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Showing posts from February, 2021

Ready in 15 min...

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 Moroccan  vegetarian feast ready in 15 min.. Aubergine with couscous. Or if you like, egg plant. Really tasty, brings me my memories back when I went to Agadir for holidays.  This is an easy recipe and very tasty. My weekly food shopping always has lots of veggies in it so I was not short on any ingredients. It’s a great full meal when you don’t have much time for cooking and you want something different. I fried a yellow pepper (I used yellow but red can be a better option), a courgette chopped into cubes and a red onion, then I added vegetable stock, couscous and thyme, salt and pepper, smoked paprika, cumin, coriander. I then covered the pot to allow the couscous to absorb the stock. In the mean time I was preparing an aubergine, which I sliced and fried lightly adding harissa for the last 3-5 mins. I also added pine nuts (another option could be pistachios) and a bit of lemon zest and a squeeze of juice to taste. I fried it until it was tender. On this occasion the fridge needed e

I am so looking forward to this..

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 I can’t wait to make a trip further than 5 miles from my house. Once we will be able to travel, I will go for a trip down to Brighton.  And I don’t know about you, but the first thing I’ll do when everything re-opens, is to book a table in a restaurant or pub, even the nearest pub will do. They will all have to be pre-booked in advance because there will be high demand. I giggled when Boris announced earlier this month that pubs (and restaurants ) can re-open in April, but only if they won’t serve alcohol. I was thinking about people that used to go to the pub just for a pint, what will they do?? Stare at each other πŸ˜‚ ? Before the complete lockdown in December started, the government had implemented various tiers of restrictions; one of them was that pubs can only serve alcohol with a meal - guidance included saying that a Scotch Egg constitutes a meal! ’Scotch Eggs quickly became the best sellers in many pubs. No surprise  there πŸ˜‰! It seems like this will be our new normal for the

Nails, nails ,nails...

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  So I discovered that I can make decent poly gel nails πŸ’…on my own without having a course or certificate😁 Boris will open Salons and Retail shops at the same time in April and I will have to look presentable before I start. Since I couldn’t find who is doing this service near me  I had to take it into my own hands. I pulled  myself together after a long rest and sorted out my make up, hair and nail product collections! First I looked up on google how to make poly nails at home, and what are the best products to use. Then I found a video on you tube on how to apply these nails. It’s simple, fast, straightforward and doesn’t cost a fortune. They are strong and last long. So I ordered myself a kit and got on with my nails. Why I never tried to do this myself before I don’t know πŸ’, but surely now I won’t need a salon for that again. Plus it’s fun to see what you can create.

Day and night Hat cake...

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WARNING! NOT SUITABLE FOR DIET! This time something sweet.. I named it after the shape I created. I was trying a new recipe. The healthiest thing on this recipe is the mint leaf in the pic! And I can confirm that it tastes better than it looks.😁 I know this doesn’t look extra special, nor decorative. I made it to test a special recipe. No eggs and only takes 5 min to make. So simple, especially when you don’t have much time. I mixed 1 & 1/2 cups of self raising flour, 4-5 tbs of natural yogurt (I like 0% fat), 1tsp of baking powder, vanilla essence, 1 cup of caster sugar, 100g of melted butter and a pinch of salt. The yogurt was activated  almost immediately with baking powder, surprisingly it was rising really fast. While the cake was baking it almost doubled in size. This mix went into a microwaveable dish. At the bottom of the dish I placed grease paper. This made it easier to take it out after baking. And there we go 5 min later the cake was baked. When it comes to microwaves,

Cake or not cake...

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  If you guessed that it might be a chocolate or walnut cake with vanilla icing then you are wrong! In fact this is a savoury cake with cream cheese 😁. A rather unusual recipe! Yes, zucchini pie. As you can see above I used 1 zucchini, 1 egg, around 4 tbs of self-raising flour, 1&1/2 tsp of baking powder, cheese ( with this ingredient you can be generous, there is never enough of it πŸ˜‰), sausage and bacon, 1 small onion, 2 small garlic cloves,  a little bit of milk, also you can also add hard boiled eggs chopped into small pieces. I didn’t do it because my family prefer to have the boiled egg separately on the plate.  After all the ingredients  are mixed, I placed it into the oven for about 45-50 min at 160c. I used the cake toothpick technique to check if its done in the middle.  One time I was making a vegetarian version of this recipe and to make it richer I added small pieces of boiled potato.  When it was done I cooled it down and then put cheese spread on top. I wanted to cr

French potatoes which French don’t know about ...

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 One of the  Slovakian  traditional dishes that we call ‘French potatoes.’ Boil potatoes in their skins, remove the skin and chop them into fries or slice them as per dauphinoise potatoes. Then add chopped onions, a sausage like chorizo is good, or if you prefer a more spiced sausage we use Hungarian sausage (for my recipe I used frankfurters), boiled eggs, gherkins. I like to everything into similar sized pieces. I like to bake it in the old fashioned way, ie. Oil the dish and sprinkle the base with breadcrumbs, this will prevent the dish from burning. It also makes the dish easier to clean and it is tastier 😁. Place the potatoes at the bottom of the dish to form the first layer. Then form the second layer from the gherkins, sausage, onions and boiled eggs. Then covered with another layer of potatoes. When I am cooking for 2 people this is more than enough. (I used 3 medium potatoes, 2 hard boiled eggs, 1 &1/2 sausage, half a medium onion, 3 small gherkins) but if you are cooking
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  I hope you all had a Happy Valentine’s Day ! Mine had a promising start with breakfast in bed 😍.  It was fabulous; a wonderful paratha with berries and Nutella! A paratha looks like a pancake but isn’t.  It is originally from India.   The paratha  is an important part of a traditional breakfast from the Indian subcontinental. This flatbread is   Also popular in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives and Myanmar. Traditionally, it is an amalgamation of parat and atta which means layered cooked dough. |It is made using ghee but oil is also used. Some people may even bake it in oven for health reasons. Usually, the paratha is eaten with dollops of white butter on top of it. Side dishes which go very well with paratha are curd,fried eggs, omelette, mutton kheema (ground mutton cooked with vegetables and spices), nihari (a lamb dish), jeera aloo (potatoes lightly fried with cumin seeds), daal, and raita as part of a breakfast meal. It may be stuffed with potatoes, paneer, onion

What a better way to end the weekend..

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  Nice movie, warm cracking fire and good wine. Have a good end of the week my lovelies.  And I hope you have a good start to the week tomorrow.  😘

I thought I try...

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  I thought I will try this simple recipe and see how it works out. Two ingredients pizza dough.. 230ml of fat free plain yogurt A breakfast bowl of self raising flour  Knead for 10mins and rest for an hour (the dough and you). Top with ingredients of your choice and fry on the pan until is gets golden at the bottom. Then heat under the grill for about 12-15 min and here it is, the final result...  (I also put a bit of cheese into the crust. You can never have enough cheeseπŸ˜€πŸ§€) I tested the pizza on two teenage boys and they gave me a BIG πŸ‘ .

My Moussaka lasagne..

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So much deliciousness on the plate! It tastes even better than it looks I must say. How did I come to this idea? Simply craving lasagne but not having all the necessary ingredients at home. Also trying to cut on Carbs. :-) For those who like Mediterranean cooking I would advise to try it. I only swapped lasagne pasta for potato and aubergine. Sliced them thinly and fried them a bit with seasoning. Into the mincemeat I added more tomato sauce than you would in moussaka. Then layered with Bechamel Sauce with a bit of cheddar cheese like you would with lasagne, no egg. Bon appetit!