Thank you, Asda!

Thanks to Asda, I'm now not only drowning in apples, no, I got carrots to keep them company! Huzzah! I guess ...

Well, thankfully, carrots can be deep-frozen quite easily - peel them, cut 'em up, blanch them, freeze them.

But today, they made my low-calorie, low-fat dinner in a lovely soup, with red lentils, orange juice, ginger, chili, and coriander.
This turned out much nicer than I anticipated - I make variations of this soup pretty often, as I'm a bit of a fan of lentils and spicy cream soups ...




Spicy Carrot Soup with orange and coriander

2 medium carrots
1/2 medium onion
1 cup of red lentils
6 cups of broth (or water + chicken stock cube ...)
1 orange
1/2 inch slice of fresh ginger
1 clove of garlic
1 bird-eye chili (or other - I like it really spicy, but obviously that's up to your taste)
1 tablespoon fish sauce

Chop the onion, ginger and garlic - no need to deliberate, as the soup will be blended later!
Heat one tablespoon of vegetable oil in a pot, roast the onion over medium heat until it's getting tender. Add garlic and chili, roast a bit longer and let the garlic take some colour, but don't let it burn.
Add one cup of red lentils, and 6 cups of broth. Bring to a boil.
Peel and cube the carrots, add to the pot. Let simmer for 10 - 15 minutes, or until the carrots and lentils are very tender.
Peel and chop the ginger, and juice the orange. Add to the soup.
In the meantime, finely chop the coriander green.
Get your blender, and blend soup until no chunks are left. Add coriander green and fish sauce (to taste).
Enjoy.

Noodle soup with Wakame

I've always been a bit of a soup girl, and my favorite are clear noodle soups. Sometimes I make them sour, most of the time really spicy, occasionally with meat, often using leftovers.

This one, however, is pretty mild, and full of good, healthy stuff from the seaweed. It's also one you can make solely with stuff from the larder and the freezer, which can come in handy if your fridge is a bit empty.



Noodle soup with wakame (feeds one as a main, or two as a starter)

1/2 l of water
5-6 dried mushrooms (shiitake, if you can get them. If not, porcini will do just fine.)
handful of Wakame
one cup green beans (I used frozen ones)
1 green onion
1 bundle of vermicelli
5-6 prawns
1 dried chili
1 slice of ginger
soysauce, fish sauce
sesame oil (optional)

Bring the water to the boil, add the dried wakame and mushrooms. Turn off the heat and let sit for ca. 30 minutes.
Place the vermicelli in a bowl and cover with boiling water, let sit to soak. This is the base for your broth.
Pour the broth through a sieve, keep the vegetables if you want to use them in the soup (I do). Put the broth back into the pot, add one spoonful of soysauce, and one of fish sauce. Bring to a boil again, add the ginger slice and the chili(whole), add the beans, and let cook for 2-3 minutes.
Turn down the heat and add the frozen prawns. Be careful to not boil anymore as that will make the prawns very hard.
Chop up the seaweed and dried mushrooms and add back to the broth.
Place the drained vermicelli in a bowl, pour the broth over them, add a splash of sesame oil. Sprinkle with the spring onion.

Enjoy.

Apple and Carrot muffins

The apples ... I still want to make some chutney, but having been rather sick over the weekend, that has to wait. Instead, here's a simple apple-and-carrot muffin recipe.

Apple and Carrot muffins (makes 12)

2 smallish apples
1 medium carrot
2 cups wholemeal wheat flower
1 tablespoon backing powder
1 teaspoon salt
a pinch of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon allspice
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2/3 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil (or melted butter)

Preheat the oven to 180C. Lightly grease a muffin pan.

In a large bowl, sift dry ingredients.
In a separate bowl, beat the eggs, add milk and oil/butter. Mix well. Add to the flour mix and stir in - work quickly and do not overwork, as it will make the muffins hard. Grate in the peeled and cored apples, and the peeled carrot.

Spoon the batter into the muffin pan, fill about 2/3 high.

