May 5, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
A perfect recipe for when you have half an hour to make dinner.
Ingredients:
5-6 chicken legs
3-4 medium-sized tomatoes
a bunch of celery
an onion
sweet (non spicy) paprika
vegetable stock – 1 cube or 1 tbs if you’re using granules
a dash or two of olive oil
Preparation method:
Defrost the chicken legs, peel off the skin and get rid of any visible fat before you boil them until the meat is tender enough to be easily removed from the bone.
Cut the onion in two halves and start slicing each half into small crescent-shaped pieces.
Slice the tomatoes. Wash the celery and chop it finely.
In a wok or a big non-sticky pan gently fry the onion using a very small amount of olive oil just for taste. Once the onion has become golden, add the chicken, stir and simmer for a minute. Add the celery and tomatoes, stir well. Mix in the stock and paprika, cover and cook for about 5 minutes stirring occasionally.
The chicken really soaks up the celery &tomato flavour and the tomatoes release a lot of juice.
Enjoy!
May 5, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
Ingredients:
3 medium sized to big tomatoes
a few raw or tinned mushrooms – if you adore mushrooms that much you can always put more, it’s up to you!
a few slices of ham – again, the exact amount depends on your personal preferences
4 eggs
500 ml milk
dill or other green herbs – fresh or dried
2 crushed cloves of garlic or garlic powder
black pepper
For the base:
I am not sure about the exact weight of ingredients, but I kept the following ratio:
1 mug flour
1/2 mug milk
2 tbs melted salted butter
2 pinches of black pepper
1 tbs mustard
1 egg
1 tbs baking powder
3 pinches of salt
This very soft dough should be poured into a deep pyrex baking dish until it covers the surface forming a very thin layer. Before you do this, however, make sure that you’ve oiled up the bottom of the dish with your fingertips and some butter or sunflower seed/ olive oil, and then sprinkled flour so that the base won’t stick to the dish.
Bake @ 250 degrees C for about 10 minutes.
In the meantime dice the tomatoes, ham and mushrooms.
Take the tray out of the oven once the base is ready, and layer the mushrooms, ham and tomatoes one after the other. Put the dish back into the oven for another 5-10 minutes.
Break the eggs into a bowl, whisk them, add the milk and stir well. Add black pepper and green herbs.
Once the tomatoes start to roast and the ham and mushrooms have sweated a bit, take the dish out.
Pour the egg & milk mixture over the whole dish and let it spread evenly.
Bake for another 10 minutes until the eggs and milk harden.
Serve with spring garlic or scallions. Breath mints come handy after this meal, but I’d never give up the garlic taste.
Enjoy!
May 5, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
This turned out to be a very easy dessert recipe. I am sure many experienced cooks are laughing at my excitement over something this simple. Nevertheless, I enjoyed making it and eating it…
Ingredients:
600 ml milk
50-60 gr sugar
vanilla essence- to taste
3 eggs
Preparation method:
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and insert a deep (deeper than average) baking tray with water in it. While you prepare the milk and eggs, the water will slowly heat up and start boiling. You are going to place dessert bowls onto this tray later, so make sure the water is not too much or else it will overflow.
Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk them for a couple of minutes. Set them aside for now.
Heat the milk with the sugar added to it and stir so the sugar melts. Add the vanilla essence. Keep heating and stirring. Pour and stir in the whisked eggs and keep stirring for a few more seconds. Make sure the milk never reaches boiling point.
Pour the mixture into porcelain or pyrex dessert bowls and slowly and carefully place the bowls onto the water-filled tray.
Bake for 25 minutes until the surface becomes slightly brown.
Carefully take the tray out of the oven and let the dessert cool down, then chill in the fridge for a couple of hours. Don’t worry if straight out of the oven the custard seems a bit flabby when you gently shake the bowl – it will thicken as it cools down.
Enjoy!
April 23, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 2 Comments
It’s good to have a vegetarian day now and then, and since meat is never my first choice, i decided to experiment with some vegetables. This is a very easy recipe, though the chopping does take some time. I never actually weigh products with precision and use herbs and spices freely without worrying about exact amounts – that’s part of the fun. However, I have tried to give a rough account of the amount of each ingredient. Remember though – confidence in the kitchen comes from trusting your own creative genius and TRYING THINGS OUT!
