Ep. 68 – cornbread (gluten free)

Well, at the request of the fans we have the recipe earlier, but be careful, it comes with a disclaimer: this recipe is actually a great improvisation, built on the ingredients in the fridge. 🙂

I wanted to make cornbread – a kind of bread-cake made with corn, traditional in the southern USA (from what I read diagonally), only it had to be gluten-free, so the recipes that combined cornmeal with flour wheat fell from the start; what I had around the house was cornmeal not corn flour, so I risked the idea that if it didn’t come out edible, my dad’s fish would be treated to deluxe food. 😛 :)))) Then the recipes, most have milk in them (or buttermilk) and I only had yogurt. 🙂 I told you maximum improvisation of the chief disaster! 😀

If you are going to make it, combine the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ones in another, then mix the two. Just like muffins.

Because I’m a disaster, I threw everything in one bowl, depending on how I found them in the house/ fridge/ pantry: 2 cups cornmeal (400g), 1 large regular yogurt (400g), 2 eggs, 3 tablespoons caster sugar (approx. 100g), 1 teaspoon salt (and it came out a little salty to my taste, next time half a teaspoon), 1 baking powder, 1 tablespoon lard (pork, of course, so bye-bye vegan recipe) and the equivalent of about 3 tablespoons of margarine, cut approximately. (The original recipe says 4 tablespoons of melted butter, of course I put more). I mixed them, then used the mixer to melt the fat.

The result has the consistency of a cake dough (or polenta with yogurt and fat :)))), I poured it into a cake tray, on baking paper. Bake on medium heat for about 25 minutes and then on low heat for about 15 minutes.

It makes a golden crust – if it doesn’t burn brown – and the toothpick comes out dry.

I ate it with peach jam – the recipe here.

Now, if you do not have real problems with gluten (from those diagnosed by the gastroenterologist), you can look for recipes that combine flour; milk can be put in place of yogurt; instead of honey, sugar. The next round I will try to turn the corn into flour, to see what comes out… if it comes out.

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Special ep. – peach jam

Well, I said it would be the easiest thing. I made quince jam in five minutes, so it would be the same. :)))) Yessss… or maybe not really. 😛

2 kilograms of peaches, well washed and cleaned of seeds and peeled (kept for a few minutes in hot water), plus 1 kilogram of nectarines. Plus 1 kilogram of 1:1 gelling sugar and half a lemon juice.

They should have been minced, but I was lazy, so I had to blend them when I saw that although they boiled, they are still whole pieces. The problem no. two is that they left quite a lot of juice and that – problem three – I should have boiled them without sugar and add it only at the end, because my stuff had to be mixed continuously, because it tended to stick nonstop. 🙂

In two jars I also put both mint and basil. Something will come out. 🙂

Are you going to do it again? Yes, I will do, peach pie. :)))

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Ep. 67 – easy cooked yellow beans

Well, the success of this ultra fast food is green or yellow beans, freshly bought from the market or store. Fresh means that when you clean it, it has no threads and when you break it it is tender. I don’t know how to explain it to you very clearly, but I can show you. :))

We prepare the string beans before anything else. We clean it, break it into smaller pieces, wash it thoroughly and put it to boil in a large pot with boiling water and some salt for a few minutes. The idea is to be edible, but crunchy – pre-cooked. 🙂 Drain it and rinse well.

In a pan or saucepan we put some chopped onions, chopped garlic, salt, pepper, oil and, if you want, carrots and peppers, finely chopped. On the fire, lightly harden, then add the preheated beans, a little water and chopped sausage. Let it boil until we like the consistency of the string beans. It will be a disaster if the water evaporates and we burn it – NO! Or if we boil it until it’s mushy – NO!

Pre-cooked beans can be frozen for later when we need it.

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Ep. 66 – carrot and ginger soup

Yesterday two things happened simultaneously: I wanted to cook something, and I didn’t know what and I woke up having to write on the blog, and I didn’t know what. 🙂

As a result, I ended up reading vegan recipes, as I do every time I want to relax. 🙂 It’s just that this time I had to burn something in the kitchen too, because my stomach was screaming with hunger. :)))

Well, I admit, I was about to give in and do something with lime, coconut, basil and corn, but the feedback was not too glorious. 😀 I also refused the tomato soup from the family catering. Like a princess, exactly. :)) But I was saved at the last second by a fabulous recipe of carrot and ginger cream soup with bread croutons. Perfect for the heat outside.

