La petite biscotte

Contents:
- Whole-wheat spaghetti “à la provençale”
- Snow peas
- Tamagoyaki
- Apple rabbits

As it’s getting hotter around here in Germany (surprisingly it hasn’t rained since 3 days) I’m naturally leaning towards lighter meals and bentos. This recipe for pasta is great because it tastes even more delicious when it’s cooled off. You can freeze leftovers in portions and just put them in the bento box quickly in the morning. While the spaghetti unfreeze on the way, they also cool your bento, which is especially important in summer. The only thing I actually had to make in the morning was the tamagoyaki, the apple rabbits and the snow peas (15 minutes including time to pack up the bento).

 Spaghetti à la provençale

• 150g spring onions
• 100g celery
• 1 yellow or red pepper
• 1/2 zucchini
• 1 tomato
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 250g whole wheat pasta
• salt, pepper
• herbes de provence

Put water to heat in a large saucepan for the spaghetti. Meanwhile cut the vegetables in bite sized pieces, slice the spring onions and dice the tomato. Heat the olive oil in the pan and start by adding the spring onions. After 1 min add the other vegetables beside the tomato and cover the pan with a lid. Stir occasionally and finish cooking the pasta, then drain them and sprinkle with a little olive oil so they don’t stick. After about 5 minutes remove the lid from the pan, add the tomato and season to taste. Cook for 2 more minutes and add the herbes de provence. Finish by putting the pasta into the pan and tossing it with the vegetables. Serves 4, enjoy!

Eating a piece of tiramisu must be the biggest sin you can commit when you are watching your weight. But when you look at this delicious treat, it looks so innocent and actually also tastes fairly light, one has a hard time believing that a portion contains more calories than a human should consume during a full meal. The treacherous ingredient that makes it a calorie-bomb is the Italian triple-cream cheese mascarpone, made from crème fraîche and cream, which contains about 80% fat. Luckily there is a low-fat alternative which contains only 40% fat and tastes almost just as good, which I used in this recipe. With 420 kcal per portion I still wouldn’t recommend eating loads and heaps of this tiramisu, but it does make indulging in this all time favorite dessert weigh a little less on the conciousness And the best part for me is that this is made entirely without eggs, so there should be no risk even if you keep it in the fridge for 2-3 days.

Tiramisu “light” (inspired by “meine Familie & ich”)

• 500g low-fat mascarpone
• 1 tsp lemon zest
• 100g sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla
• 200 ml very strong coffee (cold)
• 4 Tbsp Amaretto
• 150g lady fingers (Italian sponge-cakes)
• Unsweetened cocoa powder to dust the top

Combine the mascarpone, sugar, zest and vanilla in a bowl and stir well. Pour the Amaretto into the coffee, prepare a form (square) to stack the tiramisu in. Now drop the lady fingers into the coffe, flip them and start layering the bottom of the form with them. Once done, if you like the sponge cakes to be well imbibed with coffee sprinkle the layer you just made with 2 additional Tsps of coffee. Cover with a layer of the mascarpone mixture and continue this way until you are out of mascarpone and finish with a layer of it. Put the tiramisu in the fridge for 2 hours and dust with cocoa powder short before serving.

Enjoy!

Been a long time yes, but I was simply overwhelmed by my internship. I found the time to make this delicious bento though and surprisingly the highlight was the little pile of pickled radish that was actually just an experiment. With some preparation this bento can be assembled in 15 minutes (I used left over zucchini tempura, the only thing I actually had to cook was the stir-fry and the omelet, I also used frozen rice which I unfroze in the microwave).

Contents:

• Japonica rice
• Quick-pickled radish
• Sliced omelet
• Cabbage / spring onion / red pepper stir fry (seasoned with soy sauce only)
• Zucchini tempura

Quick-pickled radish:

• 100g of grated or sliced radish (the red ones make  for a pretty color)
• 4 Tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 Tbsp salt

While you are making your bento, start out by grating the radish and combining it with the other ingredients in a bowl, stir well so the salt gets everywhere. Cover the bowl with a plate or a lid and put it in the fridge. By the time the rest is done, spread a cheese cloth over your sink or another big bowl and spoon the pickled radish on it. Wrap the cloth together and squeeze the radish through the cloth as hard as you can so all the excess liquid is removed. It’s ready to be used. While packing it, best put it in a seperate container within the box.