Ingredients:
8 green peppers
2 big carrots
pumpkin – I didn’t weigh it but make sure the pile of diced pumpkin is as big as the diced carrot pile
1 big onion
7-8 big raw mushrooms, I am sure canned ones would work as well
2 full teacups of breadcrumbs or bran
some salt
cooking oil
thyme
3 tbs tomato paste
black pepper – to taste
Preparation Method:
Dice the carrots, onion and pumpkin and after you mix the three, simmer with some cooking oil until the onion is soft and translucent and the pumpkin softer but not disintegrating. In the meantime, wash & chop the mushrooms roughly. Add them to the cooking vegetable mix and stir well for 3-4 minutes. Sprinkle some salt, thyme (I used plenty) and black pepper. Add the tomato paste and stir again, cook for 1 minute.
Next, add the breadcrumbs/ bran. They really help to turn the vegetable mix into smoother and more paste-like stuffing.
Don’t worry if you have too much stuffing left after you’ve filled the peppers – it makes a great dip/ spread and is pretty healthy.
The peppers need to be washed and emptied with all seeds and *spongy* bits removed. How to do that? Well, it does take some practice but basically, you hold the handle with all 5 fingertips around the handle’s base and you push the handle base inwards, towards the inside of the pepper. The handle and it’s base will then separate and go inside the pepper. Just don’t let go of the handle, and pull it out. Gently peel the spongy strings inside the pepper and throw them away, removing any seeds that might have remained inside.
Your peppers, ready for stuffing, should look something like this:
Stuff the peppers and arrange them on the tray. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C and roast the stuffed peppers until they get covered in small brown patches. Turn the peppers over so they roast equally on all sides.
Finally, seal the “mouth” of each pepper using the topping I so love:
In a small saucepan melt 50 gr of butter. Stir continuously while adding 3 tbs of flour to the frying butter. Keep stirring and add300 ml milk. This mixture is slowly going to thicken so stir very often. Keep it on the stove.
In a bowl, break 3 eggs and whisk them roughly. Add a dash to 100 ml of milk and mix. <— Do this before you deal with the butter and flour mentioned above, or do it while the butter is melting but make sure you do it fast!
Add the contents of the bowl to the butter, flour and milk mixture on the stove. Sprinkle some black pepper. Keep stirring until the mixture becomes thick sauce. Add dill.
Once the topping has thickened, take it off the fire and , using a spoon, “seal” the “mouth” of each pepper. Roast until golden.
I found I had quite a bit of topping left so I poured some in between peppers as well. Another option is to not roast the topping at all, and just use it as sauce to pour over the finished peppers, once you’ve roasted them completely and are ready to serve the meal.
The taste? Unbelievable. The smell? Irresistible. And so filling and healthy.
Enjoy!
April 23, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
I had been feeling a bit down. Yesterday my husband woke me up and declared his intention to go to METRO. For those who don’t live in China that may not mean much, but foreigners here would know what I am talking about. METRO is the supermarket that sells imported Western foods and ingredients like Philadelphia cream cheese, pickled gherkins from Germany, peppermint tea and Nutella. And I don’t know about you, but that is enough to make me want to jump out of bed with a big smile on and scream “Let’s go!!!”.
What he wasn’t telling me was that he had decided to make rock cakes. I had never eaten those in my life, but he’d made them with his mum back in the days when he was a kiddie and he was certain they’d make me as happy as he had felt in the old days.
And so, this is a recipe for something I didn’t cook myself. I assisted though. Therefore, I believe I have the right to publish it on here 
Making these did make me happy and excited and if you are reading this and have been wondering how to make your partner, children, parents or friends happier – just read on!
Ingredients
200g self-raising flour
100g margarine
75g granulated brown sugar
1 egg
Some raisins / sultanas
Grated rind of a large orange
A couple of tablespoons of milk
Extra :
Some grated carrot (optional)
A teaspoon of cinnamon
A teaspoon of mixed spice / nutmeg
A teaspoon of baking powder
Synopsis
The world’s easiest ‘cake’ to bake! Delicious cookie-like mini cakes which require almost no baking skill to make.
