La petite biscotte

When I was little, my mum used to make a gratin with spätzle, cauliflower and broccoli. Even though she used a ready-mix to make the sauce for the gratin, I couldn’t get enough of it. But which kid can actually get enough of spätzle?

Unfortunately I couldn’t make any spätzle because I didn’t have eggs left, but I used pasta instead and it tasted (almost) just as good! To replace the ready-mix sauce I made a thin sauce béchamel and flavoured it with an onion and a little stock powder.

One reason why I love this gratin so much is that it’s a delicious way of eating broccoli, which is an incredibly healthy vegetable. Its health benefits beat the ones of most other vegetables. I generally think that it’s quite important to find an alternative to the 2-3 sad florets of cooked broccoli, which we typically serve with our roast dinner. Actually I think that the broccoli feels mistreated and sad, having to share the plate with a big mean piece of meat!

Ingredients

• 500g broccoli, cleaned and cut in florets
• 500g cauliflower, cleaned and cut in florets
• 2 little carrots, cleaned and cut in slices
• 250g pasta, cooked
• 300ml of this sauce béchamel (infused with an onion)
• 2 tsp stock powder
• salt & pepper
• 125g of grated cheese, I used gruyère

Preparation

Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and add salt. Turn the heat to medium. First add the cauliflower and let it cook for about 2 minutes, then add the carrots and let both cook for 2 more minutes. Then add the Broccoli and let everything cook for 4 more minutes.

Drain the vegetables from the water and put them in a gratin dish. Add the cooked pasta.

If the sauce béchamel isn’t seasoned yet, season it and add the stock powder. Keep whisking as you don’t want the sauce to develop a skin.

Heat your oven to approximately 180°C. Pour the sauce over the vegetables and the pasta and mix everything well. Sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven until golden brown.

Serves 4

Contents

• Fried rice (scroll down for recipe)
• Corn cakes (scroll down for recipe)
• Baby spinach salad with ricotta
• California roll
• Cherry tomatoes
• Little bottle of vinaigrette for the salad

What I liked about this bento

This bento allowed me to use up an incredible amount of leftovers. Over the past days I had gathered up leftovers of: ham, steamed carrots, cooked corn, rice and ricotta. It was really fun to turn those leftovers into a yummy meal. I particularly liked the fried rice, which is an awesome dish: Takes about 10 minutes to throw together, can use up almost any leftover vegetables and can be made with any sort of rice or any sort of canned/frozen vegetables.
I also liked the balance between vegetables and the rest in this bento.

What I didn’t like about this bento

The corn cakes: Were adapted from a recipe of Tim Mälzer. I liked the taste but the original recipe suggested way too much garlic for my taste. I’m going to reduce the amount considerably next time and I’m going to drop a little spoon of ricotta in the middle to soften the flavour a little, which brings us to the next point.
The ricotta on the baby spinach: Didn’t like. I ended up putting the ricotta on the corn cakes instead. The spinach leaves tasted great with the vinaigrette alone and really didn’t need the additional cheese.
Also this bento is not really made to be kept a long time before eating. We ate it about half an hour after preparation and I wouldn’t suggest eating it much later than that without fridge because the ricotta doesn’t really preserve well at room temperature. Also it’s nice if the fried rice can be heated up in the micro wave before eating as it’s best eaten hot.

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Fried Rice

Ingredients

• 1 cup of cooked rice (leftover rice works really well, I used Japonica rice)
• 1 egg
• 90g of finely diced ham or diced cooked chicken
• 100g of frozen or canned peas
• 1 carrot, cut in small pieces
• 1/2 onion, finely chopped
• 1 tsp chicken stock powder
• 1 Tbsp soy sauce
• vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Put the egg in a little bowl and stirr it a little with a fork to break the egg yolks and to mix them with the egg whites.
2. Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or a large pan.
3. Turn the heat to medium-low and add the eggs. Scramble it just like you would for scrambled eggs. When they are cooked (be careful not to burn them), remove them on a plate and add a little more vegetable oil to the wok.
4. Turn the heat to medium and add the onions. Cook them a little until transparent and add the carrots. Cook them for 3-4 minutes while stirring occasionally. Add the peas and continue cooking everything for 4 more minutes. Once the peas and carrots are almost soft, add the diced ham. Cook while stirring frequently for about 2 minutes (or until the peas and carrots are soft).
5. Sprinkle the stock powder over the vegetables/ham, turn the heat up to medium-high and add the rice. Incorporate the vegetables well with the rice and stir continuously while you fry the rice 2-3 minutes.
6. Add the soy sauce and the egg, mix well and remove from heat.
7. Serves 2 bento portions, enjoy.

