cookingbookclubEN, disaster in the kitchen

Special [cookingbookclub] ep. – cappelletti veggie soup

Well, only those who did not have to improvise something to eat in a short time do not recognize the benefits of recipes that are made in a maximum of 30 minutes, as written in the recipe taken from the site of Mega Image.

Basically, if you have the soup base and the pasta ready made, you put the pasta in the soup and wait for it to boil, you put some more basil on top and voila, you came out with a meal (for lunch, probably). 🙂

If you only have the basic ingredients and you are stubborn to do everything from scratch, well, then it may take longer. And you might don’t want to repeat the experience. :))))

For the vegetable soup base you will need root vegetables (carrot, celery, parsley root), onion, possibly bell pepper and celery; plus salt, pepper, vegeta, to taste. I prefer more vegetables and less vegeta, but if your fridge is a bit empty, then make up for it with a cube or two of vegetable concentrate. (The downside is that the result will be a bit salty and less nutritious). Put the veggies on the fire in a pot, foam, let it simmer, preferably until the vegetables get soft (do not boil them until they are mushy, please). If you also want vegetables in soup, then cut them into small pieces from the beginning; if you don’t want to, when they are cooked, take them out and use only the soup.

Cappelletti “caps” pasta are pasta that is originally stuffed with a combination of meat and cheese, cooked in a chicken or rooster soup, which is eaten on special occasions, at the beginning of a Sunday or Christmas meal, in some parts of northern Italy. (6-8 per serving). Yeah, just like a ravioli that looks a bit different, like a cap of Spanish soldier. 😛

I made them with carrots, red onions, celery and peppers (vegetables grated or finely chopped and hardened with a little oil, then drain the oil as much as possible).

The dough is made of 3 eggs and 2 cups and a quarter of flour (or 4 large eggs and 3 cups and a quarter of flour, etc.), plus a pinch of salt. Mix the ingredients, knead the dough until smooth and silky. 😛 Then cut into 3-4 pieces, so that it can be worked more easily, spread out on a thin sheet and cut into circles or squares.

The disaster of me no longer knows if I followed the recipe (did I? :D), but I know that I had a terrible dough. I struggled to stretch it – it’s true that my patience was already at its limit – and it seemed too much for my soup pot anyway, so I used about half of it and froze the rest for another time.

On each circle of dough, you put a little vegetable composition, then sprinkle the edges with water (so you can glue them more easily) and glue the stuffed pasta in semicircles, then bring the tips forward, giving it the shape of a hat. Or leave them as they are. :)))))) If you didn’t understand anything, here are the some pictures.

Because I didn’t drain them, they didn’t stick together. Plus, as a disaster, I tried to make some really small ones. 😀 Then I cut some bigger circles. :)))) And, of course, that my dough was thicker, because I couldn’t stretch it thin enough. 😛

I boiled them directly in the soup, because I was a little hungry, but you can also boil them separately. If you’ve done more, you can freeze some.

Well, what I want to say is that the end result was disastrously tasty! 🙂 Because I cheated, and I also put a chicken leg in the vegetable soup and because, doing several things in parallel, I boiled the soup over a very low heat.

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cookingbookclubEN, disaster in the kitchen

Cookingbookclub 8| Mega Image’s recipes

As you remember this year we cook from # 321sourceofinspiration, the second being Mega Image’s Recipes.

These people’ recipes are kind of broken. To my surprise. For instance, the picture, the list of ingredients and the description are 3 different things. Or the recipes are put in some dubious categories. So if you haven’t come up with what it looks like in the pictures, don’t despair. It’s really good. :))))

Linguine with herbs, also called pasta with pesto. It’s just that in my case they were spaghetti with spices, because Parmesan and I are not friends. Yet.

Vegetable soup with cappelletti. You will have a lot of fun if you start doing everything from scratch. Perfect for those who stay home and complain that they are bored. LOL. 😛

Our club’s next virtual meeting will be in early May.

