CBC - Spaghetti with Lemon-Lamb-Sauce

This was on request of my Mom. And it was awesome!!!! I'll make this one again, that's for sure!

The cook-book is still this one: Pasta, Zabert Sandmann, 2000, page 70

Ingredients: 

400gr Lamb 

100gr bacon

1 big onion

1 bouquet of dandelion or rocket

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 clove garlic

400gr Spaghetti

1/8 l white wine

1/4 l veggie-broth

freshly ground pepper, salt, nutmeg

1 teaspoon lemon-peel

150gr Crème Fraiche or Cream

6 tablespoons lemon-juice

Preparation:

1. Cut meat and onion in small dices. Wash and dry dandelion or rocket. 

2. Heat oil in a skillet, fry meat for circa 5 minutes and then drain the oil in a small bowl (and put aside for the moment). Add garlic and onion to the meat and fry some more.

3. Bring water to a boil and cook spaghetti.

4. Add drained oil, broth and wine to the meat and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg (I left it out) and lemonpeel. Let simmer for another 10 minutes.

5. Stir in Crème Fraiche and Lemon juice, lower heat and let simmer another 10 minutes.

6. Drain Spaghetti and mix well with sauce, decorate with dandelion.

CBC - Fusilli ai peperoni

I wasn't thrilled by this recipe, but I'd make it again. The preparation is kind of a turn-off though...


The cookbook was: La cucina dell'Emilia Romagna in 450 ricette tradizionali; Newton & Compton Editori 1998, page 83


Ingredients (for 6):
400gr Fusilli
400gr bellpeppers
80gr butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 ladle of fine broth
one glass of dry white wine
salt and pepper

Preparation:
Prepare the peppers (cut out the "innards", little white skins ecc.) and put into boiling water for a moment to skin them. I did this step only partially, the skin did not want to come off, no matter what! If you have a better way to do this, please tell me (I think one can put them in the hot oven?). Cut into small pieces and fry in butter and oil. Add wine and simmer until evaporated, do the same with the broth. Salt and pepper, and let simmer on low heat. Prepare the Pasta, drain and mix with sauce, serve immediately.

As you can see from my pic, there was no sauce. There were only single pieces of pepper, nicely cooked in wine and broth. I think I also added a whole lot of broth, because the peppers were still hard and started to burn as all the broth had already evaporated. The dish is also in desperate need of parmesan cheese to top it off.

Insalata di fagioli con "Speckpflaumen" (Bean Salad with Bacon-Plums)

A friend reading my blog asked if I could cook something with beans. She told me about a cold bean-dish from Naples - so far I haven't been able to find a satisfying recipe for this soup, but when browsing my cook-books I came across this recipe and couldn't resist. And I have to say: Yeah me for not resisting, it was delicious!!! 

This is the cook-book: Antipasti, Zabert Sandmann, 2000

Ingredients (serves 4):
600gr white thick beans (dried)
2 garlic cloves
1 bay leave (nope, not for me)
12 dried plums
1 red onion
1/2 bunch of parsley
200gr bacon slices
1 tablespoon sunflower oil
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoons Aceto Balsamico (I used Crema di Balsamico, it's sweeter and not so "vinegary")
Salt and Pepper


Preparations:
1. Let the beans soak overnight in cold water, drain and rinse with water. Peel garlic cloves and cut into small pieces. Bring beans, garlic and bay leaf with water to the boil and let cook for about 1,5 hours. Drain and let cool.

Here's a pic of my overnight beans and one for comparison dried bean - soaked bean.

2. Let plums soak in water for 1 hour and dry well - I used soft plums so I skipped this step.

3. Peel onion and cut into thick pieces. Wash parsley, shake dry and pluck leaves from stems.

4. Wrap each plum with a slice of bacon, eventually use a toothpick to fix. Heat sunflower oil in a pan and fry at medium heat.

5. Mix olive oil, Balsamico, 2 tablespoons of water, salt and pepper. Pour over beans and mix well, let marinate for minimum 30 min. Eventually salt and pepper again.

6. Spoon beans on plate and garnish with onion and parsley. Serve with bacon-plums and bread.

And here is the masterpiece!!!

