Burn a Little - Bean and Feta Enchiladas and Steak

You can’t mess with time. Even if you could go back in time to change things you have done in the past, things will most probably end even worse.

What you could do, though, is a trip on memory lane, thinking about the things that you did and that happened and if you are clever enough, you could also learn from your mistakes. Or you could rediscover things you liked to do.

Anyway, today we will have at first some prawns and later something Mexican. After all we want some food. Some time ago, I bought a bag of Panko – Japanese breadcrumbs. I saw a dish on television – Panko Fried Prawns. For a long time I wanted to try it. Now I did.

Together with some chilli sauce it’s a lovely snack.

Side note: Just keep an eye on how much Panko Prawns you have going in the hot oil at the same time. If you use too many, the oil might just … eh … bubble over and spread on your oven top and … who knows what mayhem that might cause there.

Now we can go on with some Mexican food ...

Bean and Feta Enchiladas and Steak

The original idea was to make some vegetarian enchiladas, which indeed happened, but I felt I needed some more food, so I added the steak to the side. While the recipe mainly focuses on the Bean and Feta Enchiladas, I will mention a few things regarding the steak as well.

Ingredients:
Wheat tortillas
Creme fraîche
Chilli Sauce:
A splash of olive oil
1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
1-3 dried red chillies, finely chopped
400 ml tinned tomatoes
400 ml vegetables stock (or chicken stock for non vegetarian)
1 tbsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. sugar
A splash of red wine vinegar
Enchilada Filling:
A splash of olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
140 g sweet corn
1 red or green capsicum, chopped
250 g kidney beans
Salt, pepper
Bunch of parsley, chopped
200 g feta cheese

Method:
First of all, we need to do our own chilli sauce. Start in a sufficiently sized pan with a splash of olive oil at medium temperature.

Chuck in the garlic and the onion and have them work in the pan until translucent. Then add the chillies, the tinned tomatoes, the vegetable stock, the oregano and the sugar.

Bring it all to the boil and leave to simmer.

Now you have plenty of time to prepare the filling for the enchiladas.

Somehow, we start in a similar way, here – another pan and another splash of olive oil at medium heat. Toss in the onion and … you know … until translucent.

Add the sweet corn, capsicum and kidney beans. Season with salt and pepper and let it all simmer for a while until the vegetables have softened a tiny bit.

Remove the content of the pan to a bowl and let it cool down slightly. Then mix in the parsley and the feta.

Check the chilli sauce. If you where not super fast with the filling, you can remove the sauce from the heat now. If you don’t like all the chunks of onion and tomato in your sauce, you can pass the sauce through a sieve.

Get yourself an oven-proof dish, that will hold at least five enchiladas. Lightly oil it.

Then get yourself a plate. Place a wheat tortilla on it and spoon a bit of the chilli sauce on it. Spread the sauce onto the tortilla. Place a part of the filling on the tortilla, roll it up and place it in the oven-proof dish. Pack those enchiladas all nice and tightly in the dish. When all enchiladas are in the dish, pour over the remaining chilli sauce and transfer the dish to the oven for about 30 minutes at 180 °C.

Meanwhile you could prepare the steak, if you wish to have it.

Have some butter in a pan and cook the steak to your liking in it. Once you have removed the steak from the pan and leave it to rest, you have some pieces of tomato and some stripes of capsicum go into the fat. Season them with salt and pepper.

When everything is finished, you can plate up.

Place the tomatoes and capsicum first, the steak on top of it and some roasted onions on top of that (figure out yourself how to get those onions).

Put one enchilada on the side. You can garnish it with some chopped up parsley and add also a spoon of creme fraîche on the side to mellow the effect of the chilli sauce.

Enjoy!

Of course, I used three dried chillies in the sauce, but I didn’t feel it so much. So, don’t be afraid. While the chilli sauce itself might be quite hot, you won’t feel it so much in the finished product.

Lovely! I enjoyed my meal very much and I reckon and I keep on saying, I need some more Mexican food in my life and ... apart from that hot food will help you to burn and by that I don't just mean that it will burn in your mouth, but it could also aid you in burning off some fat you might not like in your body. I guess it always works for me.

