Sometimes when the day is getting late, I feel I don't need a proper dinner, but a snack will be just fine, maybe together with a beer ...
Just like that! Some chilli cheese balls on a bed of rocket together with some serrano ham. Life is good! I'm happy and satisfied! The end of the day can come. I would say that snack has it all ... all those ingredients I love: chilli, cheese, serrano ham and rocket. What more could I want? Oh, I mentioned it already ... a nice refreshing beer.
It's not much work and quick you go and have your snack ...
Ingredients:
Rocket, as much as you want
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Salt
Pepper
4-6 slices Serrano ham
200 g soft goat cheese
Chilli, fresh, dried, flaked, powder or whatever you like, have and want
Small bunch fresh parsley, chopped up
Flour
One egg, whisked
Large hand full breadcrumbs
Oil for frying
Method:
Dress the rocket with the lemon juice, olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper. Place it on the plate to serve and arrange the serrano ham on top.
Mix the goat cheese with the chilli and parsley. Give it a pinch of salt. Shape small balls from it. Then it's time to get them bread-crumbed. Off to be rolled in the flour, then egg wash and finally breadcrumbs.
Get some oil hot for frying and fry the chilli cheese balls until brown and crispy. Obviously you want to avoid that the cheese gets leaking out.
Lay the ready chilli cheese balls on some kitchen paper to get rid off some of the oil, but hurry, we want to have a snack ...
Ah, I really should make sure I have serrano ham and goat cheese in my fridge most of the time. So, have it as a late night snack or a starter, if you prefer that.
Now, tell us, what is your favourite quick evening snack?
What a beautiful day! The sun is shining already since I got up and there is no sign of it being over soon. It might even get that far we are having more sun in two days then in two months.
Everywhere you see buds on the trees and the bushes. Somewhere, flowers are making there way up out of the soil. Will winter now be over? Have we made it?
I don't know!
The thing I know is, that my pot of basil didn't make it. Already was it knocking on death's door and it was only a matter of time until it would make it's final decline. Would it be a time to mourn?
There would be other causes for just that. However, in a last attempt to make itself useful, the basil made it's last stand to join in a quick and simple meal.
That is just so, because I read somewhere a blog title with 'walnut pesto' in it.
Ingredients:
2 hand full of basil leaves
6-8 walnuts
A hand full of grated parmesan
Olive oil
Salt, Pepper
3 eggs
Butter
Serrano ham (I promised you)
Method:
Good if you have a mortar. Get you basil leaves in it and start bashing them until it gets all juicy and mushy. Add the walnuts (without shells) and continue bashing.
Then put it together with the grated parmesan and season with salt and pepper. Pour in just enough olive oil to bring it all together. It doesn't need to be runny, unless you want it to, of course.
Get your eggs ready. Crack them into a bowl. Carefully season with salt and pepper and give them a quick whisk.
Next we need a medium sized pan or a large one, if you don't have a medium sized one just like me. Bring the pan on high heat. Rub the bottom of the pan with butter.
When the pan is sufficiently heated up, pour in the eggs. Make sure they are well distributed throughout the pan. Let the heat do it's work. That shouldn't be too long. Once the omelette takes shape, that is, you can see it is getting firmer towards the top side.
Smear on the walnut pesto all over the omelette. Wait a tiny bit before you place the serrano slices on top. Now we are as good as finished. When you see, that all the egg is as good as firm, transfer the omelette to a plate and ...
... you know what you have to do. That would be a perfect meal for weeknights. in fact that is what it was in my case. I came home from work ... it was late ... I was kind of frustrated ... I didn't want to do anything and ... then I saw the basil. The rest of the story you know.
Oh what a night!!!
Well, if I would know what happened, I could tell you ...
... right, I do know ... and ... it wasn't really that serious.
I'm going to tell you anyway. But where to start?!
Fine, my last post. Do you remember? I mentioned a few things about the 85th Academy Award in LA. No, I don't want to go over it all again. As the date for it was approaching, though and don't having anything to do at all the next day, I decided, I could have a try and watch it.
