Why wouldn’t it be called a family bed?

Warm quinoa shrimp salad

Easy, fresh and delicious. If you are a busy cook, this is a recipe for you!

I find that lots of times the best food in my kitchen is born when I just look at what I have home and decide how to put the ingredients together. This is an extremely easy recipe that I made for a lunch with a friend (I dare to say that this would be a crowd pleaser), it can be prepared in advance and can be served warm or cold. Warning: you will want more of this

What I found and used for this recipe (for 2)

• 50g of quinoa
• half a cucumber, peeled, sliced
• 10 cherry tomatoes, sliced
• 2 sticks of celery, diced
• 1 red bell pepper, deseeded, diced
• 20g of pine nuts
• handful of coriander leaves
• leftover of my home made pesto
• 12 large shrimp, peeled and deveined
• bit of olive oil
• salt, pepper

Step-by-step approach

1. Cook quinoa according to the packet instructions (you’ll need approximately 15min). I added veggie stock cube to the water for some extra taste.
2. While quinoa is cooking, cut all your veggies and put in a bowl.
3. In a pan roast pine nuts until they are golden brown. That takes about 5min. Add to the bowl with veggies.
4. After that in the same pan add olive oil, shrimp and pesto. Cook until shrimp are pink and curly. And to your taste of course. Add to the veggies.
5. Drain quinoa, add it to your other ingredients, drizzle with some olive oil, add salt and pepper to taste and serve!

Chicken noodle soup

A bowl of home made soup is the best reward after having a long walk in the cold.

Since I have my son, I have switched my daily biking to almost daily walks. And whilst I do appreciate the discoveries, secret gems, new places and faces one finds whilst wondering in the city (cause let’s admit it, when we are in the working mode, we don’t look much up to appreciate what is around us, now do we?) after a walk on a cold day I do feel I deserve some sort of reward. This chicken noodle soup is exactly that! And on top of that: easy and fast to make.

For 2 you’ll need:

• 1,6l chicken stock (i did use the cube for making the stock)
• 2cm ginger, peeled, cut in big strips
• 1 garlic clove, bruised (put your knife on the garlic and whack it so the garlic is kind of mushy but stil in 1 piece)
• 1tbsp of soy sauce (add more later if you think the broth is lacking taste)
• 2 chicken legs (loosen the skin though, so the meat cooks quickly)
• 8 mushrooms, cut in slices
• 2 carrots, cut in thin slices
• 150g vermicelli noodles (or egg noodles)
• coriander(or you can use spring onions) to garnish

What to do:

1. Bring the broth together with the garlic and ginger to boil. Put in the chicken legs and boil until the meat is cooked, take it out and set it aside.
2. Get rid of the garlic and ginger, add the carrots, mushrooms and pasta, boil for approximately 5 minutes or until ready.
3. Meanwhile shred the chicken meat and chop the coriander.
4. Pour the stock with veggies and pasta in the bowl, put the chicken and coriander on top.
5. ENJOY!

p.s. the original recipe also feature soft boiled egg in the soup, which i didn’t add but I did add some asparagus. Basically, variate. Always variate with ingredients to your likings. That’s the best way to enjoy cooking anyway:)

p.p.s i did put the chicken skin in the oven on 225C for 5 minutes to have a crispy cracker. will do that again!

Sleepless night reward

First attempt at lactose free tiramisu is approved!

Fresh is the best

Home baked bread with fresh guacamole, topped with crab. Happy times!

Special dinner for a busy cook

This is the first year when for the Valentine’s day I am not on a mission in Strasbourg. And whilst the day itself does not hold a special value for me, it is, however, a reminder to make some meals more special than others. This one is a meal for a busy cook. Almost everything can be prepared ahead and all the cooking you’ll need to do for this menu during dinner time, is to boil the pasta

Those who have small children will know that you can forget about a decent sit down dinner that you were used to having. So, for me it was important that everything can not only be made in advance, but can also be served according to the free time slots we have in our son’s evening routine.

This was our special dinner

We started with salmon tartare and home baked bread with rosemary and thyme

The bread was admitted to be delicious also with home made pesto

Pesto then was used together with fresh pasta

And the night ended with what was supposed to be a chocolate lava cake, but was, in reality chocolate suffle (as long as it tastes good, who cares about the names, right?

Here are the recipe inspirations for the special night meal:

• Salmon tartare (I found the recipe to be too complicated though, so my version contained fresh salmon, juice of 1 lime, coriandre, salt, pepper, rice vinegar and a bit of sugar, marinated all that for an hour and that’s it)
• White bread. I did add different spices to my liking, generous amount of rosemary and thyme being the main ones.
• Pesto. My pesto does not have cheese in it (and yet is extremely delicious). If you prefer to make it without cheese as well, cut out 1 garlic.
• Chocolate lava cake.

Mini pumpkin muffins

why should you stop with just one of these?

I am still in the house with no heating. And even though there is some progress with works and hopefully by the end of the day I’ll be able to enjoy a long shower without fear of flooding my downstairs neighbors, I do keep to my new favorite heating and house aromatization system: baking.

There are some days when I like to look in the freezer and/or pantry, see what is left and challenge myself to try to make something out of it. Today the challenge was frozen pumpkin cubes that turned into delicious (dare I praise myself? ) muffins.

Do I feel sorry to have lost the colorfulness of the pumpkin in this? Not really, no . Picture credit somebox@Flickr

What I used for 20 muffins:

• 150ml vegetable oil
• 170g white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 160g flour
• 4g baking soda
• 4g baking powder
• 5g grounded cinnamon
• 3g salt
• 200g frozen pumpkin
• 1 ripe banana
• 10ml soy cream
• 10g brown sugar

Step by step:

• Heat the oven up to 190c. 
• Take out your muffin pan and put the muffin liners in. If you don’t have one, just use the muffin cup liners on the regular pan (the only fear might be that they don’t keep up the shape as well without the support of the muffin pan. But so far most of the times it has worked out just fine.)
• Put the pumpkin with a tiny bit of water and sugar in a pan to cook on a medium heat. In 5-7 minutes add the cream and cook until the pumpkin is soft. (If you have pumpkin puree available, use that one. Saves you one step of the cooking.)
• Put all your dry ingredients, except the sugar, together in a bowl.
• In another bowl combine sugar and oil, then 1 by 1 add eggs. Then add the dry ingredients and mix well.
• In a food processor combine the pumpkin with banana and add to the batter.
• Spoon the batter in the muffin liners, put in the oven for 20minutes (check if the muffins are done by sticking a toothpick in the middle. if it comes out clean, it’s ready), cool for 10 minutes and ENJOY!!!