Blue Cheese and Apple filled Pastry

I am going on a 3 day trip tomorrow and looked through the food that should be gone before that.

2 apples, a half eaten piece of blue cheese and a roll of puff pastry. No the usual ingredients for lunch. But a combination of apples and cheese oftem works. 

Wrapping that in puff pastry was a good choice. A couple of bits and pieces were used up too.

Recipe for 4 pastries:

1 round puff pastry

1 egg yolk

2 apples

4 tbsp pumpkin seeds

3 tsp honey pepper

Preheat the oven 220 C.

Quarter the puff pastry. Core and peel the apples and cut them in 4 equal slices. Put them 2 each in the middle of the pastry.

Top with pumpkin seeds and 2 tranches of soft blue cheese. Drizzle honey on top and ground some black pepper.

Fold the sides of the pastry up and close them. Brush with egg yolk.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Salami Pizza

When I prepare homemade pizza dough, I usually freeze 2 smaller balls for future pizza needs.

I found a ball of dough in my freezer the other evening and took it out to defrost in the fridge over night. In the morning I let it sit on the kitchen counter to get back to room temperature and rise a little, but still in its bag.

I did not have tomato sauce on hand, instead I used Ayvar, the Balkan red bell pepper paste.

Ingredients:

1 pizza dough

3 tsp Ayvar

6 Mini Mozzarella balls

50 g Salami

3 Mini yellow peppers, homegrown

1 green onion

25 g Emmenthal cheese

Majoram, pepper, salt

Preheat the oven 220 C fan.

I harvested the mini yellow bell peppers on my balcony today. Cut some salami from a chunk of salami I bought and tossed everything together.

Bake for 8 min.

Marinated Chicken Steaks in the Oven

An easy way for tasty chicken. 

I used boneless and skinless chicken thighs that were marketed as chicken steaks. Important here is the marinate to keep them juicy after they come out of the oven. The idea came from CanansRezepte.

I marinated them 2,5 hours, but over night is great too. If you are in a pinch timewise, put the chicken steaks in the marinate for 1 hour minimum in the fridge.

Cut up bell peppers went on the baking sheet after half of the baking time. And a pilaw with short oil roasted angelhair pasta and pilaw rice cooked in veg stock with added ayvar was served on the side.

Recipe:

400 g boneless skinless chicken thights

2 red bell peppers

1 tbsp cold butter

Marinate:

2 tbsp dark soy sauce

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tbsp honey

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp paprika + smoked paprika + piment d'Espelette

1/2 tsp cumin

Pilaw:

30 g small angelhair pasta

1 tbsp olive oil

1 ricecooker cup pilaw rice

4 rc cups veg stock

3 tsp ayvar

Bake at 180 C fan for 20 min, add peppers and bake 15 min more on baking paper.

Potatoes rosted with Honey on Olive Cream

My newest French Gourmand magazine issue has this recipe and I had a jar of brown and green olives to get rid off.

First I only saw that honey was on top of the roasted potatoes, but then reading the whole recipe I discovered that more honey was used mixed in with garlic and olives.

Fresh herbs, cream cheese and a bit of Greek yogurt as the base under the potatoes, but with olives, garlic and honey. Sounds strange, but the tangy olives, the strong taste of garlic gets smoothed out with the honey. It rounds the flavours very well.

Ingredients for 2:

600 g potatoes

Olive oil, salt, pepper, 4 tsp honey

Cream:

200 g cream cheese

100 g Greek yogurt

60 g Kalamata and green olives

1-2 garlic cloves or 2 tsp paste

Chives, parsley, watercress, sorrel, sage

Salt, pepper

Cook the potatoes with or without skin until done. 

Preheat the oven 200 C.

Use baking paper and put the potatoes on top. Use the bottom of a glass and press them down. Spray with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Bake for 10 min, then drizzle the honey on top and bake 10 more min.

While the potatoes cook or are in the oven, stir the cream cheese with all other ingredients together. When the olives still have the stones, get them out before putting them in.

Leave some olives whole for topping later.

Crêpes with Apricot Jam or Nutella

At yesterday's electric car event there was a crêpe Foodtruck. One crêpe with Nutella about 6 Euro. Other fillings 8 or 10 Euro.

But I did not eat one. Today I decided to bake myself some crêpes. For less than 6 Euro ingredients I've got 5 crêpes

I have a crêpe pan which I bought in France many years ago. It never lets me down. Just a little butter brushed around is enough.

Recipe for 5 to 6 crêpes depending on the size of your pan:

50 g melted unsalted butter

150 g sifted flour

2 eggs

Pinch of salt

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

1 tbsp oil

200 ml whole milk

2 tbsp water

Nutella, Apricot jam

In a large bowl melt the butter, sift the flour in and crack the eggs in. Mix to coarse paste. Add sugar, vanilla sugar, salt.

Mix oil, water and milk and pour it over. Stir 2 minutes until everything is well combined. Let it rest for 15 minutes.

Heat up the pan, brush some butter. Stir the batter again. Get 2 large serving spoons of batter in the pan and swirl it around. Bake until you see bubbles coming up, turn it over for 1 more minute.

Get the crêpe out and top it with either jam or chocolate and roll it up. Keep warm.