Preparation method:
Pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees.
Put the flour into a large mixing bowl. Slice the margarine into small pieces. Add the margarine into the flour. Using your fingers mix them together. Rub the margarine into the flour until there are no lumps. When you are finished you should be left with something that looks like a relatively smooth breadcrumb mix.
Break the egg into the mix. Add the milk. Stir everything around – it should become a slightly wet doughy ball. Add the other ingredients and mix it around until everything is spread quite evenly.
Grease a baking tray using the wrapper of the margarine. Using 2 table spoons, put lumps of the cake mix on the baking tray, around the size of a medium sized pebble! Don’t worry about making it a regular shape or height. Leave a little room between cakes on the tray as the mix will expand during baking.
Bake for somewhere between 15-25 minutes. The cakes are ready when you can put a fork into it and the inside is semi soft with no mix staying on the fork.
April 22, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
Ingredients:
4 zucchini
5 chicken legs
7-8 mushrooms
1 big onion
dried dill
ground black pepper
1/2 packet of salted butter
500 ml milk
3 eggs
3 heaped tbs flour
vegetable stock
Preparation method:
Defrost the chicken legs, peel off the skin and get rid of any visible fat. Boil in slightly salty water until the meat is tender enough to be easily removed from the bone.
Chop the meat as shown below.
Dice the onion and cut the mushrooms into small irregular pieces. Stir the chicken, onion and mushrooms into a wok and simmer with a few dashes of extra virgin olive oil.Add the vegetable stock and stir well, then add some of the dill and mix in the tomato paste.
In the meantime wash the zucchini well and remove the handles and the opposite end, then halve and with a spoon carve out the inner side – do not throw this pulp away! Instead, chop it finely and add to the simmering vegetables. By now the onion and oil will have formed a juicy base and the chicken and mushrooms will have cooked a bit. The zucchini pulp will release some more juice but don’t worry – if you keep stirring for some 5 minutes the whole mix will get thicker and you will find it very easy to fill the zucchini boats.
Right after adding the zucchini pulp to the chicken & veg wok, set the oven on full heat (up & down) and start roasting the empty zucchini boats until they “sweat”.
Once the chicken & vegetable filling has thickened, take the zucchini boats out of the oven. Arrange them neatly on the tray and fill each one with the meat & vegetable mix. Then re-insert into the oven and roast for about 15 minutes.
In the meantime, prepare the topping:
In a small saucepan melt the butter. Stir continuously while adding 3 tbs of flour to the frying butter. Keep stirring and add most of the milk. This mixture is slowly going to thicken so stir very often.
In a bowl, break 3 eggs and whisk them roughly. Add a dash of milk and mix.
Add the contents of the bowl to the butter, flour and milk mixture. Sprinkle some black pepper. Keep stirring until the mixture becomes thick sauce. Add the dill.
Once the topping has thickened, take it off the fire and spread it on top of the boats. Bake until it’s golden.
I chose to serve the Zucchini Boats with tender asparagus lightly fried in a few drops of extra virgin olive oil. Red wine to wash it all down is recommended.
April 22, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 1 Comment
Ingredients:
500 gr beef mincemeat
a big bunch of spinach
1 medium-sized onion
1 green capsicum
1 egg
salt
ground black pepper
Tabasco sauce
sunflower seed oil
breadcrumbs
Preparation Method:
Wash the spinach. After you’ve chopped it finely, soften it by cooking it with a few drops of olive oil in a small saucepan. It will shrink and once it’s soft but not overcooked in any way, turn off the stove.
In the meantime, chop the onion and green pepper.
Strain the spinach (it tends to release quite a bit of juice) and mix it with the onion and capsicum. Add the mincemeat and knead the meat and vegetables into a homogeneous “dough”. Add salt, a lot of black pepper (that depends on how spicy you like your food) and add Tabasco to taste. Keep kneading until all spices have spread evenly.
Break the egg and keep kneading using your hands until the meat and vegetables have stuck together due to the yolk and white spreading evenly.
