Gingery Noodle Soup

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. I am back home, after I spent two days at my parents house. I'm actually quite happy to be back in my kitchen, I feel comfortable here. In my parents kitchen I always feel a bit unsure of myself. My mother is a bit bossy when it comes to cooking, and a bit conservative. I just dont want to be explaining why I want to do something differently anymore, and so I stick to cooking what everyone likes, if I cook at all when I'm there.

I only moved out of my parents house two years ago. I only really started cooking about a year ago. And now I just can't accept the way we always did things as "the only" way. I don't mean to change my parents, and my brothers and my sister still live at home and have to find out what they want when they move out, too. But only when I'm at home, in my kitchen, the one with only one flat surface, with the little wonky garden table that we eat almost every meal at, with the very impractical floor-to-ceiling built-in cabinets and the old, too hot, oven - only then can I really cook.

I'm back home, and I needed a break from the food I ate over Christmas. It was good food, but it was not my food. Do you ever feel the same?
So I made this soup. It's light. Gingery. Slightly spicy. And so refreshing after days of eating and drinking too much.

Vietnamese Rice-Paper Rolls with Dipping Sauce

Some time ago I bought this little bowl. You might have noticed that I use if often. I just love it. It makes me happy whenever I use it, even months later. I find it really interesting how most of the time it is the little things that make me happy. I often think that it is the big things that make me happy, vacations for example. But it's when I fail to appreciate the little good things happening in my life that I get kind of grumpy.
Especially when I have many things I should be doing I fail to enjoy the small things. (Btw. I love Kelle from Enjoying the Small Things, I want to be like her when I grow up) Because there are many things to enjoy. I'm really grateful for a friend who let me copy all her lecture notes, I enjoy the morning sun when I have to commute to work. I love making plans for the upcoming holidays, and the vacations to Andalucia, Spain. I love making a thank you gift for the friend I mentioned before. (This is a great edible gift idea, I made Hot Chocolate on a Stick and used this recipe. I bought silver spoons at a thrift store and used these instead of stick, looks much nicer) There are many things that make me happy, I just have to keep looking for them. Because it is so easy to miss the beautiful moments when we are so busy. Today I chose to bake little Jasmine tea muffins, the Jasmine flavor is great but the texture of the muffin wasn't quite right. I'll try again and share them soon. They made me happy too, I love Jasmine tea, it has such an uplifiting scent. But since the recipe still has to be adapted, I share with you an other recipe.
One of the first things I made when I bought the bowl were these Vietnamese Rice-Paper Rolls plus a Dipping Sauce. The recipe is out of Vegetarian Planet, and while the Rolls are a bit fussy to make, the dipping sauce is really simple. The the crunchy vegetables together with the soft rice vermicelli make for a really interesting texture, and the dipping sauce is both sweet and sour.

Golden Wonton

I've talked about my love for Heidi Swanson's recipes and cookbooks before. It's really difficult to put in words what I love about it, though. The way she uses healthy ingredients really speaks to me. I don't think I could compromise when it comes to flavor, but she makes using the natural, "good for you" ingredients so much fun. I also welcome the change her flavor combinations give to my usual way of cooking. I normally have a rather European way of cooking, pasta, olive oil, herbs and such and I don't experiment that much when it comes to Asian ingredients. Now I get excited when thinking about black sesame, soba or ginger. (After saying all this, I feel a bit like a stalker.)

Well, I also mentioned (Just briefly, really. Believe me.) my love for her recipes to my boyfriend, how I adore her first book and how I really should get her not-so-new-anymore book, Super Natural Every Day. Being the wonderful boyfriend that he is, he ordered the book for me as a present. (He mentioned having a present for me, and I actually thought it would be an energy-efficient light bulb. That sounds weird now - Maybe we are weird?) But, (there has to be a but) I had actually ordered the book already, and it arrived just a day before his present arrived. Which leaves me now with two versions of Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Every Day. I admire her work, and I love the book, but I have no clue what to do with two copies of the book. Frame one and hang it on the wall? Keep one in the bathroom to read? Keep one under the pillow, so that inspiration can come to me in my dreams?

I decided to give one copy away here. I have never done a giveaway before, and it feels a bit strange. I just thought that you, too, might love this book. (I actually pay for the book and shipping myself, just to be clear)  
Leave me a comment and tell me who your inspiration is, in cooking, blogging, or anything else. Follow me on Twitter (@MrsGarlicHead) for another chance to enter, and leave me a second comment to tell me.
The winner will be announced in a week, on December 8th.

To not leave without a recipe, this wontons were inspired by Heidi's Golden Potstickers. I changed the filling completely, but without her recipe it would have never occured to me to make wonton, I'm not really familiar with them.

