Adjusting the Amount of Blogs after 8 1/2 Years

After mostly more than 300 blogs per year (2023 = 342), I need to recalibrate my way of doing. I still love what I do. But there are other things to keep track off.

All the planning, the grocery shopping and the preparation took a good amount of my daily time. It is a very intense hobby. Since October 1., I did not miss a day posting a blog.

That does not change the way I look at food, but only one or two blogs a week will now be enough for me. I even bought a new plate! All these new and exciting tastes from different countries will still be explored. When I am dining out or eat with friends there will be blogs about it. The same goes for holiday trips. 

Just simple foods and a bit of fasting are the new lines I will follow. 

Marinara Sauce with Linguine

I watched YT Vinzenso's Plate again. He is showing traditional Italian recipes.  I cooked some of them already and they were good. 

Marinara sauce is not as common here in Germany as it is in the USA. You wont get it in large jars here either. Since I am no fan of ready made pasta sauces, the basic recipe is more to my liking.

The only thing I did not have this time of the year is the fresh Oregano. My plant on the balcony is still dormant in winter. I used the dried stuff. Fresh basil is widely available in all supermarkets and I have a pot on the windowsill.

There are no onions in this sauce, just a good amount of garlic. Good quality date tomatoes from a can were used as the main component of this sauce. Just a bit crushed.

Recipe for 1:

120 g linguine or spaghetti

1 can of date tomatoes or others

3 tbsp olive oil

3 garlic cloves minced

Salt and pepper

Dried or fresh oregano, fresh basil

Some chili flakes (optional)

Grana Padano cheese

Peel the garlic and use a garlic press to get it in the medium hot oil. Fry until fragrant. Use a little water (clean out the tomato can) to prevent the garlic from burning. Crush the tomatoes a bit and pour them in the pan. Season with salt, pepper and lots of oregano.

Start the pasta and during this time cook the sauce. Drain the pasta and save some pasta water. Put the pasta in the Marinara sauce and add a bit more oregano and fresh basil.

Add enough pasta water to finish the dish. Serve with Grana Padano.

Hash Browns with Peas, Beef and Feta

Day old potatoes cooked brown to perfection in a pan and then upscaled with cooked seasoned ground meat and defrosted peas should sound good to anyone. A finish with feta must be even better. And it is! 

It is always a challenge to bring ingredients together that will match in the end. Fridge raids are a good way to learn to combine sertan things. Create something new and stop food waste.

Ingredients:

3 cooked cold potatoes, 5mm slices

3 tbsp rapeseed oil

50 g defrosted peas

1 spring onion, 2 garlic cloves, 1/4 red chili

100 g cooked ground pork/beef 

50 g feta cheese

Salt, pepper, Patatas Bravas seasoning

Chives

Heat up the oil in a large pan and put the potato slices in. Do not let them sit on top of each other. Fry them for 4 to 5 min without stirring, then turn them.

Season.

Chop onion, garlic and chili and add to the pan. Stir carefully, not to break the potato slices. After 3 min, add meat and peas. Give them enough time to heat through. 

Now it is time for broken chunks of feta cheese. Check the seasoning and add chives.

Pasta Bake

This is easy. The base of this bake is a very old recipe from my Grandma. She made it for her family and tought my Mom, her daughter-in-law.

The very strange name of the base recipe still exists in our family: Nudeln mit Hund as is Pasta with Dog.

Do not fear, it is mixed pork and beef mince. My Dad as a small child asked his Mom what she had in the pan cooking. Maybe she was stressed. She told him it was dog meat. That was nearly 90 years ago.

I basically used the same base recipe, just added garlic, chili and some fancy modern spices.

Mixed with the pasta and a royal cream and egg sauce and topped with cheese, it went in the oven at 180 C fan for 18 min. Coming out of the oven I let the dish rest for 10 minutes.

200 g short pasta

180 g ground pork and beef

1 tbsp oil

Onions, garlic, chili

Salt, pepper, smoked paprika, herbes de Provence, Toscana spiceblend

2 eggs, 100 ml double cream, 30 ml milk, Salt, pepper, chives

Skrei on red Pepper and Tomatoes

It is Winter Cod Time!