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Corn Cakes (adapted from Essen & Trinken für jeden Tag, issue 10)

Ingredients

• 1/2 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 eggs
• 70 ml milk
• 50g flour
• salt
• chilli powder
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 70g canned corn, drained
• 2 Tbsp of olive oil

Preparation

• In a medium bowl, mix the garlic, the eggs and the milk. Add the flour slowly and incorporate well. Mix in the salt, the chilli powder and the thyme. Now fold in the corn.
• Heat up the vegetable oil in a medium sized pan. When it’s hot, turn the heat to medium and drop spoonfuls of the corn batter into the pan. Cook until golden brown from both sides and remove on a plate layered with paper towel. Continue until you use up all the batter. Sprinkle with chopped chives. Makes about 12 little cakes.
• Tip: If your cakes turn out to be shaped weirdly when you cook them in the pan, simply drop half of the mixture in the pan at once (just like a pancake) and cook it until golden brown. Once done, take a little glass and cut out little circles.

Contents

• Quick Mac’n Cheese (scroll down for recipe)
• Japanese Rice
• Red Bean Burgers (scroll down for recipe)
• Chicken sausages in octopus form (didn’t work very well, more about that later though)
• Tamagoyaki

When we decided to prepare a bento this morning we wanted to use up a few things that gathered up in the fridge: rice, pasta, sausages and some grated cheese. Grated cheese and pasta made me think of a quick mac’n cheese immediately. I decided to add a Tamagoyaki (rolled Japanese omelette) and octopus shaped chicken sausages. Unfortunately when I decided to use the octopus cutter I once ordered from ebay, I should have probably guessed that the cutting is supposed to be done before the cooking/frying of the sausages, so the shape can expand over heat :p Well well, the sausages do look extraordinarily amateurish but they still tasted good!

After finishing the above described components I thought that something was still missing. And I remembered a recipe I had seen on Maki’s blog (Just Bento) recently: black bean vegan burgers. I loved the idea immediately because I’m not really that much of a meat eater (especially minced meat). Unfortunately I didn’t have time to look up her recipe again, so I tossed something together myself and I’m quite happy with the result. The only thing I’d change in retrospect: buy a bottle of ketchup before making the burgers :p

Another thing that bothered me is that I didn’t get to pack more vegetables. I wanted to use up most of the left overs from the fridge so I didn’t really have a great choice, but next time I’m definately packing more green stuff!

Quick Mac’n Cheese

Ingredients

• 2 cups of cooked pasta (can be left overs, heat them up quickly in the microwave in that case)
• 1/2 Tbsp butter
• 1 generous Tbsp low-fat crème fraîche
• 2-3 Tbsp grated cheese (I used gruyère)
• salt, pepper
• 5 cherry tomatoes, cut in a half

Preparation

1. Melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat
2. Add the pasta and toss a little to cover with the butter
3. Add the crème fraîche and stirr well
4. Sprinkle with the grated cheese and sirr the pasta. Keep heating the pasta until the cheese is melted.
5. Season to taste.
6. Add the cherry tomatoes towards the end and remove the pasta from the heat.
7. Serves 2.

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Red Bean Burgers (adapted from Just Hungry)

Ingredients

• 400g canned red beans
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1 tsp curry powder
• salt and pepper
• 2 Tbsp all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp miso-paste
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• ketchup or tomato sauce to garnish

Preparation

1. In a food processor combine canned beans, shallot, curry powder, flour and miso paste. Blend until you have a rough paste (don’t blend too much). If you don’t have a food processor you can crush the beans with a masher or a spoon as well, it’s what I did.
2. Taste the paste a little and add salt and pepper to taste.
3. Cut off a piece of clingfilm and cover your hand with it. Spoon approx. 1/5 or 1/4 (depending of how big you want the burgers) of the bean paste on the clingfilm. Close the clingfilm and form a burger with your hands. Repeat until you’ve used up all the paste.
4. Heat up the olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Put the burgers in the pan and fry until golden brown.
5. Garnish with a little ketchup or tomato sauce to go with the burgers.

