Ep. 26 – plum dumplings (bonus, some corn)

Assuming you haven’t made all the plums jam or brandy, it’s time to celebrate the end of September with a large pot of plum dumplings (gomboți, Zwetschgenknodel, szilvasgomboc, Knedle ze śliwkami).

While you say dumpling using all those versions, remove the kernel from the plums, leaving them, if possible, whole. 🙂 If you don’t succeed, cut them in half, because it’s ok, instead of round things you will get some flatter and smaller things, just as tasty.

The classic recipe says that the plums are filled with sugar and cinnamon and dressed in a potato dough, after which they are boiled and when they are ready, they are covered with breadcrumbs fried with caster sugar and a little butter or oil. Then eat them hot, until you feel sick… :)))

Well, I changed the recipe (what news, Claudia :)) ), I put the cinnamon in the breadcrumbs and I took out the sugar from the inside and from the dough, leaving only the one from the breadcrumbs. You don’t have to do like me. 🙂 Leave one spoon of sugar in the dough.

For a kilogram of plums, I made a dough from two or three large potatoes boiled in their skins, then purée and mixed with butter or margarine, 1 egg, salt, 1-2 tablespoons of sugar – optional and flour so that a dough comes out that can be spread by hand and is not extremely sticky. Don’t overdo it with flour because you don’t want a rubber dough to come out. 🙂

What you don’t know is that I prepared the dumplings, being extremely proud of how they looked like, after which I boiled the first round, I waited for it to rise to the surface and after a few minutes I said, it should be ready, let’s taste one… I took it, cut it and ups, the uncooked dough and the plum inside looked a bit dubious. I waited another 5 minutes, I took out another one, did the same… What a disaster, alas, what am I doing… In the end I boiled them for about half an hour, during which time I tasted half the pot :))) (eh, not really, but close: P). In round two I managed to catch time and in round three… well, I managed to stick them to the pot, as a result the dough spread a little and we had sort of plum dumplings a la Cluj… But it was good, I ate them all :)))

Can you also tell us how many kilos do you have? 😉 No, but I said we have bonus boiled corn, et voila! What did you do to him? Nothing at all, I washed it, put it in the pot, boiled it, then salted it a little and ate it. 😀

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Lessons learned

I liked what Stephen King writes in On Writing, that good ideas can come from anywhere, and that ideas that previously had nothing to do with each other can be put together for a new outcome. What he says about writing can be applied to any field – only those who have not worked with ideas can contradict it. 🙂

By the end of the year, 40 items will appear in the category # kitchendisaster. Some are funny, some are delicious, some are happy results of unplanned disasters, and all are from my experience this year.

The original idea was to laugh it off. In my family, everyone cooks well and very well, plus professionally. I am the catastrophe. But like me, there are others. 🙂 And real life means a continuous process of trial and error. Those beautiful pictures on instagram or pinterest are the result of many conditions, including technical and photoshop and sometimes represent an ideal reality instead of the real one. Your result on the plate will be the result of the values you believe in combined with the budget you have and less the virtual reality on social media.

For me it is important to have a regular exercise to create food from basic ingredients, because when you have a diet or many fads and a limited budget, your options are reduced proportionally.

But what I learned is that over time you become more willing to try new things and your creativity is growing. 🙂 Also expand the variety of ingredients and recipes, self-esteem, technical knowledge, tips & tricks and possibly the number of kilograms (here we have more little work :)))) Next year maybe we expand the group of friends we do experiments on and we will do a little disaster prevention. 😛

What I wrote about the 6 principles to put into practice about a healthy lifestyle and nutrition still applies.

Until the next disaster, peace, love and papaya (that avocado was unripe). 🙂

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 25 – Another Potatoes Salad

In high school I know I had a few hours of cooking, put in after sewing and crocheting and before those about iron components (what do you know, the real .ro woman from the 90’s couldn’t iron clothes if she didn’t know how to unscrew the iron with a screwdriver…). In theory there was a kind of makeshift kitchen with a stove and a table, but in practice all the things learned were with ingredients brought from home and prepared without much logistics. Or so I remember. The most famous recipe was the one of oriental salad, made of potatoes, onions, boiled eggs, sour peppers or sour cucumbers and possibly black olives.