Now you’ll need to prepare the breadcrumbs. I had a couple of month-old baguettes still in their original packaging. I had bough them intending to eat them fresh but anyway, I never did, and since they were rock-hard I thought I’d use them to bread the meatballs.
I used a kitchen grater and a bowl and it all worked out nicely.
It’s a good idea to make all the meatballs and cover them in breading before you heat the oil and start frying – that way you can focus on frying later and make sure you don’t burn anything and the meatballs fry evenly everywhere. Frying and continuing to make more meatballs at the same time is fine but puts more pressure on you.
So make small meatballs from the “dough” and then roll them in the breadcrumbs.
Heat the oil in a pan, add the meatballs and fry them until they start to brown on the outside – that guarantees the coating will be crispy.
Place the ready meatballs on a plate covered with kitchen blotting paper in order to absorb the unnecessary oil. Fried food is not the healthiest as it is.
I served this with the following salad:
Wash and slice tomatoes making sure you’ve removed the darker areas around the handles. Arrange the tomatoes beautifully on a flat dish. Chop some onion and place it in the center of the dish, on top of the tomatoes. I had some canned baby corn in the fridge so I added it to the salad. I sprinkled some olive oil and salt and added a couple of extra chili peppers.Fresh parsley would have gone so well with this salad but I had none. Next time!
Black olives are another thing you could use to decorate the salad and they complement the taste of the tomatoes and onion.
Put some brown rye bread and cream cheese or goat cheese on the table, pour a bit of Bulgarian brandy (a.k.a rakia) and you’ve got a perfect meal.
Enjoy!
March 31, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 1 Comment
I have to admit my attempts at making curry sauces until today had been quite disastrous. I decided to experiment a bit and add lots of things to most simple curry recipes, so here is the result…and it was delicious:
Ingredients:
curry powder – the type I used was premixed with (according to the label) cumin, coriander, turmeric, ginger, chili, fenugreek, anise, garlic powder, salt, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves. Still, I decided to add more of some of these herbs .
2 potatoes – cut into chunks
1 carrot – sliced
1 apple - peeled, seeds removed, and chopped into fine pieces
1/2 green capsicum – cut into long slices
4 tbs of tomato paste
2 tbs flour
the juice of 1/2 lemon
dried red chilies – depending on how spicy you like your food and how hot 1 pepper is. I used 5 or 6 small ones.
cumin powder – to taste
garlic powder – to taste
50 g butter
a few slices of ginger (I guess ginger powder would do too!)
surimi – crab sticks – as many as you wish
raw shrimps, frozen
raw squid cut into rings, frozen
Here is what some of the ingredients looked like:
Ginger Root
The frozen squid rings!
Preparation Method
I cooked this curry in a ceramic pot as I find food tastes better than when it’s been cooked in a metal pot.
To stir I used a wooden spoon.
First, melt the butter and once it starts sizzling, add the curry powder and the cumin/ garlic/ ginger powder. Once you have a homogeneous buttery mixture, simmer the potato, carrot and apple bits in it. Chuck in the dried chilies. Add ginger slices. Pour water to cover and simmer for a few minutes. You need to do this in order for the potatoes and carrot to cook properly – the seafood can wait a little as it tends to cook very fast and you don’t want to add it at the same time as the harder vegetable ingredients and make the surimi and shrimps mushy and disintegrating.
When the potato is almost ready, add the seafood after you’ve defrosted it. However, I sometimes find that adding frozen squid and surimi works better than defrosting them – when you cook them frozen they get a lot more tender.
Next, squeeze the lemon and add the juice into the simmering ingredients.
As soon as the shrimps become orange and the curry sauce starts boiling, mix the flour in about 150 ml of water and pour this floury water into the pot while stirring all the time to prevent the flour from clustering up. The flour will thicken the sauce. If you prefer your curry to be “clear” rather than thick, simply don’t add flour.
And here is my creation:
Serve with steamed rice – long-grained varieties.
Steaming rice using a colander and a pot of boiling water takes a long time – perhaps 45 minutes? Maybe more. Using a pressure cooker is easier but I don’t have one, so I had to use the pot/colander system. If the colander is very big and there are holes higher than the pot’s edge through which the steam can escape, you can simply wrap those holes with aluminium foil and tuck the foil into the pot as you place the colander (as shown below):
I added salt to the water in order to make it boil sooner. Of course I placed a lid on the colander to allow the rice to steam. How much rice you want to steam depends on how much you want to eat.
