Braised Endive with Sardines

This is endive or chicoree in an other form than a salad. 

I am trying to loose some weight and been looking for non vegan options. Everybody and their aunt is trying to tell me that becoming vegan is the solution with lots of TOFU.

Since I am highly allergic to birch and have lots of cross allergies, this is not my way. I love veggies and fruits, but I love cheese and fish and meat. Most kinds of nuts, seeds and pulses are great and have been always a part of my diet.

Many vegan recipes are on these blogs,  but I avoided all kinds of highly processed vegan "meat" options. Make it with veggie and I am in the boat and leave the pork or chicken taste to the pig or chicken.

The endive just needed a bit of sauce. I still had some amall jar of balsamic onion glaze from my Advent calender and a little Date vinegar. With salt and pepper and a dash of oil, it was perfectly braized. I only sneeked in a tablespoon of Noilly Prat.

The sardines were small and only needed a coating in flour and a little oil in the pan. They were ready in no time ( 4 min)!

Ingredients:

3 small heads of endive/chicoree

1 tbsp grapeseed oil

2 tsp balsamic onion glaze

1 tbsp Noilly Prat

Salt, pepper, fresh chives

Breakfast Galette

Looking for something else then a piece of toast for breakfast?

This could be a nice change. A Breton thin pancake, aka a Galette. It is made from buckwheat and ready awailable in each French supermarket. But not on Germany :-(

I had a couple of random ingredients and a single egg sitting around. That is tge perfect choice to go with a galette.

I preheated the oven to 180C grill/fan and put a pan on the hob with a knob of butter. The galette 2as placed in on medium heat and all the chopped ingredients went in and been topped with an egg. 

I let set sit on the hob for 3 min, then put it in the oven for 6 to 8 min until the egg had a creamy consistency. If you like it more runny, take it out afte 5 min. 

The cheese had melted and the egg was perfect to my liking.

Ingredients:

1 buckwheat galette   

1 tsp of butter

50 g cooked ham, 1 stalk parsley, 1 green onion, 1/4 of a yellow bell pepper

25 g goat cheese, 1 egg

Salt and pepper

Garlic Preparation for longer shelf life

I was so happy when I found a bag of garlic bulbs that were grown in France.

Our supermarkets and discounters only sell China garlic. Either the very white larger bulbs or the small single garlic cloves in a basket.

On my grocery shopping trip to France I spotted pink garlic bulbs. The amount of it did not made any impact on me, I just picked them up and went away smiling. It is great to be happy about small things - even stinky ones.

This morning I looked at them in my onion basket and asked myself how to eat all of them before they get bad. I took the bag out to check it, but there was no weight anywhere on the sign. On my kitchen scale, they came up to 600 g.

In many Korean or Asian recipes, teaspoons or tablespoons of garlic pastes are used in recipes. Lets make my own and store it in the fridge.

Most recipes on the Internet are using olive oil. But for my more Asian recipes I looked for a neutral oil and went with grapeseed oil.

You will need 250 g peeled garlic cloves. Now the fun starts. Get the bulb open and break out the single cloves. Use a small knife to cut off the top and the tail of each clove. I have tried the method of getting them in a box and shaking them for a couple of minutes. But the skin stayed on. Then I just used my knife. The bigger ones got a tap with the knife on top, that helped with the skin.

Add them to a chopper and add 50 ml grapeseed oil. After you reach the consistency you like, put them in a sterilized glass jar. Add 2 more tbsp of oil on top. Store in the fridge and allways use a clean spoon to get some out. This way the garlic has a much longer time to stay useable.

Clean your stinky fingers either with lemon juice or a bar of steal soap.

Green sweet Dessert Drink

St.Patrick's Day Dessert!

It is only light green. I did not use enough green foodcoloring. 

But the taste is amazing. I wanted a bit more food to celebrate and looked though my freezer. The ice cream was made some weeks ago and needed to be eaten. Combining that with milk was fine, but a bit more substance was needed. 