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disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 106 – veggies a la Venice

Have you been to Venice without us? 😀 Noooo, my mother searched intensely through her collection of recipes and discovered a vegan recipe. 😛

By the way, many years ago, I tortured some volunteers with vegetables a la Șteaza… as you can see the creativity revolves around the family, lol. :))

Well, this is a typical recipe for what it looks like in the picture and what it looks like in reality experiments. Although I have to admit that it wasn’t really a disaster. 😀

You will need zucchini, potatoes and tomatoes, washed, cleaned and sliced. According to the recipe, in a round dish of jena, greased with oil, arrange the vegetables in layers, alternately, around a clove of garlic. Although the potatoes are raw, thinly sliced, I think you can make it with half-boiled potatoes. Vegetables sprinkled with olive oil, plus basil and salt. Bake for 30-35 minutes.

My mother had a round but smaller bowl, so she woke up with extra vegetables, which she turned into a kind of pudding (nothing is thrown away, everything is used, lol).

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disaster in the kitchen

Special [LesHalles] ep. – tomato and fennel soup

Les Halles was a famous French bistro in New York. Opened in 1990, it went bankrupt in the summer of 2017, but we are left with some of the recipes thanks to the books of Anthony Bourdain, who worked there for a while.

Well, this is an attempt to get our PhD in fancy recipes. 😀 I admit that I have never cooked fennel, because it is expensive and looks dubious. :)))) Raw tastes like negro candy, which I hated when I was a kinder… an extra reason to stay away from it. But I wanted fancy, I had fancy. 😛

For this sparkling soup you need 1-2 fennel roots, 1 liter and a half of ready-made soup (chicken or vegetables), a can of tomatoes in broth, a potato, an onion, salt, pepper, 4 tablespoons of olive oil. I’ll tell you what it says in the original recipe, but you’re free to improvise (tomatoes and fennel are important :D).

The fennel roots are cleaned and finely chopped, as well as the onion and potato, then put on low heat with olive oil, hardened for ten minutes, but not burned (I know, it already sounds dubious). Add the canned tomatoes, and after another ten minutes, the soup. Simmer for an hour on low heat. After it cools down a bit, put it in the blender one at a time and make the cream. Return to the heat for a few minutes, then slice, season with basil and eat. 🙂

On this occasion the disaster of me ate cream soup. 😀

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disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 105 – chicken and baked peppers stew with polenta

Every housewife knows how to make (at least) one stew and every disaster in the kitchen knows (at least) one way to quickly burn what you have in the fridge. 🙂

From the “15-30 minutes” category, today we have a dish with a super pretentious name. The haters will tell you that a real stew is made over low heat and that it takes at least until you saw the last episode of your favorite soap opera + you debated the news with your mother-in-law on the phone + you looked in the door sight at those noisy neighbors from 2. 😀

It’s just that some of us missed intensive stew training, so we improvised quickly. With what we have in the freezer and refrigerator. 🙂 (If you use frozen stuff, you’ll need to defrost it first.)

In a saucepan, in about two tablespoons of oil, over high heat, put a chicken breast, cleaned of skin and fat and cut into pieces; after a minute or two add a glass of water, season with salt, pepper and dried basil and bring to a boil; when the meat is almost cooked (which happens quite quickly), add a bag of baked peppers, cut into slices and two cloves of minced garlic, plus another glass of water. During this time we prepare the polenta: a glass of water, a pinch of salt and about 3 tablespoons of cornmeal, thrown into the water, when it starts to boil, mixed well with a fork or a mixer, until the polenta thickens.

The key to this dish is the sauce – if it has no sauce, add more water, and the garlic.

Disastrously good. 🙂

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disaster in the kitchen

Special ep. [withyeastandflour] – French toast

Well, this competitive break is good for something. 😀 For example, I found out that the bread in the egg, which you know as ‘frigănele’, is actually French toast.

If I stretch the egg with water, others use milk; plus the topping can be honey, or sugar, or sweet and spicy syrups. Like some kind of cake. :)) Plus it’s a creative way to use old bread (whoever was born before ’89 knows this, hipsters will brag about not wasting the planet’s resources, lol).

The egg bread I know is food for breakfast. Whole egg, mixed with a fork, with a little salt and pepper and possibly a little water (milk); sliced bread (made with flour and yeast from the pantry :D); put the slices of bread through the egg, on both sides and fry them in a pan with a little oil.

