White Bean Salad or Bombay Fasulye Piyszı

A very tasty bean salad from Turkey and it is vegan.

My problem was where to get Bombay beans. The large Turkish supermarket did not had any and I asked one of the staff, but they could not help me.

The photo in the food magazine issue showed medium sized white beans. There was a variety to choose from.

All other ingredients were already at home. It is a good salad to take to a foodie gathering, not only vegans will like it.

Recipe for 3 :

1 can white medium size beans

1 green onion

3 soft dried tomatoes

3 roasted red bell peppers from a jar 

3 tbsp chopped parsley

1/2 lemon juiced

2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar

3 tsp tahin

3 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Chop the green onion very fine and drain the beans. Cut up the dried tomatoes in tiny cubes and chop the bell peppers. Get everything together and check if there is enough lemon juice and salt added.

Serve as a side or with meat or just with piede.

Biscoff Ice Cream

Everything Biscoff (Lotus) is the new trend since last year. I found some ice cream in the supermarket freezer and had to give it a try.

There were 2 choices. Sandwiched ice cream between the famous cookies or on a stick like a Magnum. I choose the sandwich. 

4 tiny sandwiches in a package for €3,97.  They were good, but too sweet due to the 2 cookies.

Then I started my search on foodwebsites. The sandwich recipes popped up first. No big deal to make. But I looked further and found a regular ice cream with Biscoff.

Even easier to prepare.

Recipe for 6:

200 ml double cream

1 pack cream stabilizer

1 can sweetened condensed milk

100 g Biscoff cream - crunchy

5 biscuits and some for decoration

Warm up the Biscoff cream a little in the microwave. Beat the cream with the stabilizer to soft peaks.

Pour in the condensed milk and the Biscoff and fold that in. Crush the biscuits and add them. Fill in a large loaftin or in smaller containers, put a biscuit on top and freezer over night.

Sushi the lazy way

I cooked a larger amount of Japanese short grain rice and saved and treated it with salt, sugar and rice vinegar.

Later I thought about making onigiri or sushi rolls, but I was so lazy. On the Internet I watched some people combining all ingredients with the rice, wrap that in Noori or set it on top of Noori and called it a day.

I had to give that a try. But first a Japanese omelet, this time in a round pan. I wanted a flat one, not the pillow kind out of the small rectangular pan. Worked fine. It is a little sweet, I used Mirin to loosen the eggs a bit.

Then the ingredients were cut in small pieces and the tuna drained and loosened. The amount of soy sauce and Mirin to your preference.

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked Sushi rice

Salt, sugar, rice vinegar

1 can tuna fish

2 snack cucumbers

2 eggs

2 tbsp Mirin

1/2 cup Kewie mayo

Oil

Soy sauce

Sesame seeds

Noori sheets

Salt and pepper 

Wrap a ball in a piece of Noori or press it in a smaller bowl and upend it on a Noori. 

Asparagus in creamy Cheese Sauce

Topped with more

 cheese and baked in the oven.

I had a bunch of hard cheeses left in the fridge. Not much from one kind, but many kinds in small sizes. They were blocking my cheese shelf and needed to go.

The white gold - asparagus - is sold in huts all over the place here. I bought a kilo. After peeling it, I took the washed peel and bottom pieces and threw them in a pot with salted water. They cooked for 20 minutes. I kept the stock for the cheese sauce and the pot too.

The asparsgus went in the steamer on top of my Thermomix. Then drained and cleaned the thermomix.

I put all bits and pieces of cheese in the Thermomix to make a homogenous mountain of shredded cheese.

The base of the sauce is a roux. Butter, flour, a little milk and lots of asparagus stock. Seasoned with salt and white pepper. Dumped the ground cheese in and a couple of spoons full of cream cheese. Since the cheeses had intense flavour, no more seasoning was needed.

The bottom of an oven proof dish was given some sauce, the asparagus on top and covered with the cheese sauce. 