In the original version, some carrots, ginger and cumin seeds are boiled, blended, to be a cream soup, after which they are served with fried cumin seeds, chopped green parsley and some slices of toast. In my version the soup is liquid and is a base of vegetables (onions, carrots, celery, green peppers) with finely chopped or lightly blended vegetables, which are then mixed with carrot and ginger cut into small sticks and cumin seeds, fried in a spoon of olive oil. When is ready, I added some chopped green parsley on top and whole grain pretzels, because that’s what I had around the house.

Because I am a disaster, it came out a little spicy. :))) But I ate everything, down to the last drop. 😛

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Cookingbookclub 4

The book number four to read & cook is The Big Book of Backyard Cooking 250 Favorite Recipes for Enjoying the Great Outdoors.

I guess you’ll like it a loooooot. 😀 Because we upgrade from the classic grilled minced meat rolls with potato salad, eaten outdoor to many variants of burgers, salads and other stuff. Basically a slimming diet, keto-protein. 😛

The deadline for reading, choosing a recipe, trying, photographing and sending feedback is August 10th. 🙂 Give me a message to tell you where to find the book. 🙂

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Ep. 65 – beautiful meat lasagna

Well, in recent years lasagna has been wreaking havoc on my regular menu. 🙂 From “I don’t eat anything like that ever” to “be with vegetables or meat” believe me it took a lot of effort. And time. 🙂

The variant below is with meat and peas. Maybe you remember the ragu sauce, in which we add some peas at the end.

In a tray we put some oil and tomato/ meat sauce, after which we will have a layer of pasta, a layer of ragu, a layer of mozzarella and so on, about 3-4 layers. Ragu to have more juice and to be warm, the pasta sheets are put raw. You can prepare lasagna from today for tomorrow – keep it in the fridge when it has cooled. Cook it in the oven, medium heat, about half an hour or more.

I usually put 4 rows of pasta and 3 rows of ragu or vegetables and on the top sheet I put cheese and some tomato sauce. And I keep the pasta in hot water for about 5 minutes beforehand. The idea is to have enough sauce, including on top, otherwise the pasta will remain uncooked, but do not boil it too much. From experience, after a few trials you start to get caught up with the time, temperature, quantities and so on. 🙂

Sounds disastrously good, but no bechamel sauce? Let’s not exaggerate though. :)))

The next round we do with vegetables (it will be the same, except the sauce between pasta). 🙂

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Ep. 64 – biscuit salami (chocolate salami)

Well and what do we have here? Biscuit salami. ❤

Childhood dessert, comfort food, de-li-ci-ous, are all synonymous for the same thing, an easy dessert to make, whose recipe I learned in secondary school. Yes, I had some kind of cooking/ housekeeping classes from which I didn’t learn much, except the recipes for biscuit salami, boeuf salad and stuffed eggs. Plus the elements of an iron. 😀 (No, I didn’t go to school in the 50’s…)

1 kg of popular biscuits (they are per kilogram, at Auchan), they are broken into pieces and/ or passed through a mincer (half and half). In a saucepan, heat, melt and mix 3-400 ml of milk, 300g of sugar (or less, because the cookies are sweet), 3 tbsp. of cocoa and 250g of margarine. Mix the biscuits with the cream, and two vials of rum essence. You can add nuts, chopped Turkish delight, dried fruit. Or sour cherries. Roll bars of salami in cellophane and refrigerate for a few hours. If you want to make a larger quantity, you can freeze part of it for several weeks.

It can’t be a disaster, because if you put too many biscuits, you prepare extra-cream and if you put too much cream, you add more biscuits. 🙂

The salami in the picture was made by my mother and is part of a series of several attempts, the most successful being the one in which the percentage of cherries was almost similar to that of biscuits. :))))

If you make biscuit salami, don’t hesitate to call me. 🙂

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Special ep. – falafel with tzatziki

Falafel. With tzatziki. Episode 3.