Spicy Squash Salad with Wild Rice and Parsley

I barely have time to cook. Or rather I barely had time to cook. Having three presentations at college in a row (one per week) is just not such a great idea. Taking up another little job, writing for a homepage, at the same time might not be the clever idea I thought it was.
Many things got neglected in the meantime, I had almost no time to enjoy fall until now and I had to work all weekend long. Tomorrow, after my presentation about the 'Greening of Protestant Thought', this should be over. There will still be things to read, translations to make and classes to visit, but I'll have my weekends back.

One thing I did try to keep up doing is preparing lunch to take to college or to work. I made "salads", mostly. My definition of salad is somewhat loose, though. I usually don't add a real dressing, so a salad is more a cold meal that was planned to be eaten cold (in contrast to left-overs).
For today I prepared this squash salad. I saw the recipe on The Moveable Feasts, it is from Bon Appetit originally.
I did not have smoked paprika on hand and could not find it in the supermarket I went to, so I had to do without. I also decided early on that I wanted to add lots of parsley. (This is probably because I saw a recipe in one of Jamie Oliver's books, that used tarragon as main salad ingredient. Really interesting idea!)
And I swapped out the lentils for a wild rice mix (this is just regular rice and wild rice mixed, I think it was something like a 8:2 ratio)
It is a lovely little fall salad, way better than anything I could get to eat here for lunch...

Do you prepare lunch to take to work or to college? And what do you prepare if you do?

Using What You Have or: What To Do With Old Bread

I really hate wasting food. I feel bad when I have to throw something away because I did not come around to using it. Not because of the money. I usually have to throw away food that my flatmate bought and did not eat. I still feel bad about it. I don't know what it is, it is probably a mix between "there are people who don't have enough food to feed their children" and "this food had the potential to be something good". (is it strange to think that food has potential? I think I'm weird...)

So usually when I go out to buy food, I don't have a list of what I need to buy, but a mental list of what it is that I already have in my fridge. This wasn't reflected in my posts up till now. I thought I could only post "real" recipes.
This is not "me". I feel restricted by real recipes, I waste food if I have to buy all the ingredients in the recipe and then end up not using what is waiting for me in the fridge.

I often have old bread lying around. I eat bread for breakfast, but often I'm at my boyfriend's place and the bread does not get eaten quick enough. There are several things you can do with stale bread, but today I proudly present:

 

Pasta with Thyme

I am back to college. Suddenly I have to shift from the lazy days of summer to a busyness I don't always like. I already miss the whole days spent in the kitchen. The long elaborate meals I shared with my boyfriend. The hours spent reading about food and cooking. The long bike rides. The spontaneous jumps into pools and lakes. The little things you don't really notice until they are over. 

But I am also happy to be back. I miss the structure of college days in summer. It requires a lot of effort to fit in running when I don't have my days, my times to just go. I miss the conversations, the challenges and the opportunities to learn.

But college also changes my cooking and eating habits. When I get home at 6.30 I'm just too hungry to wait longer than 7 till I can eat. I eat more pasta, more sandwiches for lunch and more not-so-tasty food in the cafeteria at college.

These last days I used lots of thyme. I bought a bunch, then I bought some more, and now I even picked lots of it in my parents garden. Until now, I sort of overlooked thyme, but with the colder temperatures, it is just right for me.

Crunchy Baked Acorn Squash with Mozzarella

A year or two ago I saw this recipe for baked squash with mozzarella in a cookbook. We looked at it in a bookstore and just loved the idea. My boyfriend took a picture of it, secretly and a bit ashamed because we had no intention to buy the book. I can't remember what the book looked like or what the name of the recipe was, but we took the inspiration from there and baked squash, topped with rosemary and mozzarella for quite a few times last winter, and I think also the one before. And it was absolutely delicious, the squash turns from hard to soft, it develops a balanced sweetness (not like pure sugar sweet) and the mozzarella melts, turns from white to golden brown and somehow changes its flavor.

Well enough, but this year I saw in the Ottolenghi cookbook Plenty, a recipe for crunchy squash with lemon. I don't remember the title of this recipe either, and I only remember the lemon bit about it. He cover the whole squash slices in a crunchy mixture that included lemon. Without looking up his recipe I decided to include the crunchy topping into the baked squash with mozzarella dish I already made. This is how this recipe was born, after thinking about it for quite some time, it came together really quickly.

Heidi's Feisty Green Beans

I love Heidi Swanson from 101cookbooks.com. I have tried out quite a few recipes she posted on her blog and I think I could cook everything on it and it would be a hit. I love her lemony chickpea stir-fry, I have made it several times already, and I don't usually cook the same things over and over again. A few months ago, I made this recipe for green beans and used Halloumi instead of the tofu in it. My boyfriend ate the leftovers cold and loved it, but I knew I had to make it again. I changed a few minor things, but basically it's the same recipe. It is somewhat difficult to describe the flavor of this dish, it definitely has Indian flavors from all the spices, but the wine doesn't quite fit into the Indian label. I served it with Basmati rice, sprinkled with some of the toasted almonds. I will be making this again, once everything is cut, toasted, chopped, etc, the preparation is really easy.

