Macarona Bi Laban - Levante style

This type of pasta dish reminded me of Turkish Manti with yogurt garlic sauce and topped with paprika butter.

"SundayKitchen au" told that Mothers in the Arabic countries love to make that for their kids when they don't have a lot time to cook.

I can fully understand that. As a kid I would loved that too and I love it today.

I had young garlic on hand, sliced and added to the yogurt with some salt and pepper. Cooked the Spelt flour elbow maccaroni al dente and tossed them on top of the yogurt.

A good amount of Ghee in a small pan and some tablespoons of pine nuts. Keep an eye on the pan. The pine nuts will go from white to dark in a very short time.

Pour that on top of the mixed pasta. I added some garlic breadcrumbs from my jar.

Ingredients:

110 g pasta

75 g Greek full fat yogurt

1 garlic clove 

Salt and pepper

3 tsp Ghee

3 tbsp pine nuts

Chicken Thighs on Kohlrabi

When you bake chicken thighs in a dish in the oven, putting a piece of veggie under it prevents it from loosing too much juice.

The direct heat often releases too much moisture and the meat dries out. I often use halved carrots as the base.

This time I harvested one of my kohlrabi from a pot on the balcony. Ate some of it and cut the other part in slices to set on the bottom of the baking dish.

The seasoned chicken thighs went skinside up on top. A scatter of garlic cloves around for more flavour and the dish went in the oven at 180 C fan for 45 min.

I served it with Basmati and homemade tomato sauce and a sprinkle of garlic breadcrumbs.

Fig Sauce with Spaghetti

This years fig season in my garden has started.

The last couple of weeks I admired the amount of figs my small tree has on. I was looking forward to eat some end of this month, when they usually are ripe. This morning I was out picking some of my tomatoes and took a look at the fig tree.

I went inside to get a bigger bowl and a knife then did my first harvest of the season.

Giving some of them to my neighbor was a good idea. She loves figs and can look upon the tree from her balcony.

Recipe for 1:

120 g spaghetti

3 tbsp olive oil

1 stalk rosemary

1/2 red chili

3 garlic cloves

4 ripe figs 

35 g pine nuts

150 ml sparkling wine

Salt, pepper, Piri Piri seasoning

25 g Parmesan cheese

Cook the spaghetti. I used tricolore pasta. Chop the figs in big chunks and chop garlic and chili. Take the rosemary off the stem.

Put all of it in a pan with heated olive oil. Sauté until the figs are soft and mushy. Add the sparkling wine and the seasoning.

In with the pine nuts and the Parmesan.

Filled Pasta with Coconut Milk Sauce

Maultaschen a bit Asian style maybe. The idea of this recipe is from "zimtliebe".

I tweaked it to my liking, but the basic ingredients are from the recipe.

The filled pasta was with chicken this time. It was the first time I have seen them in the supermarket. When reading the backside and the ingredients list, I found out that 12% chicken in total was used.

Some added German Speck (bacon) was the right choice. 

Recipe:

6 maultaschen

1 chicken stock cube

1 tbsp oil

1 red onion

3 garlic cloves

1/2 red chili

50 g speck

1 red bell pepper

1 tbsp tomato paste

200 ml coconut milk

Parsley

Salt, pepper, Piri Piri

Garlic Breadcrumbs

At first heat up the chickenstock and cook the maultaschen for 12 minutes. Take them out and quarter them.

During the cooking time chop onion, garlic, chili and bell pepper.

In a pan pour in a gluck of oil, chuck in onion, garlic, chili and after 3 minutes add the tomato paste. Roast it and now in with the pasta and the give it 2 minutes.

Some coconut milk and a little pasta water comes next. Let it mingle and season everything.

Finish with parsley and top with the garlic breadcrumbs.

Topping for Pasta Dishes

I watched one of my fav YouTubers Andong and he prepared a tasty easy topping for all kinds of pasta. 

Store it in the fridge and you can use it on many different pasta dishes.

The base is a neutral tasting vegetable oil with lots of chopped garlic cloves. They go in the oil in a cold pan and are carefully heated and cooked until soft, but not dark.

Add lots of Panko breadcrumbs and some standart ones if you like. But Panko makes the better crunch.

On medium high heat and constant stirring toast breadcrumbs and garlic until fragrant and lightly brown, add some salt.

DO NOT take the color to deep, nobody likes to eat burnt and bitter garlic.

Scatter on top of all kinds of pasta. Store the remaining mix in a jar.

15 garlic cloves chopped, not pressed

8 tbsp grapeseed oil

100 g Panko

Salt

Mung Bean Congee

This is a dish I saw on YT from Sri Lanka. Is is a breakfast dish.

Featuring Insta Pot recipes by Beryl Shereshewsky. But I added a couple of things and used my old pressure cooker pot for the stove.

I think this dish can easily be made in the CrockPot over night on low for 8 hours.

I had a fresh cobb of sweetcorn and decided to use 50% of the kernels together with beans, garlic and rice and add the other 50% with the coconut milk later.

I love some texture in my congee. 

Some Thai fish sauce, lime juice, chili salt, mixed pepper and palmsugar went in too.

Otherwise it would have tasted like hospital food.

The cooking time under pressure was 45 minutes. The coconut milk, sweetcorn and seasoning took open an other 5 minutes.

Ingredients:

1 rice cooker cup mung beans -soaked over night 12 hrs.

1 1/2 rice cup rice

1/2 fresh sweetcorn kernels

5 garlic cloves

8 ricecooker cups water

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400 ml coconut milk

50 ml water to clean out the can

1 lime

1 tsp palmsugar

2 - 3 tbsp fish sauce

Chili salt, pepper

 

Pasta with Sweetcorn in Tomato Cream Sauce

I looked up pasta and sweetcorn and saw a picture with a light tomato sauce and thought: yes, that' s my lunch.

Spirelli pasta works great with sweetcorn. It trapps the kernels. I used a couple of open packages to get rid of them - no food waste!

The pasta went in one pot together with the sweetcorn and the bunch of chopped green onions and red chili went in a pan with some oil. Then the sweetcorn.

Tomato paste and the leftover tomato passata as the base of the sauce. A small cup of pasta water to loosen everything. Cream went in next together with the broken pieces of Feta.

To thicken the sauce, some grana padano together with herbes de Provence, salt, paprika and pepper. 

The drained pasta went in next and some fresh basil leaves. That's it.