Cucumber Pancakes - Kakadiche Dkirde GF

These are Indian spicy pancakes. This is a Gluten Free recipe.

YouTuber Beryl Shereshewsky showed her favourite dishes. This pancake recipe made me curious. 

Grated fresh cucumber I usually use in Tsaziki, but I never thought about putting it in a pancake.

A whole green chili is giving the kick here. Lots of tumeric and ground cumin, salt and pepper for seasoning.

The original recipe called for cilantro, I could not buy some yesterday. But the herbs on my balcony are thriving and I used a lot of them. 

The use of rice flour is rare for me. But I have this flour in stock.

Some curd as a dip is fine.

Recipe for 1:

2/3 fresh cucumber

1 green chili

1 tsp garlic paste

1 tsp ginger paste

1 handfull mixed fresh herbs (vietnamese coriander, parsley, spicy mustard greens, spicy oregano)

3 tsp tumeric, 1 tsp cumin, salt, pepper

5 tbsp rice flour

5 tbsp water

Oil for the pan

Curd

 

Button Mushroom Soup

This is a less heavy soup. The traditional mushroom cream soup has a lots of calories more. The base is different, no roux in sight.

But the soup is still creamy, but leaving the  mushroom halves intact and not blending them gives you something to chew. Not only a texture thing.

I bought big white button mushrooms and started them the way I discovered a while ago. Just sitting them in a dry pan cut side down on high heat. That way they steam and the taste intensifies. When they take color I turn them and then added a bit of butter, the onions and garlic. Seasoning them with salt, pepper and herbes de Provence.

A mushroom soup deserves creaminess. A little double cream, Noilly Prat and 3 tsp veg stock paste went in and enough boiling water from a kettle to make it a soup.

That just cooked 3 min. To get some of the consistency of a roux, I used soft wheat semolina. I just sprinkled it over the soup and stirred it in. It helps to thicken the so

Ingredients for 1 hungry person:

400 g button mushrooms

2 spring onions, 3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp butter

50 ml double cream

1 tbsp Noilly Prat

2 tbsp homemade beg stock paste, 350 ml boiling water

3 tbsp soft wheat semolina

Herbes de Provence, salt, pepper

Lemon and Cottage Cheese with Linguine

The original recipe called for Ricotta. 

Before I go on holiday next week, I have to clean out my fridge. There was just one tablespoon of Mascarpone in the package and I added 65 g of cottage cheese.

I wanted to start the pan with my homemade wild garlic butter, but rememered the recipe. Just use some starchy pasta water, no fat!

The lemon skin and the juice went in to the cream. I grated very hard Grana Padana and added some to the bowl. Seasoning with salt and pepper was the only thing needed.

The linguine went in the pan to cook until finished. Some fresh parsley and chives to make it look nice.

Ingredients:

90 g Lingine pasta

Salt and pepper

1 1/2 organic lemon, zest and juice

65g Cottage cheese half fat

1 tbsp Mascarpone

Parsley and chives

Puff Pastry filled with Ladyfingers and Apples

Lots of Gin-Strawberry Jam too!

My friend gave me a jar of her homemade strawberry jam with added pink Gin. Delicious, even if you get first Gin and then strawberries. I am not complaining :-)

I have found this filled puff pastry on FB and took some notes. I still have Ladyfingers sitting around from my Tiramisu Truffles. The buttery puff pastry was from France. 

This is a very quick to prepare kind of dessert. It just takes some time to peel the apple and cut in thin slices. Keep them in lemon juice while you prep the other stuff and preheat the oven to 220 C.  

Unroll the puff pastry and spread the jam in a long strip down the middle. Put the Ladyfingers on top. Lay the apple slices in a row and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Fold one side of the pastry over and spread jam on top. Fold the other side over and close. Put some apple slices for decoration on top and brush with egg yolk.

Bake for 15 min.

Ingredients:

1 round butter puff pastry

8 Ladyfingers

2 apples, juice 1/2 lemon

Cinnamon

4 tbsp strawberry jam

 

Wild Garlic and Tomato Sauce with Pasta

I still had a bag of wild garlic from yesterdays cooking. Fresh leaves do not last long, I needed to prepare something with them.

Fresh tomatoes and a ball of Mozzarella with lots of green onions made a great tasting combo together with the wild garlic.

The ingredients with the wild garlic added up. I only started with tomatoes and green onions and a heaped teaspoon of minced garlic in a little olive oil. To make the sauce a bit richer, I added tomato paste and a good gluck of Noilly Prat. The roughly chopped wild garlic came last with seasoning of salt and pepper and 2 tsp of Arrabiata seasoning.

And do not forget the pasta water. Just a couple of spoons in the beginning, then some more. I dropped the nearly al dente pasta directly from the pot in the pan adding more water this way. The pasta had time to finish in the pan, with a bit more added pasta water.

The ball of Mozzarella came on top just on the plate with freshly ground pepper.

Ingredients:

85 g Cappellini pasta

200 g tomatoes, 1 tbsp tomato paste

1 heaped teaspoon minced garlic, 4 green onions

1 tbsp olive oil

40 g wild garlic

125 g Mozzarella

Salt and pepper, Arrabiata seasoning

3 tbsp Noilly Prat

Cheese Chips/Crisps

This is a very very low fat cheese and it is not everyones favourite: Harzer or Handkäse

Here in the state of Hessen, Germany, we use it for Handkäse with Music. That is cheese in an oil and vinegar dressing with caraway seeds and lots of chopped raw onions. Hence the "music".

Others like to use this cheese for Kochkäse (cooked cheese). A combination of ingredients combined with the cheese and cooked. Eaten cold on bread or topping a Schnitzel.

This cheese chips are advertised as low fat and high protein and several recipes can be found on German cooking sites.

Something new is always a thing for me. I had to give it a try.

When I buy Harzer I look for cheese that is not too young, I prefare the more ripe kind of cheese. I cut it in very thin slices.

These slices are coated in paprika, herbes de Provence and dried chives. Spread out wide on baking paper. 

But spreading it out did not help a lot. The cheese slices mashed together.

Oven at 170 C baking time 17 min. When the cheese takes color, let it cool down and brake it up in chips.

Well, this cheese chips were not my thing. 

Puff Pastry with Asparagus, Cheese, Ham and Wild Garlic

Today is Wild Garlic Day! It's the time of the year.

My neighbor was at my door with a huge paper bag filled with leafy greens. I took 200 g off her hands.

What now? The wild garlic is not known to last many days. 

My plan for lunch today was asparagus filled puff pastry. I bought baby spinach and green asparagus and added cooked ham, goat cheese and Reblochon and a couple of wild garlic leaves.

But before I made lunch, I prepared wild garlic butter and wild garlic pesto.

Recipe for 4:

1 round puff pastry

4 tbsp wild garlic pesto

8 green asparagus stalks, steamed 

100 g baby spinach, blanched

30 g wild garlic

4 slices cooked ham, 4 slices goat cheese, 4 tranches Reblochon

Preheat the oven 200 C.

Cut the pastry in 4 pieces. Spread the pesto on top. Then the spinach. Add cut up asparagus, ham and cheese slice. 

The wild garlic leaves next and the Reblochon last. Fold up the edges of the pastry and slide it in the oven for 15 min.