Ah yes, sweet student life, whenever you think you have a little time to yourself something comes up and you end up spending your holidays busy with random stuff. Like we have this fabulous internship coming up for April. Normally universities, especially here in France, try to incorporate as many internships as possible in the study program for both bachelor and master degrees. Personally I don’t question the necessity of internships and they are absolutely crucial after several semesters of acquiring theoretical knowledge, which, in all honesty, is mostly useless for your future professional career. Yes, the intentions of universities are indeed honorable, but when reality strikes in, you often find yourself stuck in a small company that tries to replace full-time workers by chain hiring interns. Some of my friends at university have to work under abominable conditions, yet they still can deem themselves lucky to have found some sort of working experience to validate their semester. As a student, especially here in France at a public university, it’s difficult sometimes not to lose your motivation when all the support you get is “make it work” from your professors. But hey, all of this is just to make us a stronger, right? Right!
Anyway, enough ranting, let’s get back to business. This bento was quickly made with left-over gnocchi and a tomato relish (the recipe is from one of Jamie Oliver’s cook books). The sandwich and the snow-pea stir-fry are really nothing special. I really liked the taste of the tomato relish with the gnocchi but one must be very careful with packing the relish. It tends to be rather liquid so a leak-proof container with a compartment that can separate gnocchi from relish is needed. Overall I’m not quite happy with the presentation and I’d really like to get back to making more elaborate bentos but for now I’ve got almost no spare time
Recipe section
Tomato relish
Ingredients
100 ml vinegar (the lightest one you have)
2 Tbsp sugar
1 shallot, sliced
400g cherry tomatoes, chopped
salt, pepper
3 Tbsp olive oil
Preparation
In a small saucepan combine vinegar, sugar and the shallot. Bring to a boil and reduce to half at least. Then add the cherry tomatoes and let them get hot. Remove from heat immediately and season with salt, pepper and olive oil.
Serves 2-3. Can accompany various things like pasta or meat dishes.
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
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)
Remove the onion and the garlic pieces. Add the olive oil and the basil. Adjust seasoning if needed.
Serve on the pasta of your choice (goes really well with Gnocchi too). Sprinkle with ricotta cheese.
Let’s face it: as a student you sometimes open the fridge and there is nada :p Only the jar of marmelade and the egg looking at you like “dude, marmelade omelette sucks so give up right away and order pizza”.
Living on a tight budget does suck, however it’s exactly in those moments that you’ve got to be creative if you don’t want to end up eating crackers. So what did I have left exactly: Flour, 1 egg, melting cheese (gruyère), onion, +some cans and usual pantry stuff. Then the flash of insight hit me, why not make spätzle! Spätzle are self made egg “pasta” that are incredibly popular in Germany, especially in the south (they are also very popular in Austria, Switzerland and Alsace). I grew up eating those and I still love them. It’s often baked with cheese and some even add fried onions. It’s godly stuff really and very easy to make… well that is if you follow Yakumo’s 3 rules to making spätzle:
The traditional way of making spätzle consists of pouring the spätzle batter on a cutting board which you hold over a saucepan with boiling water. You then need to rapidly cut off pieces of the batter with a knife. As you might have guessed already: this requires a lot of training and if you work too slowly half of your spätzle will be mushy. Spätzle batter sticks like hell too (fun, fun). Luckily nowadays technology saves us from all that pain and lets us create perfect spätzle quickly without stick-fest. This technological wonder comes in the form of a piece of metal with a lot of holes: Norpro Stainless Steel Spaetzle Maker :p It’s that easy!
Normal spätzle batter is made of eggs, flour and salt (+ oil maybe). Nothing else. This naturally means that you need to add a large amount of eggs. Whilst I’m convinced that eggs are healthy, I still think they should be consumed in moderation. Beside, I don’t always have 5-10 eggs lying around. You can actually reduce the amount of eggs and substitute with water. Of course the less eggs you put the less the spätzle will taste of egg but in my opinion 1egg-spätzle taste delicious already. I’ll still tell you the original recipe so you can make “authentic” spätzle, should you wish to.
If you fry onions to accompany your spätzle, cut the rings equally big :p Like the tart that I am I cut mine pretty unevenly… needless to say that some rings were slightly burned while others were just nice and crispy and some weren’t cooked at all. I could have guessed so before but hey, I’m here to make mistakes so you don’t make them ^^
You are probably wondering right now why the heck I’m getting so excited about eating some form of pasta :p Well spätzle do not exactly taste like pasta. They have a very distinct flavour that goes so well with their particular texture. That and they are very cheap and quick to make. You can use up the rest of eggs or cheese that you have, you can even add some spinach to the batter to color the spätzle… they make a great main course if you bake them with cheese but they are fantastic as a side dish with meat or with a vegtable gratin as well.