Eggplant Antipasto

I told you, eggplants have a special place in my heart. Right next to the one for Goat's cheese. When I saw the recipe for a eggplant antipasto on Delicious Days, I put it in my Tapas recipe folder and knew I wanted to make it soon.
Yesterday I did not have to work. I had all morning to myself, and I spent it in the kitchen. The first thing I made, was a plum butter, after having been inspired by Deb. Then I made this easy antipasto. I just knew it had to be perfect. And it is. It's garlicky, lemony, a bit spicy. The herbs add lots of flavor, and I just love the mix of textures: The soft flesh of the eggplant and it's leathery skin. I let them marinate for the whole day and brought them to a party in the evening. They were gone in a very short amount of time.

 

Pasta with Wild Mushrooms

Since I can remember, I went on a mushroom foray with my grandmother almost every summer. I remember getting up really early, we left when the grass was still wet. We packed something for lunch, and she carried the basket. I remember running around in the wood, bringing the mushrooms to my grandmother to ask if they were edible, and more important, delicious. We walked around for hours, with our eyes scanning the ground. We then went back to the camper, cleaned all the mushrooms and she made mushroom toast for us. She used to toast the bread in a pan with some butter, then we spooned a mushroom ragout, made with more butter, onion and white wine, on top. I loved it, and I still do.

My grandmother is older now. We still do this once a year, although I'm sure I missed some summers I now don't remember. We start not until about 10 in the morning, and we are back after about 2 hours. But I still love these moments with my grandmother.

This year I met her a week ago, we spent 3 hours in the wood and came back with about 6 mushrooms. The weather was too dry for the mushrooms. I plan on going again in a week or so, but until then I had to rely on my supermarket to provide my wild mushrooms.

I picked up all varieties of wild mushrooms they had in my supermarket, I'm sure not all of them are available all over the world. You can use a mixture of probably most mushrooms you can find in a supermarket. There are edible mushrooms that have to be blanched before you can prepare them the way you want, but I don't think they are sold in supermarkets. If you are not sure, check it out on Google, I'm in no way a mushroom expert.

Ricotta and Peas Crostini

I already talked about my mother's birthday party, but I have to tell you about these crostini.

My little brother (he is 14) is a bit of a picky eater. I did not expect him to like much of what we made, just because he is 14. I was somewhat surprised when he loved the smell (and later the taste) of the tortilla when I made it. But when he said he loved these crostini, I was almost shocked. The peas are not blended in completely so there were little bits still visible (my mother usually blends the tomato sauce with a blender because of him), there is a hint of mint in there (he is not used to that) and it's texture is not as firm as I wanted it to be (he would like it better that way), but no: he came back for more and asked me what was in there. He loved them, which was somehow really cute.

Tapas

I am a recovering perfectionist. I expect things to be just as I imagined and planned them. This obviously results in lots of disappointment and stress. Then I offered to plan and prepare an "apero riche" for my mother's birthday. I think I talked of nothing else for about a week before her birthday. I had lots of ideas I knew my mother would not be too fond of - my family is not as experimental as I am when it comes to eating. They like the familiarity of the things they always prepare for birthdays and other celebrations.
I came up with a few ideas that were not too new, not too strange, but not boring and old either.
Everything turned out great, the food was a success and we made enough for everyone. (and way too much of the lentil and couscous salad...)

I'm going to share with you the recipe for Goats Cheese and Onion Confit Crostini. They sort of had a slow start, people were not too sure about the cheese, about the amount of onions and so only a few were eaten at first. But after that, when every one who tried one wanted more, we had to go back to the kitchen to make more.
The combination of the tangy flavor of the goats cheese and the sweetness of the onions is delicious, and makes people come back for more.

Bavette with Lentils, Roasted Tomatoes and Onions

 

This recipe was inspired by Pasta with Roasted Tomato Sauce that I just saw today. I new I wanted to do something with Pasta and Lentils, but the thought of tomatoes roasting in the oven was just too irresistible.

You need quite a lot pans and pots for this, or at least more than I normally use on a normal weekday. First I wanted to slowly brown the onions in a skillet, but then I decided to just throw them in with the tomatoes and the garlic.

 They got soft and mild in flavor in the oven, rather sweet too. Just like the garlic.

I used two types of lentils because I loved how it looked, but the red ones kind of lose their color and turn a less interesting brown.

