RECIPE: Quiche with Chargrilled Asparagus, Roasted Broccoli and Marinated Feta

Hejhej. How’s everyone doing? I thought I’d finally post another recipe for one of the dishes I made in the first week of the #VegBoxChallenge. I’ve always loved Quiches (my mum makes a delicious one) but I don’t feel like I have enough quiche in my life, so I was really happy when I came across a good recipe that was 1) a quiche and 2) would make use of two of the vegetables from my box. Well the original recipe wouldn’t have, but I thought it was a pretty straight forward substitute. Because I made some changes and because I promised to blog more recipes where you can use the marinated feta from this recipe, I thought I’d quickly blog about it.

RECIPE: Quiche with Chargrilled Asparagus, Roasted Broccoli and Marinated Feta

♘ Preheat the oven to 200°

♘ Make the pastry. I used the recipe from here (but it’s in german, so I’ll take you through it).
Mix 130g of flour, 20g of parmesan, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, 65g of butter (cold), 1 egg and if you like some herbs and knead it into a dough. Then shape it into a ball, wrap it in cling film and put it in the fridge for 30min.

♘ Break off the woody stalks of one bundle of green asparagus, cut the asparagus into 1cm bits and fry the pieces in a griddle pan in a little bit of olive oil. When it’s cooked, sprinke with a tiny bit of salt.

♘ Cut one head of broccoli into little florets. Marinate in a little olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano.

♘ Spread the florets on a baking tray (covered in silver foil) and roast until it’s cooked and crispy (around 10 minutes)

♘ Whilst this is happening, roll out the pastry, then put it into a springform pan (you don’t need to grease it). Once the broccoli is cooked, put the springform pan in the oven and bake until slightly browned at 170° (I didn’t put anything on top to keep it down, and probably should have done, but still worked fine)

♘ Make your egg mixture: Separate two eggs. Whisk the egg whites until they’re stiff, and mix your (slightly cooled down) broccoli and asparagus, approximately 150g marinated feta (see this recipe), another tablespoon of grated Parmesan, and 75g soured cream with the egg yolk.

♘ Gently fold in the whisked egg whites

♘ Fill this into your springform pan with the pre-baked pastry and bake for another 20 minutes until lovely golden brown.

♘ Enjoy!

FOOD: The Londoner’s Homemade Gyros

Bonjour mes chèrs. The Londoner never fails to tempt me with her delicious recipes. So last Sunday, Daniel and I had a go at her gyros recipe. I don’t eat meat, so for my “wrap” we replaced the chicken with some shop-bought falafels (you can get really nice ones that you only need to pop in the oven in the UK). It was everything we had hoped for and better. I was a bit concerned that the Harissa sauce would turn out too spicy, but trust her, it is just perfect! In fact I’ve made it again since. So, even if you’re not going to make the whole recipe, I strongly recommend you give that sauce a go

We had these bad boys of wraps with some home-made potato and sweet potato wedges, for which we just cut 3 regular (Maris Piper I believe) and 1 sweet potato into wedges and marinated them in olive oil, paprika, cajun, smoked salt and pepper before putting them in a very hot oven for approximately 35 minutes. 

I really really enjoyed this whole meal and I also think that it would be great if you have dinner guests. Replace the chicken with falafels for anyone who doesn’t eat/like meat and you have a wonderfully fuss-free meal. You can prepare pretty much everything before hand, so when your guests arrive, you just need to put the marinated potatoes in the oven, have a couple of drinks with your friends and just before the meal, grill the chicken/chuck the falafels in the oven
Give it a go You can find the recipe here. 

RECIPE: Caramelized Mushrooms with delightful Red Wine Sauce and Dumplings

This is probably not something you want to make during the week. It requires patience, well time rather than patience, because you don’t have to actually be in the kitchen for most of it. Just at home. You know… reading a good book, or watching trashy TV or anything that’s not work-related/stress.

It’s based on this lovely recipe from JoytheBaker for Caramelized Mushrooms and Dumplings. And it’s delightful. It’s super super nice and definitely more of a candidate for an under the week meal.
So I remembered this dish this weekend, and then I remembered how much I like red wine sauces that have cooked for hours (mmmmmmmmmh!!), soooo I figured, why not combine the two? (It’s all about combining things in my opinion. Which also does go wrong a lot of the time, but let’s not talk about that on the blog). So here it goes.

