Breakfast Revolution: French Toast with Apples and Cinnamon

Do you find toast too boring for your mornings? Don’t worry, this is French. J I am not sure the recipe is even French, or that French people eat it, but it is a simple breakfast for which you don’t have to go down to the grocery store to buy ingredients. For a twist for your toast (?!?) I added some apples, cooked just a bit with some cinnamon.

For 6 slices a bread prepare a batter with:

2 beaten eggs

1 pinch a salt

1 tsp vanilla extract

½ tsp cinnamon

½ tsp 5 spice

125 ml milk

*French toast recipe adapted from foodwishes.blogspot.com

Some butter for frying and some honey/ maple syrup for serving.

Mix all the ingredients and whisk them good, then toss the bread slices in the batter until they absorb all the liquid. In a pan with some butter, fry the bread slices until they turn golden-brown. Then, transfer the slices on a tray and let then cook some more in the oven (for 10-15 minutes) until the outside gets crispy.

When the toast is in the oven you can get on with the apples. In a pan, heat up some vegetable oil with a dust of cinnamon, 5 spices, nutmeg and vanilla sugar. When the oil is heated it will already be infused with those lovely spices. You just need to add the apple, sliced as you prefer it. Make sure to toss it around to get covered in all the spices. Also, the vanilla sugar will caramelize it a little. Cook them as long as you like, I didn’t want to make them all mushy and pureed, so I just let the slices get a bit tender and absorb the flavors (around 3-5 minutes).

Add the apples to the toast and drizzle some honey or maple syrup on top of everything. Great start to make your day sweeter.

Enjoy,

Mrs. G.

100TH POST* Spaghetti al Pomodoro e Basilico (Tomato & Basil Pasta) *100TH POST

Tomato time again!!!You didn’t think I was done that easy with those beautiful fruits? Yeah, that’s right, tomatoes are actually fruits, big shocker, I know. Hey, you can even say I cooked a dessert.  This, combined with some Italian style basil-power, leads to very nice, fresh and absolutely delicious pasta recipe.

For the pasta, you already know how we do it and the fact that we prefer homemade over bought (when we have the time to make them). So for about 3 generous portions, we made some spaghetti out of 200 grams of white flour and 2 eggs. Besides this, we used 500 grams of tomatoes, about 1 big handful of basil leaves, olive oil, salt and pepper.

Honestly, this recipe is incredibly easy and is something that anyone that wants to start cooking can make, with great results. 

The secrets for this recipe are: 1. The basil – use very fresh, whole basil leaves and be careful when you wash and pat them dry, don’t bruise them.

2. The tomatoes – use only ripe, bursting of flavor tomatoes, and if you’re using whole ones, make sure they are not bruised, or damaged.

For the tomatoes we activated “cute mode” in our kitchen. I mean, take a look at those tomatoes, what’s not to love about them. 

The incredible intense taste, the adorable colors, it’s summer in your plate. So, 500 grams of that yellow and red combo, the smaller ones I’ve left whole, the bigger ones I halved or quartered. Start up by heating some olive oil, add in you tomatoes and cook them on high heat for 5-7 minutes.

My idea was not to turn this into some kind of stew, make sure they keep their form (some of the already cut tomatoes will crumble, it’s OK), after which add the whole basil leaves, salt, pepper, cook for another minute, then add the pasta that you boiled meanwhile, turn off the heat and stir things in. 

  

Plate your delicious pasta, sprinkle with some freshly grated parmesan and have yourself to a wonderful, aromatic summer dish.

Enjoy,

Mr. G.

Spicy Tomato Soup Recipe

After a long wait, in farmer’s markets is finally tomato season in full power. Small, big, red, green, yellow, round or oval, you can find excellent quality tomatoes on the stands.

So, again, another dead easy recipe that packs a lot of flavor and that you can switch and mix to your liking. A couple of things about this first, things that I use when cooking tomato soup. I use both water and tomato juice to cook, in proportions of 1 to 3 (1 part water, 3 tomato juice) and I don’t really like celery in this. Yeah, I know it’s weird, totally, but that’s how I roll, get over it, stop giving me that look and get away from the back button on your browser. You can always add it if you like it. 

So, about 250 ml of water, 750 of tomato juice (to get that, I just cut the tomatoes in half and grate them on a medium grater, another thing, I like my tomato soup with the seeds in it), 1 spicy red chilli (on a scale from 1 to 10, I’ll have an 11), 1 medium onion, 1 carrot, 2 garlic cloves, a couple of branches of fresh thyme, 2-3 tbs of chopped parsley, 2 bay leaves, salt pepper, olive oil. Oh, and another thing, I would suggest not to use a juicer to get the tomato juice, the results tend to be a little bit too thin for my taste, and rather mild in taste. Better use this method for your Bloody Mary.

Start up by heating the olive oil on high flame, add in the finely chopped onion, finely grated or chopped carrot, the sliced garlic and cook for 3-4 minutes. Add the hot water and cook on the high heat for another 3-5 minutes. Reduce heat, add the tomato juice, salt, pepper, thyme and bay and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes, after which sprinkle the parsley on top. You can mix things up, add celery sticks or root, peppers, sprinkle some olives on top in the end, add basil, oregano, whatever makes your day, that’s the beauty of this dish.

So there you have it, easy spicy tomato soup. Just toast some slices of bread, rub them with a clove of garlic, sprinkle some olive oil on the bread and enjoy the summer. And I think it goes without saying: don’t forget your nice, cooled wine. 

Enjoy,

Mr. G.

Oven Baked Levrek ( Turkish Sea Bass)

It’s been a while since we cooked fish and we wanted to try a type of fish that we didn’t have before. This recipe is dead easy and the results are delicious, with a great taste from the veggies and very meaty, rich fish. Honestly, this is so easy that actually I’m not sure that I can call this a recipe. 

Before anything, make 3 cuts on each side of the gutted and cleaned fish. Don’t go all the way through, you just need to make some incisions that allow the flavors to get easily in the meat.

Rub your fish with salt and pepper, and fill its insides with mint (don’t bother cleaning the leaves from the stalk, just give it a good wash), fennel leaves and 1 garlic clove, sliced. Then, grab some tin foil (the length should be twice that of the fish) and place tomato slices and on top of those onion sections for as long is needed to cover the fish from head to tail. 

Place the filled fish on top of the veggies, then add another layer of the tomato-onion combo on top of the fish. Drizzle a nice splash of olive oil on top of the fish, then close the tin foil just like you would seal a giant candy, making sure you leave a pocket of air inside, that’s where the steam will create and cook your fish to perfection. Put your candy wrapped levrek into a hot oven for 15 minutes, then put it on a plate and sprinkle it generously with lemon juice. 

You’ll see that there will be a lot of cooking liquid in the foil, I’d say don’t throw it away, it’s basically the concentrated flavor of the dish; put a couple of tbs of that on top of the fish as well, can’t do you any harm. Open up your well chilled rose wine and dig into this very light and fresh dish.    

Enjoy,
Mr. G.