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!

Alea iacta est - Avocado Salad with Egg and Salmon

No, don't expect any kind of history lesson, although this was one of my favourite subjects before I went to school and maybe the first few years while in it. That would be ancient history then with the pyramid building Egyptians and the Romans, yes, even Julius Caesar.
Indeed, 'alea iacta est' - 'the die has been cast'. Apart from that phrase and a few others, my Latin isn't that good anymore. Another one of my favourites is ... you probably think 'veni, vidi, vici', but no, it's 'mihi equus est', although that has never been true for me. I never had a horse.
'Alea iacta est', but not in the meaning of 'I have reached the point of no return', although that might be more true than the horse thingy. I guess, I better get on with my point then. 'Alea iacta est' can only mean one thing in my case: 'the die has been cast' and that in a literal kind of way. It's time for random recipe again. For that I always use my 100-sided die to determine a random cookbook. 
However, it wouldn't be random recipes, if there weren't another trick to come. Well, it would be random recipes, too, but it's more likely it comes with an additional twist.
This time it is that Dom has teamed up with Ros from The More Than Occasional Baker and Caroline from Caroline Makes. The result of that is a random recipes and AlphaBakes combination. According to that we are heading for a random recipe starting with the letter 'A'.
Well, the first book that came up, didn't have any recipes with a letter 'A'. So I decided to roll the die again. Once more 'alea iacta est'. The second book was one that features dishes for 1 person. At least that would help not to eat too much this time, but would it be something lovely? Edible, sure, but would it be delicious and enjoyable?
There were indeed four recipes starting with the letter 'A', two sweet one including apples and two savoury ones. Fine, one of the savoury ones included apricots, but the die stopped on the final one ...

... Avocado Salad with Egg and Salmon. Oh, I might try that book again. The avocado salad was good and there was really not much effort involved to prepare it. In fact it took longer to randomly pick a recipe than actually making it.
You just have to have a hard-boiled egg and cut it into small pieces, peel and cut an avocado, cut some smoked salmon into stripes and whip up a dressing with a tbsp. of oil, the juice half a lemon, one tsp. of mustard, a pinch of cayenne pepper, a tsp. of rosemary and salt and ... there you go, a quick and light lunch, kind of.

I have another one for you ... 'errare humanum est' ... wait, one more ... 'in vino veritas', not that I am suggesting you are having some wine with the salad or that you I am going to reveal all my secrets, when you fill me with a bottle of wine.
Enough then with our Latin lesson, although you might need one or the other word of Latin in your life at some point.
Anyway, AlphaBakes random recipes ... I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did or ... well, it suffices already, if I enjoyed it, but there is no harm in making others enjoy things ...

Fully Fed - Pulled Pork with Herb and Beer Cheese Buns

I know, there are quite a lot of things I haven't tried before. There is still a lot of food on my list to feed on ... eh to try, cook and eat. Sometimes I think, I should be cooking all day. Eh, well, for some thing you nearly have to do this literally, like for example pulled pork. An acquaintance talked about it, that he wanted to try it and then I saw something lovely on the net somewhere that encouraged me to try it, finally.
So I had a bit of a look on how to do it and then I had a go ...

Together with the pulled pork I wanted to have some Herb and Beer Cheesebuns.

Cheesy Meatballs with 'disgusting' all-in Chili Sauce

Disgusting! Since I was disposed to this word spoken by a friend of mine in his typical Yorkshire accent at various occasions I came to use it too often as well. Yes, I know, that is disgusting!
While I don't want to classify the following cheesy meatballs as disgusting, you have to judge for yourself as regards the chili sauce.

The meatballs themselves are based on a recipe by Jamie Oliver: Mountain Meatballs. I simply adjusted at to my personal amounts and availability. 
The chili sauce contains a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I will roughly state the ingredients, but the real content has to remain shrouded in mystery.

