Parsley Pesto Again!

This pesto is slightly tart, fruity and tastes like summer. It's basically the Parsley Cashew Pesto  but with only a third of the cashews and additional dried cranberries.The dried cranberries give this pesto not only a tart taste but also a very light texture.

No Egg Salad w/ Chickpeas And Raw Zucchini

There are lots of vegan "Egg"-salad or No-egg-salad recipes out there. As I can't follow recipes anyway I just made a version of my own, vaguely remembering what other people use and what I used the last time when I made one (I think I used a recipe back then). I added raw zucchini to have a more fresh taste.

- small can chickpeas
- 100g pasta
- one small finely grated zucchini (or half a medium one)
- a few spoons vegan mayo
- salt (if you have use kala namak but be careful)
- parsley


Cook pasta al dente and let cool a bit. Drain chickpeas and smash with a potato smasher or a fork. You can smash the pasta too if you want to, to have this egg-salad consistency. I had small mezzo pennones so I didn't want to smash those beauties.

Mix chickpeas with mayo and parsley, salt slightly. 

Then add the finely grated zucchini and pasta. Mix thoroughly and season to your taste. Cool the salad in the fridge for at least 30 minutes

 

Pasta with red cabbage and orange.

- 250g tagliatelle
- 250ml soy cream
- 1 large red onion
- red cabbage
- 1 orange
- garlic
- oil (olive oil, for example. Pumpkin seed oil works here very good, too)
- salt, pepper

Cook pasta according to instructions. Meanwhile finely dice the onion and smash the garlic (I used two cloves). Fry in 1 teaspoon oil and add 100ml water. Shred the cabbage and add to the onion/garlic mixture.
Bring to the boil and cook for about 3-4 minutes, then turn off the heat. Add salt, pepper and soy cream.  The cabbage is supposed to be just slightly cooked. Not raw anymore, but not completely soft and done.
I had the half of small cabbage head.

Peel and slice the orange.
Mix the tagliatelle with the cabbage-cream sauce on a plate and add some slices of orange. 
I love orange and salt by the way. Just try one piece on its own with a little salt sprinkled on it.

Miso Wasabi Pasta Salad. And dinosaurs.

dressing:
- oil
- soy sauce
- miso
- vinegar
- agave syrup
- miso

salad:
- 250g noodles 
- 200g tofu
- one zucchini
- fresh coriander
- smoked salt
- olive oil

Cook the noodles and prepare everything else while they're cooking. I had dinosaur-shaped pasta which is highly recommended. If you poor thing can't find anyone, use regular pasta of your preferred shape. I even think this salad would be wonderful with glass noodles but I haven't seen any cute shaped glass noodles ever, so where's the fun in that?

Whisk some oil (rather neutral in taste, like safflower oil) with the rest of the ingredients for the dressing. I had a tiny amount of wasabi, just enough that there is this hint of its fresh spiciness. Adjust to your taste.
The miso works really well with the wasabi and the syrup completes all this hearty and tangy flavours to a umami deliciousness.

Cut your tofu into very small cubes, the zucchini cubes can be a bit bigger. I had a yellow zucchini but the taste isn't very different to the green ones.
Heat a little olive oil and fry the tofu until it gets slightly brown and crispy. Add some smoked salt and then the zucchini. If everything is almost done, deglaze with soy sauce, then turn off the heat.

If the pasta is done, drain and toss with dressing. Then add tofu, zucchini and coriander, mix well.

I put the warm salad into jars as we were heading for a picnic and it was perfect as it could sit for 2 hours or so before we ate it.

Summer food.

From time to time I cook at punk shows for a bunch of people and I never know what to cook until last minute. I barely can follow a recipe, recipes make me totally confused and so I just think about something that sounds good, make a rough plan and go shopping. If I find everything I planned - yay. If I don't find everything - I make something different. It doesn't matter because I use everything I find in the particular kitchen where I cook and often change the plans during cooking anyway or add something I never thought of beforehand. I improvise and it's always way too much but more or less it's tasty.
Yesterday I got asked: "So you make awesome stuff off the top of your head?" Erm, yes. Kind of.
But then I always forget how I made it, which is irrelevant most of the time, but yesterday I made the best lentil salad ever. I hope, that I can remember everything.

