Favourite sushi.

Avocado maki, wasabi, shoyu, inari-zushi and edamame in ponzu sauce (shoyu and lemon juice).

Raspberry turnovers.

Frozen puff pastry. You can fill it with almost everything, throw it into the oven and what comes out is deliciousness.

For these bleeding birds thaw the puff pastry rectangles a bit, then put a few frozen rasperry on each, sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon, fold and seel it. Mix 2 tablespoons soy milk with 2 tablespoons sugar and brush turnovers with, cut stripes into the dough or use a cookie cutter. Then bake it for about 15 minutes.

Spaghetti Squash!

Another recipe in the "looks bland - tastes terrific"-category. And it's pumpkin and sqash season. And oh, I love the word squash. Sounds (and looks) more like a noise than a vegetable. Squash! Squashsquash!

This.....is a spaghetti squash:

I halfed my spaghetti squash and cooked it for 30 minutes unpeeled in very salty water with bay leaves. 

 After cooking it looks like this:

 

Now you can scrap out with a scoop the squash seed first and then the good part - the "spaghettis". The taste of this squash is quite neutral so you can use any hearty sauce you would use for pasta. I made it this time with a great creamy coconut-sauce with eggplants and sweetheart cabbage.

While the squash (!) is still cooking, cut eggplant into cubes, mince the garlic and fry both in 1 teaspoon oil, then add a little water, just to cover the eggplant.

Cook eggplant for about 5-10 minutes until almost all the water has gone. Cut the sweetheart cabbage into small pieces and add with another little water to the eggplants. Cook for 2 minutes, then add either coconut cream (liquid) oder a bit more water and the creamed coconut I used. It's a firm block as you can see in the pictures above, I used 100g and it melts in the hot water. I spiced this with vegetable broth, salt, pepper, a hint of curry. Cook all things together for another 5 minutes, then add fresh cilantro leaves. Serve with the hot squash spaghettis. (My squash was good for about 4-5 big portions altogether). Squash!

Coffee-Pecan-Brownies.

Coffee, chocolate, nuts. Great combination.

- 2 cups flour

- 1 1/2 cups sugar

- 3/4 cup cocoa

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon salt 

- 250g margarine

- 3/4 cup soymilk

- 1 espresso (still hot)

Mix dry ingredients well, than add margarine. If these are really good mixed first add the still warm espresso and than soymilk.

Spread the dough on a baking sheet, and put one pecan nut for every brownie onto the dough. Bake for 20-25 minutes, gas mark 3.
Let them cool for  at least 10 minutes before cut into pieces. Store in an airtight container and be patient: they're waaaay better the next day and as luscious as brownies have to be.

Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I have different recipes, most of them with egg-replacer (which I hate, they're a waste of money and totally needless) and other things, so I mixed a few together and made this. It is one of the easiest doughs you can think of! The cookies went crispy but still chewy and I think they're perfect. I had about 75g chocolate chips or so, but you can use up to 100g or leave them out and use something else instead. White chocolate chips, nougat chunks, nuts, cinnamon,...but here is the classic way:

- 1 cup sugar (I used raw cane sugar, very caramelish)

- 0,5 cup margarine

- 1,5 flour

- 0,5 teaspoon cream of tartar

- chocolate chips

Mix together sugar and margarine until very soft. Mix flour with cream of tartar* then add it to the sugar-margarine-mix. Mix very quick, add chocolate chips or whatever you wanna use and then chill the dough for about 1h in the fridge. It has to be very cold and firm, otherwise your cookies will melt into one big ugly megacookie, which is not a good option. This happend to me before and no, it is not tasty at all.

When it's chilled, preheat your oven while putting the cookies onto a baking sheet. I used about 1 big table spoon of dough per cookie. Just roll a ball out of the dough and flatten it only a little bit with your hand, put on sheet. They will spread a little while baking, so don't make them to flat. You can also flatten them with a fork to have patterns on it.

Then put them into the preheated oven and bake for 8 to 10 minutes on gas mark 6. When golden brown remove from oven and let sit for a minute before you move them onto a plate or something.

*I always use cream of tartar instead of usual baking powder. You can use a lot of it in a dough without tasting it.