Anyway ... keep enjoying your life and ... we will do the same here!

Welcome Back - Spinach, Goat's Cheese and Ham Pasta Roulade

Welcome back! I reckon I have to do it and welcome myself back to the kitchen, since no one else is going to do it. Eh, well, how could possibly anyone else but me do this without knowing that I  am actually back in my new flat cooking? I haven't told anyone, have I?
Of course, I mentioned that I am going to move to a new flat and that I didn't have a kitchen to do some proper cooking anymore. Anyway, everything went well with the moving, just two dead and one injured. A friend, who helped, kept on knocking some pieces of furniture against his shinbone. So he had a little bit pain there afterwards, but nothing serious. As to the two dead one ... a clock went to the bin, because I was split in two halves. Then the plastic sign "Maltese on board" in my car broke to pieces. In fact the latter happened after the actual moving day - two days later - when I decided, for what reasons whatsoever, I needed a new bed. So I had no other choice as to transport it in my small sized car. Imagine for yourself ...
Otherwise, things went so well, that actually I didn't need to take a day off from work. However, I  already did. So, apart from getting a dentist appointment at the new dentist, acquainting myself with a new doctor and doing some shopping, I had ample of time to do some proper cooking again ...



For that we are going to make some fresh pasta dough, a spinach, goat's cheese and ham filling, a tomato salsa and a béchamel sauce ...

Quick and Easy Greek Lunch - Strapatsada

I have quite a lot to do and to decide at the moment. Not really an easy job. Every day a little bit more is accomplished. Nevertheless, the show must go on and ... will go on ... as far as it is in my hands. Right now I prefer to cook larger amounts of food so I have some for the days ahead. Otherwise I appreciate quick and easy food as well. As you know, cooking some Greek food is on my list for this month. Therefore, it is only logical to have a quick and easy Greek meal ... or two.
Here is what I came up with today: Strapatsada. It is popular in many regions in Greece. It's really quick and easy to prepare and for sure you have all the ingredients ready with no big fuss about it.

Let's see ... 

Give me an N - No Fuss Capsicum and Pork

I was thinking ... no, I'm just kidding, I wasn't, but ... I had a look at my recipe page on my blog and I noticed, I didn't have any recipes starting with E, I, J, N, V, X and Y. I reckon, I have to work on it. Most probably it would be easy to work of everything with cakes and puddings: Eton Mess, Irish Coffee Cake, Jaffa Cake Tart, Nutty Surprise, Vacherin Something, X-Men Cake, Yogurt and Berry Dream ... things like that. Really, I don't  know, why I don't have anything with E as eggs something would be quite easy as well. Strange ... I am ...
So, give me an N and ... have some No Fuss Capsicum and Pork.

Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions

Sometimes I get the idea I want a leg of lamb. Well, that happens not that often, maybe not even a hand full of times during the year. What do I do then? I go through all my cookbooks and see what I can do . The last time I did some French version with beans and something. That was very delicious.
Now I wanted to try something else. I ended up with a classic Italian way of cooking lamb with aubergines. Therefore I had to trust Jamie Oliver again to have a fantastic meal: Roast leg of lamb with aubergines and onions. You find the recipe in his book Cook with Jamie.

Apart from the lamb, the aubergines and onions, there were a lot of herbs involved, such as rosemary, oregano and parsley.
First of all the leg of lamb goes into the oven just rubbed with olive oil and salt and pepper.
After that the rosemary, aubergines and onions join.
In the meantime you have to prepare a tomato sauce with the usual suspects, garlic, chopped parsley stalks, anchovy fillets, tinned tomatoes, dried red chillies, vinegar, salt and pepper.
When the lamb is cooked, it gets removed from the roasting tray to sit around for some minutes.

While that is happening and having some room in the roasting tray, the tomato sauce is going to assimilate all the flavours and vegetables in it. So you pour the tomato sauce to the aubergines and the onions and cook it for a couple of minutes on a gently heat.
Afterwards it's time to eat. Get your usual lovely bread to it and dig in. If you fancy a salad together with it, fell free to do so.

