La petite biscotte

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.

How do you like your vinaigrette? Do you buy it or do you make it yourself? I personally keep a bottle of self-made vinaigrette in the fridge which I mix with whatever I currently feel like. I use it for salads obviously but also for some simple dishes instead of a heavy sauce (like taboulé for example). I prefer to make small amounts at once to prevent the vinaigrette from standing too long in the fridge. What really helps is if you have a vinaigrette shaker or one of those saucing bottles that chefs normally use. You can store those in the fridge and they allow you to neatly apply the sauce on your dish.

Here is my recipe and a few variations:

Ingredients

• 50 ml olive oil
• 50 ml sunflower oil
• 1 1/2 Tbsp cider vinegar
• salt and pepper

1. Combine the ingredients in a bowl, emulsify them with an immersion blender and keep in the fridge until you need it. Shake well before use.

Variations/Ideas

1. Traditional french mustard dressing: add 1-2 tsp of Dijon mustard to the basic recipe. (This is generally my favourite)
2. Instead of the cider vinegar you can use balsamic vinegar for example. Always use the best balsamic vinegar/olive oil for your salad dressings (and lower quality olive oil for cooking).
3. Instead of 1 1/2 Tbsp of cider vinegar you can use 2 Tbsp of lemon/lime juice.
4. You can add a little water so the vinaigrette doesn’t feel too heavy from the oil.
5. Shallots, diced tomatoes, dill, leeks are nice additions to variate the vinaigrette.

Ahh I’m about to reveal the recipe for one of the most delicious things on this planet. Poulet “à l’africaine” or African style chicken is a dish that my mother in law used to make for us whenever my husband’s aunt (who is married to a Togolese) and cousins came to visit. I always enjoyed those moments, not only because it’s great fun being with them and listening to their stories but also because I got to know this dish.

I am actually not entirely sure if this recipe is truly African. It’s made with peanut butter which gives it an amazing, “exotic” flavour. If you are thinking right now “what in the world is exotic about peanut butter???”, then let me tell you that it’s veeeeery exotic for someone who grew up in Germany :p Germans don’t really eat peanut butter and until a few years ago you could only get it in specialized shops. I didn’t know what I was missing! Today was actually the first time I bought a jar of peanut butter and I spent 10 minutes smelling, tasting a little spoon, smelling again, tasting… it was that fascinating! It’s a new type of flavor that I wasn’t used to but that I liked instantly.

If you don’t like couscous you can serve the dish with rice or pasta but I really think that couscous complements this exceptionally well. The sauce itself is made from ingredients that most of us always have at home. Easy and rather cheap to make but tastes amazing!

Ingredients

• 2 chicken breasts
• 1 onion
• 1 clove of garlic (optional)
• 400 ml tomato purée
• 250 ml water
• 1/2 tsp chili paste (if you like it really hot, use 1 tsp)
• 3 big tsp peanut butter
• oil (sunflower or peanut)
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 1/2 cups of couscous

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Preparation

1. Chop the onions and the garlic finely.
2. Heat up 1 Tbsp of oil in a casserole.
3. Cut the chicken breasts in dice.
4. Add the onions and the garlic to the casserole and cook them for 1-2 minutes on medium heat until they are transparent.
5. Add the chicken and cook it for 3 minutes approximately or until it has a golden brown color. Add the chili paste and cook for 1 more minute.
6. Add the tomato purée and the water. Bring to a boil and let the sauce simmer for about 20 minutes.
7. Meanwhile prepare the couscous according to instructions.
8. Add the peanut butter and let it melt into the sauce. Add seasoning to taste.

Serves 4, enjoy

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:

1. Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan and salt it.
2. Cut the onion in equally sized rings.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Put the onion rings on kitchen paper to dry and remove the frying oil from the casserole. Salt the onions if you like.
8. 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.
9. Remove the spätzle from the heat, serve them on a plate and garnish with onion rings.

Serves 2-3, enjoy

Today my husband asked if we could make some cookies together for the coming week. We very much enjoyed the ones I made last week because they were so versatile. Sometimes we ate them quickly on the way to university as breakfast (not healthy I know :p), sometimes we took them along as dessert for lunch and sometimes it was simply enjoyable to sit down with a cup of tea and a nice cookie. There is something comforting about having self baked cookies at home, can’t really explain why.

This time I tried out a recipe from allrecipes.com (Steven’s Chocolate Chip Cookies). I altered it slightly to fit my tastes (I prefer less sugar in general, more vanilla extract and less chocolate chips) and the result was very good. Still I used about 100g more chocolate chips than last week and whilst the cookie is perfect for people who are really fond of chocolate, it was a little too much for me. I’ll reduce the amount to 150g next time. Also I think that I’ll try to chop up some quality semisweet chocolate (70%+) instead of using ready-made chocolate chips.