I can never have enough cheese, grated Gouda went on top and the dish baked in the oven at 180 C fan for 20 min.

I served it with some potatoes and parsley.

Ingredients:

1 kg white asparagus

3 tbsp butter+ 3 tbsp flour

125 ml milk

400 ml asparsgus stock

Salt+ white pepper

Pecorino, Grana Padano, Parmesan, old hard sheep cheese, cream cheese

Parsley

Potatoes

Chicken Tenders with Ranch Dip

I've made the Ranch dip yesterday to serve with the fried chicken tenders.

I bought a package of 600 g chicken breast, that were 3 halves. I butterflied them to make them thinner and then cut them up in strips. 

They were only seasoned with salt and pepper and coated in flour. The final seasoning was on the eggmixture. 600 g chicken were too much for my airfryer. Deep frying them was a better choice and I could reuse some of the frying oil I kept in a bottle.

I wanted to use Panko as the final coating, but did not had enough for the amount of chicken pieces. I added regular breadcrumbs, sesame seeds and 3 hands full of crushed cornflakes.

2 eggs and a good gluck of milk were the base of the wet mix. Chili, paprika, dried onion and garlic, salt and pepper and some chicken seasoning went in too.

I fried the tenders for 8 minutes in 180 C hot oil and put them on kitchen paper later.

They were served with Ranch dip and carrot salad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ranch Dressing - homemade

Hidden Valley Ranch in a bottle or as powder packages is not available here in supermarkets. You can buy online, but the prices are crazy.

There are several yogurt based salad dressings here to buy, but they are not coming close to the US one. I tasted some of them, but most of them were only good on lettuce, too watery and were lacking the buttermilk undertone.

I will cook chicken tenders tomorrow and serve them with Ranch dressing. I went online and checked a lot of recipes and made my own version. The way I remember the original one, it is pretty close, just missing MSG and other stuff that is forbitten here in Europe.

Recipe:

1/2 cup Mayo

1/2 cup sour cream (with herbs)

6 tbsp buttermilk

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp onion powder

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp dried parsley

1 /2 tsp dill weeds

1/4 tsp dried chives

Salt and pepper

Stir it all together and put in a jar and it keeps in the fridge for 1 week.

Bolognese with Green Spelt Groats - vegan

My BFF gave me a package of green spelt groat.

The area she lives now is a producer of it. Spelt is a very old kind of grain and can be grown on barren soil where wheat wont do. But it has less volume harvest, only about 70 % of a wheat harvest.

I've made meatfree bolognese before and wanted to give it a try. Most of my bolognese sauces always contain a lot of fresh vegetables. I love the balance of veg to meat and I am no fan of more or less veg free bolognese sauce.

The start was to cook the grout in vegetable broth. There was no advice at the back of the package. I decided on 100 g green spelt groat to 300 ml stock. It takes 15 minutes to cook and I did not use enough liquid. Some of it stuck to the bottom of the pot.

Now I know that I should treat it like an instant polenta 100x400.

Recipe for 4:

100 g green spelt groat

400 ml veg stock from paste

2 carrots

3 celery stalks

Green part of a leek

200 g cherry tomatoes

2 spring onions

4 garlic cloves

1 orange mini bell pepper

5 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp tomato paste

1 tbsp paprika paste

200 ml tomato passata

200 ml white wine

10 fresh basil leaves ( no dried stuff!)

Fresh oregano, thyme, majoram, sage, rosemary

Salt and pepper

I used my Thermomix to create a very fine vegetable mix. In a large pot went the olive oil heat up, then the tomato and paprika paste to cook for 2 min.

All veggie mix was dumped in and needed 5 min to cook. Then wine and passata were next.

The salt and pepper and all fresh herbs with stalks went in. I fished them out short before serving with some tongs.

Let it cook 12 min and then stir in the cooked groat. Make sure it is completely loose and well combined with the sauce. 

Serve on top of fresh cooked pasta with some more basil leaves.