For one person or for even two persons, you have quite some food here, the chance to eat a few times from it. It would be perfect, delicious and fantastic as it is, but you could have it as a pasta dish, too.

All in all I can say, Jamie hasn't disappointed me. Once more, it worked out totally perfectly.
Do you like to have a leg of lamb at times? What is your favourite way of having it?

Text over Photo or Photo over Text? Onion and Feta Puff Pastry Pie

When you buy a new cookbook, what's more important for you, the text or the photos? Do you appreciate well written texts with lots of information and how to do things and some extra tips? Or will you rather go for books, which have delicious pictures in them?
Questions over questions. It seems, I have just questions for you today. But do you have answers?
Decide for yourself. Maybe you like to comment and leave your thoughts. For sure you know a lot of good cookbooks that don't have many pictures in them, yet to speak about photos. For example, Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck has no photos at all in it. There are some illustration, though. To me, that's a great book, despite the lack of mouth-watering photos. Still you are able to create some mouth-watering dishes by following the detailed instructions.
Do you know any other brilliant cookbooks without photos?
Oh, another question, sorry, but I did this deliberately. Now we like to turn the tables. What about cookbooks with mainly photos and not much text or not so well written or useful text?
I don't have any examples for that. Do you?
Anyway, it wasn't my intention to just go on talking and talking and asking and asking and so forth. I still have some food for you. Once more there was a bit of experimenting going on in my kitchen. Here we go for an Onion and Feta Puff Pastry Pie.
However, we are doing things slightly different today. I give you the list of ingredients and some photos and you figure out the rest. Have a try!

Ingredients (in order of use):
3 onions
3 cloves of garlic
Splash of Greek Raki
180 ml cream
300 g puff pastry
Olive oil
200 g Feta
A small bunch of freshly chopped Parsley
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp dried oregano
20 ml cream
2 eggs
Salt and pepper

Method (if you can call it like that):
I told you, you'll be getting just  some pictures. So, here we go ...

Did you enjoy it? Are you now able to do such an Onion and Feta Puff Pastry Pie?
Of course, you only would be willing to have a try, if the photos would have made you hungry for it. Come on, there is feta in it!
What do you think? Maybe I should try it the other way around sometime and post a recipe without photos and try to make you hungry just by the description.
What do you think is easier? Text over photo or photo over text?

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 ...

Gemelli pasta vegetariana al forno

You know what? I eat every day and not just once. Well, there is nothing special about that. Most do. So I really don't need to mention it. However, I don't eat every day the same, not even every week according to some kind of schedule. I know, some do that and the same dishes come reappearing week after week.
That doesn't need to be! Our planet is full of so many lovely ingredients. Those can be combined in various ways. Let's take just 10 ingredients. How many different dishes could you do with them? Let me know!
Now we like to focus on pasta, there is such a great variety. Here now something I came up with today. I didn't even need to do some extra shopping to get it done. It was all there already. Besides that, some things had to be used anyway ...

Lacking another name, I just called it Gemelli pasta vegetariana al forno. 'Gemelli' is the name of the pasta I used. So if you are going to use a different one, it might be called Orecchiette pasta vegetariana al forno. 
'Vegetariana' is obvious to you, I hope. So if you are putting any kind of meat to it, you have to cancel the vegetariana and ending up with Gemelli pasta al forno or Orecchiette pasta respectively. 
Then we have the 'al forno' left referring to the fact that it is baked in the oven. So, finally, if you are too greedy and don't want to send the dish to the oven you end up with 'Gemelli pasta vegetariana' or 'Orecchiette pasta vegetariana' or even with 'Farfalle pasta vegetariana' and if you put in some meat you have 'Gemelli pasta', 'Orecchiette pasta' or 'Farfalle pasta', which in my opinion would sound simply dull and wouldn't do any good.
On the other hand we could mention some more of the vegetarian ingredients, which could then lead us to ... wait ... that got already a bit far, but maybe you can figure out some other names by looking at ...