Ingredients Meatballs:
1 red onion, finely diced
300 g minced meat
1 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp dried oregano
A few bashed cumin seeds
1 tsp bashed up coriander seeds
1 handful of breadcrumbs
1 egg
Salt and pepper
50 g grated cheese

Ingredients Chili Sauce:
1 onion, finely chopped
5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Tomato puree
Honey mustard BBQ sauce
Water
Curry ketchup
Sweet chili sauce 
Coffee liquor

Method:
Heat up some olive oil on medium heat and then soften the red onion dice in it. 10 minutes will do. Remove the onion pieces from the pan and put away to cool down.
Then start the sauce and do the same with the stated onion as you did with the other onion. Hm ... sounds strange to me ... ah ... forget it ... no worries ... just do it. Then add the garlic.
Meanwhile you can also start heating up your oven to ... eh ... let's say 250 °C.
Now add all your other ingredients for the sauce to the pan, bring to the boil and then reduce to a simmer.
Back to the meatballs ... mix all the other ingredients apart from the grated cheese together and form ... eh ... 4 large meatballs out of it. Get a quarter of the grated cheese ... wait ... that's about 12,5 g and press it into each meatball and close with meat around it so the cheese is more or less in the center of the meatball.
Throw your meatballs into an oven-proof dish and transfer ... no throwing here ... to the oven for 25 minutes.
In the meantime the sauce is disgustingly bubbling away. It gets more and more sticky ...
The 25 minutes are over. Remove the meatballs ... don't burn yourself ... and pour the disgusting sauce over the meatballs and ... shove the dish back to the oven for 15 more minutes.
After that you still can decide whether to eat it or not. Well, surprisingly the sauce didn't taste disgusting as to be expected or announced. It rather tasted interesting.
Oh, I know what people mean, when they say interesting. It's the polite way of saying disgusting. But, really, it didn't taste like that. Frankly, it was rather good. It simply was a sticky mix of sweet and hot and ... there is only one way of finding out ...

Anti-Rabbit Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

"Hey, are you eating again the food of the rabbit?!" "Poor rabbit, you are eating up all it's food!"
Did you hear a comment like this before, while enjoying a portion of salad?
From time to time I'm getting such comments.
What can we say about this? A lot!
My rabbit like some good fresh green salad leaves. Carrots it appreciates as well. She even gladly goes for some herbs. Well, some days I gave her some Thai basil and ... she absolutely devoured it.
Well, it's true then! Are you eating up the food of the rabbit?

Not exactly! A good salad is more than just a few green leaves of salad.

A keen observer might see a few things in that salad a rabbit for sure would not appreciate at all.

Let us though go a bit into detail with preparing our Anti-Rabbit Salad. That way, the rabbit for sure would never like it, but I hope you do.

Ingredients (amounts according to taste):
Rocket
Tomatoes, according to size halved, quartered or even further
Physalis, halved
Gorgonzola, in big chunks
Walnuts ... obviously without shell, broken into smaller pieces

Honey Mustard Dressing:
Balsamic vinegar or lemon juice
3 x as much olive oil
1 tsp mustard
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper according to taste

Method:
Put the ingredients for the dressing into a dressing shaker (old, empty and clean jam jar) and give it a good shake to bring all the ingredients together.
Put the rocket, tomatoes, physalis and the walnuts in a bowl. Pour over the dressing and mix it through carefully.
The gorgonzola I reserve for the finish in order that it doesn't fall further into smaller pieces because I like big fat chunks of it to get the full blast of the cheese flavour.

Well, a good salad isn't just a few green leaves. You have different flavours: bitter, sweet, sour, peppery, and have different textures: soft, crunchy and so forth.
This time I thought, the physalis would look nice in  the salad and taste nice as well. I have never seen them before in salads or even thought about using them that way, but ... hey, why not! Just use your imagination ...

So, I hope you enjoyed this Anti-Rabbit Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing. 
What is your favourite combination when it comes to salads?

Guest Post- Canadian Beer Cheese Soup -5 Days of Soup

Do you like having guests? Then you can share some hostility ... oops ... I wanted to say hospitality, but maybe when you think about your mother-in-law, you might want ...
Guests! Focus on that. I didn't have any guests for a while now. However, if, then it's very lovely to cook or bake something nice.
Today, though, we are having a guest cooking for us. Therefore, without any further ado, I like to stop talking and give the word to Tara ...