Last week’s recipe is my favourite so far, not only because there were less chocolate morsels but because the cookie itself had a nicer texture, was less crunchy and the flavour felt cleaner. Have fun trying this out and if you’ve got a perfect cookie recipe, please share

Ingredients

• 225g butter (soft)
• 110g brown sugar
• 100g white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
• 160g all-purpose flour
• 150g whole wheat flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 150g chocolate chips (white, milk or semisweet, or mixed)
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

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Preparation

1. Preheat the oven to 175 °C.
2. In a medium bowl, combine all dry ingredients (flours, salt and baking soda). Mix them and put aside.
3. In a medium bowl whisk the soft butter along with the different sugars until you get a creamy texture. Mix in eggs and vanilla extract.
4. Stir in the dry ingredients from before and mix everything well. Fold in the nuts and the chocolate chips.
5. Lay out a baking tray with an ungreased baking sheet. Drop spoonfuls of cookie dough on the sheet making rows with enough space for each cookie to expand.
6. Bake in the oven for 10-12 minutes - until golden brown. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.
7. This recipe yielded about 44 cookies for me.

Enjoy

It’s the third day of my Gordon Ramsay test cooking. Today I decided to attempt a warm chicken salad from Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy“. First let me say that I am extremely happy about my recipe choice. I was completely blown away by this dish. Without exaggarating, I didn’t eat something as good as this in a long time. The flavours mixed well, the vinaigrette was light and didn’t overpower the taste of anything else, the chicken itself had a sublime taste from poaching in a flavourful liquor and the bacon added a really nice crunch to the salad.

I will definately cook this dish again, especially for guests. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough baby spinach leaves so I had to divide the chicken and the artichokes on two plates (that’s why there is so many on the picture). The portion was huge but we didn’t eat anything else so it was fine. The only thing that I’d really like to add is about frying the chicken: whenever you see a chicken recipe in a cookbook, do not mind any cooking times that are indicated. The thickness of chicken breasts differs greatly and it is crucial to verify yourself if the chicken is still pink in the middle or not. It’s very dangerous to eat a rare piece of chicken. This is why you should always check if the meat is cooked in the middle, if not, cover the chicken with a lid and put it back on the stove for a few minutes on lower heat. Or slice the chicken breast in a half and fry it on the uncooked sides. Or if the meat already has a nice color on the outside but isn’t cooked inside, put it in the oven for a few minutes.

(Adapted from Gordon Ramsay Makes it Easy)

Ingredients

• 2 rosmary sprigs or 1 tsp of dried rosmary
• 2 thyme sprigs or 1 tsp of dried thyme
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled
• 500 ml chicken stock
• 2-3 chicken breasts (depending on the size, with skin on if you like)
• 2 Tbsp of olive oil
• 25g butter
• 150g artichoke hearts (from a jar or a can)
• 1-2 Tbsp lemon juice
• 6 slices of bacon
• 50 ml basic vinaigrette (100 ml olive oil, 100 ml sunflower or groundnut oil, 3 Tbsp white wine or cider vinegar, salt & pepper –> mix with an immersion blender and keep in the fridge for use)
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
• 150g baby spinach

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Preparation

1. Put the herbs, garlic and the stock in a saucepan and bring to a simmer. Clean the chicken breasts (cut of fat etc.) and put them in the simmering liquor. Let poach for about 3 minutes or until the meat is firm to touch. Let the chicken cool off in the liquor.
2. Remove the chicken from the liquor, heat the olive oil in a non stick frying pan and once it’s nicely hot, put the chicken breasts inside (if you use chicken breasts with skin, put them in skin side down). Now put a lid on the frying pan and and let it cook for approximately 5 minutes (until the skin is crisp). Turn the chicken and add the butter. Cover again and let cook for about 2 minutes.
3. Remove the lid from the chicken and check if it’s done in the middle, if not, either let it cook as a whole for a few more minutes at a lower temperature with the lid on. Or halve the breasts and fry the pieces with the uncooked side down. Or put the frying pan with the chicken in the oven for a few minutes.
4. Drain the artichokes through a sieve and remove all excess oil. Dry them on kitchen paper and drizzle with the lemon juice.
5. Pan fry the bacon until it’s nicely crisp. Drain on kitchen paper.
6. Mix the vinaigrette with the balsamic vinegar and the shallot.
7. Now slice the chicken breasts in six long slices each. Arrange 4 plates with the chicken the baby spinach leaves, the atichokes and the bacon. Drizzle with your vinaigrette.

Serves 4, enjoy

It’s the second day of my Gordon Ramsay test cooking. As I posted yesterday, I’m going to try out three recipes from the cookbook “Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy“.

I was particularly intrigued by this dish because of the Ratatouille. As you might have read already, I’m living and studying in Aix-en-Provence, a beautiful town in the heart of the Provence region, about 30 kilometers away from Marseille. If there is one dish from Provence that almost everyone knows, it’s Ratatouille. This vegetable stew originated in Nice but it is eaten almost everywhere in France.

(One of Cezanne’s paintings of Mont St. Victoire, the mountain that
reigns over Aix-en-Provence. The famous painter was born in Aix.)

