Italian-Style Lunch

For this quick Italian-style lunch, my cousin and I had some homemade minestrone soup, accompanied by a mushroom and cheese panini, and an iceberg salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

Thought I'd share ^^

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MINESTRONE RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 1/2 to 1 block tofu
• 1 can white beans in tomato sauce
• 2-3 tomatoes, diced
• vegetable broth (I just cooked some diced carrots and celery in water, adjusted with salt, and used it all into the soup)
• seasoning
• 1 small zucchini, diced
• ~40g small pasta (macaroni, etc.)

  Procedure

1. In a large saucepan, crumble and cook tofu with seasoning over medium heat.
2. Add remaining ingredients and bring to a boil.
3. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

  Tips

     If, like me, you tend to not have broth laying around, and want to add more vegetables to the minestrone, you can do the following: Dice up some carrots and celery, and cook them in water. Adjust the broth flavor with salt, and add it all together into the soup.

Hashbrown Waffles

Lots of potatoes to use... So I thought I would try those waffle iron hashbrowns I saw once online. I haven't had hashbrowns since last November, so it was high time to have some.

I didn't grate enough potatotes, so mine were too thin and thus more crisp than anything. Accompanied by salad.

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HASHWAFFLES RECIPE

  Ingredients

• Potatoes, grated
• Salt, pepper, to taste

  Procedure

1. Squeeze grated potatoes between your hands to remove water.
2. Mix in salt and pepper and whatever other seasonings as desired.
3. Put between paper towels and squeeze out water. The less water there is, the crispier the hashbrown.
4. Heat waffle iron. If it's not nonstick, brush some oil on.
5. Put in potatoes and cook for around 10 mins.

Curry Samosas

This is something I've been wanting to make for a long time, but I kept on being put off because the recipe I had gotten from a teacher involved deep frying. Unless I'm really motivated, I don't like dealing with deep frying, despite how good deep-fried food is.

Today, I had a bit of inspiration. What if I baked the samosas instead of frying them? That would solve all my problems! A quick Google search confirmed that it was possible, and I got to work.

First, I made the curry. I make it more or less like all my other curries before, except instead of leaving it watery, I simmered it down to a thick consistency. Incidentally, I also used up a lot of leftovers that were laying about. In this curry, I put:

• leftover cooked potatoes
• leftover green beans that were stir-fried with small tofu pieces and a bit of tomato
• 1 carrot, diced finely
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• some ginger, cumin seeds, dried chili
• curry powder

After cooking the curry, seasoning it to taste, then letting it cool, I took out some thawed spring roll wrappers. Each of these were cut in 3 and left between folds of a clean, damp towel. Then I put a bit of curry, folded it into triangles, then put them in a greased baking pan. Brushed the tops with a bit of olive oil, then baked it at 205°C (400°F) for about 24-25 minutes.

For the raita (salad), I simply grated some cucumber, added plain yogurt, and seasoned with a bit of salt and pepper. This salad adds a refreshing note after the heavier samosas (due to the potatoes and the heat).

Here is a picture of my first batch. They're not so pretty since I hadn't gotten the hang of folding the samosas just right, and the spring roll wrappers were not dampened enough and kept on breaking.

And an unedited picture (I only edit the lighting and colors a bit) of the samosas before I took a bite out of one to show how it looks inside:

Potato salad

Potatoes were starting to grow things out of their buds... way time to eat them. I didn't what to make for dinner anyways.

Am I going to start blogging my college meal every day? I don't think so. Just these days, I'm getting some kind of food creativity/motivation, so I keep on doing things that are more than simply veggies and rice.

