Smoked chicken and avocado tortilla.

Type: Fusion, easy

Serves: 4

Preparation time in minutes: 15

Contains per single serving:
495 calories, protein 28 g, fat 9 g, carbohydrates 38 g


Ingredients:
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (or a light version)
125 ml sour cream
300 g smoked chicken breast, sliced
1 red onion, chopped
10 small carrots, sliced
3 tablespoons mint, chopped
1 ripe and ready to eat avocado
1 lemon, squeezed
1 spring onion, chopped
4 Wrap tortillas (the larger size)

Method:
Mix the mayonnaise with the sour cream.
Add the smoked chicken, the red onion and the carrots and stir.
Season with mint, freshly ground pepper and salt.
Slice the avocado in half, remove the pit and cut it up evenly, sprinkle with the lemon juice.
Heat the tortillas, follow the instructions on the packet.
Spread the chicken salad evenly over the tortillas, place the avocado on top
Scatter the spring onions.
Add some more salt and pepper to taste and fold the bottom of the tortilla up and then fold the left side over to the right (or whatever way you fancy) and turn over onto your serving plate.

Enjoy!

Tip: I forgot to buy the carrots so I used tomatoes instead. Delicious!

Pizza du Jour: Mediterranean Puff Pizza

Last week I came across this recipe and I’ve made it last Saturday.
Verdict: Easy to make and just delicious!

Type: Mediterranean (vegetarian)

Serves: 2 (or 1 one if you are really hungry, or 4 if you use it for a snack)

Preparation time in minutes: 20 minutes & oventime 20 minutes

Contains per single serving:
605 Kcalories - protein 4 g, fat 41 g – carbohydrates 41 g

Ingredients:
375g ready made puff pastry, thawed if frozen
2 big plum(or breakfast) tomatoes
1 courgette
1 onion
1 mozzarella cheese
4 table spoons of green pesto
Salt & Pepper

Method:
Preheat oven to fan 200C/conventional 225C (or check the instructions on the package).

Wash and slice the tomatoes and the courgette, thinly slice the onion and slice the mozzarella.

Unfold the pastry on a lightly flowered surface. Roll into 30 x 30 cm square and place on a baking sheet. Prick the pastry with a fork.

Bake for 5 minutes.

Spread the pesto over the crust and place the vegetables and mozzarella on top.

Season with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Put the pizza back in the oven and bake for another 20 minutes.

Really yummy with a green salad.

Enjoy!

Soup du jour – Leek-Mustard soup

I’ve tried this soup last week and I really liked it. Maybe you want to give it go too, so here is the recipe.

Type: Dutch, starter or main course,
serves: 4

Preparation time in minutes: 25

Contains per single serving:
Energy 255 cal - protein 4 g, fat 22 g – carbohydrates 10 g

Ingredients:
2 tablespoons olive oil,
500 gram leek, use the white and the light green part, thinly sliced,
2 potatoes peeled and cut into (cube like) pieces
Chicken stock (from a cube), 1 litre
2 tablespoons of sharp (whole-grain) mustard
125 ml crème fraîche (light)
Salt and pepper

Other stuff you need:
(Immersion) blender
Soup pot

Method:
Reserve a bit of light green parts of leek (sliced very thinly) to add to the plates/bowls just before serving.

Put the oil in the soup pot and heat it.
Add the leek to the pot and let it sweat for 3 minutes or so, just giving fragrance not colouring!
Add the potato and stock and bring everything to a boil
Let it simmer for 10 -15 minutes
Add the mustard and the crème fraîche
Puree the soup with your (immersion) blender
Reheat the soup and season with salt and pepper to taste
Put the soup in their serving bowls and sprinkle the reserved bits of leek on top!

Enjoy your soup!

Just stir …..and that’s it!

I think I’ve to visit Belgium soon. Why? Because! Kidding…. I’ve found a very interesting, new product online the other day which I, of course, would like to sample. Who knows, you might want to do the same after you have read the rest :)

Do you love dark milk chocolate, based on bitter chocolate? Or milk chocolate with just a hint of sweetness? Or are you more likely to choose a marriage between nuts and chocolate? No, still not a thing you would fancy? Well, how about this one then: Cointreau…..a novel combination of orange liqueur and bitter chocolate? What am I talking about? I am talking about Choc-o-lait here, the new way to make hot chocolate in an instant.
The concept is new and original. They have created something that looks like a chocolate lollypop. It’s a wooden stick with a Belgian chocolate on one end, which rapidly melts in a cup of hot milk. Man, that must result in the best hot-chocolate ever!

Hmmz… not willing to travel to Belgium? Well, you could always make your own hot cocoa. Just put some cocoa in a cup, add some lukewarm milk (not too much) and stir until you have a smooth mix. Add some sugar and steaming hot milk. Of course you can add some whipped cream on top or some marshmallows. You could also use chocolate sauce or syrup. But you probably knew that already, so here is an alternative hot chocolate…..which is very yummy too!