1 green kiwi and some French yogurt with syrup from sugar cane came in handy.

All of that stuffed in a high container and with a stick blender made in to a creamy thick dessert. Do not call it a smoothie!

Whipped cream from a can and some sprinkles, voila!

Ingredients:

150 ml milk

125 g plain yogurt with sugar cane syrup

50 g homemade coconut lime ice cream

1 kiwi

3 drops Pandan extract

Whipped cream, sprinkles

Leprechaun Hats for St. Patrick's Day

Today is March 17th - the Irish holiday.

Green is the main color on this day. Food and drinks are beeing served in green.

Usually I prepare a green Jell-O and serve that with custard. Over years I brought lots of it to the office.

Today in Sunday and I was looking for something else. 

On Pinterest are many pictures and I saw these cucumber based Leprechaun hats.

Ingredients:

Cucumber

Yellow bell pepper

Slice of cheese, I used goat cheese slices

Agave syrup as glue

Cut a 1 inch piece of cucumber and cut it down the middle. Shape the sides. Cut some batonettes and glue them with syrup to the bottom.

Cut small strips off a yellow bell pepper and make cubes. Trimm the insides and make them slimmer. A slice of cheese gets cut in small strips and glued on top of the lower part of the hat. Set a yellow cube in the middle.

Cauliflower Rice with brown Garlic Butter and Merlan Filet

My grocery shopping trip to France brought me a head of cauliflower and a piece of fish.

The huge head of cauliflower was on sale and I could not walk past it. €1,99 was a steal. I had no idea what to prepare with it, but I am seldom lost for ways to cook veggies.

Just take off a couple of florets and wash them and chuck them in a blender. Make it to rice consistency and put it in the Microwave with a lid.

The Merlan filet was on 30% off, because it expired the next day. Since I planned on eating fish anyway today, it came in handy. Merlan is a part of the cod family. The meat is firm and best way to eat it, is not doing a lot to it. Just seasoning and a bit of flour and a jump start in the pan with some oil and a finish with a little flake of butter. 

It took me cooking the fish just the time the cauliflower rice needed 5 min in the microwave.

The brown butter or Beurre noisette with lots of garlic was made earlier this morning. Just let the butter melt on medium high heat and add the chopped garlic. Stir constantly until the milk solids sink to the bottom of the pan and butter and garlic get darker. Pour in a little bowl to cool down.  I added some dried chives and some salt and pepper to it later. Mixed in the hot cauliflower rice it was a treat.

I finish with fresh chives that already is going strong on my balcony again for 4th season.

Ingredients:

1/2 head of cauliflower

Fresh chives

1 1/2 tbsp butter and 5 cloves of garlic, 1 tsp dried chives, salt and pepper

1 Merlan filet, fish seasoning, pepper, 1 tbsp grapeseed oil, 1 /2 tsp butter

Mussels in Ras al Hanout and Wine Sauce

I was grocery shopping in France today. I huge package of mussels went in my shopping cart together with seasfood for tomorrow and pork for Sunday.

I already bought the meat for the Easter holidays. This year rabbit and lamb. I know, I know: the poor rabbit, the poor lambs!

But everything is better than poor Tofu.

After a long drive I had to get two ice boxes and lots if shopping bags inside in pouring rain, no fun! After sorting through everything and packing the groceries I purchased  for 2 friends to be picked up later the day, I was hangry.

I washed the mussels and checked for damaged or open ones to discard. I only took most of a bulb of garlic and an onion to throw in a large pot with some olive oil. 

Ingredients:

2 kg mussels

1 yellow onion, 6 garlic cloves

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp Ras al Hanout

1 cup white wine

After steaming the mussels, check if there are closed ones. Throw them in the trash. When you have some cooked mussel left over in the pot, take the mussel meat out of their shells and put them in the fridge.