Turkish Cucumber Soup

Have you also had some of that wonderful summer weather lately? I have, and although I don’t have much time to spend outside, at least I managed to have dinner in the sun yesterday. We had a Pasta Salad (with mackerel and sun-dried tomatoes instead of chicken breast and corn) and this very light Turkish Cucumber Soup.

 

Turkish Cucumber Soup

1 cucumber
500 g yoghurt
2 tbsp. dried mint
salt
pink shrimps
garlic oil

Peel and de-seed the cucumber, then chop finely, sprinkle with salt and drain in a sieve. Wash of the salt, dap dry with a kitchen towel and mix with yoghurt, mint and shrimps. Leave to cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes. Salt to taste. Garnish with shrimps and garlic oil.

 
Notes:

Why should you first sprinkle the cucumber with salt, drain, make wet, dap dry and then salt again? Seriously, I have no idea. This seems to be the least logical recipe I have ever encountered. I’ll leave out this step next time. Anyway, it wasn’t much of a soup anyway, so any cucumber juices would have been welcome, as might some extra yoghurt.

The original recipe calls for two garlic cloves to be crushed, and pure olive oil to be used instead of garlic oil. I can definitely recommend that, as I thought the oil’s garlic taste was not strong enough for the soup; in fact, I didn’t like the oil at all and would not use it again (or let my guests decide that themselves).

We used shrimps because I saw that elsewhere; and pink shrimps because they were the cheapest and we have to pinch pennies at the moment (and because I wanted to add some extra seafood to our menu); but unfortunately, they weren’t really worth it. Either chose good, expensive shrimps, or leave them out altogether to make a vegetarian meal!

Dinner with my in-laws

Dinner at my in-laws’ last Wednesday. I always enjoy going there, not only because it’s always very entertaining and pleasant, but also because my mother-in-law is a fantastic cook. And she has outdone herself once again.

As a starter we had Beetroot Soup with Pumpkin and Horseradish Cream. It was supposed to have been beetroot soup, but in the last minute she discovered that it wasn’t going to be enough for the four of us and added some pumpkin – a daring step, I think, but it gave a very interesting taste. The main dish was Steak with Aubergine and Coriander, followed by Apple Bread Pudding. I only have recipes of the latter two, so I will only post those.

 

Steak with Aubergine and Coriander

3 aubergines
1 tsp. coriander seeds
1 lime
1 cm fresh ginger
2 shallots
2 red peppers, deseeded and sliced
coriander

1 steak pp.

Cut the aubergine into long thin slices. Sprinkle them with salt, place them in a sieve and place a heavy object on them so that as much water as possible will be squeezed out.

Place the coriander seeds in a dry pan and roast them until they begin to smell. Wash the lime, grate its zest and squeeze the lime. Grind the coriander seeds, lime zest and juice, ginger, shallots and red peppers until they form a smooth paste.

Pat the aubergines dry. Fry them for 6-8 minutes in some oil, then add the paste and 100 ml water, cover and cook for another 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Brush the steaks with oil. Heat a grill pan and grill the steaks for 1-2 minutes on each side until they are done but remain pink on the inside. Serve with the vegetables and sprinkle with coriander leaves.

Serves 4; a recipe from the local supermarket.

 

Apple Bread Pudding

bread
cinnamon
butter
apples

Butter some stale bread (e.g. baguette), sprinkle with cinnamon and roast in the oven until it is dry and crispy (but not too crispy, you will want to be able to bake it a second time), then cut into small cubes. Cut some apples into slices and cook until they fall apart. Keeping some of the bread cubes apart, mix the apple mixture with the bread cubes in a oven-save dish. Place the rest of the cubes on top, and roast for another 10-15 minutes.

Serves how many you wish; a family recipe.

The 55p meal

Roasted Vegetables with Poached Eggs and a Slice of Bread

I found myself a really cheap meal this weekend. My supermarket had reduced the price of a bag of vegetable selection (potatoes, carrots, turnips and onions) to 69p, which was enough to prepare two portions of roasted vegetables. Cube the vegetable, add some extra garlic (whole), place in an oven proof dish, add a marinade of honey, lemon juice, oil and some salt, stir and pop it in the oven. Or, in my case, into the microwave – it was the first time I prepared something with the microwave-grill-combo function, so I was glad that all went well. In the mean time, poach one egg per person (see my – very very very – basic description), prepare some bread, wait until the veggies are cooked and crispy, and enjoy.