The fishmonger had nice pieces of Skrei on ice.

300 g went with me home. The best way to treat it do not much to it. Just season it and put it on high heat in a pan and sear it, then bast it with a knob of butter. Job done.

A red bed of veggies is the best to let the Skrei shine. No thick sauces, just the juices of the veggies that still had some crunch to it.

Recipe for 1:

300 g Skrei, fish seasoning

2 tbsp rapeseed oil, 1 tbsp butter

1 red bell pepper

4 medium tomatoes, 1/2 red chili

1 large green onion, 3 garlic cloves

30 ml Noilly Prat, 30 ml water

1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp smoked paprika, salt, pepper

Chives, oil

Put all the veggies in a pan with hot oil, season and cook for 4 min, add Noilly Prat and water and reduce the heat and let it simmer for 4 min more. Finish with chives.

Caramelized Onions and Burrata Spaghetti

A huge Italian yellow onion and some Arrabiata spiceblend are the main components to serve with spaghetti.

I had a Burrata sitting in the fridge to use up. Without it the dish would be vegan. The huge onion was from  pack of three I had to buy for the Flying Dutchman Burger. It was time to use one of the others. 

This dish is not complicated, but it needs time.

Onions that need to soften and then caramelize have a very long cooking time. Best way is to start at medium high heat to seperate the onion strings, season with a little salt and pepper and put a lid on the pan. Now reduce the heat to medium and let them cook. Check every 5 min and give them a stir.

I used some Arrabiata seasoning and let it come to life in a little hot water. After a couple of minutes I added olive oil and set it aside. When the onions started to take color, the seasoning went in, without all the liquid. 

The last 5 minutes, the honey and as a finish the vinegar was added. Lots of pasta water went in the pan together with the spaghetti I took directly out of the pot. The starchy water will make the sauce together with ripped to pieces Burrata.

Finish with fresh parsley.

Recipe for 2:

1 very large onion, 3 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp olive oil, salt

1 tbsp Arrabiata seasoning, hot water, 1 tsp olive oil

1 tsp honey, 1 tbsp chives flower vinegar

1 Burrata

Parsley

 

Chicoree and Feta warm Salad

Cooked salad! Why not?

Chicoree is a versatile winter salad. Crunchy, but no longer as bitter as it was 20 years ago. I still miss the bitter taste a bit. 

This is a quick lunch with not much work to do. Great to cook fresh during a lunch break. The feta gives it a salty vibe and enough protein. Combine it with some Baguette and enjoy.

Ingredients:

1 large chicoree

1 green onion, 1 garlic clove

1 tbsp herb butter

6 cherry tomatoes

60 g Feta

Parsley

Salt and pepper

Chop green onion and chicoree roughly. Quarter the tomatoes and melt the herb butter in a pan. Toss in the veggies and season them. Let them wilt and cook for 5 min.

Break the feta in small chunks and add it to the pan. Finish with parsley.

Ube Jam Cake

Experimental baking! No recipe, a couple of miscellaneous ingredients and only an idea. A 50: 50 chance to fail.

But it went surprisingly well. I had some premade shortcrust pastry sitting in the fridge. I looked for a topping and jam was my next idea. Since I organized my storage cupboard the beginning of the week, I knew there were several jars of jam to use. One of them was Ube jam. I bought that online for a recipe I never made.

I opened the jar and tasted it. Coconut flavoured sweetness. Not much yams or sweet potato to taste. But a good base on a shortcrust pastry. I spread most of the jam from the jar on top the the pastry. 

But what next? I stuck my head in the fridge and found curd on the top shelves. A little over the expiration date, but what are 4 days anyway. A small can of already opened sweetened condensed milk was next that caught my eye. No additional sugar needed. Just some flavouring, eggs and starch.

Baking at 170 C for 40 min.

Ingredients:

1 square readymade shortcrust pastry

250 g Ube jam

250 g curd, 1 egg, 1 egg yolk

30 g sweetened condensed milk, sweet spice mix, 1 tsp vanilla extract

1 heaped tsp potato starch

One Pot Scamorza Pasta e Patate

This is a recipe from the the city of Napoli, Italy.