Makes 4-5 burgers.

When my mother in law returned from Canada she brought back the most amazing maple syrup. You could literally drink it with a straw the whole day and you wouldn’t get tired of it. Apparently there is a great difference between store-bought maple syrup that we can find in local supermarkets and real maple syrup which is produced traditionally in smaller quantities. The difference is as striking as comparing Blue Nun to an expensive Cabernet Sauvignon (I was told).

Well this maple syrup does taste amazing and I’m actually trying to use it in savory dishes because I’d very much like to get away from the habit of drowning pancakes in maple syrup and only using it for desserts. I was actually inspired by a cookbook from Canada which describes how to marinate fish or any other type of meat with maple syrup before cooking it.

When I tried those recipes I wasn’t all that satisfied because you couldn’t really taste the maple syrup (there were other flavours in the marinade which were simply too strong, like Dijon mustard). So I decided to use the syrup with a neutral soy sauce to create a glaze on the fish. My husband was amazed by the subtle taste of maple syrup on the salmon. The combination with soy sauce made this quite a yummy take on teriyaki. And the best is: the whole dish, whilst looking quite sophisticated etc, was done in less than 25 minutes!

Ingredients

• 2 pieces of salmon (can be frozen)
• 3 Tbsp of soy sauce
• 1 1/2 Tbsp maple syrup
• 1 zucchini
• 2 carrots
• 5-6 cherry tomatoes
• salt, pepper
• vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Wash the carrots, zucchini and the tomatoes. Peel the carrots. Using a vegetable peeler, slice the carrots and the zucchini in thin stripes (like large pasta). Cut the cherry tomatoes in a half.
2. Mix the soy sauce and the maple syrup in a bowl. Stir to dissolve the syrup completely.
3. In a pan, heat up a Tbsp of vegetable oil. Once the oil is hot, turn the heat to medium and put the salmon in the pan. When the fish is about half cooked, turn it.
4. Heat up another Tbsp of vegetable oil in a second pan. Put the vegetables (beside the tomatoes) in there and let them cook on medium-low heat.
5. When the salmon is just about cooked, add the soy/maple mixture and turn up the heat a little. Let the fish cook in the liquid (tilt the pan a little if needed) and using a spoon keep pouring the liquid over the fish. Towards the end, when the liquid has almost evaporated, turn the fish another time and continue cooking it until it has that golden brown/glazed look on both sides (be careful though, the sugar from the syrup burns really fast if there is no liquid left anymore). Remove from heat.
6. Toss the vegetables a little and finish cooking them. Add the cherry tomatoes. Season to taste and remove from heat.
7. Serve the salmon pieces on a little pile of the vegetable pasta.

Serves 2. Enjoy

My perfect cookie has to be chewy...

While I was browsing the Orangette blog the other day I saw a recipe for chewy cocoa cookies that intrigued me because it uses yogurt to make the cookies soft and to reduce the number of calories a little. The pictures of the cookies were absolutely stunning (that’s how I always imagined a perfect cookie!).

So when I tried this recipe I used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose (because I only had that at home). It worked very well and I loved the taste the cookies had. However I think that next time I’ll reduce the amount of sugar to 1/3 cup (refined sugar). Because they were a little too sweet for me. Also I’d like to use this yogurt recipe as a base to try normal chocolate chip cookies. I could substitute the cocoa powder with vanilla pudding mix and nuts (in that case I’d also leave away the vanilla extract).

The recipe, adapted from Orangette:

Ingredients

• 1 + 1/3 cup whole-wheat flour (all-purpose works fine too)
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 125g unsalted butter
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup light brown sugar
• 7 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup plain yogurt
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• ½ cup chocolate chips

Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with cookie sheets.
2. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda, and salt.
3. Melt the butter (either in the microwave or in a small pan on the stove). Add the sugars, and sift in the cocoa. Stir to blend well. (The mixture will have the consistency of wet sand) Add the yogurt and vanilla extract. Stir to mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients, and stir to just combine. Fold in the chocolat chips.
4. Drop the dough by generous tablespoons onto one of the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 9 to 11 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and let cool down for 10 minutes. (Do not skip this step, it is very important that you let them cool off a little because when they come out of the oven they are very soft still). While you let one batch cool down, spoon some cookie mixture on the other cookie sheet and repeat the same procedure. Remove the cookies from the baking trays and put them on wire racks to cool completely.