Chinese Chicken with Cashew Nuts

Since last week I was lacking a few ingredients of this dish, I made sure that today I was well-prepared. This dish is easy to make (perfect for beginners) and quick (well, there's a 30min. of marinating, but I guess that in cases of sudden starvation you can easily skip this part). Of course I did make the odd variation (I always do, don't I?), I'll tell you while going along with the preparations. Oh, and the baby liked it as well!

The cookbook is: Linda Fraser "The essential chicken cookbook - exciting new ways with a classic ingredient", Lorenz Books, 1998 (recipe on page 88)

Ingredients (serves 4):

4 chicken breasts, about 175gr each, boned, skinned and sliced into stripes (I diced it)

3 garlic cloves, crushed

60ml soy sauce

30ml cornflour (didn't have any, thus no cornflour went into it)

225gr egg noodles (I used rice-noodles)

45ml sunflower oil

15ml sesame oil

115gr roasted cashew nuts (used plain ones, they roast by themselves in the pan)

6 spring onions cut into pieces and halved lengthways (I only used one big one)

spring onion curls and chopped red chili to garnish (nope, baby was eating with me, so no garnish)

I added carrot, thinly sliced with a potato-peeler, cause I like a bit of veggies in my food

Preparations:

1. Mix the chicken, garlic, soy sauce and cornflour (and in my case carrot)  in a bowl. Cover and chill for 30min.

2. Bring a pan of water to the boil and add the noodles. Cook according to package directions, drain well.

3. Heat the oils in a large frying pan and add the chicken-mix and marinade (I added another bit of soy sauce). Stir-fry for about 3-4 min., or until golden brown. 

4. Add the cashew nuts and spring onions to the pan and stir-fry for 2-3 min.

5. Add the drained noodles and stir-fry for a further 2 min. Serve immediately, garnished with spring onion curls and chopped red chili. 

Here's the food!

Smoked Haddock (Cod) and Pasta in Parsley Sauce

After yesterday's CBC-meal didn't go very well I was anxious to prepare something better tonight. Well, little did I know.... This seems to not be my cook-week at all. Actually I think it was alright, just that I didn't like it very much. The recipe calls for Thyme, and I just found out I do not like that taste.

Well, I made some pictures anyway and I'll share the recipe!

Here's the cookbook. Since this was the only recipe that inspired me and since it turned out to be inspiring, but bad-tasting, that book is useless. Anybody wants it, I'll ship it to you. I think it's quite a nice cookbook, but I'm just not a fan of seafood or elaborate fish-dishes. It's: Linda Doeser "Fabulous Fish in minutes - Quick and healthy inspirations for every meal", Lorenz Books, 1998 (recipe on page 53)

Here are the pages from the book and the close-up of ingredients and preparations. I'm too lazy to type it out. 

Variations I made: I couldn't get Haddock. Nobody seemed to know that fish, so I bought cod instead. Left out the bay leaf and didn't add almonds after cooking.

Here's my plate. Doesn't look that bad, does it?

Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

This week's choice of CBC  was - surprise surprise - another Pasta-Dish. It comes from the Italian region Umbria, one of the smaller regions with lots of hills, mountains and forests. Thus, the cuisine is genuine, hearty and meaty, with a strong tendency also for venison. If you ever come to Italy in the fall, make sure to spend a few nights in an agriturismo in Umbria. You can visit beautiful cities by day (Assisi, Perugia, Gubbio, Norcia, Spoleto, Orvieto, Terni....) and by night you can indulge in fabulous pasta, meat and polenta-dishes. 

