White fish in foil

I had lots of vegetable still from my shopping trip to the farmer's market. Sometimes there is so much good stuff, I buy a little too much. Solution: chop up part of it and freeze for the next minestrone or vegetable curry. The other part came in my fish dish in the evening:
Yellow and green zucchini, cherry tomatoes, carrots, spring onions and chilis.
whatever is to your liking, just pay attention to cut them according to their cooking time. You don't want part of the vegetables to be overcooked and the others to be still raw.

I put them in the oven with about 180 Centigrade for half an hour, adding just salt and dash of white wine, the vegetable kept the beautiful colors. For an extra taste, I then put them in a pan for about 10 minutes in order the finish the dish.

Chinese cabbage salad

You know Chinese cabbage? Maybe you agree with me that it can be one of the most boring vegetables. I have seen it many times on the salad buffet, mostly as staff food in large hotels. When it is cut and remains outside for some time, it gets even more boring because it gets dry, not even the greatest salad dressing (and believe me, they don't put that out for staff either) can help it. Most of the time I avoid to buy it, also because you have a really large chunk of vegetable to work.
The trick is to let the dressing get inside the china cabbage and let it rest for at least 20 minutes, the leaves take up the dressing beautifully then. I decided to make a fancy dressing with different flavors: sweet, spicy and hot:

Many recipes with China cabbage are with fruit because this combines quite well.
My ingredients for the dressing:
2 shallots
1 pear
2-3 table spoons of orange mustard
(if you don't have them use normal mustard and orange peel)
a dash of white wine
a dash of water
sea salt
different oils - this time I used grape seed oil and sunflower oil.
Would be perfect with a walnut or peanut oil, too.

Fry the shallots until they have that glassy look, then put them on the salad with a little bit of the frying oil.
Mix up the other ingredients and blend them.
In the end I added roasted cashews.

And remember, it is worth a try and a great salad to bring to a barbecue, goes fine with meat, too.

Chili con carne - texan style (mostly)

I am listening to a nice audio book called "Texas Cooking" right now that gave me the idea to try a Texan recipe. First thing which comes to mind: Chili con carne, of course. I found a really nice recipe on another blog and was amazed how many types of chili there are. Of course I couldn't find the chipotle in one of our stores, so I had to cheat a bit. The chipotle would be a smoked jalapeno which gives this special flavor to the dish. I didn't want to buy any of those bottles in the supermarket, nor liquid smoke, so I used smoked bacon instead. 

Here are the ingredients I used:

1 diced onion

Beef, cut in small pieces - about 1 pound

Minced beef - about 1 pound

Smoked bacon - about 1cup

All different kinds of chilies, I only had the two types you see below

half a glass of beer

1 can of diced tomatoes

Spices:

My special homemade spicer in the glass made of garlic, almonds, white wine, bread crumbs, olive oil and sea salt

coriander

clove (just 1!)

cumin

1 tablespoon of cocoa

I took the original Texan recipe as an inspiration, so don't tell it to any Texans, as I understood, they usually don't put beans in it (which I didn't) and neither tomatoes (which I did).

Next time I would put more spices and add diffent kinds of chili, hopefully also the chipotle.

By the way, sorry for the pictures, they really are not much, hopefully I will make better ones!

Vegan Butternut-Zucchini Ceviche

Usually a Ceviche would be raw fish, marinated with lime, originally from Peru but I also tasted it in Costa Rica. Very yummy. This time I stole the word for a purely vegan dish. The important thing is to slice the pieces in very fine stripes and leave it at least two hours - better more with the marinade.

So here we go:

VERY thin slices of butternut and zucchini, marinate with lots of lime juice and sea salt. After two hours add the oil. I used grape-seed oil this time.

Parsley root salad

Still summer and an opportunity to make a little barbecue. So we grilled some squids and I just made a light lettuce salad and a parsley root-carrot-remaining vegetables in the fridge one.
I have two types of mint in my garden, one sourced from a mojito drink in Cuba many years ago and planted in the garden without roots, still going strong. The other is the more spearminty type. The added an extra freshness to the salad.

Ingredients:
Parsley roots and carrots - I let them simmer with a little bit of olive oil and a dash of water in the pan.
Cherry tomatoes, a half avocado and two kinds of mint, cashews.
The cashews are slightly roasted to give them more flavor.
Mix everything with lime juice, a little sea salt and olive oil.

 

Olive oil

Maybe you noticed already - I really use a lot of olive oil. It is a very healthy and cholosterol free oil. There are few times I use butter, pumpkin oil or sunflower seed oil for special recipes, otherwise the healthy mediterranean oil is the best.
Since we have about 300 olive trees in a lot in Sardinia we, have the possibility to harvest and press our own olive oil, knowing exactly where it comes from.
The grooming of the trees and the harvesting also involve a lot of work and money. The trees have been cleaned again this spring, about the harvest we are not sure yet. Since the trees have been cut down, in the last years there has been no harvest, now is the first year with lots of olives.
I started a Kickstarter project for the harvest, if it is fonded, we will go down and bring up delicious "Valverde" olive oil to Germany - and send it to whoever is too distant.
 So if the funding is done until the end of October, there will be interesting news about all the stuff involved in harvesting, video and pictures of the special device for shaking the olive tree and the people collecting the olives and also pictures from the oil mill where the olives will be pressed afterwards. I have many pictures from Sardinia, too, which I will post these days on my other blog, so you get an impression of this beautiful island where there is lots of space and few people, lots of animals which are allowed to roam free outside and this special scent of the "Macchia mediterranea" which can not be described in words but which will end up in the olive oil as well.

Giant Schnauzer guardians of the olive trees

The sea is about 1 mile from the olive tree lot

Delicious sea food - Spaghetti e cozze alle vongole

Delicious roasted squids

Zoodles

Summer is turning into autumn and these are the last day to eat lighter stuff. Actually I just discovered "Zoodles" on the blog of Kevin. I had been roaming the internet, looking for mixing prawns with something else to make it a more substantial meal. Of course I also had to surf by "Closet Kitchen" because I love these recipes and actually found the cutting zucchini in very long and narrow stripes to use them as a fresh spaghetti replacement. I still must practise how to create these thin stripes without mashing the zucchini. I cut them with the knife in small stripes, then took the pealer and cut them from up to down. This is all very well when you are on the outer part of the zucchino, the further you get inside, it will disintegrate. So I cut in stripes what I could and cut little dices from the rest. Looked nice, too.
Here is how I did it:
"Soffritto" with onions and garlic to taste - I took 1 onion and 2 pieces of garlic
1 chili - medium hot
10 prawns
I let it roast, then simmer slowly and put the zucchini in the end because I didn't want them to be too soft.
In the end, add a glass of white wine or rum to taste.
In the meantime I heated up the water for the pasta - I took "bavettine" this time, let them cook for 5 minutes and put everything together in the end.
The combination of chili hotness and the sweetness of the zucchini combined perfectly with the prawns. Definitely a plate I will try again, maybe also with caroodles (carrots) or celoodles (cellery) and in autumn I might also go with pudles (pumpkin). The idea of the whole thing is that the vegetables are not really cooked but just simmer along until they get softer and this leaves them so much more flavor - try it!