This round we have a book for my cooking level. That is a cooking book for children. The book is for children, not the cooking.

So, listing the recipe, I took the recipe (also American, also in their quantities, but partially translated into my quantities) in my pocket and went shopping.

Well, the recipe. I mean the recipes. Because there are two. And surpriseeeeee. They have no meat.

Falafel: 400g (13oz) tin chick peas (drained), 1tbsp chopped fresh parsley, 1/2 small onion (chopped), 1tsp of ground coriander, 2tbsp of plain flour and extra for shaping, 1tsp of ground cumin, 1 garlic clove ( chopped), salt and pepper, 200ml (7fl oz) sunflower oil

Tzatziki: 1tsp of fresh lemon juice, 1/2 cucumber, 1 garlic clove (crushed), 1tbsp of chopped fresh mint (optional), 200g (7oz) Greek or natural yogurt,

In Romanian, a can of 400g chickpeas, chopped parsley leaves, half a chopped onion, coriander powder, 2 tablespoons flour, cumin powder, 1 chopped clove garlic, salt and pepper (more pepper than salt), 200 ml of oil.

So you throw everything except the oil in the blender, press the button and wait until the dough is done. Take the pasta out of the blender, make some burgers, dress them in flour and throw them in the pan in the hot oil. You leave them two – three minutes on each side and put aside to drain.

Then, a teaspoon of lemon juice, half a cucumber, a clove of mashed garlic, a teaspoon of chopped mint (if you want), 200 grams of yogurt. Greek. They say.

Grate half the cucumber (and now I wonder what to do with the other half) and squeeze it. That cucumber juice does not work well in tzatziki. Put the cucumbers in the bowl with the lemon juice, garlic, mint and yogurt, add some salt and pepper and taste. And that’s it.

You eat them together.

If your name is Carmen…

You talk to a mother of a vegetarian-vegan-stuff kid and she tells you that only with the chickpeas, the falalef will be spreading in the pan, therefore you add two teaspoons of sesame paste in the composition. Because it sticks all ingredients. And it also has tons of calcium. And for the future, remember to skip the onions. Because it tastes like fried onion and you don’t like fried onion.

Throw the falafel in the pan and go on facebook. After half a cigarette, you turn it over and go back on facebook. It seems to you that something does not sound good in the pan, you look and find that there is no more oil. Because this donkey eats oil like a mobra.

You start eating and remember your grandma’s biscuits. Cumin’ rules!

Great appetite. And a hot summer.

The recipes are from the third book proposed at the cookingbookclub in May / June Ultimate Children’s Cookbook. The next book appears in early July.

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Special ep. – hummus with red peppers

It took me a lot to choose this month’s recipe, so that the summer came before me deciding, that’s why the good temperature outside have chosen for me, to bake peppers on the tiles on my terrace. Therefore the recipe:

Humus with red peppers (baked on the tiles on the terrace)!

It pairs with raw vegetables, such as cucumber or carrot, so if you are on a diet, you can try it. I will put it on bread with gluten, because even the extra-healthy stuff can damage you. 🙂

We need:

-2 red peppers (cut into 4 and without seeds, baked on the grill… Go away dude, I baked them completely and cleaned them of seeds after that because I know this way better :))

-400g of chickpeas in a can (I took two cans of 250 g drained and used everything)

-2 cloves of garlic

-30 ml (2 tablespoons) of tahini / sesame paste – if you have it, if not, it will be like mine without 🙂

-the juice of half a lemon

-3 tablespoons of olive oil

-a bit of paprika, for the artist’s eye (L.E. after I tasted it: well, paprika also gives taste, it’s not just for the eye :)))

I joked about baking :)))

Did you bake the peppers, let them sweat in a covered pot (the book says to leave them in a plastic bag, but we are environmentalists, right? :)) and then cleaned them of the seeds? Did you put the rest of the ingredients in the blender and blend them until the cream came out? Did you transfer the hummus to a bowl and powder it with paprika? Well, that was the whole philosophy, keep up the good work :).

