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!

Quick and easy Pumpkin-Potato-Soup with Feta Cheese

Cut pumpkin in pieces, peel potatoes and dice. Heat oil in a big pot, fry pumpkin and potato, than top with boiling water and cook until both are tender. You can add whatever spices you like, such as chilis or ginger. Drain, but save the cooking water!!! Blend potatoes and pumpkin and add cooking water to make a thicker or thinner soup, just as you like it best. Top with feta cheese and serve with bread.

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.

Gnocchi with Brussels Sprouts, dried Tomatoes and Sage

I saw this recipe on a friend's blog and fell in love with it. Actually, I've discovered my love for Brussels Sprouts recently.....
The "original" recipe is here! As always, I did not stuck to the amounts, but did it by rule of thumb.


For 2:
* one package of Gnocchi (500 gr.)
* 300 gr. Brussels Sprouts
* 50 gr. Pine Nuts (I didn't have any)
* 80 gr. dried tomatoes (drained well from excessive oil)
* fresh sage
* Olive Oil, salt, pepper, nutmeg


Prepare Sprouts (I cut off the "stem" and peel off the dark leaves or the dirty ones). Cut into quarters. Put into boiling salted water and boil for about 5-7 minutes. Take out of water with a slotted spoon so you can use the water to cook the gnocchi. Heat oil in a pan and fry the pine-nuts, then add sprouts, diced tomatoes and sage (leave some leaves for decoration). Salt, pepper and if you like, add nutmeg as well. Cook gnocchi according to package instructions, drain well and add to the pan.  Let "fry" for a couple minutes, serve.

These were the veggies in the pan

Together with the gnocchi it looks a bit chaotic - if you want nice pictures, please go to my friend's blog.

Or do as I did: Cover the mess with a lot of parmesan cheese!!!

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.

Lentil-Soup with Wieners

Ingredients:
Lentils
(Spring-) Onion
stock-cubes
carrots
potatoes
pancetta
Wieners
Parsley
other veggies as you like (I had none, but leek would go well I think)


Preparation: Soak lentils overnight in cold water. The next day, drain and rinse. Fry diced onion and pancetta in a big pot in a bit of oil, add lentils and cover with boiling water. Add some stock-cubes and let simmer - you might check on package instructions for the lentils. I added the dices potatoes and carrots about 10-15 minutes before the end of cooking time of the lentils and the wieners about 5 minutes before the end. Throw in some parsley and/or other spices. Serve hot with bread (or add more potatoes to make it a complete meal). A dash of vinegar goes really well with this soup!

Pasta with pancetta-zucchini-creamcheese-sauce

Ingredients:
Pasta
Zucchini
Pancetta
Creamcheese

Preparation: Cook pasta according to package instructions. Meanwhile, cut zucchini in thin slices. Fry pancetta in olive-oil and add zucchini. When zucchini are almost cooked add a bit of the salted pasta-water and the cream-cheese, stir well. Season according to individual likes - I might add some black pepper and a bit of salt, but that's it. Drain pasta and mix with sauce, add parmesan cheese if you like.

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!

Two types of Tortellini

Since there was close to none cooking involved, there's no recipe. Shame on me. I just opened and cooked two packages of store-bought Tortellini (one with meat filling and one with spinach-ricotta filling). For me the sauce was Spinach-Feta (I had a whole bag of Spinach-leaves in the fridge which otherwise would have ended up as food-waste), for the Mister it was pancetta and cream.

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. :-(

Soup with Minced-Meat, Leek, Cream Cheese and Potatoes

This is one of my favorite soups or stews!! I used to make it with one of those package-mixes until I decided that I did not need them anymore.

Ingredients:
450gr minced meat (beef)
4 leeks
about 1,2 - 1,5 l boiling water + broth/stock-cubes
400gr cream-cheese (a little less might do as well)
potatoes

Preparation:
Prepare the leek, cut into small pieces and wash. Fry minced meat in a bit of oil and add the leek, fry for another couple minutes. Add about 1,2 l boiling water and the amount of stock-cubes needed or the amount needed to satisfy your salt-taste-buds. Peel potatoes, cut into small pieces and throw in as well, let boil until the potatoes are cooked (you might need to add some more water). Add cream-cheese and stir in well.

