Tortilla-"Lasagne"

I was in the mood for something Mexican (or what we misleadingly call Mexican). I bought tortillas and hot-tomato-sauce Mexican Style, chicken-breasts and Edamer cheese and some red and yellow bell peppers and an avocado. I still had some Nacho-cheese-sauce in the pantry.

Note: The following recipe wasn't bad, but neither was it extremely good. The taste was fine for something I came up with this same afternoon, but consistency and fillings/toppings have yet to be improved! I'll definitely make this again but then I'll put more effort into it!

1. Marinate chicken-breasts with part of the Hot tomatosauce, some olive-oil and some garlic.
2. Fry in pan and cut into little chunks, add the rest of the tomatosauce and the diced bell peppers

3. Mash avocado, add some lemon-juice and Nacho-cheese-sauce.
4. Cut the tortillas into rectangular pieces so they fit into your casserole-dish. I used the cut-off pieces to do the last layer - no food-waste :-))
5. Start with a layer of tortilla, then Avocado-mash, then chicken-peppers. Continue until toppings are finished. Top with grated Edamer cheese or any other cheese you might prefer.

Here's the first layer of Tortilla.

The second layer with avocado-mash

The third layer with chicken-peppers

Layers in Casserole-Dish

Topped off with grated cheese

Out of the oven

Piece of Tortilla-Lasagne

Side-view ;-))

 

Cauliflower-Spinach-Beef-Curry

Ingredients:
Beef
Frozen Spinach Cubes
Cauliflower
Green Curry Paste
Coconut-milk
Garlic

Preparations: Dice beef and fry in oil. Add garlic, washed cauliflower, divided and cut into the "single flowers" (or whatever you would call them) and a couple of spinach cubes and the curry-paste. Add some hot water and stir well, when the cauliflower is almost cooked and the spinach defrozen, add coconutmilk and let simmer for another 5 minutes. Serve with rice or rice-noodles.

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!

Quick and Easy Chicken-Veggie-FridgeCleanUp-StirFry-Curry Whatever

Today was meant to be another Cookbook Choice: Chinese Chicken with Cashew Nuts. Well, I was so sure to have soy-sauce in the pantry, that I didn't check. If course there was none - my brain must have wired pictures from years ago. Oh, and I didn't find the right noodles. And no chilies. So, with three ingredients missing I decided to push this recipe into next week's meal-plan and make a quick Curry with whatever happened to be in my fridge/pantry. Thus, I could also prevent some food-waste. Whatever turned out to be:

Ingredients:
3 small chicken breasts (fillet, maybe about 300gr)
2 spring onions
2 carrots
half a zucchini
one can of bamboo shoots (drained weight 175gr)
2 cloves of garlic
peanut oil
some green curry paste
one can of coconut milk
rice

Preparation:
Mix some curry paste (according to how hot you like it) and peanut oil in a bowl. Dice chicken breasts, peel carrots and use a potato-peeler to cut long and thin stripes. Do same with zucchini. Drain and wash bamboo shots. Peel garlic and spring onions and cut into pieces. Mix everything together with the curry/oil in the bowl.
Mine looked like this:

I think you could also prepare it well ahead and just keep it in the fridge. For cooking: Pour some oil into a pan and just dump the whole mix into it when hot. Stir well. When ready (tricky, this one. When you have decided that it's ready) just pour the coconut milk over it and let simmer. Mine cooked for too long and the milk was reduced way too much.

Serve with rice or Chinese noodles.

Sorry for bad quality. :-(

Falafel

I love a good falafel and on several occasions I've (successfully and less successfully) made the chick-pea-dumplings myself. This time I only had time for the ready-to-go ones (mix package with water, form dumplings and fry in oil, and to top it up I burned them. The sandwich was quite good though.

Storebought falafelbread, spread with yoghurt and the dumplings, add salad and spices as you like, roll up, enjoy.