No big deal ... when you don't live too many time zones away from it. Therefore I had quite some time to kill before it would all start. Why not have some food? Still that would not suffice for all the time.
Nevertheless, I voted to go for homemade pizza ... again?! I had it already the week before.
Somehow, it seems to be a way to deal with leftovers ... just make some nice pizza dough and top it with whatever you have left from other meals. Really? No, not really, but kind of!
First of all to the pizza dough that I ended up with and keep on making again and again.
Ingredients (makes for more than one person can eat):
500 g flour (100-200 g semolina flour and 300-400 g strong baking flour)
Pinch of salt
300 ml warm water
7 g dried yeast
5 tbs olive oil
1 tbs honey
Method:
Put the flour and the salt into a large bowl, while you give all the other ingredients into a different bowl. Wait for about 10 minutes.
Then pour the yeast water bit by bit into the flour while you bring it all together with a fork. Once all the water is in, get yourself some flour on your hands and go and knead the dough.
Wash your hands with warm water and while you are at it soak a clean kitchen towel with water as well and put the cloth over the bowl with the dough. Let it rise for at least one hour.
That gives you enough time to devote to a tomato sauce.
Ingredients (it might be even to much for that dough):
Splash of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, slices
About 10 basil leaves
400 g tinned tomatoes
200 ml water
Salt, pepper
Splash of red wine vinegar
Method:
Heat up the oil in a pan at low heat. Toss in the slices of garlic.
When you have the wonderful odour of garlic going all over your kitchen, toss in the basil leaves as well. Oh, that's even better.
Now pour in the tinned tomatoes and the water. Don't harm the tomatoes. Bring it to the boil and reduce to simmer again. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Then you can crush the tomatoes and if you don't want to put your sauce into a liquidizer afterwards, do it properly.
Leave simmering for a further 15 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
Finally turn off the heat and add the splash of red wine vinegar. Sauce is ready!
Pizza is not ready!
The dough should make for three reasonable sized pizzas.
Hm, as it seems, this all is a at least a bit of work. Well, the evening before I did just an easy thing: quick tapas ...
But back to the pizza now, although those tapas might not be totally unrelated. You will see at least three of the above food items again later on.
It's time to heat up the oven as much as possible. I managed about 250 °C.
One part of the pizza dough received some more kneading and then rolling up to a kind of round object.
We have to get to the pizza topping somehow. You might guess that the chicken and chickpeas will end up on the pizza. I thought about it ... yes, really ... but as you have seen I especially prepared a tomato sauce for it.
Therefore I just went for the chicken.
First of all, spread some of the tomato sauce on the blank pizza. Add some stripes of ready chicken breast. Some slices of green chillies (see above - tapas plate) on it, too. Don't bother with getting rid of the seeds from the chillies. We need some mozzarella as well and maybe some more basil leaves. Nice! OK, a few small splashes of olive oil might be even nicer.
16 more minutes and the pizza is ready ... that is if you don't forget to put it into the oven for the aforementioned 16 minutes ... delicious!
Fine, only four more hours to go until the start of the Oscar night ... well, that is of you like to watch people walking on the red carpet and hear some thoughts about fashion ... just hypothetical.
At a time then, when most, if not all of my neighbours finally had gone to bed, the actual show started ... after watching it, now I at least now, what movies I might still have a look at or ... which ones not. It was interesting to watch the show, while I have never done so before, because the constellation of circumstances hadn't been towards favourable the years past.
"At the end of the day you're another day older!"
I went to bed at a time I usually get up and ... had some more pizza for breakfast ...
Right, time wise that couldn't be classed as breakfast considering that it was lunch time by then. At this point it happened to be the case, I already had run out of mozzarella.
Of course, I would never allow it to run out of cheese completely. After all there was still some manchego left I didn't use for the tapas plate and while already at it, why not use some serrano ham on top of the pizza just as it was coming from the oven ...
I can only say so much ... it was even more delicious than the day before.
As a conclusion I guess I won't be doing pizza again this week. In fact. So far I didn't feel like doing much cooking so far this week. Still, that won't be the last you have seen of that serrano ...