Ingredients
How I made my batter:
250g flour (I used whole wheat but you can use all-purpose too)
1 large egg (you can add more eggs, however you must add proportionally less water then)
1 tsp of salt
1 Tbsp of oil (do not use olive oil, the taste doesn’t really fit here, use sunflower for example)
125 ml of water (+/- some, depending on the flour you use)
For an original spätzle batter, you’d need:
250-270 grams wheat flour
5 large eggs
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp oil
up to 50 ml water
Other than that:
1 large onion
a little flour
1 Tbsp of butter
salt and pepper to taste
4 Tbsp of melting cheese (I used gruyère)
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Preparation:
Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and salt it.
Cut the onion in equally sized rings.
Mix the ingredients for the batter and whisk them well until you’ve got no lumps left. The batter must have the consistency of a frozen yogurt or a very thick pancake batter that sticks to the mixer and is heavy.
Use the batter with your spätzle device according to manufacturer’s instructions to make the spätzle. Just be careful to work as quickly as possible once the batter is over the hot water. If you take too long, the batter will just cook/harden on the device and you won’t be able to push any spätzle through anymore.
Once the spätzle are in the water they are cooked very quickly, as soon as they swim on the surface of the boiling water they are done and can be drained through a sieve.
Keep the spätzle warm and heat about 4 Tbsp of oil in a casserole. Dust the onion rings with flour and put the them inside the hot pan, do not salt them yet and let them (deep-)fry on medium-high heat until they are golden brown.
Put the onion rings on kitchen paper to dry and remove the frying oil from the casserole. Salt the onions if you like.
Add a little fresh oil and heat the casserole up again. Now add the Spätzle and fry them until they take on a golden brown color. Add the butter and the cheese and let it melt nicely. Season to taste.
Remove the spätzle from the heat, serve them on a plate and garnish with onion rings.
[image to come soon] “Ok, what would you like for dinner tonight?”
“Pasta, Pasta!”
“Again? :p”
“Yes :)”
I’m sure you know this type of conversation just too well. What can you do if your family likes Pasta a lot but if you’d still like to cook something healthy?
While strolling over the vegetable section of a local shop here in Aix en Provence, I found a bunch of different vegetables which all looked very appealing but I simply didn’t know how to put them together. So while browsing the wonderful foodblog of Elise I stumbled on a recipe that I’ve always wanted to try out: Pasta Primavera.
Pasta primavera is an Italian dish that consists of pasta and fresh vegetables. A meat such as chicken, sausage or shrimp can be added if desired, but the focus of primavera is the vegetables themselves.
This recipe is so interesting because it is a healthy, low-fat alternative to all those pasta dishes with heavy sauces. Refreshing, light, a taste of autumn and italy on a plate. A great recipe to use up vegetable leftovers you might have in the fridge.
Ingredients
(You can substitute/adjust the following vegetables in any way you like)
2 carrots
1/2 zucchini
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 green pepper
1 onion
7 cherry tomatoes, cut in a half
garlic (if you do not like garlic, don’t put any)
olive oil
200 ml tomato purée
200 ml water
thyme or herbes de provence
salt and pepper
1 vegetable stock cube
200g pasta (penne for example, you can also use whole-wheat pasta)
grated parmesan cheese (optional)
_______
Chop the onions finely. Wash and cut the vegetables in bite sized pieces, stripes for example. Put a large pan on the stove and heat the olive oil in it. (medium heat)
At the same time bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add some salt and a bit of olive oil.
First put the onions along with the garlic in the hot pan, stir them once and cook them for 30 seconds. Then add the rest of the vegetables and stir to cover with the olive oil. Let the vegetables cook like that for approximately 10 minutes (while stirring once in a while), until they are almost soft.
Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook them according to manufacturer’s instructions.
After the vegetables are soft enough for your taste, add the tomato purée, the water and the vegetable stock cube. Stir well and let everything cook for a minute while adding some thyme (or herbes de provence) and salt/pepper.
Drain the pasta and add it to the vegeatables. Mix everything well and adjust seasoning if needed. Add the cherry tomatoes and remove from heat.
Serves 4. You can add some parmesan cheese but personally I left it away. Enjoy
:p It’s that easy!