 ... the ingredients:
Various splashes of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, cut into small pieces
500 g of tinned tomatoes
250 g cannellini beans
Dried oregano
Salt and pepper
Splash of red wine vinegar
500 g dried Gemelli pasta (you might even want to use Fusilli)
50 g grated Parmesan
125 g mozzarella (one ball)

The Preparation:
Heat up the first splash of olive oil in a large pan. Then gently fry the garlic and onion for about 10 minutes. Enjoy the smell of the garlic!
Now add the bell pepper, tomatoes, beans and a bit of water. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer for about 30 minutes.
That gives you plenty of time to cook the pasta. Prepare them according to the directions of the package, but ... reduce 2 minutes from the mentioned time. Give the pasta some love and attention. Who wouldn't like that ... love and attention! 
Reserve a bit of the cooking water of the pasta.
Season the sauce with salt, pepper and dried oregano according to your taste or for those, whom you are cooking for. Show some consideration! 
By the way, you could also start heating up the oven to 200°C.
It's time to turn off the heat for the sauce. Add a splash of red wine vinegar and grate in the Parmesan. You could also add some of the reserved cooking water, if you have the feeling that things are looking too dry.
Then mix it all together with the pasta. You could do that either in the pan or in your dish you are putting into the oven.
Is everything in the oven-proof dish? Good! Tear the mozzarella ball apart and spread the individual pieces on your pasta. Season with some extra dried oregano on top and sprinkle another splash of olive oil over the pasta and mozzarella. Off it goes to the oven for 30 minutes!

After you have plated up the pasta al forno and are ready to eat it, you could sprinkle yet another splash of olive oil over it ... Enjoy your pasta! What do YOU like to call it?

Just looking at this last photo, I get reminded that I wanted to get some nice white plates. I guess it will work out one day ...

I might even survive a few more days with all my stored items ...

La Soupe Aux Choux - Herby cabbage Soup

Space! The final frontier ... cut, cut ... stop this! We already had it.
What though about receiving visitors from outer space - having some aliens for dinner?
No, the aliens are not going to have you for dinner.
Well, let me get to it in a slightly different way. Just slightly. Do you connect some kinds of foods with movies? Or vice versa? What about cooking something you saw in a movie?
Let us come back to our aliens and move right away over to France. 
Sorry, if you got this wrong! It was not my intention, just put the words a bit of ... don't know. Anyway, you might know the famous French actor Louis de Funès. Right away, different movies come to my mind, that deal with food. One of it has the French title La Soupe Aux Choux.
That brings us straight away to France, as I said, and to the aliens, as I said as well. The main character receives a visitor from outer space, because of food, that is, a cabbage soup. Well, the movie contains also some ... well, eh ... just concentrate on the soup for now.

My intention is not to conjure up some extra terrestrial life. No! I simply like to reproduce such a soup and ... use up my leftover cabbage in the kitchen. 
By the way, this is not going to be fast food. We are taking some time to do this herby cabbage soup.

After slaughtering the cabbage we can get into things (Hey, who said, we could do this without hurting something ... ah, no worries. Things will be fine!). Good! I used cabbage already in my last post. I got a comment, that 'cabbage is hugely underrated as a vegetable'. We don't want this to be, do we? Besides that, if you take a closer look, you find more cabbage recipes out here on my blog. Hm, well, at least one more.
Let's work then: Herby cabbage soup. Plan about two hours, to be generous. Remember? No fast food! On top of it, it's all made from scratch.

Ingredients (as they go in):
A large knob of butter
One onion, chopped in rings (that's also a reason, why I cry so much lately)
One small white (to be specific) cabbage, roughly cut (use your imagination)
One large carrot, cut into cuby pieces
1,5 l water
Bouquet of herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender)
600 g potatoes, cut roughly into cubelike shapes (don't be too fussy, unless ...)
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped (yes, this is all going to be very rough)
Fleur de sel (or use other salt, if you must)
Pepper

Method (as time goes by):
Well, a lot of the above mentioned things (cutting) you can do as we go. At least this is the way I prefer to do it.
Therefore, whilst heating the butter in a large pot, you concentrate on the crying (onion) and then add them to the pot to let them start to soften a bit.
Now you devote your attention to the cabbage and then to the carrot. Obviously, the result of that leads to more vegetable in the pot.
It would be quite helpful to put the kettle on to get the water boiling. Why not take some more water. That way you can treat yourself to a nice cuppa of tea. We are in no hurry (you can do this at other times, if you insist). The water you are not using for your tea goes into the pot. The cabbage should be covered. If not, you used too much water for your tea.

