It's a Beautiful Life - Anniversary - Beetroot Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Life is beautiful ... and so is my loving wife. I am so grateful I can be married to such a wonderful woman. Yesterday we had our wedding anniversary and it was a delicious day.

For some wedding anniversary may mean to get a gift for his wife like jewellery or something along that road. As for my wife she is very happy and content when I cook something lovely and delicious for her. Now you can judge for yourself what is easier, buying a piece of jewellery or passing quite some time in the kitchen cooking up something delicious.

Did I mention I was very grateful?

Well then, let's get into the food. First of all we started off with something healthy, a beetroot salad.

Ingredients:

2 pre-cooked beetroots, finely sliced

60 g lamb's lettuce

140 g mango, cut in cubes

20 g pumpkin seeds

20 g shavings of parmesan

Red wine vinegar

Olive oil

1 tsp Mustard

1 tsp Honey

Salt, pepper

Method:

The ingredients serve for two plates. This makes sense completely. After all, it was for our anniversary that we were celebrating the two of us.

Arrange the slices of beetroot on a plate, well two plates. Build a circle if you fancy so.

Arrange the lamb's lettuce in the center of the plate.

After that toss on the pieces of mango and the pumpkin seeds.

Then shave over the parmesan, maybe with a potato peeler.

For the dressing mix one part of red wine vinegar with triple the amount of olive oil in a jam jar, for example, together with the mustard, honey and salt and pepper. Dress the salad with ... eh ... this dressing.

Enjoy! Side fact: The beetroot is supposed to be good when you want to build muscles. If not, it's good anyway.

Of course, there was more. For the main plate I cooked up a nice and gorgeously crispy pork belly. It was so awesome.

The crispy pork belly was plated up with some browned potatoes and mushrooms glazed with a good knob of butter. I say it was very delicious. Did I mention the pork belly was so crispy with an awesomely good crunch?! Well, just wanted to make sure of it.

We had a lovely glass of white wine with it, a glass of Albariño, my wife brought along from A Coruña, Spain. Wonderful!

Then we finished the meal off with an espresso or two. But there has to be something more to it ...

... yes, of course, cake. On the inside a chocolate part and a vanilla part. Very good combination. All around it was coated with a chocolate ganache.

Thank you very much for joining us on our anniversary and for taking the time to read this blog post right to the end. All in all it was a really lovely day. Yes, life is beautiful!

Wheat Tortillas with Mango Salsa

Sometimes I think I need more of a certain kind of food in my life. Ha, you say, when you look at my blog, there is a lot of variation. Fine! At times, though I wish I could have certain things more often. Maybe something like that ...

That was the dish for Mexico I totally forgot to blog for the World Cup. No worries. Yes, at times I wish I could have a bit more Mexican food in my life.
Well then, what do you have to do for these little wheat tortillas with Mango salsa?
Obviously you need to make your own  wheat tortillas.
For that I usually take normal wheat flour, add a pinch of salt and then as much cream as is necessary to make the dough come together. However, it will never be more than 200 ml of cream. Then I never used more than 500 g of flour.
Let the dough rest a bit, then separate the dough into individual portions, roll out little tortillas and dry-fry them.
Make your Mango Salsa with half a cucumber, a hand full of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of fresh coriander, one ripe mango, the juice of one lime, one red chilli, a small red onion and a bit of salt.
It's best to cut the cucumbers in half lengthwise first. Then remove the softer more watery inside with a small spoon. Cut the remaining part into small cubes.
Remove the seeds of the tomatoes and cut into small bits. Finely chop the onion, chilli and coriander. Cut the mango into small pieces as well.
Mix all the ingredients together. Maybe a drop of olive oil will do no harm.
Put a spoonful of the salsa on each ready fried wheat tortilla and enjoy ...