Quinoa aux legumes

J'adore le quinoa. J'ai une tres bonne recette avec des epices, des lentilles, tout ca que je vous posterais un de ces 4...mais la c'etait juste un lunch rapide avec les legumes du frigo.

Faire cuire une demi tasse de quinoa dans une tasse d'eau.
Faire cuire des legumes: moi j'avais du fenouil et des carottes
Faites griller quelques graines: ici un melange graines de tournesol, graines de citrouille et pignons de pin
Ajouter quelques feuilles de coriandre fraiches. (on ne la voit pas sur la photo car il pleuvait ...mais finalement quand j'ai commence a manger je me suis dit que ca manquait vraiment et je suis allee en chercher sur mon balcon ;-)
Bon appetit !

Bacalao à Brás

Despite this is really good and typical portuguese, it is better to keep this recipe for exceptional occasion as codfish (bacalau) is an endangered species.
En francais c'est la morue sechee.

Well yesterday we had this exceptional occasion: one of our friend is leaving for Mexico, so a portuguese friend cooked for us this typical dish.

The name à Brás is coming from the cook who invented this recipe. It is one of the most popular ways to prepare codfish in Portugal. It is made from thin strips of cod mixed with onions, and thin strips of potatoes bound by eggs.

You need this salty dried codfish ...but for ecological reasons it is maybe time to try to find another fish that could replace it.
You first let the fish in the water to remove a bit the salt, for few days.





You fry some garlic slices in olive oil








Then you fry few onions slices in olive oil








you add the fish and stir up everything




Well here is the tricky part on which portuguese people will maybe fight: the potatoes: apparently there is two ways to used them, either as boiled squared cut potatoes either fried...and I even discovered another one : add dried patatas fritas from the bag !!







Stir it up for few minutes

and then pour some eggs with continuoulsly stirring up...it is almost done






....add some black olives and some decoration...et voila !

pate a tartiner maison..et light ;-)

My flatmate, who says he is not so fond of sweet thing (yeah yeah the same one that eats the cookies I am baking ;-), is crazy about chocolate. Well, he maintains that he could live 10 months without it....he could yeah...
So anyway, I love it as well, so I am not gonna complain...because sunday he decided to make nutella.

Here are the ingredients he used: 250g margarine+ 200g chocolate...and well normally he used sweet concentrated milk...but we could not find that in albert heijn...so let's make it light and add some "fromage blanc 0%" instead ;-)

He just melted in a pan, the chocolate and the margarine, added a bit of sugar and then once everything was melted, he added a bit of "fromage blanc" until he got the stuff a bit thicker.
It is not bad !

Edit from march:
Finally we found some concentrated milk, so we tried...and despite the consistency was much better, I did not like it so much it was way too sweet, so we just try a new thing: a mix between both and I think it is perfect:250g margarine+ 200g chocolate+150 sweet concentrated milk+ 2 big spoons of "fromage blanc"+2 drops of bitter almond
It's perfect !

cookies figs and cereals

I made these delicious cookies from the recipe from papilles et pupilles. I just replaced the white flour by whole wheat flour and the sugar by only 80g of brown sugar.
Miam!
Hier soir j'ai fait ces delicieux biscuits dont j'ai trouve la recette sur le site de papilles et pupilles. J'ai juste remplace la farine blanche par de la farine complete et mis seulement 80 g de sucre roux. Un regal !

customized lunch

Pour le lunch, j'ai fait ma faineante et utilise les restes:
Les restes de riz aux epices et du tofu marine du repas de mercredi soir.
J'avais envie de gouter le tofu autre que froid en salade. J'ai donc fait revenir le riz dans un peu d'huile d'olive, j'ai ajoute le tofu.
Quand tout etait chaud j'ai ajoute queslques graines de lin.
Et voila !

Recette des florentins

That looks really ugly on pictures but these stuffs are divine....

200g creme fraiche
200g honey (=miel)
200g sugar, I recommand to take white sugar if you are a beginner because then it is more easy to see when it turns into caramel.

