garlic

cilantro and smoked almond pesto

by Eva on March 16, 2013

First comes first, thank you all for your lovely comments on my last post, you made my day. I am caught of guard about your honest emails, you might not know how helpful this is for me. I appreciate you all so much!

The other thing that’s bothering me about being new in town, is starting from scratch with everything. Beside the administrative stuff like getting a new driver’s license and car registration (check and check), I also have to find random shops like favorite groceries and pizza delivery service. But I postponed the search for a new dentist, there is no need to rush, who want’s that? Being so lazy about that topic is maybe the reason why I ended up at one of my last dental practice. This place stuck in the late 70’s including the receptionist hairstyle. I was amazed to find a computer on her desk, I rather expected paper stacks and steno notebooks. I spend the next hour saucer-eyed and with too much blood in my head. Let me explain… My former dentist was a little on the short side, means while he was sitting on his little stool his assistant pushed the antique dentist chair as low as possible and my feed went up and my head went down. That explained the (overflowing) blood in my head. And why I had my eyes gapping wide open? While he worked on my teeth he explained his practice situation. Turned out there had been a fire in his former rooms and he had to move temporary. One night after business hours a guy broke in, not for stealing the dentist’s favorite dental drill but for (gasp) self-immolation. He managed to survive without injury, I guess – I wasn’t able to ask any questions. But he burned down the whole place. I felt sorry for my tiny dentist, he had been still outraged weeks later. You might wonder why someone should try to perform suicide at his dentist office? Well I did, hanging there nearly upside down, with an over performing brain due to an unreasonable amount of blood and someone else’s fingers in my mouth. I put two and two together while listening to his next stories. Turned out he was head over heals in love with a guy in Berlin, he found it appropriate to share this with me because I am from Germany and… I don’t know actually. But suicide out of spurned love made sense to me. I spare you the rest of his stories (involved carnival in Germany) because you won’t believe me anyway. Needless to say, this is no fairy tale, all true. It was so far the most bizarre and entertaining dentist experience in my life.

Back to business, Mr. F and many more are not a big fan of cilantro because it is too soapy for their taste. I shared this opinion but it grew on me and now I love it. I made this pesto for a couple of times and keeping it more or less “plain”, I mean no other spices or flavors added, allows me to combine it with more dishes. It is great as a base for a sandwich, fish burger, with baked potatoes, grilled meats, for seasoning rice, garnish for soup especially this one… Let me know if you have a combination I missed so far.

cilantro and smoked almond pesto

ingredients

about 100 g / 3.5 oz. (1 small bunch of) fresh cilantro, washed and dried
40 g / 1.4 oz. smoked almonds
½ -1 garlic clove
sea salt
60 ml / ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil

instructions

Add cilantro, almonds, garlic to your food processor and blend until crumbly. Add olive oil and process just until incorporated. Season with salt to taste but keep in mind almonds are already salted.

{ 2 comments }

red beet tartine

by Eva on May 4, 2012

As I am writing this I have a huge smile on my face because I am in Charleston, SC for a little beach vacation, some sightseeing and a lot of food. I never heard before about Charleston being such a great foodie city, but everyone I told about my vacation plans, was mentioning the great food and told me: “you’ll love it”. And I do, I really do! I am going to tell you about the restaurants I tried and all this whole shebang as soon as I am back home and able to close the first button of my pants again.

What I am looking forward to do while exploring strange cities, is visiting the local farmers market. Although I basically had all my meals and the ones in between, cooked and served by someone else and I didn’t cook more, than what you see on the picture above since one week, but a stroll over a farmers market can lead to a flash of genius for future kitchen adventures. Here are some pictures from Charleston, more are about to come.

Red beets are not exactly eye candy, it’s more falling in love on the second sight. The dream team combination is hands down with dill and horseradish. Fresh dill was an easy find on the farmers market, horseradish not so. Hey someone mixed wasabi (aka Japanese horseradish) with mayonnaise and sells it in jars in your supermarket, can’t get easier than that. If you are not a fan of burning inside your nose and teary eyes, buy the small jars with white horseradish and mix it with yoghurt, adjust the ratio just how you like. If fresh garlic (looks like a small version of leek) is not available for you, simply use 2 sliced garlic cloves and skip the topping of the beets.

red beet tartine

serves two

ingredients:

4 small red beets

1 fresh garlic

olive oil

wasabi mayonnaise

small bunch fresh dill, chopped

4 slices of sourdough bread or baguette

aluminium foil and baking sheet to save your oven from potential dripping

instructions:

Preheat your oven to 200 C / 400 F. Wash the beets and the garlic, pat dry and cut off the leaves. Keep the garlic green but discard (or better save for another purpose) the green part of the beets. Put on one aluminium foil sheet big enough to hold all beets and still closeable. Drizzle with olive oil, top with the garlic green and make a pouch with the foil, closing at the top. Place on a baking sheet and cook 45 minutes in the oven.