Today’s salad is an improved version of what you have in the fridge. 🙂 In this case, in addition to the classic boiled potatoes, some chicken, boiled eggs, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and grated carrots. Plus a dressing of oil and lime juice (that was on sale at the hypermarket).

The potato salad thus joins other extremely filling dishes that are prepared with what you have in the fridge, such as pizza. 🙂

And I think you already know, if you want vegan, you just put potatoes + vegetables, for vegetarian, you add some vegetarian ingredients and if you have no problem, you can combine the list above or what you can find in your fridge.

These being from the fridge (I repeated the subliminal message 100 times? Yesss :))), good luck and good appetite.

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 24 – Cinnamon Rolls

5 minute variant. 🙂 With one condition, well, maybe two. :)) Do not read the label and ignore the amount of sugar. 🙂

You pay a nice visit to Auchan; in the bread/ cake section they sells brioche dough (you can also try in other networks or bakeries/ confectioneries). At home, spread the dough thin in a rectangle, on top of it spread half a packet of soft butter and sprinkle it with brown or caster sugar and cinnamon; if you want you can add nuts, hazelnuts, raisins, etc. Carefully roll the dough lengthwise, then cut the slices one finger thick and place them in the stove tray, on the baking paper at a distance, with the rolled side up. A tray of rolls comes out of one dough. This part shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes. 🙂

Leave the tray for about half an hour at room temperature, during which time the rolls will rise until they come together, which is ok. Then bake in the oven for about half an hour or until the dough is done.

If you want to put icing on top, it’s powdered sugar mixed with water, vanilla and some butter (but don’t complain after that it’s too sweet :))).

To be consumed with a hot black coffee. ❤ It is disastrously good. ❤

And if I can’t find dough at Auchan, what do I do? You learn to make the dough (with a good mixer it is made quite quickly, but of course, the best one is the one kneaded by hand, at 5 in the morning, as my grandma used to…) or call a friend. 😀

What if I don’t understand anything you wrote above? Well, what a small disaster you are (you too), look for the recipe on youtube. :))

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 23 – Smoked Salmon Sandwich

I happened to go to the family for lunch and left with some smoked salmon. Must eat on the same day. I searched for some ideas on the internet, because my brain was having a break day, but what I liked either contained pasta (hmmmm) or other non-existent ingredients in my almost empty refrigerator. As a result I had to improvise big time. :)))

On a bun with seeds, cut in half, I put the salmon broken into small pieces and on top I made a sauce from some mayo, some lime, some capers, some hot green peppers, bell peppers and celery. I saw that salmon usually is combined with cream cheese, capers and red onions, but my combination was not too disastrous either. Especially since the sauce came out quite sour, and I didn’t even count the calories. :)))

As dinner, after a day with apricot cakes, it rains in my mouth only when I remember. 😀

Well, pastas? Another time. ❤

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 22 – Green Bean Soup

Well, let’s say it’s a soup because it’s not sour and it doesn’t have too many tomatoes in it. :)) (Otherwise should be “ciorbă”, the local equivalent for a sour soup).

Preparing and cooking it takes less than a windows update. 🙂 First open the refrigerator (or pantry, as appropriate). Identify some soup vegetables, e.g. onions, peppers, carrots, celery or parsley, wash, clean, finely chop and throw them in the pot with a little oil, salt, pepper, vegeta, possibly paprika, sauté for a few minutes, then add water and bring to a boil. Wash and clean the green beans, cut or break, according to your preferences, then add them to the soup. Towards the end, cut some tomatoes into small pieces and throw them in the pot. Be careful not to confuse the tomatoes with the basketball, as you risk ending up disastrously with the whole soup on the walls. 😛

You can decorate the soup with some chopped green parsley.

It’s an unplanned vegetable soup (vegan, for hipsters), but it just happened that my mother bought some beans and sent them to me. 🙂

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 21 – Sort of Spring Rolls

Those things came out so dubious (read: disaster) that it’s worth writing about them 😉 (today’s branding lesson: D).

