Sunday 15 June 2014

Vegetarian nachos and salsa salad - recipe

Now in times of football and the world cup, we love to eat snack food in front of a nice footfall game in the living room, although I prefer us to eat at the dinner table. But there are exceptions, like a world cup :). We often make nachos and serve it with a nice salsa salad to make it more filling. This recipe, is not really a recipe, just putting few ingredients together to create a lovely meal. 

Ingredients:
A bag of nachos chips
1 jar of salsa
mature cheddar, shredded
creme fraiche

salsa salad:
2 tomatoes
half cucumber
1 avocado
lettuce
lime juice, 1 whole
1/2 tbsp dried parsley


Method:
1. Line a flat oven tray with aluminium foil and spread the nachos chips on. Add the salsa sauce on top and shred mature cheddar cheese to taste. Bake it in the oven for about 20 minutes on 200 degrees, or until cheese has melted and it is golden.


2. While the nachos are being baked in the oven, make your salsa salad. Wash and chop all the vegetables and put it in a bowl. Sprinkle over 1/2 tbsp dried parsley and juice from a whole lime.


3. Once the nachos are done as well as the salad, serve it on a flat plate with a tbsp of creme fraiche. Nice and delicious to be served in front of a great game of football.



Enjoy!

Thursday 12 June 2014

Potato salad served with oven-fried fish - recipe

We have been blessed with a great weather here in the UK, almost to the point that you cant handle the heat. Days like these, it is often hard to find motivation to stand by the cooker and make a hot meal. On the contrary, you want something light, quick and preferably cold, or at least not piping hot. What comes to mind is generally a nice salad. But, salad is not always enough if you are very hungry and want something more hearty and filling. Then what can be better than a cold potato salad? It is a great option to serve with meat, seafood, fish or just keeping it vegetarian. It is a must on every BBQ I would say. So how did I do it? 

Ingredients:
1/2 cup mayo
2 full tbs of creme fraiche
2 tbs of cucumber relish (I am using Bostongurka from Sweden)
1 tsp paprika, dried dill, granulated onion powder, chive, salt and pepper to taste
1tsp of Jacobsbaii spice mix by u-kuva i-africa (not necessary if you don't have it, but gives a zesty and tangy flavour)
2 stalks of celery
few stalks of spring onion to taste
2 hard boiled eggs
3-6 potatoes depending on how much potatoey you want it to be


Method:
1. Begin with putting the eggs in cold water and bring it to a boil for ca 10-15 minutes until hard boiled.
At the same time boil the potatoes in salted water. I did not boil the potato this time as I needed them to be done quickly. I simply peeled them and chopped them into bite size and put them in the microwave on the potato setting for 10 minutes.


2. While potatoes and eggs are being boiled you can start doing the dressing for the potato salad. In a bowl, mix the mayo and all the seasoning together. Wash and chop the celery and spring onions as well as the eggs once they are done. 

3. Once the potatoes are done as well, mix it with the dressing, celery, spring onions and eggs until everything is coated well.



 4. I served the potato salad with oven-fried breaded cod fish and it was delicious. But of course you can serve it as is, or with grilled meat. Another great idea is to mix it with a few cooked shrimps, which makes it a great salad with seafood, yum yum.



Enjoy!

Sunday 8 June 2014

Vegetarian pasta with tomato sauce and cream - recipe

Pasta is very versatile and can be made in different shapes and forms and be complemented with hundreds of different sauces. For that reason we make it quite often in our household, especially when the outcome is completely dependent on ingredients available at home. 


Husband made a quick pasta sauce yesterday and it was delicious and tomatoey. He made a lot so we had leftovers of sauce. Clever me who loves using leftovers, decided to use the sauce but alter it so it becomes a complete different one for today's taste buds. What ingredients did i use? Creme fraiche and double cream, they were also leftovers!

Ingredients:

Half aubergine, chopped
Half zucchini, chopped
Red paprika, chopped
Big onion, chopped
1 tsp dried parsley
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika powder
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 tsp herbe de provance
1 jar of Dolmio tomato sauce
Olive oil

1 table spoon creme fraiche
2 table spoons of double cream

Boiled pasta twists

Method:

1. Wash all vegetables and chop them in preferable size. Brown them in a sauce pan with few table spoons of olive oil on medium heat.

2. Add the tomato sauce and add a jar of water to get extra liquid and the remaining sauce stuck in the jar. Let it come to a boil and let it simmer for 30 mins until sauce has reduced and thickened. Served with pasta twists for yesterday.

3. For today's alternation: put the leftover sauce in a pan and the leftover cream fraiche and double cream and mix well until the sauce is fully creamy. Let it simmer on low to medium heat for 15 minutes and serve with boiled pasta twist or any other pasta shape of choice.

It became very creamy and tasty this way and i will definitely try it again.




Enjoy!