RECIPE: Homemade Shallot Flatbread with a fresh Cucumber and Coriander Joghurt Dip

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Coriander, Coriander Dip, Cucumber, Dip, Flatbread, Lunch, Shallots

Hello Hello Hello, long time no see! Or recipe or you know a lot of posts, which is actually odd, cause I’ve made some delightful things lately, and I can’t even really decide what to start with!
Uni is mental at the moment and I’m not sure anyone in France has ever really heard of organisation, but I’d definitely recommend for people to keep bringing it up, so they might adapt at some point? Maybe when my grandchildren come to France, it will be a more organized place and I can tell them about the good old, yet very unstructured days?

Ok enough with the complaining, it helped to make my mind up about which recipe to post first though. I’m opting for a fairly simple one, because it’s been a loooong uni day, and I’ve spent way too many hours with a Georgian lecturer.

Homemade Shallot Flatbread with a fresh Cucumber and Coriander Joghurt Dip 

1) Mix 1.5 cups of flour with some salt and mix in 0.5 cup of boiling water. I’d start with a spoon, and then when it’s starting to become one use my hands to knead it.
2) Mix in any spices that you fancy and dried shallots
3) Put this to one side (covered) and get on with the dip
4) Mix Joghurt with 1/2 a cucumber (washed, deseeded and chopped), lemon zest, lemon juice, chopped coriander, honey, salt, curry powder and anything else you might fancy in a dip
5) The flatbread “dough” should have rested for about 30mins (don’t ask me why, this is how the spring onion pancakes were made on delicious days)
6) After that you just divide them into 6-8 and then roll out each bit and rub with some more flour.
7) Heat some oil in a frying pan and simply fry the little flatbreads
Serve with the dip : )

P.S: obviously the flatbread would be nicer with yeast, but if you’re making this for lunch, chances are, you don’t have enough time!

RECIPE: Quinoa Cakes with Olives, Chili and Coriander

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Chili, Coriander, Olives, parmesan, quinoa, Quinoa Cakes

Yesterday I had a go on Joy’s Lemon, Parsley and Olive Quinoa Cakes. I did some things slightly differently, so I thought I’d share my version

1) Rinse approximately 1 cup of Quinoa under running water

2) Cook the quinoa according to package instructions and add 1 tablespoon of honey

3) When the quinoa is done, set it aside and let it cool slightly

4) Chop together: 1 handful of green olives, 1 handful of fresh coriander and 1 red chili

5) Grate over quite a lot of parmesan and the zest of 1 lemon (make sure the skin is actually good to use!)

6) Mix everything with the quinoa, add 2 eggs and some breadcrumbs (however much you feel is the right amount; you want it to become shape-able, whilst making sure that the mix stays nice and moist!)

7) Shape the quinoa mix into little patties, and fry on medium heat (stay patient, and don’t try to turn them too early, because that will only break them!)
Voilà

RECIPE: Baked Aubergine

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Aubergines, Aubergines with Tomato Sauce, dinner, Recipe, Tomato Sauce, vegetable main, vegetables

Hi everyone. I’m sorry about the lack of posts recently (not that anyone reads this, but anywy), but I wasn’t really producing anything worth sharing, to be honest I’d rather not post anything if I don’t have anything good, than post everything I make, when it was really just boring and dull.

But tonight, finally, I made something that was everything I was looking for! It was really cheap, delicious, comforting and had a vegetable (not even necessarily opposed to meat, but also to pasta/bread/rice/yougettheidea) in the main role!
Ok so you might have guessed from the title, the “star” I’m talking about is Aubergine. I used to hate Aubergine, but once I started cooking with them myself, I realised that I just never had them, when someone bothered to cook them properly.

(And I know that my dearest friend Madame Stephi will love them too, once she has them made in a nice way!)

Aubergines are a bit special, you can’t just chuck them in with other vegetables. Well I don’t like them that way anyway. They take about a decade to cook (or a similar amount that feels like a decade) and a lot of restaurants don’t give them that time (apart from The Gate, obviously)
Talking about The Gate, Daniel gave me one of their cookbooks for my birthday and somewhere in there, they describe exactly what I mean with aubergines…. that there is one perfect way to prepare a vegetable. Furthermore that “the simple alchemy of how water is taken out of a vegetable will often determine its true flavour”.
Firstly, I love how this is put, secondly, I couldn’t agree more. Especially for Aubergines, I haven’t worked with any vegetable that this is more important for.
I think for them the most important thing to always remember is to give them time! Don’t bother cooking Aubergines, if you want a quick meal, use a courgette or something instead. So here’s the perfect way (in my opinion) to make them. I think this is a somewhat greek dish and there’s probably an actual name for it, I’m not very up to date with greek cuisine, so sadly, I don’t know any fancy name.