Does it happen to you sometimes that late in the evening you think all of a sudden, “I really feel like eating cookies”? Of course it’s always in those moments that you don’t have any cookies left, neither in the pantry nor in the freezer. Then you start contemplating if you should really get up and make a batch and after half an hour of yes/no/maybe you make up your mind and go for it.

While frantically searching for anything that could fit into a cookie, I stumbled upon a jar of peanut butter, sugar, eggs, flour, almonds and… and that was about it. I was so disappointed when I saw that I had none of the usual ingredients like chocolate chips available, but at that point I was already past caring and the need for a cookie was starting take control of the logical part of my brain. So I went ahead and made some peanut butter cookies. When C. (my husband) tasted them he was like:

“… hmm … Interesting”. -_-

Uhm yeah, we all know what that means, but hey, at least I really didn’t feel like eating anything anymore after that cookie

What can we learn from this? Firstly never give in to midnight baking temptations unless your pantry is really well stocked. Secondly always keep some emergency cookies handy.

This morning I decided to cook one of my favorite dishes to make up for those atrocious cookies: Thai chicken curry with coconut milk. This was a great opportunity to use up some of those chili peppers we had bought last week, this time however in a MUCH lower quantity. The result was absolutely amazing and this is one of those fast dishes that completely blow people in your house away just by the way it smells. Anyway, hubby is always happy when he smells curry.

Thai Chicken Curry with Coconut Milk

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 chili pepper (depending on how hot your peppers are, use a little more or less)
• 1 carrot, cut in bite-sized pieces
• 2 chicken breasts, cut in dices
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup green beans
• 1 tsp grated ginger
• 2 tsp curry powder
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 tsp sugar
• oil for cooking (peanut oil for example)
• optional: lemon grass

In a large saucepan heat 2 tablespoons of oil. When the pan is really hot (and that means piping hot) add the meat and cook it from all sides until it starts to get brown. Add the onions and the other vegetables and cook everything over medium-high heat for about 4-5 minutes until the chicken is cooked and the vegetables as well (they should still be al dente though).

Add the spices as well as some pepper to taste and pour the coconut milk into the pan. Sir well and reduce the heat to a very low simmer. You must be careful with coconut milk and heat as it can somewhat disintegrate if cooked too long. Add the sugar and salt the curry to taste.  Remove from heat after about two minutes.

Serve with hot rice. Serves 3-4. Enjoy

Spring is approaching and normally markets should start to feature all sorts of asparagus. Since I absolutely love this vegetable I was looking for it a few days ago when I went to the supermarket, with a specific recipe in mind that I’ve always wanted to try. So while perusing the selection, I stumbled upon the most amazing jalapeños I had ever seen - a full basket of shiny chili peppers that simply begged to be taken home and cooked. But no, I told myself, I was there for the stunning, fresh asparagus they were supposed to have!

After searching for it for what must have been five minutes, I finally found five lots of it, tucked away behind all the potato-baskets where no one could possibly find them. Actually that was quite fortunate for the asparagus as it was so dried out and shabby that it looked like little bundles of straw. Quite amazing actually when you think about it. You set out to cook seasonal/local vegetables that should be available in abundance right now but instead, in this little supermarket in one of the most remote places of Provence, we had the choice between jalapenos, shiitake mushrooms and flown-in papayas :p

Anyway Mexican food is great and we weren’t going to complain. When we came home from University today we started cooking right away and whilst my husband loves to taste everything I’m chopping on the cutting board, he glanced at me rather dubiously when I asked him to taste how hot the jalapenos were. But you see, the great thing about men is that they’d never openly admit that something is too hot for them (lucky for me :p). So when he finally took a bite he told me it was quite hot but said that I should go ahead and put in two of them! And that’s what I did.

Suffice to say that the chili completely owned us. But still, with our eyes and noses running and our mouths literally burning we still chomped our way through the bowl because it was simply too good.