RECIPE: Caramelized Mushrooms with delightful Red Wine Sauce and Dumplings 

1. Start with the chopping. Here’s what needs chopping:
- 2 Leeks (thin slices)
- 2 Carrots (rough cubes)
- 1 big or 2 small Sweet Potatoes (rough cubes, similar size to carrots)
- 500g Mushrooms (very rough, you want them to stay juicy)
2. Melt a tablespoon of Butter in a big frying pan, and once melted add the mushrooms and fry for a couple of minutes. When they’ve taken on some colour, put them in a separate bowl and season with salt and pepper.
3. Add a splash of Olive oil to a saucepan and then caramelize the leek for a couple of minutes (if you like it a little sweet (like me), also add some honey)
4. When the leek has softened, add the carrots and sweet potato cubes and fry for about 2 minutes.
5. When it’s all sizzling (now it gets exiting!!) Add about 250ml of red wine (or however much you fancy… quite a lot anyway) and let it cook off a little, then add 500ml of vegetable stock, 2 teaspoons of dried Thyme and the mushrooms.
6. And that’s it pretty much for this part of the dish. Now you just have to leave it for a couple of hours (2-3) on fairly low heat (obviously stirring it every now and again) until it’s become fairly thick. Not thick thick, but thicker (so it’s not soup-consistency anymore)
7. Stir in 1 cup of frozen Peas.
8. Make the dumplings (oh and this would also be a good time to preheat the oven, 200° please)
- Mix 2.5 cups of flour with 1 tablespoon of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 2 teaspoons of sugar, some black pepper, 1/4 cup of chopped chives (I used frozen)
- Quickly incorporate 170g of Butter with the dry ingredients with fingers.
- In a separate bowl mix 1 egg with 3/4 cups of natural yoghurt and the juice of half a lemon.
- Mix the yoghurt mix with the rest.
- Shape into dumplings (add more flour if the mix feels too moist!!)
9. Fill the mushroom mix into a casserole and put however many dumplings will fit on top (have the others for breakfast the next morning)
10. Put in a 200° hot oven for approximately 25 minutes or until the dumplings are cooked through.
11. Serve with some crème fraiche.

 

RECIPE: Grilled Sweet Potato Soup

This is the best soup I have ever made (maybe even that I’ve ever tasted). I saw the recipe on the hungry birdie and I knew straight away, that I was going to have to try it! I love love love sweet potatoes especially when they’re grilled. I also just got a blender stick thing, so I’m trying to make more soups to make up for the soup-less time, when I didn’t have this magic thing.

The result was so so good, I can’t even describe it, I’m afraid you’ll just have to try it yourself. I did some things slightly differently, so I’ll post my version of the recipe here. But you should definitely all go follow this blog. It’s the first recipe I made from it, but it was so good, that it’ll end in a lifetime subscription for me.

My soup wasn’t vegan anymore in the end, because I made it a tad less thick with regular milk and I used some actual mayo in the dip, but you could easily keep it vegan, by just using more stock to make the soup less thick and by using the recipe on the hungry birdie to make the dip. Oh and one more thing, I’ve decided to post the recipes in German underneath the recipe in English now, because there might be some people who don’t like reading English as much as I do

Grilled Sweet Potato Soup with a Lemon and Garlic Dip
1. Peel and cut into cubes (1cm^2 roughly) 3 Sweet Potatoes (aim for the biggest ones you can find).
2. Put them in a bowl and mix with salt, cayenne pepper, herbs de provence, some curry powder and olive oil. I find it hard to put measurements on this one, because it’s up to your taste. If you don’t like it spicy obviously go light on the cayenne pepper. Generally I’d say don’t be shy about the spices though!
3. Spread the marinated sweet potatoes on an oven tray covered in silver foil and put under the (hot) grill for about 25 minutes. They’re done, when they’re really soft inside, but slightly burny on the outside (that’s how I like them anyway).
4. Whilst they’re in the oven, you tidy the incredible mess you made, you get on with the dip. Mix 1 tablespoon of Mayo, 2-3 tablespoons of natural yoghurt (or if you’re feeling fancy greek yoghurt), garlic powder (or fresh garlic, I just get fed up with garlic some days), lemon juice, salt, pepper, a tiny tiny tiny bit of mustard (if you’re not using french mayo that is) and sugar.
5. Put the dip in the fridge, whilst you finish the soup
6. Chop 1 leek (obviously) and let it caramelize in some olive oil whilst you chop 2 carrots, which you add once the leek is nicely caramelized. (Sugar helps, but I don’t want to get you on the unhealthy track)
7. Add in some garlic (fresh or powdered, either will do the job)
8. And now quickly, before the garlic gets bitter, add some vegetable stock and let it simmer until the liquid’s mostly gone. Now (optional) if you’ve got other stuff to do like tidying the mess you made in the process  you can keep going with the adding stock until you want to finish the soup. The longer it cooks, the better it will taste (although there’s probably some sort of asymptotes line concerning how good it can get, just by adding the same ingredient again and again)
9. Add the soft inside, crispy outside sweet potatoes to the pan.
10. Add 200ml of coconut milk
11. Purée the soup
12. Adjust the consistency with either milk or more vegetable stock
13. Serve with some nice baguette and the dip which is waiting for you in the fridge

And now I just have to wait for it to turn lunchtime so I can eat the rest of the soup NOM NOM NOM. Thank you hungrybirdie, I think this will be one of my favourite recipes of all times!

Joy’s Caramelized Mushrooms and Dumplings

Yesterday I made lunch for the family, and I chose to make the Caramelized Mushrooms and Dumplings dish that Joy the Baker posted a while ago (again). It turned out delicious, and because it was perfect just the way the recipe was, I didn’t change anything. I did exchange the chives in the dumplings for chili, but that was for my chives not looking too pretty reasons rather than because I thought, it’d be better with something else. So here’s just some photos, and a link to the recipe, so you can all have a read and look at the pretty photos

Savoury Scones and Mozzarella with Avocado

Yesterday I made savoury scones, which turned out fairly nice. I used this recipe, but instead of just using plein cream cheese, I used Philadelphia Roasted Garlic, to give it even more flavour.

To go with the scones, I made something Jamie Oliver often makes: some ripped apart mozzarella sprinkled with chopped up chili. I also added some ripe avocado, a few drips of tabasco and some freshly ground black pepper.