The final product. You blend more heavily, for me it’s okay like this: I made it, I eat it :))) P.S. Does it happen to you to take 34 pictures and in the end to choose the first one as the most representative? :)))

If you are wondering why I chose this recipe, then I have to admit, because I was lazy and it was very hot – couldn’t find a faster recipe to use less heat. 🙂 And I’m not sorry because the taste is nice and I think it will be even better after the ingredients chat a bit in the fridge. 🙂 Otherwise I’ve liked many recipes again, there are a lot of kinds of bread that I would like to try, delicious desserts for my soul mate… If not soon, surely in winter I resume the cookbook. 🙂

The recipes are from the third book proposed at the cookingbookclub in May / June Ultimate Children’s Cookbook. The next book appears in early July.

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Ep. 63 – feast with tortilla, salmon and…

Well, because obviously I didn’t get past the kindergarten age, no matter how hard I tried, I loved this month’s book. ❤ ❤

Which is why I cooked not one, not two, but three delicious recipes. 🙂 About a Sunday menu. Or for when your friends visit you and you want to impress them. Assuming they’ll ignore the plating :)) (I promise we’ll get there, too, but first we have some recipes to burn in the kitchen. 🙂)

Breakfast Tortilla or tortilla for breakfast or an omelet with more stuff in it. Invented by the Spanish, it is an omelette with potatoes or potatoes and onions; her Italian sister is called frittata and contains several things, including meat, cheese and vegetables. Romanians have something similar called a peasant omelet.

Although the recipe included potatoes, sausages and cherry tomatoes, I put what I had in the fridge, as usual. 🙂 In a pan with a little oil, I threw a potato, cut into cubes and let it fry lightly, then I added some diced red peppers, some leftover celery and some ready-cooked broccoli, plus two beaten eggs lightly with a fork, salt, pepper and some basil. Actually a vegetarian omelet. 🙂

The most complicated thing was to turn the omelet on the other side, because if it’s not burnt on both sides I can’t eat it. 🙂 I think that another easier option is to prepare it in the oven, because it can be kept in the fridge for at least a day or two.

Salmon Parcels or salmon packets are not really packets, but salmon with Chinese vegetables and noodles. Super yummy! 🙂 A parenthesis: from youtube I learned that there are about four possibilities to cook salmon and in time I tried them all; in the oven, in baking paper I liked the result the most, therefore the recipe here was a variation of what I had cooked before.

Buy the ready-cut and boned salmon, wash it and put it on baking paper. Put a few very thinly sliced vegetables on top – carrot, ginger, red pepper and some green onions (I put red onions); season with salt, pepper, soy sauce (if it is very salty do not add salt), orange juice (I preferred to put slices of orange on top); possibly a drop of olive oil. Wrap each piece individually (hence the packages) and put in a tray, in the oven, on the right heat, about 15 minutes or more (the fish is done quickly, but it depends on the oven).

The noodles are prepared according to the instructions and can be mixed with some lightly fried sesame (I preferred without). They are the garnish to the Asian-flavored salmon. 🙂 My picture doesn’t look very spectacular, but it is one of the recipes that I will definitely repeat, because it is made extremely quickly.

… and? The last recipe is a fusion of about 2-3 recipes with what I had around the house. :))) Well, you didn’t expect anything else, did you? 😛 From Crunchy Cereal I experienced the preparation of some cereals with dried fruits, seeds and honey, in the oven (I realized that as sweet as they are, I have supplies for about a year 😀); after which I saw the recipe for Apple Crumble Sundae, which combines in layers ripe apples, ice cream, cereals and caramel sauce (another option is with yogurt, strawberries and cereals).

My variant was with half-frozen blackberries, ice cream from Lidl and crunchy cereal. I’ve tried with kiwi before, but it seemed too sweet – I think the fruit in this combination should be slightly sour. Or ice cream to be sherbet and very few cereals. 🙂 Of course, for those of us who don’t take sugar regularly. 🙂

The recipes are from the third book proposed at the cookingbookclub in May / June Ultimate Children’s Cookbook. The next book appears in early July.

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