About the dish itself: I loved the combination of Ratatouille and fish. The dish felt very light and it was relatively easy to make. The only criticism I have is for the Ratatouille itself. In the recipe the vegetables are cooked very shortly (about 5-7 minutes) which is good if you want to keep the vegetables a little crunchy, but which isn’t so great if you leave the skin on the aubergines. Of course it probably depends on what kind of aubergine (eggplant) you use, but the one I used had a quite thick skin and when the dish was done it was hard to chew the aubergine pieces. Apart from that I might add a little tomato purée the next time but that’s optional.

(The recipe is adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s cookbook “G.R. Makes it Easy”)

Ingredients

For the rustic ratatouille:

• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tomato
• 1 yellow pepper (or 1/2 red pepper and 1/2 yellow pepper)
• 1 courgette
• 1/2 aubergine
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 handful of basil leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp of balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper

For the fish:

• 2 nice sea-bream fillets (buy them fresh with the skin on)
• 2 Tbsp of olive oil
• salt and pepper

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Preparation

1. Wash and cut the tomatoes in quarters. With a sharp knife slide along the flesh to deseed them. Finely chop the flesh.
2. Wash and deseed the pepper(s). Cut them in 1cm dice.
3. Wash and cut the courgette in 1 cm thick dice.
4. Wash the aubergine and cut it into 1 cm dice. If the skin is very thick rather remove it.
5. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. Wait until it’s hot.
6. Cook the garlic and the onions (on medium heat) in the pan for approximately 2 minutes until they are soft.
7. Add all the vegetables to the pan and cook everything for about 5 minutes while stirring every now and then.
8. Add the basil and the vinegar, season to taste.
9. Remove the ratatouille from the heat and keep it warm.
10. Clean the bream fillets, be careful to remove all scales and with your finger drive along the line in the middle of the fillets. If you feel any bones, remove them with a pincher.
11. Lay the fish on your cutting board, skin-side up. With your hand squeeze the fillet together a little so the skin gets stretched. Now cut into the skin leavin less than a cm of space between each cut. Salt the fish on the skin side and be careful to put salt inside every of the “lamelles” you created.
12. Heat the olive oil in a non stick frying pan.
13. Once hot (and really let it get piping hot first) put the fillets in the frying pan, skin side down.
14. Let the fish cook like that on medium-high heat and don’t touch it. Give it time until 2/3rd of the fish is cooked. (3-4 minutes)
15. Turn the fish once, letting it cook for about a minute on the other side (check if it’s done completely).
16. When it’s done, turn it around on the skin side and remove the pan from the heat.
17. Put half of the ratatouille on a plate and put the fish on top, skin-side up.

Serves 2, enjoy

A few days ago I received one of Gordon Ramsay’s cookbooks I had ordered. Gordon Ramsay Makes It Easy is a collection of recipes for everyday life, which you can prepare without spending a lot of money or standing in the kitchen for hours (it says so on the book-cover).
As I’ve said before already: I don’t like celebrity cookbooks. Often you open them with high expectations and once you try out a few recipes you get disappointed not only by the result but by the time and money you invested.

I watch a lot of cooking shows with Gordon Ramsay and I’ve always been impressed by the simplicity of his dishes. This is actually the reason why I decided to buy his book and to give it a try, despite my prejudices. I randomly selected 3 recipes and will be trying them out over the next days, always posting about my experiences here.

When I went shopping today for ingredients, the list of items I needed to make those three dishes was 9 items long. Of course it always depends on how well your pantry is stocked but 9 items for 3 dishes is really nice, especially given the fact that I’m a student and that I must be careful with my budget.

The first dish I decided to try out was a Broccoli soup. Gordon Ramsay’s famous broccoli soup with 3 ingredients: Broccoli, Water and Salt! After preparing the dish I can say: it was quick, it was cheap and it tasted good. I wasn’t blown away but that’s mostly due to the additions beside the broccoli. Ramsay suggests in his book/dvd that for a “Posh occasion” you can add a strong goat cheese along with a few walnuts to the soup. Given the fact that I loath goat cheese I added some “Tomme Blanche” (which doesn’t have a strong taste) and a few walnuts. I loved the soup itself but the cheese bothered me more than anything and made the dish really heavy. The walnuts were ok but not a must either in my opinion. The soup itself though is a great way to eat broccoli which has a bombastic nutritional value.

Ingredients

• 1 broccoli head (nice green color, no brown spots)
• water
• salt
• olive oil to drizzle (optional)

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Preparation

• Bring water to a boil in a large saucepan.
• Take the broccoli in your hand, by the stem, and hold down the florets. Cut them off by cutting around the stem, turning it slowly as needed.
• Wash the florets and salt the water.
• Once the water is rapidly cooking, add the florets and cover with a lid.
• After 4-5 minutes, once you can cut through the broccoli with a knife, remove the pan from the heat and drain the broccoli through a sieve into a bowl. It is important to keep that water, do not throw it away.
• Put the broccoli in a blender and add some of the cooking water to it until the water is about at half height of the broccoli. Now blend thoroughly (starting slowly and interrupting a few times at first) until you have a soup with a very smooth texture. Remove the lid from the blender and add seasoning if needed.
• Fill a plate with the soup and drizzle a little olive oil on top.
• Croutons should go well with the soup, try it out!
• Serves 3-4

Enjoy