Red Bell Pepper Rice with Feta and Bacon

This dish started with a Google search: Red Bell Peppers and Rice. The first thing that popped up was a vegan dish, a very bland one I thought after reading through the ingredients list.

Then I looked for vegetarian: Feta and Ayvar came up. Sounded good to eat. While I was looking through my fridge to find the Feta, I came across a package of smoked ham cubes, good until next weekend.

Now vegetarian was out and the cooking started.

The rice was cooked in veg stock in the rice cooker on the side.

Recipe for 2:

1 rice cooker cup Jasmine rice

2 tsp homemade veg stock paste

Water

----‐-------------

2 red bell peppers

2 tiny birds eye chilis

6 cherry tomatoes

125 g smoked ham bits

1 tbsp oil

2 tbsp ayvar

1 tbsp tomato paste

2 green onions, 1 shallot, 2 garlic cloves

100 ml wine

150 ml water

2 tsp veg stock paste

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

Fresh parsley

Chop the ingredients first - Mis en Place

In a deep pan heat up a little oil and toss in the ham. After 3 min add onions and garlic and chili. Give them 3 min more.

Tomato paste next and stir it to cook a bit. Season. All other veggies in now and the Ayvar. That needs 3 min to cook.

Wine and stock to simmer a little and then add the cooked rice and the broken up Feta. Stir well until everything is combined. Check the seasoning again.

Finish with chopped parsley.

Lemon Balm Pesto

This is a pesto free of garlic!

The fine citrussy note of the leaves would dissapear when garlic is added. 

My huge pot of lemon balm on the balcony just had 40 % lost of its stems, but more needed to go. 

Next step Pesto.

I harvested enough to get 40 g of leaves together after ripping them off the stems. With that I needed 40 g of fresh toasted pine nuts.

Grated Grana Padano, juice and zest of 1 lemon, salt and pepper and a good gluck of olive oil.

That all went in my Thermomix to be blended to a pesto. Filled in some jars and ready to be eaten with little dumplings.

Ingredients:

40 g lemon balm leaves

40 g fresh pan toasted pine nuts

1 lemon zest and juice

40 g Grana Padano grated

Salt, pepper

Olive oil

Falafel Laffa

I was at e4 TESTIVAL at the Hockenheimring. All about electric cars, charging facilities and even an electric airplane.

Visitors had the chance to drive different cars on track or take a full electric coach and do a lap around the racetrack.

I took out 5 different cars and had fun and discovered some I haven't heard of before.

There were a couple of Foodtrucks to feed the crowds. The usual Bratwurst/Currywurst and French fries, Pizza and Crepes.

I discovered a vegan Foodtruck featuring Falafel and vegan Shawarma. I am no Vegan, but good food can be found everywhere. And freshly made Falafel with chickpea salad, fermented red cabbage and a tahini sesame sauce.

All in a wrap. Very good and the super fresh ingredients made it so tasty.

Pasta Mista with Pumpkin Sauce

Pumpkin Cheese Soup 2.0. This time as a pasta sauce.

I had two different kinds of pasta with low weight in their boxes. I combined them to get the right amount.

The soup had even thickened more over night and was the right amount to be used as a pasta sauce.

I added a good amount of grated Grana Padano and fresh basil on top and enjoyed my kind of using up leftovers.

Ingredients:

120 g mixed pasta

Salt

150 g pumpkin cheese soup

30 g Grana Padano

6 basil leaves

Pepper

Cheesy Pumpkin Soup

When you stuff a bigger size Hokkaido pumpkin with a large cheese, there will be leftovers.

This pumpkin can be eaten with its skin. I decided to use some spring onions and leftover garlic to start the soup. Then dumped the roughly cut up pumpkin/cheese in the pot and filled it with vegstock.

Some good seasoning and some cutting in the pot while it cooked was easy.

Remember to use a good amount of vegstock, otherwise you will end up with baby food when the soup gets blended.

The pumpkin was baked in the oven, but it still needs about 15 minutes to cook in the veg stock. During that time the remaining cheese had enough time to melt and thicken the soup.

Recipe for 3:

700 g oven baked Hokkaido pumpkin with

150 g oven cheese

2 spring onions

2 garlic cloves

2 tbsp veg oil

850 ml veg stock

Smoked paprika, chili, salt, pepper, thyme

Hokkaido Pumpkin filled with Oven Cheese

A combination not so common, but it should be in Autum and Winter.

Hokkaido Pumpkins are the ones that can be eaten with their skin. Just give them a scrub and they are ready.

To take off the top make your life easier and put the whole thing in the microwave for 5 min at 800 watts. You will still need some force to get it opened, but it is not too hard.

Check the size of your oven cheese to get the right size Hokkaido. The seeds in the middle with all the stringy flesh have to come out. And widen the top part enough to have room to get the cheese in later.

But first things first, preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Spray the pumpkin with some oil and get it in the oven for 15 min. Lay the top part on the side to roast too.

Prepare the cheese: cut the top crosswise and stick garlic slices in some cuts. Season with pepper and herbes de Provence.

Take the pumpkin out and stuff the cheese in. Get some more oil on top. Back in the oven for 25 min.

Drizzle the whole thing with some honey and serve. Enjoy the cheese pull.