BBC Good Food Vegetable Ragu

Do you have days when you just don’t feel like touching and eating any meat? Yesterday was one of those days for me. While I do love poultry and meat, I do occasionally feel like a good vegetarian meal such as Vegetable Ragu.

This year I started learning to make my own pasta sauce. Not only are they surprisingly easy, they also taste fresher and healthier. This vegetable ragu recipe from good old BBC Good Food is a gem as it is so cheap and easy to make.

Since recipes aren’t set in stone, I omitted celery and red lentils in my version. I added dried basil and cayenne pepper to spice it up a little. And I’m currently in love with balsamic vinegar so I was rather generous with it too. As it cooked on the stove, the ragu was bursting with sweet smelling vegetables – the perfect healthy comfort food on a cold day.

This is to me the fun part about cooking – not restricting yourself to whatever the recipe calls for and taking initiative to tweak it to your preference.

Jamie Oliver's Roast Chicken Recipe (half-arsed)

Today I tried out a Jamie Oliver's recipe – Perfect roast chicken. I do find myself avoiding recipes from celebrity chefs because 99% of the time their recipes are just far too fancy and complicated for my liking. However, this recipe has proven otherwise.

 

I tweaked the recipe by spreading herb butter under the skin of the chicken and added some dried thyme with the bunch of fresh rosemary and lemon in the chicken’s cavity.

The result is a crispy-skinned chicken that’s really juicy on the insides. Jamie Oliver didn’t lie about that!

So why did I call it half-arsed?

I got tired in the evening from walking around the Christmas market and couldn’t be bothered to make roast potatoes. I would have put in the extra effort if I had mint sauce, the magic that makes roast potatoes taste heavenly, to go with them. Taking the easy way out, I threw some garlic bread in the oven to serve with the perfect chicken roast.

Seriously, this recipe is amazing! Give it a go if you have the time!

BBC Good Food Recipe Books

I used to dominate the kitchen because I loved to. However I had to minimise my time in my territory ever since we found out about Bao who’s not very cooperative when it comes to standing or walking for an extended period of time. Therefore, I very willingly assigned some cooking responsibilities to Daniel.

A few months back, my sis-in-law gave us a couple of BBC Good Food recipe books as part of our birthday presents. I can’t tell you how much I love their recipes. They are easy to follow, tested by others and so reliable. You can even find many mouth-watering recipes for free on their website! These books came in handy for Daniel who isn’t quite the experienced cook.

 

Each recipe comes with a well taken photo of the dish together with its full nutritional breakdown. I love how they aren’t too fancy and are actually extremely easy to follow.

Here’s what we’ve tried so far.

Italian-style Beef Stew, perfect on a cold wintry day. We served it with mash for dinner and pasta for lunch the next day.

 

Thai-style Beef Patties which was like a time & travel machine that transmitted us to Thailand the instance we bit into them. The original recipe asked for minced pork but last minute shopping on a Saturday evening in Germany pretty much guarantees that we won’t get everything we want.

 

Chicken noodles soup is another of my favourite on days when I want something gingery, warm, spicy and just plain simple. A very healthy meal!

We do cook almost everyday since it can hurt the pockets to eat out daily. There are days when I miss living in Singapore where I can just walk to the coffeeshop and be spoilt for choice. However, I learnt that cooking for ourselves is a lot healthier and it can be a really fun activity to do together too.

Now that Daniel has learnt a few tricks in the kitchen (and he has done more than what I’ve shown you above), I feel so much more at ease about the arrival of Bao. We won’t have family nearby to help us, neither is there the concept of a confinement lady who cares, cook and wash for me & Bao (thank God I won’t have one anyway!), but seeing Daniel putting in all his effort to sort everything out at home without me lifting a finger is really comforting. At least I know Bao and I are well taken care of.

Salmon Linguine with Lemon Juice

Salmon tastes so good when seasoned with black pepper and chilli flakes. I baked them at 190 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes. To give it a refreshing taste, I squeezed half a lemon over the fillets before baking.

Before watching tutorials by Jamie Oliver, I never put salt in boiling water when cooking pasta. It makes such a difference! However I only do so if I’m NOT making a sauce based pasta. Very seldom do you find me adding salt in my cooking for health reasons. After boiling the pasta, I stir fried it (briefly) in a pan with olive oil, basil, chilli flakes, juice from half a lemon and seasoned with black pepper.

It’s a really simple dish that I’ve made for dinner a few times and we really like it. Fish… I want to eat more fish! Guess what? We’ll be visiting family in the UK soon so we’re looking forward to fish & chips! FIIIIISSSSSH!

Easy Scones Recipe

An intensive, vigorous 60-minute Body Fit workout left me crawling home on Friday afternoon with zero appetite. Wasn't exercise supposed to make you feel hungry later? Or does that apply only to swimming? I spent 4 precious hours pondering what to have for lunch as I read my crime novel. It wasn't until 4.30pm that I decided to make some scones. We might as well call that tea time.

