Merguez and the Pasta Salad of Doom

नमस्ते (speak: na-mas-té) - just for starters and saying hello.

Well, it is not Sanskrit, but if I'm right (might be the case) the script is the same. Anyway, does it matter at this point? Maybe! Who knows?

As the second Indiana Jones movie was set mostly in India and at one point Indy read a few passages Sanskrit. However, my Sanskrit is not quite so good, and most of my Hindi as faded into dust.

Still, we are getting closer to were we want.

After two weeks of adventure (mostly) outside it's time to ... RETURN TO THE KITCHEN!!! (By the way, did you recognize that my last few posts were written before my holiday?)

However, before we go on whipping things up in the kitchen, I like to share a few scenes from the weeks past.

My first day was like pouring down rain - like from buckets - and wind blowing, but stupid me had to be outside and walking ... I don't know like 20 miles or so.

After that, though, the rain was gone and the sun was out for the remaining days. Was that good? Hm, the blushing colour has gone now and is being replaced by some healthier looking tone.

Looking back!

Do you know this place?

Made it up here!

Yes, had to get up there, too

At times it really was an up and down (like life itself), but always it goes forward.

Not only that, there were 'wild' animals as well.

Had to use all my cattle drover skills, but finally I got past.

Is it size that matters? When looking at the next picture, take into consideration I didn't use the zoom on my camera.

Can you guess what this little fellow did?

Yet again, there are other dangers.

Whatsoever all this is now in the past and has, of course, nothing to do with what I want to write about next. But wait ... I mentioned adventures.

So we are coming back to our intricately woven thread and whip up a pasta salad. Let's get my gear ready and put things into action. On top of it, if we are fast enough, it will make a WARM pasta salad.

Yes, this bowl looks quite empty. In fact ... it is. That is to be changed. 

There happened to be some Merguez sausages (I told you once ...) in the fridge. Get the meat out of it (I used two sausages) and fry some nice small meat balls in a splash of lovely olive oil.

That's not quite enough. What else do we have on stock. Oh, yes, of course, ther are the courgettes on the kitchen counter. One of them will suffice, although they of the rather smaller kind. After all this should be for just one person ... or maybe two.

Slices ... and fried!

As you see (or not?) there were still some other things to be found. A jar with black olives was hiding somewhere in the depths of the fridge, too. However, no matter how hard it tried, I found it anyway and a small handfull of black olives (no, I didn't asked a child to help me, but simply didn't fill my large hand completely) went in as well.

What's in the freezer section of the fridge (no I haven't stocked up the real freezer again after the sudden demise of it's content)? Well, there is a small bag with (obviously) frozen herbs. What can it be?

Ponder ... ponder ... ponder ... yes, coriander. Fine, I take it and chop it as good as possible. If you dare to replicate this later, you can of course use fresh coriander and add it later.

Satisfied? No, we need more. Ah ... how lovely (really?) my chillie plants have really ... done a lot of work. So I add one finely chopped chilli as well, not bothering about removing the seeds (could this be the above mentioned doom?).

Knucklehead, if you are not doing something about the pasta, we will not even have a pasta salad.

Oh, yes! There must be some pasta up here. Some fusilli would be nice or tagliatelle or ... eh ... even some farfalle.

OK, let's use bucatini (no, not bugattini, although a ride in a Bugatti Veyron would be nice now). Have the package (250 g) will do. After all the other half was already used at another time.

Cooked according to package instruction (good I still had the package). Otherwise you might be just clever enough to know the appropiate time for having the pasta al dente.

Did I forget something? You know, "I'm making this up as I go."

All this could be quite dry. So we are having some extra vergine olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it. I even have this mango balsamic vinegar here. That will give the whole thing a slight fruity kind of twist.

If you care (I cared) season with salt an pepper. Hopefully you manage to mix it trough well. This mixing thing, though, would have worked more advantageaously with arranging the ingredients in reverse order (I guess).

At this point, we should have it all ready to eat (if I wouldn't been taking photos, it would have been a warmer pasta salad). Then why not do it and eat.

I, though, would fancy pudding. Maybe some blackforest gateaux thingy or tiramisu or even some brownies. But once more luck was not on my side. Neither of the aforementioned was at hand nor at reach nor was there any way of getting a decent dessert to satisfy my palate. Sady, then, I went without.