Spanish Tortilla

When I was sixteen I spent 5 months in a host family in Barcelona, Spain. My host parents were divorced, and I spent every other weekend at the father's house. He lived outside of Barcelona, in a small town. I enjoyed visiting him. We often went to small restaurants with his new wife and their daughter. I remember going to a place in the woods, were Catalonian specialties were served. The leech that was roaster in the fire. It was eaten in a very special manner that I don't remember well.

This spring I went to Barcelona with my boyfriend. The city has not changed much. And what is just as good as when I lived there is the "Pa amb tomàquet". My host mother used to make this for me. Either plain or instead of butter in a sandwich, with Jamon or cheese. But as I found out now, the sandwich is even better filled with tortilla. It never occurred to me to put a tortilla in a sandwich, but the crispy bread and the soft tortilla go so well together. The onion in the tortilla, the garlic on the bread, and the juice of the tomatoes, they all add so much to the simple flavors of potatoes and eggs.
I haven't had a tortilla bocadillo (sandwich) since. The truth is, that, until this sunday, I never made a tortilla myself. But you should make one. Eat it plain, just as we did, or put it in a sandwich and enjoy a taste of Spain.

Potato Pizza

Before I went on holidays I spent a short weekend at Lake Brienz in Switzerland. I love to be there, it is really quiet and the environment is beautiful. Sometimes we spend a long time in the kitchen there, and sometimes, like this weekend, we made something quicker, so that we could spend more time outside, lying in the sun and reading.
This weekend we made a potato pizza. There is a recipe for a potato pizza in my cookbook by Nigel Slater, but since I did not have it with me, we just improvised.
It feels really decadent to put potatoes on a pizza dough, with not a whole lot more.
The pizza turned out just as I hoped it would. The crust was really thin and crispy, and the potatoes were a bit sweet. The goats cheese added some creaminess to the otherwise crispy pizza.

Galettes Bretonnes and Cookbook Challenge Update

I have been cooking from my cookbook but did not have time to take pictures, or the food was not really picture worthy.
Soon we'll travel to France again, like last summer, and we'll cycle through the Bretagne. We've been there last year too, and a culinary specialty of this region is the Galette Bretonne. It is similar to a Crêpes but made from buckwheat flour. They are great with savoury fillings. We made a Spinach filling and a Goats cheese and onion filling. I want to share the Goats cheese filling because it is more typical of the region, and also because my boyfriend made the other one and I'm not sure how he made it.

Marinated Strawberries

I bought fresh strawberries last week, and did not want to just eat them plain as I usually do. I created this one evening and made it several times since. It is really simple, the hardest part is waiting 15 minutes for the strawberries to marinate.

Beets and Tomato Tarte Flambee

 My boyfriend and I went on a short trip with our bikes over easter. We started in Basel (Switzerland) and followed the Rhine on the French side to Colmar and Strassbourg. Both towns were built around the river, loved that. In the first picture you can see Strassbourg, in the next: me in front of a smaller canal we followed for some time.

 Typical for this region (the Alsace) ist, among other things, the Tarte Flambee. The original version consists of a thin crust, topped with Creme Fraiche, onions and bacon. We actually had one in Colmar (the black and white picture) but the vegetarian option (for my boyfriend) was onion and cheese, nothing else.

After I came home I had a rather Italian inspired Tarte Flambee at a friends house, and this is what I came up with today.

 

Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever

Last week A long time ago I made the Brown Butter Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chip Cookies Joy the Baker posted a few weeks months ago. I just couldn't resist the name of it. It promised a lot, and I can happily report that the recipe lived up to the expectations. The different flavors complement each other nicely. I never browned butter before, but it was really easy, and it smelled delicious. You really have to try these! They are really easy to make, however, it takes some time to brown the butter and toast the coconut.
I didn't change the recipe, so I just post the link. The only thing I did differently is that I toasted the coconut in a pan, not in the oven. I prefer the control I have over the food. (I usually burn stuff in the oven).
Additional Note: If you, like me, have never browned butter before, just follow her instructions. It really takes some time, just wait patiently. And it really only starts to brown after the butter stops to sizzle.
I forgot to take a picture until only three cookies were left. 

Carrot Mücver

I love to try out recipes from countries I would like to travel to. It allows me to bring the country into my kitchen. Until now I've never traveled outside of Europe, but through cooking and eating exotic food I feel like I've experienced at least one part of India or China, Ethiopia, or Turkey.
I would love to travel to Turkey, I have heard from different people that Istanbul is beautiful. The rest of the country must be interesting too. But until I travel to Istanbul, or India, or Peru, I just keep on cooking.
Last week my boyfriend and I made this Turkish dish. It is basically a carrot pattie (if that is the right word for it). In Turkish they are called Mücver.