Cocos – Cocoa

Serves: 4
Preparation time: 15 minutes.
Ingredients:
500 ml ready made/store bought chocolate milk
100 ml coconut milk
25 gr. Dark (bitter) chocolate
4 table spoons Malibu Coconut liqueur
Whipped cream
½ table spoon of grated coconut.

Also needed: 4 mugs and a grater

How to:
Put the chocolate milk and coconut milk in a saucepan
Bring it almost to a boil
In the meantime grate the chocolate
Put a spoon full of Malibu in each mug
Pour the hot chocolate/coconut milk on top of that
Add the whipped cream and garnish with the grated coconut and chocolate.

Enjoy!!

Organize This turns into Organize That!

I was quite amazed by all the response I’ve got on yesterdays post. Apparently a lot of you are into cooking and want to share recipes. So, how are we going to do this? Are we going to:

• join Angela’s recipe blog (if she will take us),
• join yummy food stuff (if they'd have us),
• are we going to create a new team blog?

Suggestions are more then welcome!

Organize this!

Two weeks ago I was looking for one of my favourite recipes, but I wasn’t able to find it. Not so surprising since I have recipe boxes and plain boxes full of recipes, folders filled with torn out pages from magazines and newspapers and a lot of downloaded recipes. Over the years I collected dozens and dozens of them. Usually I can find the recipe I am looking for quite easily because there is a system, well sort of, in all that chaos, but recently one of my friends was looking for something and he really made a mess of things. Result: I can’t find a thing! Time to start organizing my recipes I thought.

First I collected all my recipes. OMG, I never knew I had so many. Then it was time to put on my sorting hat while I started to sort out all my recipes into categories, such as salads, side dishes, meat, poultry, vegetarian, pasta, fish and desserts. It’s amazing how much stuff you collect over the years. I was also amazed by the fact that I had incomplete recipes. How on earth did they end up in my recipe jumble? I was even more surprised to find a lot of recipes that had lost their appeal all together. Peoples taste really change over time.

At the moment I am in the process of putting all the recipes on my computer. I found some free Dutch software and it is really great. You can create menus and shopping lists. And as a bonus there is even some nutritional information. Woo Hoo!
There is one downside though; there is a lot of typing involved. It’s a dirty job, but someone gotta do it :) And hey, it’s not all in vain; in the end I’ll have a marvellous recipe finder on my computer. Hurrah......no more recipe chaos!

Fishy cheese/cheesy fish a.k.a. Cheesy Baked Fish – the recipe

Serves 4

Ingredients:
4 x 100gr/4oz. white fish fillets, such as cod, haddock, or hoki skinned
4 tomatoes, sliced
225 gr/8oz fromage fresh
1 bunch of spring onions, chopped
100 gr/4oz Double Glouchester (or another cheese), grated
Seasoning

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
Arrange the fish in a single layer in a greased ovenproof dish, then place the tomato slices on top of the filets and season to taste.
Mix together the fromage fresh, spring onions and 75gr/3oz cheese in a bowl and season
Spoon the fromage fresh mixture evenly over the tomatoes and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.
Bake for about 25 minutes or until golden and bubbling.

Enjoy!

Creamy Chicken soup with Oyster Mushrooms

Some time ago I started a chicken soup quest and I still haven’t found what I was looking for (hmm….that could be a great song title ;)) but I found one that comes very close. So, here is

Funky (fungi) Chicken soup:

World kitchen, serves 4, entrée or main course, soup, light

Preparation time in minutes:
30 minutes

Contains per single serving:
Energy 250 cal - protein 12 g, fat 18 g – carbohydrates 8 g

Ingredient’s:
50 g butter
25 g flower
1 litre chicken stock (homemade or bought)
150 g Oyster mushrooms
100 g smoked chicken breast
1 egg yolk
100 ml cream
Salt
Pepper
Nutmeg
Lemon juice
Fresh Basil

Method:
Melt half of the butter in a soup-pan and stir in the flower. Bake this on a low heat for 2 minutes. Add half of the stock and bring it to the boil while stirring gently until you get a nice thick soup. Add the rest of the stock, just little splashes at a time. When it’s all in, bring the soup to a boil and let it simmer for 5 minutes. Wipe clean the oyster mushrooms and cut them in pieces. Melt the remainder of the butter in a frying-pan and sauté the mushrooms for 3 minutes over a high heat. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Remove the mushrooms from the pan and keep them warm in tin foil. Cut the chicken breasts into thin slices and after that cut them up again so you are left with just small strips of chicken. Put the egg yolk in a bowl, add the cream and whisk slightly. Add some spoonfuls of hot soup to the mixture (don’t forget to stir). Now add the mixture (while you stir) to the soup. Keep stirring until the soup becomes velvety and thick. Make sure it doesn’t boil again. Add some salt, pepper nutmeg and lemon. Just add the seasoning to suit your own taste. Cut the basil into small strips. Divide the soup over four bowls. Place a pile of mushroom, chicken and basil in the center of each bowl.