Creamy Lemon Puy Lentils with Poached Eggs

2-4 spring onions
2 garlic cloves
1 can puy lentils
rind and juice of one lemon
4 tomatoes
1 teaspoon mustard (or more, if wished)
2 eggs
1 large blob crème fraîche

Ok, do your homework first. Chop (or slice) the spring onions, chop the garlic (or use a garlic press), open a can of puy lentils (or, *gasp*, cook them until tender, preferably including a bay leaf for extra taste), rind and juice the lemon and seed the tomatoes.

Then go on to fry the spring onion and the garlic until not-yet-burned. Add the mustard, the lemon rind and juice, and the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.

In the meanwhile, prepare a saucepan with salted, slightly simmering water (you can also use vinegar instead of salt) and poach the eggs for 2-3 minutes.

Add the lentils to the spring onion mixture, add the crème fraîche, warm up a little, season, and serve together with the poached egg.

Serves 1 1/2; adapted from Nicola Graimes’ 330 Vegetarian Recipes for Health

A Simple Supper

Green Beans with Bacon and White Sauce

Clean beans and boil them for 3-5 min in salted water. Drain and place in a casserole.
Bake a little bacon, with a small chopped onion, if you like, until brown. Place on top of beans.
Melt a spoonful of butter, and add flower. Add a bit of milk and a bit of single cream, stir and cook for a short while. Season with whatever you like (I only used salt, but remember that bacon is salty as well), and pour over beans.
Place the casserole in the oven and bake for 8 min. However, you might consider omitting this last step.

I had this for dinner, nothing else. It was a bit boring, I admit, but I hate it when cooking for a single person means being left with lots of open packages. If I were to serve it as a side dish, I would leave out the white sauce. Hmm. Perhaps I would even leave out the white sauce if I ever were to serve it as a main dish to myself again.

Escalivada and Broad Beans with Bacon

A new year requires a new blog, at least if you, like me, are a compulsive buyer of cookbooks, only to hardly make use of them, and have not yet found a method of exploring them in a convenient manner. Thus, my New Year’s resolution: to try out as many new recipes as possible and document them on this blog.

I will start with the first dish prepared this year. Since I’m still enjoying my semester break at home while my poor companion (Buzz, from now on) has to work full-time again, I’m in charge of getting something hot and edible on the table no later than nine o’clock (and preferably earlier). And as we’re still recovering from our holidays, including a trip to meet previously unknown family members, which, as you will know, cannot be made without heaps and piles of food (at one point we actually had a family dinner with 32 people), we opted for something light and healthy today.

Escalivada, Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking informs me, is Catalan for ‘Baked over Embers’. It’s a classical side dish, and amazingly easy. Even better, it is perfectly complemented by Broad Beans with Bacon (also known as Habas Españolas) both in nutritional values and in cooking time, as the latter can easily be prepared while the other is in the oven.

 

Escalivada

2-3 zucchini
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
2 red bell peppers
450 g butternut squash
6 whole garlic cloves, unpeeled and knife-crushed
juice of half a lemon
4 sprigs of thyme
4 tomatoes
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Slice all vegetables (but keep the tomatoes aside as you will only need them later) in large chunks. The butternut squash and perhaps the fennel will probably take a little longer than the rest to be cooked, so consider cooking them for some 10-20 minutes before you add the rest of the vegetables.

Try to find a roasting pan which will accommodate all vegetables in one layer – mine didn’t, but I knew I only had one anyway, and my tiny oven wouldn’t take a larger one, so I had to cook them for a little longer. Place the vegetables in the roasting pan, tuck the thyme between the vegetable chunks and sprinkle over oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Add crushed cumin seeds, too, if you like. Bake everything for 20 minutes at 220°C.

Stir the vegetables and add the roughly chopped tomatoes. Bake for another 15 minutes or until tender.

Serves 4-6; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.

 

Broad Beans with Bacon

1 chopped onion
1 garlic clove
50-150 g smoked bacon cubes
225 g fava beans
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp sherry

Fry the onion, garlic and bacon in some olive oil until the onions are browned. Add the fava beans and paprika, and stir-fry for a minute. Lower the heat, add the sherry and let cook for some minutes until the beans are tender, adding more sherry and/or oil if necessary.

Serves 2; adapted from Pepita Aris’ Spanish Food and Cooking.