And I'm posting this more more for me to be able to find the dressing recipe again if needed.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients (amounts according to how much is required)

• potatoes
• carrot(s)
• cucumber (leftovers from yesterday's sushi night)
• 1 tsp mustard
• 1/2 lemon's juice
• 1 tbs mayonnaise/vegenaise
• salt and pepper, to taste

  Procedure

1. Dice potatoes, carrots (smaller than potatoes), slice cucumbers however you ant.
2. Steam or boil potatoes until tender. Steam or boil carrots until just cooked.
3. Refrigerate carrots and potatoes until cold.
4. Mix with cucumber slices.
5. In a bowl, mix mustard, lemon juice, mayonnaise, and season to taste. Multiply quantities as required.
6. Mix into the potato salad, careful to not mash the potatoes.

Veggie-ful lunch~

I haven't had much time not chance to cook a lot these days... What with exams, and stress, I was lucky to have a cousin over to help cook for me while my parents are gone on vacation.

My cousin left last night, though, so I had to feed myself. I remembered there were a few endives in the fridge, so I originally planned to make a salad. Somehow, I felt it was too boring, so I thought I'd make something a little different.

Chicon bites! (chicon is the term used in Belgium for endives)

Basically, I took the endive leaves and cut them in half to make curved boat-like recipients, in which I spooned a bit of filling. The whole plate was made with just 1 endive, 1 tomato, a few pieces of tofu skin log (it's kind of like an alternative to meat... it has a slightly sweet and savory flavor).

I ate a late breakfast with another cousin, and she had leftover salad dressing. So I mixed that with the diced ingredients, chopped some Vietnamese perilla, and filled my endive leaves. I also made a few cuts in the heart of the endive and poured some dressing inside.

The dressing is made of grainy mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, olive oil, and some balsamic vinegar. I topped the whole thing with some more perilla.

I accompanied it all with a small amount of carrot matchsticks and a yogurt dip in which I mixed a bit of oregano, a hint of paprika, and a speck of cinnamon.

Homemade Chunky Roots Curry

May 28, 2013
I tried making some curry...

Apparently, it was good enough that my cousin (who did some taste-testing before I served) said she could have a reaction (refer to Yakitate! Japan manga about that).

Served with some baguette and a cucumber salad.

In addition to the ingredients listed below, I have also tried using some of the "helper ingredients" found on the following image from Addicted to Curry (manga). Some may deem it unwise to follow a fictional manga for cooking, but I wanted to try. Some of the additions turned out very helpful.

Unfortunately, I didn't write down the recipe, so the following will be an approximation.

Ingredients:
- carrots
- potatoes
- mushrooms
- tomatoes
- cashews
- tofu
- curry powder
- ginger
- mushroom seasoning

Procedure:
1. Cut the carrots and potatoes in even chunks. Boil water and cook the carrots.
2. Once cooked, remove the carrot from the water, and use the same water to cook the potatoes.
3. Reserve some cooking liquid, and add some mushroom seasoning.
4. In a bigger saucepan, heat a little bit of neutral oil, and add in minced ginger and a bit of curry powder. Add in cut mushrooms.
5. Sauté mushrooms until cooked, then add in the carrots and potatoes, reserving 2 or 3 chunks of potatoes aside.
6. Add in the liquid from step 3. Crush the reserved chunks of potatoes and add in (this will thicken the curry without adding more starch).
7. Add more curry powder and seasoning as seems fit, then throw in diced tofu, diced tomatoes and halved cashews.
8. Let simmer on medium-low heat, then serve.

For the cucumber salad:
1. Slice cucumbers fairly thinly.
2. Make a dressing out of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a hint of sugar.
3. Mix

The cucumber salad will help to cut the fire of the curry.

Potato salad~

Sept 16, 2012

- Potatoes

- Carrot

- Celery (green celery makes it prettier, but I only had white)

- Lemon

- Salt, pepper

Dice the veggies. Boil the potatoes. Slightly cook the carrots until they aren't raw, but they aren't soft either. If you want to, do the same with the celery.

Mix everything together, add salt and pepper to taste.

My proportions:

3 medium potatoes + 1 carrot + ~1 branch celery + 1 lemon