- red lentils
- ground hazelnuts
- garlic
- lemon (juice and zest)
- mint
- salt, pepper, paprika, ginger, soy sauce
- olive oil
- dash of sugar

Heat a little olive oil in a pot, add lentils. Stir and fry for about 5 minutes. Add water until lentils are covered and stir from time to time. Red lentils cook very quickly, from 10-15 minutes. Add salt, pepper, ginger (I didn't have fresh one, I used powder as I found this in the kitchen and thought: oh, ginger!), juice from one lemon, soy sauce, sugar.

In a small pan heat some olive oil and add ground hazelnuts and smashed and chopped garlic, stir well until it smells very, very good and the hazelnuts are getting a bit darker. Turn off the heat and put the pan aside.
Chop a lot of fresh mint. When the lentils are done fold in the mint and the hazelnut-garlic mixture together with the zests of one lemon.

Serve on chicory leaves and enjoy. I might have good ideas for cooking, unfortunately I don't have good ideas for names. So this is just a very good summer lentil salad. Or THE summer lentil salad.

Yesterday I served this salad along with arugula salad with caramelised cherry tomatoes; the dressing was something like balsamic vinegar, oil, tahini, salt, water, mustard. The main dish was tagliatelle with a zucchini-snow peas-sage-cream sauce and roasted walnuts, which were also very good and I was very happy with the result altogether.

In general: just add roasted nuts and as much fresh herbs as you can and everything will be perfect.

summer lentils

arugula with caramelised cherry tomatoes

tagliatelle w/ zucchini, snow peas, oat cream, roasted walnuts

Lime maple dressing.

For a nice and cosy silvester potluck (for which everyone cooked waaay too much) I made a pasta salad with the best dressing I've ever made before. 
I'm seeing lots of different salads with this dressing, not only pasta. I see potatoes, I see chickpeas, I see green salad and fresh tomatoes, lamb's lettuce and so on and on....

for the dressing:

oil

2 big pink (or red) onions

2 cloves of garlic

maple syrup

juice of 1 lime

salt, pepper

rest of this salad was:

500 g pasta (linguine)

200g cherry tomatoes

1 small can artichokes

 Finely dice the onions, smash the garlic gloves and dice, too.

Fry on medium heat in a little oil until onions and garlic are getting translucent, stir from time to time.

Deglace with maple syrup. I don't have a clue how much I used, but it was approximetaly 100ml.

Add salt and pepper and let simmer for 2 minutes to caramelize the onions. Then add the lime juice and simmer for another 1 or two minutes.

When I tried it, it was very sourish so I added another table spoon maple syrup. Just do this to your taste.

Then put the dressing aside and cook the pasta al dente.

In the meanwhile, cut cherry tomatoes in half and sautée in a little oil til they begin to melt. For about 4 minutes or so. Drain the artichokes and cut in half.

Mix everything with the linguine and add dressing. I let sit the salad over night but in retrospective I'd say it was even better when it was fresh.

Bento.

I made a non-fancy but yummy bento for my first day at my new job tomorrow.

Cucumber salad

- diced cucumber

- soy cream 

- salt, mustard

- mint, dill, basil

Baby carrots

Pasta salad

- Rigatoni

- fried red bell pepper and zucchini, glazed with a tsp cider vinegar

- sage, basil, thyme

- salt, pepper, smoked paprika

- soy cream 

Chocolate soy milk


Work sucks. Bentos do not. 

Creamy 8-minute-pasta.

- 200g pasta 

- 1 big onion

- 200ml coconut milk 

- salt, pepper, veggie broth powder

- fresh herbs e.g. mint, sage, basil

- oil

I came home from a meeting quite late and was totaly hungry but the fridge was quite empty today and I wasnt' really in the mood for cooking. I found the canned coconut milk and thought of a simple pasta dish - in the end it turned out way better than I expected. It's a very good idea to have fresh herbs on your windowsill. Almost everything is 100% better with it.

Heat a pot with enough water for the pasta. Cut the onion finely into small cubes and fry them in a teaspoon oil until they're translucent. Add coconut milk and spices, let simmer on medium heat. 