Another option is boiling the rice .
March 4, 2010 - Posted by rorrarra - 0 Comments
This is a very easy recipe and took me about 20 minutes – ideal for dinner after a long day at work, if you’re not interested in working too hard in the kitchen. I am also aware I haven’t discovered sliced bread, but I have tried to adapt it to my taste and add that personal touch I have used ZERO amount of cooking oil and very very little salt.
Ingredients:
5-6 big potatoes
1/2 big onion
a few chunks of pre-sliced smoked salmon – the kind you can buy at most supermarkets nowadays.
any brand of white creamy sauce for fish, meat or vegetables that comes in the form of powder
300 ml milk for the sauce
30-40 gr of butter for the sauce
dill – fresh or dried (I used dried)
other herbs you like with fish and potatoes to be added in the sauce or sprinkled on top of the whole dish
Preparation Method:
Defrost the salmon. I find it tastes better if I leave ot out for 30 min instead of using a microwave oven.
While the salmon is defrosting, peel the potatoes, wash them and cut each potato into 3-4 big pieces.
Boil in slightly salty water until the potatoes can be easily cut or broken with a fork but far from disintegrating. You are going for boiled potatoes, not puree!
Strain the potatoes and sprinkle with any herbs you prefer.
In a non-sticky pan fry the already diced onion for a minute and on top of it place the pieces of salmon. Turn the fish over when the bottom side becomes golden.
Once both sides have become golden, you’re almost ready!
If you’re using powder sauce – the packet will have sufficient instructions what to do.
I mixed the powder and the milk, heated the milk until it boiled and added the butter while stirring to let the sauce thicken.
I added some herbs I like and a lot of dill into the sauce.
White wine is the perfect drink to accompany this dinner!
Bon Apetit as always!
December 20, 2009 - Posted by rorrarra - 1 Comment
Ingredients:
2 eggs
fresh milk
sunflower oil
tap water
flour
salt
sugar
Preparation:
Depending on how many pancakes you want to make, pick a smaller or a bigger cup/glass. Use the same glass to mix ingredients (I prefer keeping the ratio right rather than quoting grams or ml).
Whisk the 2 eggs and add 2 glasses of milk, 1 glass of water and 1/2 glass of oil. Add 2 tbs sugar and 1/2 tbs salt.
If you have a blender – great! You can do that in the blender jug. If not – use a fork and mix everything by hand.
Start adding flour – I normally add small amounts and after each added bit I blend. Do this until you’ve got a smooth but liquid and NOT DOUGHY mixture. It should resemble something like the thickness of a yogurt drink – it needs to be able to flow and spill in the pan and not stick like bread dough.
Use a non sticky pan. Pour a medium-sized ladle of the mixture for each pancake. Do this holding the pan away from the heat so that the mix doesn’t quickly stick to the hottest centre of the pan. After you’ve spilled the mixture, make sure it spreads evenly over the bottom of the pan. Place the pan back on the stove. You need to stand by at all times as these pancakes get ready pretty fast – as soon as the edges of the pancake have started darkening into golden tones, gently lift with a wooden spatula and flip it onto its other side, that side usually takes even shorter to cook. Don’t worry if the pancake become a bit bubbley at first – as the pictures show mine do that, later on they flatten down.
I pile the ready pancakes on top of each other in a deeper dish (a low-set plate you’d call it, I guess) so that quite a few can go on top of each other and I can place a lid in order for the pancakes to soften. When you first take the pancake out of the pan, it will seem a bit dry, don’t worry – once you’ve put a lid on it softens! My mum always spread a bit of butter on the pancake she’s just cooked before placing the lid – that makes the pancakes even softer but if you’re watching your calories – skip that step.
After that – it’s up to you -spread whatever you prefer on the pancake and roll it into a “pipe”: chocolate, jam, or cheese and honey at the same time like I do – anything that tickles your taste buds to the point where you want ‘just one more pancake!”. Over and over again
Enjoy!