You might want to cook the potatoes separately, the original recipe is without them. I think the soup would go great with rice or bread as well. I just added the potatoes to save on time and pots :-). Feel free to add more spices or salt.

I'm sorry that the picture does not look very inviting, but I assure you that the taste is fine!

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.

Summer Pasta

Ingredients:
Fresh Pasta
Veggies of your choice (here: zucchini, tomatoes and mushrooms)
pancetta
some cheese - I used "Stracciatella", a special cheese from Apulia in South Italy, a kind of liquidish mozzarella mixed with cream

Fry pancetta in Olive-oil, add veggies and spices (salt, garlic, herbs) as you like. Meanwhile, cook pasta. Cut cheese in small pieces or if cream-cheese, put in ball and stir well. Add fried veggies and drained pasta. Serve either hot or cold, it's good both ways.





Veggies and pancetta in pan












Stracciatella










Finished product :-)

Panzerotti

Panzerotti are little halfmoons of yeast-dough filled traditionally with tomato-sauce and mozzarella-cheese and deep-fried in oil. They are soooo delicious (!!), and all you need is a bit of dough and some fillings - so there are two big advantages:
1. You can use almost every left-over to stuff into your panzerotti. Clearly, there are fillings which are more Italian than others, but we're not picky.
2. Every member of your family can create his own favorite filling.

To make the concept clearer to you, I copy from Wikipedia (Mind you, the picture is mine, showing a glorious "Funghi and Salsiccia"-Panzerotto and a Fior di Zucca):

Panzarotti or panzerotti are filled pastries, different forms of which are popular in Italy and in the United States, especially in Southern New Jersey. Panzerotti originated in central and southern Italy, especially in Apulia. They are small versions of the calzone, but produced with a softer dough. The most common fillings are tomato and mozzarella, but spinach, mushrooms, baby corn, and ham are often used. Another filling is onions stir fried in olive oil and seasoned with salted anchovies and capers, a seasoning that, mixed with bread, is also used in Apulia for stuffed bell peppers.In America the word has come to be spelled "panzarotti", and is regarded as singular (with the plural being "panzarotties" or "panzarotti"). They can come in various sizes from 4" to 12", and are most commonly semi-circular shaped. It consists of a pocket of dough filled with varying amounts of melted mozzarella cheese, tomato sauce, and any reasonable number of fillings, which is then wrapped, salted, and deep-fried. The panzarotti rises during this process, creating a pocket containing a considerable amount of steam which should be partially released prior to eating.


Enough babbling, on to the real thing!!!


Ingredients:
- one ball of yeast-dough (basically the same you'd make for white bread or pizza: flour, water, yeast, sugar for the yeast to rise, a bit of olive-oil, salt)
- fillings as you like, the classic is tomato-sauce and mozzarella-cheese
- sunflower-seed oil for the frying (or equivalent)




For the fillings I prepared and then mixed freely:
Spicy salami in little chunks
Italian salsiccia
Funghi
Tomato-sauce (tomatos, olive-oil, basil; let simmer for a while and then cool off)
Mozzarella-cheese in little chunks
Fior di Zucca (it's the flower of zucchini! You see it here on the left side and above.)



After the dough has risen for the appropriate time you can start preparing the Panzerotti. As quoted above, there's no rule as to the size, but they're often served as antipasto so I wouldn't make them too big. Take a piece of dough, shape it into a ball and roll it flat out. You should obtain a flat and round piece of dough, like a mini-pizza.

Careful not to roll it out too thin as it might tear when closing it. I have a Panzerotti-shaper, so I transfer the piece onto it and then add the filling. Don't use too much filling and leave a "filling-free" border. Close carefully, pressing firmly down on the borders.





It should look like this, but it could also look a lot better! You then heat the oil in a frying pan and just let the panzerotti fry in it, flipping it over after some time. Again, I'm sorry not to be able to give an exact time, but you'll figure it out.


Mine were slightly too browned, I'll try not to heat the oil too much the next time and to cook them a bit slower - well I was hungry while cooking and wanted them to be ready quicklyquicklyquickly....






And here are two more fillings, one is tomato-salami-mozzarella and the other is zucchini-flower and mozzarella (this one was especially yummy!!)