Enjoy your soup!

The hunt for thick creamy chicken soup.

The other day I was in the library looking for a new cookbook. While I was standing there, I suddenly remembered the best soup ever…. Thick luscious creamy chicken soup! Just thinking about it made my mouth water. I could picture the bowl of steamy soup in my head. Funny how you can crave certain foods the moment temperature drops a few degrees. According to some people this has to do with instinct and fattening up for winter, but back to the soup.

Since I was standing in the cookbook isle I immediately checked all the table of contents of the American cookbooks. Oh, I forgot to mention that I ate this delicious soup on one of my visits to America. Unfortunately none of the books offered the recipe I was looking for.

A few other books offered more or less broth-like recipes. You sort of hold a chicken over a pan of water add some herbs and you have chicken broth. Hmmz… that is sooo not the thing I was looking for. Later, at the supermarket I looked at all the soups in the soup isle. No luck there either. Bummer!

Well, I guess I have to go through thousands of recipes online. Or is there, by any chance, somebody with a nice thick creamy chicken soup recipe?

Simmered Pears

After an afternoon of garden work yesterday, I felt I was in for a real treat. So for dinner I made Simmered pears with roasted potatoes and a nice piece of grilled chicken. While I was preparing my pears I wondered: Do they eat this in other countries too or is this a typical Dutch side dish? I don’t know the answer to this, so if there is anyone out there in blogland who can answer this question, it will be much appreciated.

How do you make Simmered pears? You peal the skin of 8 cooking pears (this serves 2) don’t remove the stem, don’t cut them. You empty a bottle of red wine in a pan, add approximately 10 dessertspoons (or as much as you like) sugar, a cinnamonstick, some rind of a lemon and bring this to the boil. When the sugar is dissolved, you turn down the heat, add the pears and let this simmer for about 1½ - 2 hours or until the pears are deep red. You can eat them hot and cold.

As said, you can eat this as a side dish but you can also make a nice dessert out of it with some mascarpone or vanilla ice-cream and Port-wine.

Creamy Pasta with Mushrooms

Italian, Main course, serves 2, pasta

Preparation time in minutes
30

Contains per single serving:
Energy 1065 cal, - protein 32 g
Fat 69g – carbohydrates 79 g

Ingredient’s:
200 g penne pasta
2 Portobello mushrooms
5 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
6 slices (rashers) of bacon
125 ml whipping cream
75 g Rucola
50 g Parmesan cheese in thin slices or grated.
Salt, freshly ground (lemon)pepper

Method:
Cook the Penne according to the instructions on the package.
Clean the mushrooms and cut them up into slices.
Heat 4 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan.
Put the garlic in and fry for one minute.
Put the mushrooms in and fry them over high heat for 4 minutes (let the moister evaporate).
Season well, with salt and lemonpepper.
Put everything on a plate and let it rest.
Put the rest of the oil in the same pan.
Bake the bacon until they are crispy and brown.
Take the bacon from the pan and put them on a piece of kitchen paper.
Strain the penne; reserve some of the hot water.
Put the penne back in the pan.
Add some of the cream and some of the reserved water.
Stir and put the rest of the cream (and water if needed) in.
Re-head it slowly.
Add the mushrooms, garlic and Rucola, stir lightly/slowly
If it’s hot enough, take it of the heat.
Divide the pasta over two plates or bowls sprinkle the bacon and the cheese over the top

Enjoy!!

Italian quiche with chicken - the recipe!

Italian, main course, serves 4, hearty tart.

Preparation time in minutes:
50 waiting, 45 preparation

Contains per single serving:
Energy 710 cal, - protein 39 g
Fat 48g – carbohydrates 31 g

Ingredient’s:
50 g butter
500 g chicken breast, skinned
3 onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, finely sliced
fresh sage and rosemary
3 eggs
250 ml whipping cream
1 lemon
ready made pastry for quiches
salt, freshly ground black pepper

1 x 30 cm quiche tin or low-sided tartlet tin, greased

Method:
Preheat the oven to 225 °C. Melt 25g of butter in a frying pan, season the chicken breast with salt and pepper and fry for 3 minutes over medium heat, turn and fry the other side for 3 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan, place them on a plate and let them cool down.
Melt another 25 g of butter in a sauté pan and add the onions and garlic, let this simmer for 20 minutes.
Finely chop the sage and rosemary.
Combine the eggs with the cream in a bowl and season well. Add the sage and rosemary.
Clean the lemon and grate it. Add the zest to the egg mixture.
Line the whole well-buttered quiche tin with the pastry.
Cut the chicken into even slices and combine them with the onion/garlic and egg mixture.
Pour the mixture into the quiche tin and distribute the mixture evenly. (you can add some sliced mushrooms if you want). Put the tin in the middle of the oven.
After 10 minutes reduce the temperature of the oven to 175 °C and bake for another 35-40 minutes or until the filling has set and the quiche is golden brown.
Serve with a mixed salad and a mild rosé