Cook all of this in a pan (=casserole in french)
Do not stop stirring it up (=remuer) until it starts to be a blond caramel

Add a mix of 300g dried fruits (fruits confits + silvered almonds)
Ajouter un melange de 300g de fruits secs (fruits confits + amandes effilees)
Here I took full almonds that I put in the blender (if you had seen the price of 3 silvered almonds here, you'll understand) .... and actually that was also quite great !
oranges confites that I cut in really small pieces
and cherrys green/yellow/red for the color. What do you mean you never saw green cherrys ??? ;-)
it is better to warm this mix up a bit before adding it to the caramel.
(=ajouter le melange fruits secs + amandes legerement tiedi afin de ne pas faire grainer le caramel)

reheat it for a few moment = faites recuire quelques instants.


ok here at this point I realise I do not have the english vocabulary...so try to follow ..any comments are welcome to help me correct !
you are gonna put that on this kind of cooking paper on a oven plate and with a teaspoon you put small amount of the dough on it WITH ENOUGH SPACE !
Me I always end up having a giant florentin that I will cut afterwards ;-)
= sur plaque du four, papier sulfurise beurre, avec cuillere a cafe deposer petit tas de pates (ESPACER SUFISAMENT)

put under the really warm gril for ~10 minutes.

remove them from the paper (Do not try to be greedy it is caramel so it is HOT!) and leave it cool down.

Then spread 200g melted chocolate (=chocolat fondu) with a knife on the flat side of the florentins and put that on cellophane (this plastic paper) for the shining effect!

OK next time I'll put on the recipe in french...this will be a good exercize for english speaking people ;-)

Enjoy !

"No smell" challenge

What ? yeah I know this title is a bit weird.. It could look like I wanna say I am normally cooking smelly things...but well it is something a bit different.

This evening I invited a nice colleague for dinner...but he can not smell (il n'a pas d'odorat).
So my challenge is to cook a dinner using a lot of different colors (even if we will eat with the candles ...well, just because there is no other lights in my living room...what are you gonna imagine!) and different textures, and still different sort of spices...

So here is the menu:
Apero: tapenade on whatever bread I will find I did not find my favorite one...and it is wednesday after work..I did not have time to bake one...
then a salade with tofu cubes from Clea cuisine

chicken curry with rice with spices


and in dessert.... florentins ;-)

I will come to update the recipes soon as well.
Now have to start cooking.

preparation of the tofu. They have been marinated the whole afternoon in soja sauce + garlic + ginger...and are now ready to be recovered of sesame seeds.

saturday evening

argggggghhhh I was writing for more then 10 minutes when my firefox crashed...grrrrrr..
OK I'll come edit this post ASAP to rewrite all what was lost..

So..here it is:

Saturday evening I invited some colleagues of mine: nice Dutch ladies !
I served them tapenade as appetizers

then a salade with mango: I used two types of salad: normal one and "rucola" which is a bit more spicy and gives a nice contrast with the sweetness of mango that I had baked quickly in honey. I seasonned with a vinaigrette made with balsamico, honey and olive oil and add some sesame seeds on top.
For the main dish I made something "simple" because I love the simple taste of fresh salmon just baked in the oven with "fleur de sel de Guerande" and rosemary (=romarin). I served it with rasped carottes and endives stirred fried in olive oil. A nice side dish that I stole from my flatmate: the contrast between the sweetness of carottes and the little bitterness of endives is great !
To finish I served fennel cookies. You can see the recipe on Clea's blog biscuits vanilles aux graines de fenouil. I put too much rice milk and then add some flour...so they were tasting a bit like some kind of typical Saint Nicolas cookies... I do not have a picture of them as my roomate finsihed them before I had chance to take one... but I baked some again the next day...with the right amount of rice milk and here is how they look like.


They were tasting different...though they were both good ;-)

I did it !

I finally created my blog..

Like its title says..it is gonna be about foooood !
I saw so many excellent cooking blogs that I hesitated for long, but well I am in the last phase of my Phd and I need to cook to relax...so I would like to share it with you.

I love cooking. Since I live on my own, I always invited friends which gave me a good excuse to spend my afternoon cooking. This has been enhanced since I lived in the Netherlands. Most of the Dutch people think food is only a vital need.... and I took it like a challenge to always prepare them "handmade" food to make them change their mind and appreciate this moment of conviviality.

Posts will be either in french or english as I want my french friends to be able to read it quickly without zapping and my foreigner friends to be able to check it as well.

Well, please enjoy this blog and bon appetit!