Slice the remaining (white) part of the garlic and Make a small pouch, add some olive oil and sprinkle with salt.

Remove the beets from the oven, don’t open the foil and let steam for 10 minutes. Meanwhile put the garlic pouch into the oven for 10 minutes. If you like you can add your bread to the oven to crisp it up.

Open the aluminium foil and let sit until cool enough to handle. Discard the garlic greens.With a paper towel rub over the beets to remove the skin, slice the beets and the bread and assemble the tartine: spread some (about 2 teaspoons per slice) wasabi mayonnaise, a layer of beet slices, top with garlic and sprinkle with dill and salt if desired. A drizzle with some olive oil would be great.

{ 4 comments }

tomato crêpe rolls

by Eva on April 7, 2012

Some days ago someone asked me some questions about this little blog. It was a great conversation and one of the things we were talking about was, how I come up with new ideas, inspirations and recipes. This was quite interesting for me and I was happy to discuss this because someone else (who happens to know a lot about food blogs, you can say a pro) told me to specify my taste, say to give it all one direction. This was a couple of months ago and I thought a lot about this single opinion but I don’t really get it. Would it be helpful or more interesting for you, if I would just write about cakes, healthy or German food? Actually all I do is cooking what I like to eat and compromise and limit myself to get more readers is not who I am. Although I can use you and this blog as a alibi for making weekly cakes… who am I kidding one cake a week is just the necessary minimum in my neck of the woods.

Many departments are involved in the decision process of a blog post. Imagine myself on a farmers market or at the grocery store, the dept. of view (my eyes) see some fresh herbs, I rub one basil leaf between the dept of sense of touch (my fingers), the dept. of scent (my nose) smells their aroma but the dept. of taste (my mouth) has to veto: again pesto or herb quiche? Nope! Fresh crisp apples are the next in my radar, they meet the criteria and land in my bag. The process starts all over again as I discover some chocolate, I never get a veto for that. My shopping bag contains what’s on my list and the other part is what looks or smells good or what is interesting or new to me. You might realized until now the smart dept. (brain) is barely involved, although I got huge resources up there, why bother if I don’t need it? This is before I start with a blog post, the first step might be: I think about apple pancakes or how the apples meet the chocolate and they lived happily ever after.

The moral of the story, what you see here is what I had on my plate, sometimes once, sometimes now and then and sometimes all the time. This has no direction at all, no limits (and just occasionally brain).

This week is all about crêpe, they crossed my mind as I found my pan by accident, long time no see… I accomplished unsweetened crêpe with a tomato spread I was dreaming about for a while and came up with this little rolls. They look great on a brunch buffet, as an appetizer or how I love them, as company for salad.

For the crêpe:

This makes about 4 crêpes

1 large egg

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup all purpose flour

2 Tbsp melted and cooled, unsalted butter

1/4 tsp salt

Put everything in your blender and mix just until combined. Cool for 2 hours.

Bring your pan to medium high heat, grease the pan slightly. Pour in the batter and swirl the pan until evenly distributed. Then the batter starts to dry at the top, turn the crêpe and cook for about another minute. When ready remove from the pan and place on a plate. Go on with the remaining batter.

For the tomato spread:

This recipe yields more than you might need for the crêpes, remaining tomato spread is great on rustic bread like ciabatta. Add a few tablespoons cream cheese if you like.

150 g / 5.29 oz. sun dried tomatoes in olive oil

1 garlic clove, diced

1 handful herbs like parsley, rosemary, sage, thyme

5 Tbsp freshly grated cheese like aged Gouda, Pecorino Romano, Parmigiano Reggiano

3 Tbsp olive oil

salt and sugar to taste

freshly grated pepper

Put all ingredients in your food processor and blend until you got a nice paste, you might have to scape down the sides. Add salt, sugar and pepper to taste.

Assemble the tomato crêpe rolls:

Apply evenly the tomato spread over the crêpe then roll it up. Cut into individual 2.5 cm / 1 inch rolls.

{ 4 comments }

cilantro and smoked almond pesto