Makes about 15-20 cookies.

Whatever the occasion, crêpes are simply always popular. They can be made quickly, in large quantities and can serve as savory dish as well as dessert. The crêpes in the above picture are filled with ham, grated cheese and mushrooms.

Some people confuse crêpes with pancakes but they are actually very different. Crêpes are almost as thin as a sheet of paper and mostly they are way bigger in size than a pancake. They are almost always served with a filling.

Now I’m often told that making crêpes is very difficult and that the result varies a lot. Common issues are:

• Clumps in the batter
• Batter sticks to the pan easily
• To prevent this a lot of oil/butter is often used
• Using a laddle, it is very difficult to dispense the batter equally over the frying pan so the whole surface is covered
• Crêpe breaks when one tries to flip it

Luckily I’ve gone through a lot of trial and error (while eating a lot of crêpes :D) and I discovered an amazing method that will allow you to make perfect crêpes, easily, every time.

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• 400 ml milk (lukewarm)
• 1 cup water
• 1 tsp salt
• 250g all purpose flour (perfect would be very fine flour which is made for liquid batters)
• 4-5 Tbsp vegetable oil

Preparation

1. Mix eggs, milk and salt in a Blender. Gradually mix in flour and vegetable oil. Blend well until you see no clumps anymore. Now add some of the water until the batter has the consistency of thick pouring cream. Scoop off the foam if there is any. Keep the batter in the blending container.
2. Use a paper towel to coat a flat skillet with vegetable oil (if you have a crêpière, even better). Heat up the skillet over medium-high heat. Wait until the pan is hot.
3. Remove the pan from the heat by lifting it. With the blending container quickly pour in as much liquid as you need to cover the whole surface. Pour back excess batter into the blending container.
4. Put the skillet back on the heat. As soon as you see that the crêpe is golden brown at the bottom, flip it. If your crêpe breaks easily, the batter was probably too liquid. Add a little more flour to the batter in that case.
5. If you are preparing a savory crêpe, add cheese and other fillings now on one side of the crêpe. Fold it in a half and make sure it’s golden brown on both sides. Remove on a plate.
6. Continue this way. Maybe you’ll need to reapply a little oil at some point but usually the oil in the batter is enough to keep them from sticking.

Useful Tips

• You can add a little butter too the batter to improve the taste.
• You can make the batter 2 days in advance and refrigerate it. Just bring it back to room temperature before cooking when you want to use it (and reblend a little).
• You can seperate crêpes with wax paper to keep them from sticking.
• Crêpes can be refrigerated in a plastic bag for 3 days.
• Crêpes can be frozen in a plastic bag for 3 months.
• To reheat crêpes, place them in an oven on a cookie sheet at 170°C.
• Ideas for fillings: Grated cheese, ham, mushrooms, all sort of vegetables, a fresh egg (yolk), Gorgonzola or Goat cheese. Sugar, cinnamon, chocolate, ice cream, nutella, fruit, marmelade, jam, peanut butter, maple syrup etc…

Contents:

• 1 cup cooked Japanese rice (with a little salt)
• Teriyaki fried chicken (1 chicken breast)
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (scroll down for recipe)
• Tamagoyaki
• Maple syrup candy (which my mum in law brought back for us from Canada)
• Chocolate egg

Today I made a bento for us! What I like the most about bento is that it gives you full control over calories, portioning, flavours and assembly. There is nothing more dangerous for the health than running to university/school/work with an empty stomach and then chomping your way through burger/fries/pizza at noon (especially if one does that every day). Unfortunately those unhealthy dishes are about the only thing on the menu of our cafeteria; I’m not complaining though because I know that the limited budget doesn’t allow them to offer anything else.

But that’s precisely why I prepare lunches myself whenever I can. I used to be scared of the preparation time in the morning, but if you plan in advance, making a bento for two people can take as few as 10 minutes (sometimes more sometimes less). I started out by making bento once a month until I got used to the whole process, but then I came to enjoy making and eating bento so much, that I didn’t want to be without it anymore.