This is a quick recipe for a low-fat chili - something you can make for your whole family when you come home from work as it really only requires a little chopping in the beginning. The short cooking time is also one of the reasons why we chose ground beef, which doesn’t need to stew as long as chunks to be tender.

30-Minute Chili Con Carne (low-fat)

• 350g low-fat ground beef
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 pepper of each color (red, yellow, green)
• 2 tomatoes
• 1-2 green chili peppers
• 3 Tbsp tomato paste
• 200 ml tomato purée
• 250 ml quality stock, either beef or chicken
• a pinch of sugar
• 1 can red beans
• pepper, salt, thyme, sweet paprika
• 2 Tbsp olive oil

————-

Finely chop the onion and the garlic and heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onions and the garlic and cook them for several minutes until they become transparent.

In the meantime dice the peppers and the tomatoes and finely chop the chili peppers.

Once the onions have cooked long enough, add the ground beef and use a wooden spatula to break it up while cooking it. After about 3 minutes add all the vegetables you’ve chopped before as well as the spices (minus the salt).

Add the chicken stock, the tomato purée and the tomato paste and let everything simmer for 30 minutes, uncovered, over medium-low heat. Stir occasionally.

Season to taste with salt and pepper and add the sugar to cut the acidity of the tomato. Also fold in the red beans, then take off the heat.

Serves 4. Serve with grated cheese, onions, tortilla chips, corn bread etc.

Oh, what a horrible picture… better ones to come soon - promise!

Contents:

• Japanese rice with chicken, carrots and aburaage
• Steamed brussel sprouts
• Finely shredded thin omelette
• Polenta crusted chicken

Today is a sinister day indeed as I decided to let go of the dear camera that has so far accompanied me on my culinary adventures. Unfortunately it’s been a while since I noticed that the camera was ailing. The pictures, as you probably have noticed, are completely blurred and I simply don’t manage to arrange enough lighting in the room for the camera to stop taking my movements into account. Even pictures that I take outside are not as sharp as I’d like them to be but I have to say that I’m not the least bit surprised. After all, I had bought the thing for 99 Euros at a department store and at the time I didn’t even think about using it for food photography. So yes, I decided that it was high time to stop disappointing myself and my readers with blurred pictures and as far as my investigations go, I found out that my dear husband is maybe going to offer me a new camera for my birthday on March 14 but pssst, it’s all top secret still!

The bento that you see above was assembled rather quickly as I’m still struggling to get enough time to even cook properly. What’s great about it is that you can prepare it with a minimum of dishes. I used the rice cooker to make the chicken/aburaage rice and I added the steaming container on top to cook the brussel sprouts at the same time. Apart from that I only used a frying pan for the polenta crusted chicken which I managed to coat and fry while the rice was cooking. You might wonder what aburaage is and sadly it’s one of those things you can only find in bigger Asian supermarkets. Basically it’s deep fried tofu slices which are often canned and preserved in a sweet-savory sauce (it’s those brown little bags that are used for Inari sushi). You can sometimes find them in shops that are specialized in Japanese ingredients but don’t be surprised if they ask 4-5 euros for a little can, but hey, once in a while…

I won’t add a recipe for the polenta crusted chicken because it’s really just chicken coated first in flour, then egg, then polenta (then fried). But when you choose the corn flour (or polenta) for this, be sure to choose the one with the smallest grains and be sure to cook it in enough oil, else the grains will be too crunchy.

Japanese Rice with Chicken, Carrot, Aburaage (Inspired by Bento Boxes, Japanese meals on the go)

• 2 cups uncooked Japanese rice, washed
• 1 small carrot, julienned
• 100g of aburaage, julienned
• 100g chicken, diced
• 3 Tbsp soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp mirin
• 1/2 Tbsp sake

Put the rice into your rice cooker and add the soy sauce, mirin and sake. Add enough water so it reaches the usual 2-cup mark. Place the other ingredients on top of the rice and turn on your rice cooker. Once the rice is cooked stir in the ingredients from the top and add seasoning to taste. Serves 4, sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds for example.

Contents:

• Gnocchi
• Tomato relish
• Snow-pea stir-fry with soy sauce and chili flakes
• Mini sandwich with salad and lettuce

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.

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

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…

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.