Cauliflower Steak with Capers and Lemon

Why not eat a slice of cauliflower like a steak or cutlett? This veg is often only used as a filling side dish without any special care to it.

Use a head of cauliflower that is wide enough to cut out the middle into a decent size of "steak".
This will help with the integrity of the piece. If small florets fall off, it is not a huge problem.

Store the slice in cold salted water for some time. Then take it out and season it very well.

Ingredients:
4 cm slice of cauliflower
1 lemon
1 tbsp capers
1 stalk of tarragon
1 chili
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
Salt and pepper
Piment d' Espelette

Heat up butter and oil and grate the zest of the lemon in. Chop chili, tarragon and capers and add them. Fry the cauliflower on both sides for 3 min. Then reduce the heat and put a lid on and cook it until the florets are tender.
Serve with the lemon butter and capers on top.

Lasagne with green beans and bacon

This combo might sound a little weird. But a good tomato sauce and some vegetables are often used in a dish like this.

So why not use green beans? I pimped them with some leek and a tomato. Adding a whole package of smoked bacon bits to it, pushed it into the Premier League.

Ingredients:
Sheets of fresh pasta dough
Homemade tomato sauce
150 ml Double cream
125 g Mozzarella
60 g ripe mountain cheese with herbs
30 g Parmesan
350 g green beans
2 stalks of savoury
1 carrot
100 g leek
2 shallots
4 cloves of garlic
150 g smoked bacon bits
Salt, pepper,chili, thyme

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Top and tail the beans, peel the carrot and cut it into slices, cut the leek and give it all a good rinse. Cook in salted water for 6 min, drain and put in ice water, drain again.
Peel shallot and garlic and put this with the bacon in a pan and fry for 10 min. Season and add the veggies.

Cut out the pasta sheets for your prefared baking dish.
Spoon a tiny bit of your freshly made tomato sauce on the bottom of the dish and start then with the first layer of pasta, veggies, sliced mozzarella and sauce.
Repeat 3 times and cover with pasta.
Now pour the cream over and a bit more tomato sauce.
Now cheese and more cheese.

Bake for 25 min.

Tomato Tart with Goat Cheese Topping

The last couple of days my tomato harvest increased from two hands full to a large bowl full a day. Since I am not allowed to eat  more then a few raw everyday due to my allergy, I need to cook a couple of tasty recipes.

Just preparing tomato sauce for the next winter is too boring, but will save me when I end the season.

I bought a package of puff pastry this morning.
First I baked some banana cinnamon tarteletts with the off cuts. They are the treat for later.

Ingredients:
Puff pastry
Some oil for the baking dish
As many different tomatoes as you can put in
3 tsp mustard
Greens from a spring onion
2 cloves of garlic
3 stalks flat leaf parsley
6 round pieces of cream goat cheese
3 tsp honey
3 tsp pine nuts
2 tsp olive oil
Piment d' Espelette
Pepper
Salt

Bake at 200 C for 20 min.

Bell Pepper Sauce

This is a sauce or dressing to go with all kinds of meat or fish. Or even with the vegetarian alternatives. The sauce can stay in the fridge for a couple of days to use for different dishes.

Chef Stefan Marquard made one with red long Hungarian peppers. I had a bag of yellow ones in the fridge. To get a little more color into the sauce, I used two fresh plucked off the plant "Mexican halapeñios".
Bright red! I cut off the tip to check how hot they were. Boring. They tasted like little snack peppers.

Ingredients:
500 g yellow peppers
1 shallot
1 clove of garlic
1 sprig of rosemary
Salt and pepper
Pinch of sugar
Pinch macis
1 tbsp tomato paste
100 ml Noilly Prat
200 ml red wine
75 ml olive oil

Chop all the veggies and put them into the pot.
No oil! But the seasoning.

Just cook them in Noilly Prat until the vermouth is gone. Add the red wine and cook for 30 min.

Put all of it, except the rosemary in a strong blender. Make a fine blend. Now add the oil and make an emoulsion.

Courgette into Pineapple

I watched YT again. EMMYMADEINJAPAN.

She used a green large zucchini and made some kind of dried fruit out of it by cooking it in pineapple juice.

Two weeks ago a friend gave me 3 large courgettes, one of them yellow.
The other two are already eaten. The yellow one stayed in the veg drawer of my fridge. Everytime I saw it, I thought: Not Yet, please.

Checking my dry store cupboard I found a can of pineapples. Since it is a hot and very humid Sunday, what else id better as to spent some quality time in a hot kitchen, grrr.

The recipe is easy, but you need a drier for veggies, fruit or meat. It will take uo to 18 hrs. to reach the final result.

1 large courgette
Pineapple juice
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/4 icing sugar

Peel and deseed the courgette. Cut it in bite size chunks.
Cook it in pineapple juice 8-10 min to get it translucent.
Add the caster sugar and cook 30 min more.
Drain and keep the juice in the fridge. Use it to make more.

Put the chunks on drying racks and let it run.
9 to 12 hrs.
Before you pack them away, toss them through icing sugar.

Berry Tarte

A great treat for a Sunday afternoon.

I was invited and had this cake. I asked for the recipe to share on my blog.

Recipe:
200 g flour
60 g sugar
150 g butter
Pinch of salt

Prepare the shortcrust. Put it in the fridge for 20 min.
Roll out the pastry and push it in the buttered 10 inch loose bottom dish and raise it around the edge.
Use a fork and make some holes.

200 C 20 min with baking beans.

300 g mixed blueberries and raspberries

3 eggs
60 g sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
150 g creme fraiche
Pinch of salt

Beat it to a cream and pour over the berries.
Sprinkle some brown sugar on top.

Bake at 175 C 40 - 45 min

Serve with some whipped cream

Tom Yam Gung

A THAI soup that is a well known classic. You can eat it in many restaurants.

The base of this dish was from a package I found in my local supermarket. AROY-D
It contained the coconut milk, red curry paste and seasoning package with dried chili, lemon grass and kaffir lime leaves.

I bought frozen tiger prawns, a wild catch. Cleaning them showed the quality, large black innards to pull out and a strong shell.

Wide flat rice noodles were served in the soup.  The whole cooking time was 15 min.
But peeling and cleaning the prawns rakes an other 10 min.

To the dish I added 200 ml water, 1 tbsp palm sugar, more chili, 2 tbsp fish sauce abd juice of half a lime.

For extra veggies: 2 light yellow peppers and 1 small leek, sauted in coconut oil,  and a bunch of parsley.