Here's just one glimpse of what you could be eating (and I'm not even a very good cook)! It's: Emilia Valli "La cucina umbra in 300 ricette tradizionali"; Newton & Compton Editori, 2003 (recipe on page 76)

Home-Made Pasta with Lamb Stew (Stricchetti al Ragù d'Agnello)

Ingredients:

300gr flour 

2 eggs 

400gr lean lamb meat

2 garlic cloves

2 rosemary twigs

40gr of fat / pancetta

olive-oil

250gr of canned tomatoes (the already diced ones)

1 glass of broth

pecorino-cheese

salt and pepper

Preparation:

Spear meat with garlic and rosemary. Heat oil in saucepan or skillet and gently fry the meat from all sides together with the diced pancetta. Salt and pepper the meat (I didn't). Add the tomatoes and, after a few minutes, the prepared broth. Cover and let simmer for about 40 min. Since I tend to burn sauces and meats, I turned the heat very low and stirred frequently. When cooked, take the piece of meat out of the sauce and work it with the chopping knife (I do not know if this is the right word, however I mean this type of knife!). Return meat to sauce, put aside. 

While the meat was cooking, you prepared the pasta dough: knead together flour and battered eggs, adding a pinch of salt and a few spoons of water. Knead for quite some time, you should obtain a smooth and workable dough. The original recipe went on like this: Roll out dough very thin, cut into small rectangles of 2,5 x 5 cm and pinch them together in the middle, obtaining a butterfly-shape. However my dough wasn't made for this kind, unfortunately it was too brittle. So I decided to go for long and kinda thick spaghetti (there's an extra componetn for this on my pasta-machine, so it was quite easy!). 

Cook pasta in lots of salt-water, drain, and mix with hot sauce. Sprinkle with pecorino-cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Here's the sauce in the making, bubbling happily on the stove

and the pasta

The Mister's (rather full) plate

Close-up of my (normal) plate

Orecchiette Maggioline

This is the first of my Cook-Book-Choices!!! Yeah for us! It was quite fun trying something new and I was really surprised by the choice - usually that sweet man at my side runs like hell if a veggie comes near him. I myself am not the biggest fan of asparagus, but it was ok and quite nice to have something different. I doubt that this recipe will make the Top 10 of our favourite foods (or even near that), but anyway, here it comes:

The recipe was taken from this book:

Here's the original recipe:

For 4 People

300gr Orecchiette (ear-shaped Pasta from Apulia)

1 kg Asparagus

200gr canned tomato (already pureed)

70 gr fresh salsiccia

1 piece of onion

50 gr Butter

2 Tablespoons olive-oil

grated parmesan-cheese

salt

Scrape the stems of the asparagus, and cook in salted water. When done, cut the tender parts into small pieces. Lightly brown the cut onion and salsiccia in olive-oil, add the tomato-puree and salt and let simmer for 20 min. In the meantime bring to the boil salted water and cook the pasta according to package-details. In another pan melt the butter and add the asparagus-pieces, then add the tomato-sauce. Stir gently and let simmer for a few minutes. Drain pasta and mix with sauce, top with parmesan-cheese.

Her are tow pics of the result, one still in the pan and one on my plate.

Introducing: CBC, the Cook-Book-Choice

I have an awful lot of cook-books. I adore cook-books, especially the shiny ones with intriguing titles and lots of pictures with incredibly delicious dishes. I have books on Cakes Muffins Cookies Bread Pasta Chicken Fish Vegetarian Mexican Indian Chinese Italian Traditional German Antipasti Desserts Regional National International - You name it, I got it!

Do I use those books? Do I cook regular meals from them? Do they actually show any signs of usage or even wear? No, dear reader, the answer to all those questions is: NO, simple as that (except for muffins and cakes!). Those books are mere decoration and dust-catchers, and our meals are more or less the same every week. The adorable man at my side is very very fussy and could live on steak and Pasta, so I tend to cook quick and easy dishes (having a dog a baby a job does not help a lot in terms of dedicating time and mind to elaborate cooking).

So, I told myself I had two choices: Throw them all out or use them. And I came up with the perfect answer: I will cook 1-2 new meals a week from those books. Thus, I learn new recipes, we will eat different food, and the books finally meet their rightful destination. The idea is to let him choose one weekly meal and to have another - exotic - one on Thursdays all for myself, while he is out running after a ball.

He found the idea great and choose his first meal carefully: Orechiette Maggioline, which I will feature in next weeks' meal-plan (18-24 sept.!).

So, CBC, the Cook-Book-Choice, here we come!!! I just love my own idea!