Ingredients for 6 scones
225g self-raising flour
25g cold/chilled butter
Pinch of salt
15g caster sugar
50g sultanas
150ml cold milk
1 egg beaten with a little milk (for brushing later)

Method
1. Heat oven to 230 degrees Celsius.
2. Sift flour and salt into a dry mixing bowl.
3. Add the butter and use your fingers to quickly rub it into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.
4. Add the sugar and sultanas. Mix well.
5. Make a well in the centre and stir in the milk to make the dough. If the dough is too sticky, sprinkle some flour.
6. Transfer the dough onto a floured board and knead it lightly until smooth and then roll it out to about an inch thick.
7. Using a large cookie cutter, cut the dough. Place them on a well floured baking sheet.
8. Brush with the beaten egg and milk mixture. (Lightly will do or it might turn out quite brown like mine)
9. Bake in the oven (middle shelve) for 20 minutes or until golden brown.
10. Cool on a rack before eating.

I didn't have clotted cream at home so I used only strawberry jam. As they're packed with sultanas, these scones are surprisingly good on their own too! Crispy on the outside, light on the inside. Just the way I like my scones.

Flammkuchen

Apart from taking photos, I’ve been trying to take more videos lately too. While photos are able to portray an expression or event captured at a specific moment, videos are able to show the sequence of events which can be quite fun. I found an app known as Magisto on the App Store and it’s quite a cool video editing app.

Here’s a video of how I made Flammkuchen. Unfortunately, I’m not able to view the video on my iphone or ipad directly on YouTube but it works perfectly fine on a PC or laptop. Must be some silly Flash requirement and I’ve emailed Magisto asking if they’re planning to change that. These days people surf the internet ON THE GO. It’s just really silly to produce something that isn’t suitable for certain platforms. That would be a major MINUS point when using Magisto. But overall, I still had fun with the app. Funnily enough, the YouTube video works just fine once “embedded” in a blog post.

Alternatively, try to watch it via this link!

http://www.magisto.com/video/KU4RZ10VRi80WkRgCzE

Ingredients (depending on how generous you want to be)

• flammkuchen base which I got from the supermarket
• Crème fraîche (2-3 tbsp)
• 1 red onion
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• bacon bits

Method

1. Preheat oven at 220 degrees Celsius
2. Spread Crème fraîche on the base followed by onion, cherry tomatoes and bacon bits.
3. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes
4. Serve while it is hot

Meatless Mondays

Starting next Monday, I'll be taking on a new mission also known by many as Meatless Mondays. As the name suggests, it simply means not having meat on Mondays. 

I do love eating meat. However, I'm not a fan of handling huge slabs of raw meat. Also, I'm trying to have more fruits and vegetables to ensure that I get the necessary vitamins. 

Meatless Mondays is also a good way for me to look for proteins and iron in other sources of food. I'm sure I'll be sharing some vegetarian recipes soon! And if you know where to find excellent vegetarian recipes, please do let me know. 

Yorkshire Pudding

Living abroad in a foreign land can be frustrating when you have no access to your favourite home-cooked delicacies. It’s not too bad in Frankfurt as we’re spoilt with a good variety of restaurants and supermarkets. But occasionally I’ll find myself scratching the walls, dying to have something Singaporean or British.

I’ve learnt to cook a few Chinese dishes and I’m really proud of myself. It really does cure homesickness especially when I’m a foodie person. Thankfully Daniel isn’t a fussy eater and he loves Chinese food too. However a couple of days ago I realised I don’t really know how to cook anything British (and I don’t mean just frying sausages or bacon). Hence I attempted to make a Sunday Roast.

When it comes to cooking something I’m not familiar with I believe in taking baby steps. So I tried to make our own Yorkshire Puddings. Much to my surprise, the recipe calls for only 3 ingredients! And I assure you it’s really simple to make too. The recipe was originally from BBC Good Food but I made a quarter of it.

Ingredients (Makes 3-4 average sized Yorkshire Puddings)
35g plain flour
1 egg
50ml milk
Sunflower oil for cooking

Instructions
1. Heat the fan oven to 230 degrees cels. Drizzle sunflower oil evenly into a Yorkshire Pudding tin or muffin tin. As I haven’t got either of them, I used a mini-cupcake tin which works fine too. This is why I had 8 mini Yorkshire Puddings even though the recipe claims to serve 3-4. Heat the tin in the oven for a good 15 minutes at least.
The trick to having really fluffy, puffed up Yorkshire Puddings is to ensure that the tin is sizzling hot!
2. Mix the flour and egg in a bowl till smooth. Gradually add in the milk and beat till it’s lump-free. Season with salt and pepper.
3. To make it easier for you to pour the batter into the tin, first pour the mixture into a jug. Remove the heated tin from the oven and pour the batter evenly into the holes.
4. Bake them for 25 minutes or until they’re golden brown. Remove from oven and serve while they’re warm.

Do not open the oven door when cooking Yorkshire Puddings if you want them to rise!