Hi, I am Tara from Noshing With The Nolands and I am so excited to be here today. I have been blogging for almost a year now up here in The Great While North, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Loving every minute of it. I met Chris through a Facebook group that is so very helpful for bloggers like us to communicate and support one another. When Chris asked me if I could guest post and to do something Canadian I wasn't sure what to do. There are a few Canadian recipes but not like other countries that have a huge cuisine attached to them. We are a melting pot here so our cuisine is very diverse, in my opinion. We have a lot of French Canadian recipes but not much out west where I live. We are influenced more by Texas as we have loads of cowboys and The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth, the Calgary Stampede. Well I didn't want to go there as that is not what you really think of when you think of Canadian food. The Caesar cocktail was invented here in Calgary but I had done a lot on that subject already.
Hmmm, where else to go??? I wasn't quite sure then I thought of something I have never made before and thought I would give it a whirl, Canadian Beer Cheese Soup. I selected a lovely red amber ale from a brewery called Alexander Keith's. We do have a great selection of beer up here in Canada. I think beer is pretty Canadian!! It goes nicely with our sports of hockey and football watching!!
I have to say this soup turned out so magnificent, thick and creamy with an incredible taste. We all loved it!! And I sure hope you enjoy it too!!

Canadian Beer Cheese Soup

Guest Post- Canadian Beer Cheese Soup -5 Days of Soup
6 slices of bacon, cut into lardons
1 cup sweet onion
4 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup flour
900 ml. chicken stock
250 ml. half and half cream
200 gms. old white cheddar, grated
1/2 tsp. white pepper
1 tsp. dry mustard
2 tsp. Tabasco
2 tsp. worcestershire sauce
2/3 bottle of amber ale
Cheddar cheese, green onions and freshly grated pepper for garnish.

Saute the bacon low and slow in a small fry pan. Do not crisp it! Remove to a paper towel lined plate and set aside.
In a large pot over medium low heat saute the onion in the 4 Tbsp. butter, low and slow until translucent. Add the flour and stir and cook for 1 min. Slowly add the chicken stock and whisk until smooth, bring to a simmer and whisk until thickened. Add the half and half and heat to a simmer. Add the grated cheddar and stir to melt with a wooden spoon.
Add the pepper, mustard, Tabasco, worcestershire and whisk again to combine. Add the beer and let simmer gently for a five minutes, stirring often. Add the bacon and serve. You can garnish with cheddar cheese, green onions and a grating of fresh pepper.
If you would like to follow me I would be thrilled at Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and Pinterest.
Thanks again Chris for allowing me to be here. Cheers, Tara

Well, I was really happy, having such a lovely guest. It was really a pleasure having you here, Tara. That soup is absoluetly something for me with all that cheese and ale in it. 
Now I only have to get some amber ale ...

Tarte d'oignon avec fromage

Encore un peu de cuisine français, mais je ne parle pas français.C'est la vie! Il n'y a pas de souci! I don't necessarily need to speak French to enjoy some French food and neither need you.
However, it wouldn't do any harm. Since I have been to Paris, memories of it keep coming up ...

... and would I be more fluent in French, well ... who knows ...

Whatsoever, there are things I can do, like cooking some French and France inspired food. For example I got this new book in my collection The little Paris kitchen by Rachel Khoo. I simply couldn't resist ...

Why, I already have tried a few things from the book, like Poireaux vinagrette avec œuf poché et jambon de Bayonne ...

... and then also Nids de brielette ...

... while I've done this, I also came up with a version of a Tarte d'oignon avec fromage ... with Rouqefort to be precise.
Here we go then ...

Ingredients:
1 tbs of butter
3 onions, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp dried rosemary
100 ml white wine
2 tsp Dijon mustard
150 g Roquefort
250 g double cream
275 g puff pastry

Preparation:
Melt the butter on low heat in a pan. Then add the onions and sauté for 15 minutes. Then add the garlic and let go for another 10 minutes.
Now put in the rosemary and pour over the white wine. Let things simmer until most of the white one is gone again.
Once that is achieved mix in the mustard, double cream and the Roquefort cheese.
Get a suitable dish ready for your tarte and fit in the puff pastry. Done! Spread over the onion and cheese mixture.
Transfer your tarte for 35 minutes to the oven at 200°C.
Enjoy your tarte d'oignon avec fromage.

Well, that's one of the few words of French that clearly stick to my mind 'avec fromage'. I don't think it gets you far, when you finish every sentence with 'avec fromage'. I'm not quite sure I want to try it.
Whatsoever, I definitely know, that I'm in the wrong place ...