Lazy Dinner for the Working Men: Sauteed Chicken Livers with Parmesan Polenta

Behind the title: something simple but filling for those long and exhausting weekday evenings when you come home from work and you just don't want to cook, but you want something cooked and you don't want to spend much time on it because you don't have much time and you don't want to spend a lot of money on ingredients because you are tired and you might mess them up.

Cauliflower and Cumin Fritter with Lemon Yogurt Dip- Appetizers August (5)

To keep going (rather slow) with our Appetizers August, I was thinking of a nice dish with vegetables, to take advantage of the summer goodies. Cauliflower is not something I always loved, when I was a kid I would only eat it pickled. Now, we came to better terms and I appreciated now.

I always like when I think of a vegetable to know at least 3 totally different ways to cook it. Fritters and patties are always a nice solutions, you can serve them cold, you can pay with size and serve them as appetizers, you can take them the next day to work/school for lunch. So, I found in Ottolenghi, The Cookbook a recipe that was promised to be very flavorful.

I followed the recipe completely and I'm showing it to you exactly like that.

Speckled Pasta with Tomato and Anchovies Sauce

All you Youvegotmeal fans out there (insert the sound of nobody here) know that we love making honemade pasta and prefer using it over bought pasta. Even so, sometimes we feel the need to mix things up, bring a little bit of color even to a classic like homemade pasta. So we decided to make what is called speckled pasta, which means that we added finely chopped herbs (in this case we used exclusively parsley) in the dough composition. And, to give the recipe a nice little kick, we also added 5 roasted chilies and 2 fresh ones.

Brie and Roasted Peppers Crostini- Appetizers August (3)

The appetizer presented today takes advantage of a classical combination (brie cheese and roasted peppers) in such a great way that you will crave for this crostini from time to time. It is also amazing because you don't need fresh ingredients except the parsley, but you should always have parsley in your house...just saying!

Basically, if you have the cheese and a jar of roasted bell peppers in your fridge you have something to serve your suprise guests.

Beet-pickled Deviled Eggs- Appetizers August (1)

I have a great fascination for appetizers, they are highly appreciated at every party, they look good, they are usually finger food and it is easy to make an impression. It is a pity we don't make them often enough for ourselves.

Personally, I find that, at parties, especially wedding parties, I am only impressed by or drawn to appetizers. Maybe because you can have more flavors and tastes on one plate and my greedy, exploring taste buds appreciate that. With that in mind, I am going to dedicate this hot month to those simple bites that prepare us for the main course.

 

For today, I put together  some deviled eggs with goose pate, that as a bonus, are also mildly pickled with beet.

First, you will need to hard-boil 10 eggs and remove the shell.

For preparing the pickled eggs you will need:

1 red beet
1 onion
3 cups water
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 bay leaves
1 tbsp sugar

Bring this to o boil, then let it simmer for 30 minutes. Let it cool completely and then cover the boiled eggs with this mixture. In order for the eggs to get a nice colour you will need to let them in the beet water for at least 1 hour, and for a great taste also it need 2 hours. You can also let it sit overnight it is more convenient for you. The more you let it, the more color you will have when you cut them in half.

For the filling I used:

100g goose pate
2 tbsp sweet mustard
2 tbsp pickled horseradish (also beet-pickled)
1 tbsp finely chopped parsley

Mix all the ingredients above. Of course, you can use your usual horseradish, it happened that I had one with beets and more pink couldn't possibly hurt. If you don't have horseradish at all you can use a spicier mustard or you can just skip it alltogether for a sweeter finish.


When your mixture is ready and you are satisfied with its consistency, fill the eggs halves and garnish as you like.You could make it less thick with mayo or cream, but taste wise is definitely better without and they last longer to.

Don't they look good? Trust me, they are also very tasty and if you boil your eggs and the beet the day before it doesn't take much time or effort to put it together when you need it.

Enjoy,

Meatball Madness (II) Italian Style Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

Meatball madness! What? Again? You can't escape the madness! Especially when you have a lot of them hanging in your fridge, in wich case you can make them shine again with an easy and super delicious sauce. 

Now, the results of the original madness were some meatballs with a definite sweet touch, so I wanted to make a more sour sauce. 