I wondered why my Yorkshire Puddings weren’t sunken in the middle. I reckoned the tin was too small and it didn’t allow the batter to spread horizontally. However it didn’t affect the taste at all. This October we’ll be back in England for a holiday so I’m definitely getting my hands on Yorkshire Pudding tins!

The taste was simply marvellous. I love how fluffy it turned out to be although I must admit I was shocked and worried why they didn’t look like the frozen ones.

And so may I now proudly say that I can make one of Britain’s favourite and most popular dishes!

Mango Salsa

It has been really hot, humid and sunny in Frankfurt for the past couple of weeks. Temperatures are rising well above 30 degrees Celsius and according to the weather app I have on my phone, we can expect 36 degrees Celsius on Saturday! Many say I should be used to the heat since I’m from Singapore. Unfortunately I rely a lot on air-conditioning. It is possible to not drop a sweat in Singapore. We don’t have air-conditioning in our apartment but again, who does in Europe? It’s usually cold anyway apart from a few weeks in the summer, and that’s if we get a summer. And I don’t think it’s necessary for us to get a fan for a couple of weeks. Thank goodness our apartment doesn’t trap that much heat.

If you’ve read my Aglio Olio post, you would know that I am trying to think of recipes for this blistering hot summer. I’ve been having lots of fruits to cool myself down and I was so excited to know that Yuan Fa Asian Supermarket at Konstablewache sells honey mangoes from Pakistan. I love mangoes and they are one of my favourite fruits. It’s pointless trying to get mangoes from German supermarkets because they just don’t taste as sweet.

I’m a mango fanatic. I finished an entire box of them by myself and got another box over the weekend. Daniel doesn’t have much of them because they’re really sweet (honey mangoes…duhzzz) and for some reason reminds him of durians! As a hardcore mango and durian eater, I assure you these mangoes taste just exactly like mangoes.

They were extremely juicy. Let you in on a secret – I was slicing and sneakily eating the mangoes in the kitchen. Couldn’t resist the urge to feast on my favourite fruit!

With my second box of mangoes, I decided not to be selfish and share them with Daniel. I had to think of how to make the mangoes taste less sweet so that he’ll have some of then.  I don’t know how but I thought I would use either lemons or lime to make the fruit less sweet. Hell knows what I was thinking but I decided to make Mango Salsa based on an indian salad I made years ago.

Ingredients (serves 4  as a side dish)

• 3 small mangoes, peeled and diced (they must be very ripe and sweet)
• half a cucumber peeled and diced
• 2 tbsp of jalapeno chillies diced
• half a red onion diced
• juice from 2 limes
• a handful of fresh parsley, chopped
• a handful of fresh mint, chopped
• salt and black pepper

Instructions

1. Combine all the ingredients together and season with salt and black pepper to taste.

Isn’t this just a piece of cake? It’s so easy! This fruity salsa has a tinge of spiciness to it and is sure to add excitement to whatever you’re serving it with. It reminds me so much of Thai cuisine which sometimes has a mixture of sweet and spicy tastes to it. Mango salsa is the perfect summer appetizer or snack and I do recommend you to try it if you haven’t.

So, what is your favourite summer dish that you enjoy in this boiling heat? Do feel free to share in the comments below!

I’m just going to sit out in the balcony and have my Mango Salsa now. Excited!!!!

Aglio Olio

It has been really hot lately and I can’t bring myself to have anything too hearty – like stews, or anything too heavy and creamy. And so here’s a recipe for aglio olio which is a little zesty – perfect in the summer!

Ingredients (serves 2)
160g spaghetti
1 tbsp salt (for boiling spaghetti)
8 cloves of garlic chopped (I love them!)
1 lemon (for zest and juice)
8 – 10 fresh basil leaves, chopped
8 fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp mixed dried chilli & black pepper seasoning
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions
1. Cook spaghetti in salted boiling water (follow packet instructions).
2. Drain spaghetti but keep about 3 tablespoons of the liquid.
3. Stir fry garlic in olive oil till golden brown but do not let it burn.
4. Add basil and mint and mix well for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat down to low.
5. Add cooked spaghetti, dried chilli & black pepper mixture and lemon zest. Mix it well.
6. Add lemon juice and the reserved pasta water to spaghetti.
7. Turn off heat. Stir well to ensure that spaghetti is evenly coated. Serve while it’s hot.

I love the zesty taste of the pasta. I’ve never had lemon zest in my aglio olio before (not even in restaurants) until I chanced upon Jamie Oliver’s recipe.

I bought pots of basil and mint yesterday as I really want to try to use more fresh ingredients in my cooking. It’s amazing how the kitchen just smells so much more refreshing with these herbs sitting beautifully by the window sill.

And here’s the chopped mint.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get fresh chilli from the supermarket so I used dried chilli which is just as good, I reckon. Probably not as spicy which is fine by me.

If you have a special aglio olio recipe too please do share with me in the comments section below.