Eaten with seasonal salad or chopped vegetables. I put some cut cherry tomatoes for the artistic impression. 😛

If you are at home and don’t know what to do with homemade flour and yeast, you can choose to burn: maneesh, panettone, ciabatta or you can try a recipe from this month’s #cookingbookclub.

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disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 104 – Chinese with chicken [ironic]

Well, I had saved this episode for a cake, given that it’s Happy Birthday season. 🙂 We will have that episode in summer-autumn… As a result, ironically and with a day or two later, a Chinese recipe. With chicken, vegetables and rice.

Take a chicken breast, wash it, cut it, season with salt and pepper or vegeta and throw it in a pan with a little oil and ginger, finely chopped. Stir, add a couple more cloves of garlic, if you have any, then set aside in a bowl.

In another pan (or the same if you don’t feel like washing), oil, carrot noodles, parsnips, celery, peppers, mushrooms, salt/ vegeta, a little water, lid on top. When the vegetables are done (don’t destroy them!), soy sauce, some ketchup, some more water, the chicken. If you want spicy, some pickled jalapenos.

Basmati rice received ready boiled from my mother (you will probably have to boil it according to the instructions on the package 🙂 ).

As dinner.

Seasoned with half a glass of Porto wine. (The one I didn’t drink at the New Year’s Eve party two years ago, lol).

Have fun destroying recipes and stay healthy. 🙂

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disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 103 – Bavarian pretzel with cheese sauce

When your hunger (and creativity) gnaws at you at sunset, the result is (still) an experiment #disasterinthekitchen. 🙂

Normally, if someone had invited me to a cheese sauce, I think I would have been shocked for half the day and politely refused. But because I made it, it was very good, thank you very much. :))) And I didn’t destroy anything. 😀

Well, the sauce is a combination of what was in the fridge: 1 small light yogurt, a slice of grated white cheese, half a chopped red pepper, some chopped dill and a handful of bacon. And a lot of pepper. I do not know why. That’s what I thought was the most interesting thing at the time. :))

It doesn’t need salt because the cheese is salty, as is the bacon. (You don’t have bacon, put some ham. Or don’t put and it comes out vegetarian.)

Normally the Bavarian pretzel would have been cut in half and greased with cheese sauce. But because I started baking Bavarian in the evening and I couldn’t wait for it to cool down, I ate them directly, with the pretzel in my left hand and the spoonful of sauce in my right hand. Or vice versa. 😀

It counts for daily dairy portions. For diet, less.

The Bavarian pretzel recipe can be found here.

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disaster in the kitchen

Ep.102 – Moroccan couscous

Since the time when one of my many personalities was in Morocco. 🙂

Couscous, hot water to cover it and vegeta (or salt and pepper). For 15 minutes or until all the water has evaporated. Dried apricots, dried dates and raisins, if you like. Cut into small pieces. Canned boiled chickpeas, drained of juice and peeled. Chopped green parsley. Lemon juice, olive oil and some chopped mint/ powder. Finally, some fried almond flakes.

Vegan and ethnic, as they say. 🙂 It tastes good, sweet and sour. I think the most important thing is to hit the quantities (of course I only read the ingredients :))))).

Well and what did you do with the almonds, because they can’t be seen in the picture? The almonds are in the cupboard, because I was so hungry that I completely forgot about them. :)))))

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cookingbookclubEN, disaster in the kitchen

Cookingbookclub 8

Well, spring comes tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and with it a new proposal for our #cookingbookclub of this month.

I hope you haven’t forgotten that this year we have the #321sourcesofinspiration for our disastrous cooking. 3 Romanian sites, 2 surprise books and 1 piece of Youtube channel.

The second proposal is the Mega Image recipe site. And here you can also choose from many recipes, divided into categories, including new or seasonal recipes. In addition, you have video recipes, if the pictures and texts do not satisfy you. 🙂

Like last time, try new recipes, things you don’t usually cook.

The deadline for reading, choosing a recipe, trying, photographing and sending feedback is April 10th. (Just a picture and a link to the original recipe.)

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