Ingredients: 

the juice of 4 big, ripe, red tomatoes(just use a grater), 
1 medium onion, 
2 garlic cloves, 
200 ml of red wine, 
250 grams of tiny cherry and plum tomatoes, both red and yellow, 
half a handfull of basil leaves, 
salt and pepper

Saute the diced onion and garlic in some olive oil, add the wine and let the liquid reduce by half. Next put in the tomato juice and the tomatoes, chopped basil, salt, pepper and bring to a simmer on low heat, pop in the meatballs and cook with a lid on for about half an hour. a very simple but great tasting sauce that brings a wonderfull zing to the meatballs, so get your madness on and start cooking those meatballs.

Enjoy,

Meatballs Madness (I) Meatballs with Ricotta and Sun-dried Tomatoes

Did you ever think about who was the first person who thought of saying meatball madness? Who ever saw an indefinite amount of meatballs and screamed: This is madness! I keep imagining some 17th century dude, in his tight pants, being absolutely bedazzled by the sight of meatballs. So, with that image in mind, I decided I need to have  reason to say meatball madness, thereforeI had to cook some tasty  beef meatballs. 

I used: 

• 500 grams of minced beef, 
• 1 medium onion, finely diced, 
• 3 cloves of garlic, 
• 150 grams of ricotta cheese,  
• 100 grams of sun dried tomatoes and about 3 tbs of the oil they were kept in, 
• parsley,  
• thyme, 
• 2 eggs, 
• flour, 
• salt, 
• pepper, 
• some oil for cooking. 

Just mix all the ingredients together really well, except the flour. 

Make sure the onion, tomatoes, garlic and herbs are all finely chopped,  so you can mix then evenly.  Add the flour to thicken the composition, I used around 150 grams, both for putting it in the meat and for lightly flouring the meatballs. Heat up some olive oil on medium high heat, and fry you golf ball size meatballs until golden brown on all sides,  shouldn't take long. 

As a side dish, I just boiled some delicious,  fresh green beans and seasoned them as mentioned here. 

This meatball recipe, with  definite Italian influences is light, fresh and a delicious way to bring some ordinary and common meatballs to the next level. The ricotta make them moist and very light. There is definitely gonna be a next time cooking these.

Enjoy,

Spicy Chicory (Endive), Bacon and Egg Pasta

And many other things! Seriously, I’m proud of this recipe for a simple reason: it is our 1^st original (I hope, the internet is big and I’m too lazy to search it all) pasta recipe, and we love pasta. So let me get cracking. 

For our home made spaghetti (3 portions), we used 

2 chicories, 

250 grams of smoked bacon, 

2 eggs, 

4-5 medium hot chillies, 

3 garlic cloves, 

3-4 peaches, 

parsley, 

salt & pepper, 

olive oil, 

parmesan.

This needs a couple of things to be done at the same time, but you can always cook those ingredients in advance (like 30 minutes or an hour, not the day before). So, start of by frying the bacon cut into cubes for 5 minutes, then add the chicories (slice them however you want, but remove the middle, I, at least, found it too bitter for my liking) and sliced garlic. Cook for another 4 minutes.

. Remember when I said that you can have things cooked in advance? Well, for the chillies, you need to roast them and you can do that in advance. After you remove their burned skin, remove the seeds if they are too hot and cut the roasted chilies into strips. Also, the peaches need to be grilles, so cut them in halves and then into 3 each half and grill them on an ultra hot grill for 2 minutes on each side. The fruits will get some very nice grill marks and, because of their sweetness and delicate flavor, will balance with the bitter taste of the chicory. Make sure the fruits aren’t all that mushy, keep them firm.

So, mix the bacon, chicory, garlic, chili, peaches, salt, pepper on the fire for another minute. Add the pasta, cooked al dente, about 50 ml of the pasta cooking water. Meanwhile, poach the eggs and have them ready to be placed on top of the plated pasta, after you’ve sprinkled some parmesan, olive oil and parsley on them. The idea behind this is that the soft yolk will also serve as a sauce that binds the spaghetti together.

So, there you have it, my 1^st try at a recipe and, I have to say, it couldn’t have been anything else except pasta. The result was an interesting dish, with flavors that combined pretty nicely. I guess you can add or remove things from this, but, overall, we were happy with the outcome.

Have a great day,

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.