Pasta Salad with canned Tuna

The tuna is actually not from a can, but larger chunks are sitting upright in a glass jar in oil. That is the more expensive stuff.

Today's weather calls for a salad for lunch. A couple of things sitting around and waiting for a purpose, they went in the salad.

A small can of sweet corn to bulk out the salad works fine too.

The dressing is very simple, just olive oil, apple cider vinegar, salt, pepper and Italian and Garden seasoning.

Just stir it well and let the flavours mingle with the fresh cooked bowtie pasta.

Ingredients:

120 g bowtie pasta

1 small can sweet corn

1/3 cucumber without the wet middle

5 cherry tomatoes

1 green onion

1 tbsp chopped chives

Salt, pepper, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, Italian an Garden seasoning

Trout simmered in Broth with Vinegar

Trout blue it is called here in Germany. Because a fresh caught trout has a slimy cover on the outside that reacts with vinegar and the skin gets a blue hue.

Well, I did not use a fresh caught trout, but a frozen one. Defrosting it takes away a lot of this slime. But I wanted to cook it and not panfry it.

A Court Bouillon was the base of my cooking liquid. From a stock cube package I bought in France. I only added vinegar, whole peppercorns, juniper berries and mustard seeds and a piece of onion.

The broth needs to cook on high for 3 to 5 minutes to release the flavours, then turm down the heat and put the trout in.

Simmer it on low heat for 10 minutes.

I served it with horseradish and a green bean salad.

Ingredients for 1:

1 trout, cleaned and salted inside

1,5 l water

1 court bouillon stock cube

50 ml white vinegar

6 black peppercorns

1 tsp yellow mustard seeds

6 juiniper berries

2 bay leaves

1 piece of onion

Strawberry Caprese

Eating raw tomatoes is a problem due to allergies. But I love caprese, Mozzarella and basil.

I saw someone topping strawberries with a Burrata and that inspired me to create the strawberry caprese.

But looking for a way to change the recipe a bit, I looked through my bottle collection of sauces. The one that caught my eye was Turkish pomegranate syrup.

Lemon salt and dried green pepper working well with strawberries, some balsamic cream and lots of fresh basil.

Strawberries

Basil

Mozzarella

Pomegranate syrup

Balsamic cream

Olive oil

Lemon salt, green dry pepper

Crispy Rice Buddha Bowl with Chicken

Leftover rice turned in to crispy rice, my new favourite.

Depending on the seasoning you put in the rice, the taste varies to make it interesting in different dishes. Today's Buddha bowl was a combination of Korean flavours and lots of fresh veggies.

I had some precooked French chicken leg and decided to eat it with a vegetarian bowl on the side.

Cucumber, red bell pepper, carrot strips and green onion topped the crispy rice.

The sauce was just a combination of Poke Bowl dressing, Mirin and Kewpie Mayo with salt and pepper. The very heavy seasoned rice was the star of the bowl.

Crispy rice dressing:

Toasted seasme oil

Rice vinegar

Dark soy sauce

Ssamyang paste

Bake the rice at 180 C fan for 15, turn it over after 10.

 

Spaghetti Bolognese at the Nuerburgring

The restaurant Mamma Mia is an Italian/Indian restaurant with Indian staff.

I did not want to eat to heavy tonight and decided on Spag Bol. 

A very light colored beef meatsauce without much seasoning and a bit too much broth. But the spaghetti were al dente and I was not longer hungry after the dish.

Next time, I will go Indian food for sure there.

Eating Pho at an Asian Restaurant

I drove up to the Nuerburgring very early in the morning. I've got a new front windschield last week after I was hit by a rock. 

I needed a new banner for the top of my windshield. At 10:15 AM the car was ready and I took it out to the countryside. I visited a small city about 18 miles away from the Ring, Mayen.

A beautiful pedestrian inner city and I walked around. For lunch I found an Asian restaurant, that offered lots of dishes from different countries, including Sushi.

A soup for lunch sounded good and I went for Vietnamese Pho with Chicken. 

The broth was light and well balanced, the wide rice noodles were good, the thin chicken breast strips good, but unseasoned. Thinly sliced red onions, chopped coriander and lemon grass swam on top of the soup.

I would call it Vietnamese style, but in no way any resemblance to the Pho I had in Manama, Bahain.

Soup with toasted Fregula Sarda

Small balls of pasta are a good choice in any kind of soup.

I had some veggies to prepare and to finish my jar of homemade veg stock. A soup was the best way to to this. A smoked sausage for protein, the pasta balls for carbs.

Green onions, carrots, parsley root and celeriac are a good base for any soup. Give them a couple of minutes to sweat in oil and season them with salt and pepper makes them even tastier.

These balls may be small, but they need 15 minutes to get soft. They went in with the veggies at the same time. Just hot water and veg stock paste on top, and cooking with the lid on for 15 minutes.

In the last 3 minutes toss in the chopped sausage to warm through and some chives.

Ingredients:

70 g toasted Fregula Sarda

2 carrots

1 parsley root

1 slice celeriac

1 large green onion

2 tbsp oil

1 heaped tbsp veg stock paste

600 ml water

Salt, pepper

1 smoked sausage

Chives