A saw a video by Pizzaiolo Luigi, he showed how to prepare it. A vegetarian dish with smokey cheese, what is not to like.

I was lucky this morning at our REWE Supercenter to get the last piece of Scamorza cheese. All other ingredients were at home. 

At first it sounds strange to cook a vegetable soup, mash it a little and cook the pasta in the soup. 

The grand finale are the smoked Scamorza and a good helping of Grana Padano. Just stir it twice and let the pot sit off the heat for 3 min. A bit of chives on top

Cheese pull!  

Recipe:

3 cloves of garlic, 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, 3 medium potatoes, 120 g cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper, some basil leaves

Veg stock or water to cover everything

125 g short pasta

125 g Scamorza affumicata (smoked)

30 g Grana Padano

Chives

Start the oil in a large pot and toss in the garlic. Chop all veggies and add them. Season and add basil. Cook and stir it for 3 min.

Add enough water or veg stock to cover evwrything and cook it until the veggies are done. Use a stick blender and give it some whirl.

Add the pasta and cook it in the soup. Stir often to prevent the pasta from sticking to the bottom of the pot. Use more water if needed.

Cub the Scamorza and grate the grana padano. Add to the pasta and just stir 3 times. Cover the pot with a lid and let it sit 3 min. Finish with chives.

 

 

 

Pork and Mushroom Toast

German Fleischkäse to bake in the oven. Others call it Leberkäse.

There is no cheese or liver in this kind of very smooth sausage meat. As a warm breakfast staple to be found in each and every butcher warm meat counter to be sliced an put in a breadroll. Add mustard or ketchup and you can start the first or second breakfast for the day.

I bought the uncooked sausage meat and put it in the air fryer for 45 minutes at 180 C. It will take a little bit longer baked in the oven.

To make my bread a little bit more exciting, I sauteed some button mushrooms and spread mustard with added veggies under the pork.  A great little lunch!

Air Fryer Chicken Fingers

The thin and soft meat inside the chicken breasts is the best kind for these chicken fingers.

They stay juicy and the cooking time is fast. To prevent them from drying out, I breaded them. You will get a crispy crunch on the outside. 

For a very tasty meat, it is important to season the chicken pieces very well. The flour, egg and breadcrumbs are lightly seasoned with salt and pepper too. There is no need to marinate the chicken fingers. Just coat them all around in the seasoning mix, then start the breading process. 

The air fryer was lined with baking paper for an easier clean up. I just sprayed some oil on top of the paper, set the breaded chicken fingers in and sprayed the top of them with oil too.  

Baking at 200 C for 20 min. I brushed them with some sweet chili sauce before serving. It went very well together with sauteed mushrooms and rice.

Spiceblend:

Smoked paprika, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, majoram, chives, Baharat, Piri Piri, dried parsley

500 g chicken inner filet

Oil

1 egg + 50 ml milk

3 tbsp flour, 8 tbsp  panko + breadcrumbs

Flygande Jakob or Swedish Flying Jacob Casserole

When you love bananas and peanuts, this is the dish for you.

This is spicy, sweet and crunchy. I mixed the sauce with Sriracha, Piri Piri and Curry. The combination of meat and fruits is something I love. Savoury chicken and bacon with creamy banana and salty peanuts.

There is a guy on Insta who tries dishes from around the world. He had this, but all ingredients were raw and he cooked the casserole for a longer time in the oven. 

I checked Pinterest and found lots of different methods for this Swedish classic. I took inspirations from some of them. I had to buy some of the ingredients this morning and was lucky to get organic raised chicken (legs) 30 % off, because they were expiring tomorrow.

Recipe for 1:

1 cooked chicken leg

100 g cooked Basmati rice

50 g bacon

1 banana

30 g roasted peanuts

125 ml double cream, 50 ml whole milk

2 tsp mild curry powder, 2 tsp Sriracha, 1 tsp Piri Piri, salt, pepper

Layer the rice on the bottom of the baking dish. Put the chopped chicken on top. Slice the banana and sprinkle the peanuts on the chicken.

Mix the sauce and pour it over. Bake at 180 C fan for 15 to 20 min.

Place the bacon in a pan and get it crispy to add on the dish when it leaves the oven.