Fusilli Salsiccia e Cime di Rapa (Italian Sausage and Turnip Greens)

This is a traditional recipe from Apulia, although you should cook this with orecchiette-Pasta and not with Fusilli. Oh well....

You need:
Italian Sausage
White wine
Cime di Rapa (wikipedia gives these to me as Turnip Greens, it is the leafy part - I'll show pics) If someone knows how these are called in English, please let me know!!!
Peperoncino
Pasta (orecchiette or any short pasta you like)
Onion
Olive-Oil

Info:
These are the Cime di Rapa. Cima is the Italian word for "top, end, summit" and Rapa is a turnip.

 

Preparation:
Put on pasta-water. Dice a small onion and cut the sausages in small pieces. Fry both in olive-oil until crispy and brown, add some peperoncino and a nice shot of white wine. Have a nice glass yourself. Let simmer until the wine is almost evaporated. Meanwhile prepare the Rapa: We only need the leaves and the little flower-parts, not the stems. You can strip or peel off the leaves from the stems. Wash and then throw in with the sausages. You might need to add a bit of boiling water (from the pasta-pot). Be aware that a big bag of Rapa will turn into an almost-not-there part once cooked, similar to fresh spinach. Cook the rapa for some minutes. Meanwhile your pasta should be ready. Drain well and throw in with the rapa-sausages-sauce, mix well. Serve hot and covered in fresh parmesan cheese!!!
Note: Since the sausages usually are quite salty and peppery, you won't need to add other spices to the sauce!

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.

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. :-(