When you look at a bento box, the different compartments force you to think of a versatile menu because you never want to put the same thing in two compartments. And once you prepare something different for each compartment you automatically want to make it look neat/appealing. That’s exactly why there is something magic about lifting the lid of a bento box at noon

Utensils:

A Box
It doesn’t have to be an authentic bento box. Anything with a lid, large enough to hold a lunch can serve as container. However be careful, the box must be leak-proof and it must not be made of the kind of plastic that easily absorbs smells. Also if possible, the box should be microwave’able.
Most bento boxes can hold about 400-800ml and that’s about the capacity you should look for. At the beginning people often overestimate the size they need, but 500 ml is more than enough, especially given the fact that the whole space is carefully filled with 4-5 different dishes. Just try it out, you’ll see it stuffs pretty fast
If you want to buy a box nonetheless, please have a look here.
You might find much prettier examples on ebay or other specialized sites. The selection you can get over amazon is very limited.

A fork or chopsticks
What I usually do is: I buy a bag of plastic forks (those you use for parties) and either throw them away after I’m done or I wash and reuse them if they are stable enough. If you are lucky you’ll maybe find a set of fork/knife in a little case (sometimes they offer that for children), that’d be perfect. You can also simply take a normal fork/chopsticks and wrap them in a paper towel.

Rice cooker
This is not obligatory by any means and it strongly depends on what you want to pack in your bento boxes. It is simply very handy if you like Japanese rice. No hassle, you just drop the rice in the rice cooker and you are done. You can even steam a few vegetables at the same time (with the cooker). Sophisticated models even have a timer. Some examples can be found here.

Rectangular Frying Pan
If you’ve always liked those rolled omelets on top of sushi (they are called Tamagoyaki) then the easiest way to make them is with a rectangular frying pan. Try to get a non-stick version if you can, otherwise it can really get quite difficult.

More info
There are two wonderful blogs that specialize in everything around bento. The first is Lunch in a Box and the second one is Just Bento. You’ll find a lot of useful information as well as examples for possible dishes there.

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Ways to save time:

I’ll take this bento as example.

• Rice can be cooked in advance on the weekend. Just fill up your rice cooker with as much rice as it can hold, let it cook and then freeze in 1 cup portions, using plastic freezing bags. In the morning you can simply warm the rice up in the microwave which speeds things up greatly.
• Cut the chicken up in small pieces and marinate it overnight. That way you just need to fry it in the morning which takes about 10 minutes.
• You can cut the vegetables (beside the avocado) the evening before and refrigerate them in an air-tight container.
• If you don’t have sushi vinegar at home (needed for the salad), make it the evening before.
• The only thing you actually have to do in the morning is heat up the rice in the microwave, fry the chicken, make the omelette and cut the avocado to put the salad together. Then of course pack everything in your box and let the rice cool down a little before closing the lid of the box.
• Very important: Do not dress the salad immediately or it will turn soggy, best take a tiny bottle of vinegar with you and pour the dressing over the salad when you actually eat the bento.

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Cucumber, avocado, surimi salad with “sushi” dressing (serves 2)

• 1/3 cucumber
• 1 avocado
• 8 surimi sticks (imitation crab sticks)
• 2 Tbsp sushi vinegar (you can easily get that in supermarkets or asian shops, but if you don’t have any at home, scroll down for a recipe)

Cut the cucumber in quarters and remove the seeds. Cut the cucumber, avocado and surimi sticks in little pieces.
If you don’t have sushi vinegar: Simply mix 2 Tbsp of rice vinegar with 1 tsp salt and 1 Tbsp sugar, put everything into a small pan until the sugar dissolves then let cool down.
Dress the salad with the vinegar as soon as you want to eat it.