 ( Apologies for the bad photo… our kitchen was an absolute mess and I couldn’t find a good place to take a photo and to be honest, I sort of wanted to get eating )

1) Wash and cut 1 Aubergine into roughly 1cm slices

2) Sprinkle them with salt and let them sit for a couple of minutes

3) Use kitchen roll to pat the slices dry.

4) Heat some olive oil in a frying pan (or a chargrill pan might be even better) and fry the slices. I’ve said this before, but I will say it again and again, because I don’t want anyone to make this and not like it, because the aubergine isn’t cooked properly: give it time! Do it on both sides. You’ll know when it’s done when it’s gone slightly burny on the outside, but you can feel that it’s really soft (and not chewy (!) anymore) inside

5) Make this tomato sauce that I used in that recipe (I left the basil out this time, but do whatever you feel like)

6) In an oven tray (or some arty fake oven tray made out of silver foil, which is what you do when you’re a poor student in an awfully equipped kitchen) put in the tomato sauce first and then place the slices of aubergine on top

7) Put it in the oven at just over 200° for about 20minutes

Voilà, really really cheap, easy and potentially even not unhealthy dish!

RECIPE: Just Couscous

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5 minute cooking, comfort food, Couscous, easy

Today I found my new favourite comforting food, that literally doesn’t take any effort at all. And no I’m not talking spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce (which all the normal people that enjoy cooking pretend to even want to make when they can’t be bothered to cook), because let’s face it, that’s still a little bit of effort and even a little bit more of washing up to do. The solution for these days when you really can’t be bothered to cook anything, don’t want to order food, but still want something comforting to eat is: Couscous.
It’s a bit funny really, because I used to hate couscous. I’d always try and avoid it. However I now know that that was only because it was really boring and flavourless.

Now you might think hmmmmmmm didn’t you say a second ago, that this doesn’t take any effort at all? Does it not take effort to make it flavourful? No, not really! All you have to do is this:

1) Make 1 cup of really nice vegetable stock (doesn’t need to be fresh, but you know, buy good stock… for any germans, I use “Seitenbacher).

2) Mix it with 1 tablespoon of oliveoil and 1 tablespoon of honey

3) Pour this mixture over 1 cup of couscous

and you’re done! You only need to let this sit for a couple of minutes, loosen it with a fork and it’s ready to be eaten! Be honest, isn’t this about as simple as putting a ready made meal in the microwave?
I know it’s not the most exiting thing in the world but it’s cheap*,very flavourful** and oh so fluffy! I find this nice enough to eat plain, but you can also add anything you want… raisins (dried or soaked in something nice), feta cheese, some cut up cherry tomatoes (that’s what I did), a can of chickpeas, cucumber or literally anything you can find in the fridge

If you’re looking for real things to make with this basic couscous recipe, have a look at the ratatouille couscous and the couscous salad chili-coriander dressing
*in fact most days this will not cost you anything, because I just expect you to have this at home! (I do realise that even these ingredients need to be bought sometimes, but they’re not exactly expensive)

**Obviously this depends entirely on the olive oil, honey and vegetable stock you use!

RECIPE: Quinoa with Roasted Pumpkin

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Balsamic Vinegar, quinoa, Quinoa with Roasted Pumpkin, Reduced Balsamic Vinegar Sauce, Roasted Pumpkin, Thyme

1) Start by peeling a quarter of a pumpkin (or so, I really don’t know how much… just go by how much you think) and continue by cutting it into cubes.

2) Mix the cubes with some olive oil, balsamic vinegar, sugar and salt and put them on a baking tray. Put some olive oil on thyme that’s still on the woody thing and spread it on top of the pumpkin.

3) Put it under the grill for about 20-30minutes, turning the cubes every now and again.

4) Bring 3 cups of good vegetable stock to the boil, add 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of olive oil.

5) Whisk in 1 cup of thoroughly rinsed quinoa and cook as instructed on the quinoa package (time wise)

6) In a little frying pan, caramelize 1 chopped up red onion with some sugar

7) When the onion is done, use the same pan with all the sticky rests of the onion to make a little sauce: add some balsamic vinegar, sugar and salt.

8) When the pumpkin is all nicely roasted, mix it all together. Voilà!