The bouquet of herbs, to which I also like to refer to as a bouquet garni, goes into the pot as well just before you put the lid on and bring all to the boil.
After that is done, we have plenty of time for tea and for the potatoes and garlic. Should it be in boiling mode, we reduce the temperature and let it simmer for an hour.
Depending on your skills, though, you could also manage to do some other things during that time ... you think of something for yourself.
I'm not going to tell you, what I did.
No!
Forget it!
Back in the kitchen, right in front of our soup, yes, after one hour has passed, we throw in the potatoes and garlic. Season the soup with fleur de sel and pepper. I like to use fleur de sel (hand-harvested sea salt), because traditional fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany - just to give a bit more of a French touch to it.
Having come that far, we are nearly through. Just another half an hour to simmer and then we are ready. What to do again?
Maybe set the table? I'm planning on having a candlelight dinner. Oh, well, yes ... I put a candle on the table and light it.

If it is according to your desire, you might open the meal with a small glass of pastis - as also seen in La Soupe Aux Choux. As you see on the picture as well, you have a nice baguette ready to go with the herby cabbage soup, too.
Before I forget, the bowl for the soup is also from France. What you can't see here is, that it has a picture in it with a famous place in Normandy, which has also something to do with a place in Cornwall. I just mention it, so you get a rough (yes, again) idea.
Should you have anything of the baguette left, you could finish your meal with some cheese. Yep! I did it!
Let us now come to the side effects of the soup. If you remember the movie La Soupe Aux Choux, you know what I mean. Up to this point, where I am writing this done, nothing happened ... and no, I didn't get any visitors from outer space. I might get a few visitors, though, reading this post or even trying this recipe.
Is everything said now? No, not yet, not yet!
Since we used our lovely bouquet garni, I decided to enter this post into Lavender and Lovage's Herbs on Saturday challenge, even though, it's Wednesday.

Finally, after everything has been said, I'm not keeping my mouth shut, although that will be the case very soon.
Think again! What comes to your mind, when pondering food and movies? What movies pop up in your head and/or what foods? Let me know!

Gyros and Tzatziki Supper

… here we are again. As I mentioned (promised) before this was not the last you saw of the self-made tzatziki, the ultimate one. (I truly didn’t eat it up all at  once).

Today it is going to be featured in a “typical” Greek meal, you may get at restaurants … hm … well … I guess … outside Greece.

However, once in awhile, when you soul is hungering for meat, meat, MEAT, you might want to have a go at this Gyros kind of thing.

How shall we go about doing this?

Have some pork ready. That would be a good start. We are going to marinate this. Best you do it the evening before. If that is not possible, make sure that the meat is marinating for at least two hours.

Cut this pork in small little bits, thin if you like, or can, or want (no worries – whatever suits your desires). Shove it to a bowl and add the following: quite some olive oil (as good quality as you are willing to use – this will of course affect the taste as you might have guess), salt, pepper, dried oregano, and garlic (finely chopped, grated, squashed, blitzed). Cover it up and let it marinate as I mentioned before. Once you have done this the remaining part should be without trouble or too much work.

Now that you are ready, get a large pan on high heat and add the marinated meat together with all the content of your bowl and fry it up nice and crispy.

Serve together with some onion rings, a simple (or if you like complicated) salad and nice bread.

Well, let’s sum things up. If you do a bit of preparation the night before, you might have an easy meal the next day, you come home stressed from work.
You only have to worry about the day after. Somehow you have to find a way to mask the smell of all the garlic you ate ... no worries ... you will find a way.

That’s a KISS for you “Keep It Simple Sister” (I heard that some time before – maybe long time ago – I know nothing about it’s origin anymore, but I thought it might fall in line here).

While we are at it. Do you have any suggestions for a KISS?