The story is simple. I bought some sheets from the supermarket, made of rice and tapioca, if I remember correctly, to do something with them. That something was the spring rolls, only the sheets are boiled, not fried and look like some kind of edible rubber. :))))

Honestly, I ate a Vietnamese soup over the ocean containing shrimp with vegetables wrapped in a similar kind of dough and it was ok. The one in the picture instead was from the “never ever” category.

Otherwise, very good content. 🙂

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 20 – Ep. 20 – Salad with Chicken in Coconut and Cornflakes and Honey and Mustard Dressing

Omg, omg, I flipped through a recipe book again and came across something with coconut flakes and corn and I automatically said, yammy, for sure this is super good and what would be so hard to make, there are just some schnitzels. 😛

Well, take a chicken breast out of the freezer, thaw it and cut it into slices of schnitzel (or buy it ready sliced from the supermarket :))). At home, schnitzel means flour – egg – breadcrumbs, only in this case we replaced the breadcrumbs with a combination of cornflakes and coconut flakes. It is just that the cornflakes were too big, and the coconut was super crushed, as a result the schnitzels came out a bit strange (next time I either use coconut instead of flour, or I grind the cornflakes…. Or I buy the coconut and make the flakes myself….). It would also be advisable not to burn the schnitzels, like I did with the first two. :)))))

The salad: on a plate arrange lettuce leaves (eg baby spinach, arugula, lettuce, etc.), slices of tomato, cucumber, grated carrot. Place the schnitzels cut into smaller pieces on top. The dressing is made of honey, mustard, olive oil and vinegar (or lemon).

I put some cherries instead of carrots, because I had to finish them from the fridge. :)))

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 19 – Tomato Soup in Two Parts vs. Canned Tomato Soup

Part 1, chicken juice – some thighs, a little salt, boiled, foamed and when cooked, kept the juice (similarly it can be made from beef, bones, etc.). If you have the guts to make a larger quantity (and the needed pots), then you can continue to boil the juice without meat, cut it in half, cool it and put it in the freezer for when you do not have time to cook soup. I haven’t tried it yet, because I have a small freezer and I don’t have the right boxes for the liquid, but I’m thinkingabout it…

Part 2, the soup itself – carrot, celery, onion, a clove of garlic, basil, peppers, some freshly chopped hot peppers, tossed in a pot with a little oil, plus the chicken juice and possibly water (if needed), plus vegeta, plus some mashed or juiced tomatoes with the blender. Everything boiled.

Without anything else (well, if you want to spoil it, you can add some more potatoes and finally blend the whole composition until some cream soup comes out). Or with noodles.

The picture is from round number two, because the first one was so good that I ate it without taking any more pictures. :))) This time I received noodles from the west of the country, so I had the Banat version. 🙂

It’s the same as Knorr tomato soup (I still buy it as a backup for very busy days) except that it doesn’t have: palm oil, sugar, potato starch, hydrolyzed vegetable protein (wtf is this?) , aromas, yeast extras. (Let’s appreciate that it doesn’t have monoglutamate of I don’t know what, the shit that appears in everything and everywhere…)

The advantages of cooking from scratch vs. cooking with canned stuff are less calories, no chemicals and especially no palm oil. Ah yes, and it’s without traces of nuts, peanuts, milk and so on. 🙂

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.

disaster in the kitchen

Ep. 18 – 3 Salad Ideas for Hot Summer Days

My general salad recipe contains variations, combinations and arrangements from the following expression: potatoes, pasta or rice (carbs) + vegetables (veggies) + meat, fish, egg, cheese, beans, chickpeas (protein) + dressing, spices. The big advantage is that it is prepared extremely quickly, especially if you have the ingredients ready to cook. 🙂 Disaster is when you have the impression that the salad does not fatten, then you climb on the scale. :))))

Boiled potatoes, tomatoes, green olives, feta, dill, vinaigrette (olive oil, lemon juice).

Lettuce, black olives, tomatoes, cucumber, feta, dressing with balsamic vinegar and grape seed oil.

Pasta, tomatoes, red peppers, black and green olives, red onions, fish (fried carp, in my case, I received it fresh, straight from the pond), green parsley, dressing with lime juice and olive oil.

Do you have any new salad ideas? Don’t keep it just for you, tell me too. 🙂

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See here all the disasters in the kitchen.