Pumpkin Pancakes

These are American style pancakes. They are called fluffy.

They are thick and a bit stodgy and need Maple syrup and or some jam. Otherwise they get stuck in your throat. I was never a huge fan of these style of pancakes. I prepare the less stodgy German ones more often.

The idea is from "Beyond the Bayou blog". I changed it a bit. A had some oven baked Hokkaido sitting in my fridge. The leftovers from the pumpkin pizza. The pieces still has their skin on, that does not make it easy to mash them with a potato masher. I cut off some of the skin.

Since I only needed 1/2 cup of unsweetened pumpkin puree, I used what I had. A bit lumpy, but real pumpkin to begin with. 

Recipe for 12 pancakes:

1 1/2 cup sifted flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ginger

1/4 tsp mixed spice

1 cup milk

35 g melted butter

2 free range eggs

1/2 cup pumpkin mashed

Oil for the pan

Topping:

Maple syrup

Blackberry jam

Oil for the pan.

Use 2 bowls and a spatula. One for the dry ingredients and one for the wet. Pour the wet in the dry and stir until no more flour pockets peak through. Do not overmix. Just let it rest until the pan is medium hot.

Brush it with oil and pour half ladle dollops on. Wait 2 to 3 min, then flip. Serve with Jam and Maple syrup.

Pumpkin Pizza

Pumpkin is an unususl topping for a pizza, but it is a vegetable and is easy to combine with other vegetables.

Cheese and bacon are good companions and they made there way on the pizza too.

To start the cooking, I've put the washed pumpkin in the oven at 180 C fan for 25 min. That made it a lot easier to cut and get the guts out. It was basically ready to eat, because it was a very small one.

I used a store bought pizza dough and was finally able to open a small jar of pizza sauce I had in storage for a while.

A pink Roscoff onion and 2 homegrown green bell peppers (too late in the year they could not ripen to color) were added to the pumpkin.

I used some fresh mozzarella and grated Emmenthal as the cheeses.

Bake at 220 C for 15 to 20 min.

Ingredients:

1 rectangular 30×40 cm pizza dough

150 ml pizza sauce

1/2 ball mozzarella

1/4 precooked Hokkaido pumpkin

1/2 green bell pepper

1 Roscoff pink onion

35 g Emmenthal grated

Salt, pepper, Italian herbs

Capellini Pasta with Crab Sauce and Tuna

Japanese Spaghetti Sauce with Crab meat is something not so easy to come by here. I had ordered it at a Japan store in Düsseldorf.

But only pasta and sauce sounded a bit bland and adding some fresh ingredients and a jar of tuna in oil to it, made it a lot tastier.

Recipe for 2:

180 g capellini pasta

150 g tuna fish in oil

1 bag Japanese spaghetti sauce crab flavour

10 mini cherry tomatoes

1 green onion

1 tsp oil

Pepper

Seperate the tuna from the oil. Halve the tomatoes and chop the green onion.

Start the pasta in salted water.

In a pot heat up the oil, toss in the onion and after 2 min the tomatoes. Season. When the tomatoes have softened a little, add the sauce.

The sauce needs to cook 5 to 7 min in the pot. I drained the capellini before al dente and let them finish in the sauce.

Put the green from the onions in it last.

 

 

Scrambled Eggs with Shrimps

No need for bacon every time.

Up your breakfast game and serve your eggs with shrimps. 

Less fat, less greasy smoke in the kitchen and a little bit healthier.

I used my regular method for the scrambled eggs. Some potato starch in milk, eggs, seasoning and dried chives. The shrimps were ready to eat and only needed to warm through.

I put all of it on two toasted wholegrain sandwich toasts.

Ingredients:

3 eggs

30 ml milk

1/2 tsp potato starch

Salt, pepper, dried chives

1 tbsp butter

65 g ready to eat shrimps

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.