Bake for approximately 20 minutes, or until golden and baked through. Let the muffins cool in the pan for 5 mins before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

Pancakes with apples and pancetta

I got a big bag full of apples from a nice friend, so expect apples to play a bit of a main role in next week's menus.
Today, we open the dance with pancake with apples and pancetta. Sounds like a weird combination, but actually the sour-salty-sweet flavours work quite well together. I had this for breakfast after a night out, and it worked well to restore my spirits.
This recipe is for one german pancake the way my grandmother used to make.

Pancakes with apples and pancetta

1 - 2 apples, depending on size
1 spoonful of pancetta cubes
2 spoonfuls of flour
1 spoon of brown sugar
1 egg
milk
a spritz of sparkly water (optional)
dash of allspice
vegetable oil

Peel the apples and cut into thin slices - if you want to stop them from browning, keep them in cold water with a dash of lemon juice.
Mix the flour, sugar and the egg. Add milk until you get a smooth, but runny dough. If desired, replace some of the milk with sparkly water to make the pancake fluffier. Add a dash of allspice.
Heat the pan, add 1 spoon of veg oil, add the pancetta, fry till lightly browned. Pour the pancake dough in (according to my grandma, it should be one huge cake rather than multiple smaller ones, but that's a matter of taste), turn down the heat to middle-ish and place the apple slices on top. Work fast, as the dough sets quickly. Once it's nicely browned on the underside, turn and cook the other side.
All in all, that's about 5 minutes of cooking.

Serve.

Scraps!

Life's been busy of late. And complicated. So many decisions to make, opportunities to evaluate, paths to be picked.

No wonder that some of my life's essentials have been a bit neglected as a result. Blogging. Sleeping. Shopping.
So I found myself with a nearly-but-not-quite empty fridge today, lots of overhead police helicopter commotion and no particular interest in going out to do some shopping. I had a little think, and realized I'm set for lunch.



What I had:
- half a cabbage, in not too bad shape
- a pound of ground beef
- fridge-dried chillies
- garlic
- green onions
- onions
- some home-made Teriyaki sauce that was meant for something different, but I'm flexible :)


Sweet cabbage with beef

Finely chop the cabbage into strips of about 3mm width. Peel onion, cut into halves, then one half into quarters. Cut into fine strips, too.
Finely chop garlic and chillie - I used one dried red thai chillie pod, but of course, this is totally up to you. Use more, leave it out ... everything goes.
Heat up a wok, add a spoonful of oil, fry the cabbage and onions for about 3 minutes, until the cabbage goes a bit soft and picks up some colour.
Add the meat, a pinch of salt, the garlic and chillies. Fry for another 3 - 5 minutes, until all the juices have cooked away.
Add about 1/2 cup of teriyaki sauce. You can use any you like, I'll give you the recipe for mine, too, in case you want to make your own. Sprinkle with chopped spring onions.

Serve over rice.

Quick tip of the day: Cosmetics abuse

Well, okay, so this is not *really* about abusing cosmetics; it's about re-purposing some cosmetics containers.



This is a little plastic bottle I purchased in Primark half a year or so ago. It's meant to be used as travel bottle of shampoo/body lotion/whatever-liquid-ointment, really.

Since I like eating fresh greens, and I dislike ready-made salad dressings (too sweet, too sour, too yuck, too ... you name it, I've had all!) but I do love the convenience of shake-pour-eat, this is my take on convenience food made at home.

How to? You don't really need that, do you? Well, okay then:

You need:
- a bottle with a big enough mouth to easily fill in oil and vinegar
- 1 part vinegar
- 3 parts oil
- pinch of salt, pinch of sugar (exact amount depending on the size of the bottle)

Just throw all ingredients in the bottle, shake and pour.

Alternatively, next time you make your favorite salad dressing, make more, fill it into a bottle of your choice, keep in the fridge.
How long this mixture keeps pretty much depends on what you put in there. Oil and vinegar will pretty much outlive you, your children and all of your electronical appliances if you keep it cool. Blue cheese dressings ... not so much. Use within 3 days.

And what's that in my picture? It surely can't be salad dressing, with this colour? As it happens, it is - I flavoured some white vinegar with raspberries the other day, which turned it nicely pink, which mixed with olive oil turned orange. Weirdness, I know.

Final stitches

From Drop Box

Getting ready to put the finishing touches on the first knitting project in years, and actually the first cardigan I ever made.

And ... it's done!

From Drop Box