywhere. Peel and chop the garlic.

The white of the leek goes in sliced quarters and gets washed too.

Clean the long red pepper and cut it in very small cubes.

The Pastirma comes in slices, cube them. And make bread cubes.

The easy way now is one pan and a larger pot. Put oil in both (leave some for the second pan).

Start the garlic in the pot and after 2 min add the white of the leek. Let it soften for 5 min and stir sometimes, season. Then pour in the beef stock and simmer covered for 12 min. Add the cream, mustard and nutmeg.

While you start the garlic in the pot, add the breadcubes to the oil to fry. Shake often and turn in to croutons. Get them out of the pan and set aside for garnish later.

Add the other oil to the pan and toss in green parts of the leek and the red pepper cubes. Season with salt and pepper. When all is soft, add the ham to warm up.

Check the soup for seasoning, but do not mix it. The veggies stay as they are.

Now dress the bowl with ham leek mix and croutons and serve.

I can asure you, this soup will fill you up.

Elbow Maccaroni with Ham

I was out grocery shopping this morning and the supermarket promoted lots of different things in front of every isle.

One big box was filled with lots of elbow maccaroni. They are not so often sold here, because the bright orange Mac&Cheese are not a thing.

I put a package in my cart. Then at the butcher bought cooked deli ham. Now the dish for today was almost done. The other ingredients were at home.

Ingredients for 2:

240 g elbow maccaroni

1 medium onion

2 tbsp butter

150 ml double cream

50 ml pasta water

2 tsp Dijon mustard

175 g cooked ham

75 g Gouda shredded

2 tbsp chives

2 tbsp parsley

Salt, pepper, chili

Cook the pasta and chop the onion and the ham. In some oil start the onion, after 3 minutes add the ham. Cook an other 3 minutes. Now Pasta water and cream.

Season and add mustard and the drained pasta. Stir in the cheese and the fresh herbs and serve.

 

Lentil Salad with Sucuk Turkish style

An other recipe from my newest food magazine issue from Istambul.

My BFF not only gave me the magazine, she gave me a sucuk sausage too. We shared a double pack. One sausage for me, one for her.

That sausage needed to go. I peeled off the casing and cut some wider slices. They went in a pan with a little oil and later on some paper towel to get off some fat.

The fat in the pan was great to sautee the onion and garlic. Later the date syrup, lemon juice and salt and pepper went in. The lentils heated up a little in the pan and some lettuce leaves were the shredded base on the serving plate.

Lentils on top, leftover green asparagus as the vegetable part and the sucuk chunks.

A little olive oil on top.

Ingredients:

300 g lentils

150 g green cooked asparagus

Romain lettuce

1 onion

2 garlic cloves

Olive oil

1 Sucuk

3 tbsp date syrup

1 lemon

Salt. Pepper. Chili

Lentil Patties

Cooking too much lentils for one dish results in a second one.

Using lentils for a meat substitute is nothing new. They are high in protein. I went on Pintetest to look for some recipes, but most of them were boring and vegan.

Then I remembered my wild herb excursions and the cooking afterwards. We made lentil patties and they were good.

Recipe for 6:

250 g cooked brown lentils

1 green onion

1 orange long pepper

1 egg

60 g Labneh

30 g shedded cheese

4 tbsp parsley

1 tsp onion powder

50 g breadcrumbs

Salt, pepper, chili, smoked paprika, thyme

Spray oil

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Chop onion, pepper and parsley very fine. Bring everything together and check if more breadcrumbs are needed. 

If you don't find Labneh, use some cream cheese.

Use baking paper and put some oil on it. Place 6 patties on the baking sheet and sprizz some oil on top.

Bake for 12 min, then carefully flip over and bake an other 8 min.

Serve with salad and Greek yogurt. 

Tuna Asparagus Pesto Pasta

I am in my holiday apartment South of the Nuerburgring and enjoy the beautiful weather. Today is mostly restday after the driving yesterday.

For todays lunch I cooked pasta and green asparagus together in a pot. After draining it, butter and a green onion went in the same pot.

Saving on washing up. The small tin of Sicily tuna came next. Then the pasta together with the asparagus joint them in the pot.

The finish was the Genovese pesto.

Ingredients:

75 g pasta

200 g green asparagus

Salt

1 tiny can of tuna

1 green onion

3 tsp Genovese pasta

2 tbsp butter