My favourite cake must be carrot cake. No wait, this carrot cake.
I remember when I lived in Germany, as a student, I used to work at a coffee shop to earn a bit of extra money. It was there that I saw carrot cake for the first time. “Möhrenkuchen” it was called and we had a lot of it left over one day. The owner of the shop gave me some to take home but I almost declined (imagine that!) because I thought it would just land in the trash can anyway… like the ignorant tart that I was, I left the carrot cake in the fridge for a day before unpacking it and eyeing it dubiously. When I decided to finally take a bite, it tasted so good, I had tears of joy in the eyes!
I desperately tried to make my mum try it but she refused.. “Carrots are for savory dishes, don’t you know that?!”. This is where I went on a mission: Whenever I made some carrot cake, I tried to sneakily make her eat it. Like Inspector Gadget I invented different disguises for the cake. I coated it in chocolate, covered it with powdered sugar or tried to give some to her right after a nap… but do you think she fell for it even once?? Nope!

This recipe is my absolute favourite. It’s very easy to make, doesn’t require fussy ingredients and is actually healthier than a cake made with butter.

Ingredients

• 1 cup all purpose flour
• 1 cup whole-wheat flour
• 1 cup nuts, grated
• 1/2 cup refined sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 2 cups carrots, finely grated
• 1/2 cup milk
• 1/2 cup oil
• 3 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg

• 1 tablet of white chocolate

Preparation

1. Combine the two flours, nuts, baking soda, cinnamon and salt in a bowl. Mix well.
2. In another large bowl combine oil, egg, and milk. While blending slowly add the two sugars and the carrots. Then add the dry ingredients that you combined before.
3. Preheat the oven at 170°C. Grease a baking tin (round or square), put some baking sheet at the bottom and fill it with your batter. Put it in the oven for 50-60 minutes and keep checking with a long knife if the cake is done. Once no batter gets stuck to the knife, you can remove the cake from the oven. Let it cool down for 10 minutes in the baking tin then remove it from the tin and let cool down on a cake rack.
4. Melt the white chocolate either in the microwave or over hot water. If you melt it in the microwave, put the chocolate pieces in a bowl, turn down the power of your microwave to medium and let it run for 40 secs. Stir the chocolate once, then put it in the microwave for another 40 seconds.
5. If you melt your chocolate over hot water, you’ll need two bowls. One big one and a smaller one that fits inside. Fill the big one with hot water and put the chocolate in the smaller bowl. Now put the smaller bowl inside the big bowl so that the heat of the water comes through the smaller bowl and melts the white chocolate. Be careful though, the water must not get in touch with the chocolate. Let it melt like that, stirring once in a while.
6. Pour the liquid white chocolate over the cake so it covers the whole surface. Once the chocolate turns solid you can slice the cake.

Enjoy!

Oh boy the past few days have really been busy here in Aix en Provence. University was closed down because students throughout the whole country organise strikes against a law that would give full autonomy to universities (hence allowing selection of students by making them pass an entry exam). Many are fearing that this might lead to a full privatization of the university system (tuition fees etc). Anyway, all of this is quite new to me… I couldn’t imagine that a strike could block a whole university (or several actually) :p

So when you are in a stressful time you need to cook quick meals. Any form of pasta is handy but what kind of sauce can you make easily without fussy ingredients? Well of course, tomato sauce… But actually this is the first time since ages that I attempted to cook a tomato sauce. Usually the taste was always too bland or too acid and I preferred eating plain pasta. But I found an awesome recipe in a German cooking magazine, featuring one of my favorite German cooks, Tim Mälzer. I loved the sauce because it had a slightly sweet taste, didn’t include annoying onion or garlic pieces but was still very flavourful. Ricotta cheese goes incredibly well with this because it softens the taste of the sauce and rounds it up nicely.

Ingredients (Adapted from Essen & Trinken, Für jeden Tag - Nr.10)

• 1 onion, halved
• 1 clove of garlic, halved
• 400g of tomato dice (can) or tomato purée
• 1 Tbsp butter
• 50 ml water
• salt, pepper
• 1 generous pinch of sugar
• 4 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp dried basil or 2 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
• 100g of ricotta cheese, drained

Preparation

1. Put the onion, garlic and tomato dice/purée in a pan. Add the butter and the water and season with salt, pepper and sugar. Let it cook for about 30 minutes at medium heat. (Stir once in a while)
2. Remove the onion and the garlic pieces. Add the olive oil and the basil. Adjust seasoning if needed.
3. Serve on the pasta of your choice (goes really well with Gnocchi too). Sprinkle with ricotta cheese.

Serves 2. Enjoy.