When the water is boiling, add the pasta and a big dash of salt, let them cook for 8 minutes (or whatever your pasta instructions tell you), stirring from time to time. 

Also stir the sauce from time to time, right before the pasta is done you can turn off the heat. 

Drain your pasta and add to the sauce. Cut your herbs into fine stripes and mix everything very well.

The sauce is not that coconut-ish as it might sound. It's more a very creamy, white sauce with the aroma of the herbs you use and the hearty taste of the veggie broth. Only a slight hint of coconut, but this may depend on your coconut milk brand. Of course you could use soy cream as well, the sauce will be ready in the same time.

Mint-Walnut-Pesto w/ Linguine.

A lot of fresh mint leaves, walnuts, olive oil (this ridicilous good olive oil I brought from a France trip this summer), splash of orange juice, sea salt, fresh ground pepper and two cloves of mashed garlic make a hell of a pesto. Love mint! Next time I will toast the walnuts beforehand, I just forgot. Might make the pure deliciousness even more delicious, uh. 

Cannelloni.

Recently I had cannelloni in a quite quick version. It took me about 15 minutes to prepare and about 30 minutes to bake it. 

The filling was made of

- TVP

- tomato purée

- red bell pepper pesto

- garlic

- salt, pepper

The tomato sauce was made of

- 1 small can tomatoes

- salt, pepper

The topping was a béchamel sauce

- margarine

- oil

- soya milk

- salt, pepper, vegetable broth

- mustard

- dash of lemon juice

I mixed the TVP with salt and pepper, soaked it in hot water and added the other ingredients. If you don't have a vegan red bell pepper pesto just add a little olive oil and maybe more tomato purée or diced fresh bell peppers. Let sit the mixture for 5 minutes til TVP is more or less soft.

Fill cannelloni with the filling, layer in a casserole dish and pour canned tomatoes over it. More salt and pepper and minced garlic.

Then I made a béchamel sauce for topping and baked it with tin foil for 20 minutes, then another 10 minutes without the tin foil.

Pasta with zucchini-almond-tofu-cream-sauce, yes!

Today I had this creamy tofu-veggie combo with pasta and I still have leftovers for tomorrow, yeah. 

Cook some pasta and while it's cooking fry diced zucchini and almond-nut-tofu in a little olive oil. Add light soysauce, pepper, mashed garlic and vegan pesto rosso when tofu is golden and fry for another 3 minutes. Add some soy or oat cream - that's it. Again, this was a quite quick meal, the sauce was done before the pasta was. So get your ass in the kitchen and try it!

Yesterday I had this as a dessert:

I bought some apple-pear-compote, layered it with some vanilla sauce and served it with a little cocoa on it.

Penne with chard and cherry tomatoes

Fried chard with cherry tomatoes and a little cheezly, served with penne:

Parpadelle With Oyster Mushroom Sauce

200g parpadelle

200g oyster mushrooms

250 ml Soycream

1 small onion 

3 cloves garlic

fresh parsley

salt, pepper,

1 teaspoon vegan red pesto (optional)

1 teaspoon olive oil

A creamy sauce with the distinguish flavour of oyster mushrooms and garlic:

Cut mushrooms into stripes and fry in olive oil. Add onion and garlic and fry for about 5 minutes, stir from time to time. Cook pasta while preparing the sauce.

Add soycream to mushrooms and season with salt and pepper and the red pesto and add maybe a little from the pasta water and stir well. Let simmer on low heat til the pasta's done.

Serve pasta with the sauce and add a lot of fresh cut parsley. It's quite quick, the sauce takes only a few minutes and will be done if the pasta is!

Delicious pan-fried Tofu with hokkaido squash.

- 1/2 hokkaido squash
- 1 big navet
- 175 g smoked tofu
- one handful small rice-shaped pasta (any kind of pasta will work, this one just looks cute)
- salt, pepper, garlic
- coriander
- olive oil
- 1 lemon

Cut sqash into pieces and fry in olive oil, then add tofu and garlic. When the tofu is golden add
navet, salt and pepper and stir it from time to time. Add a handful of small pasta and fill up with one glass of water. The small pasta will be done very quickly and soak up all the water.
If it's all done sprinkle with lots of coriander/cilantro and add juice of one lemon.