It’s funny how the more free time you have, the less productive you are. At least in my case. I have been incredibly lazy when it comes to cooking (actually not only cooking) during all summer (although the fact that we had three months of suffocating heat also helped to keep me away from the kitchen) and now that I started college (yay!) I find myself thinking about what new recipes I could try…even if I know I won’t have that much time for it.
I tried this sauce last week, and absolutelly loved it. When Heidi wrote that it can go with almost anything, she means it: I tried it on potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and a dish of ‘Gypsy pot’ (chickpeas, pumpking and pear stew). And although it goes better with regular potatoes than sweet potatoes, it was delicious anyway.
Heidi’s ‘Magic Sauce’
Adapted from: 101 cookbooks
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons sweet paprika
2 medium cloves of garlic, smashed into a paste
1 well-crumbled bay leaf (I used 1/4 of powdered bay leaf)
pinch of red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon + fine grain sea salt
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
Warm the olive oil
Mix everything. It can be used straigtaway, but it tastes better if you let the flavors mix and develop. Can be stored up to one week/ten days in the refrigerator.
And for those who don’t know it yet, I want to present you the newest member of our family: 
She doesn’t have a name yet (we are still deciding it), but it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever seen. And she’s growing so fast! And yes, I started college already: a degree in Audiovisual Communication. I don’t want to bore you, so if anyone is interested I wrote a little about my first week there on my Tumblr 
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I’m not a big fan of lemon. I love adding lemon juice to my smoothies, but I don’t like anything lemon flavored: lemon caramels, lemon drinks, lemon ice-creams. Maybe because they don’t really taste like lemon to me.
But the cookies were a success. They tasted lemony but not too much. The original recipe included lavander, but I omited it and didn’t miss it at all. Even my ultra picky when it comes to food friend said they were delicious, which means they really are. I am not so sure about the texture. I thought they needed an extra couple of minutes, but even then they get hard but then soften after an hour or so. I’ll try adding less milk next time; because I’ll repeat for sure. I loved them even in their mushy, melt-in-your mouth form.
Lemon cookies
From: have cake, will travel
Serves: 20-30 cookies, depending on the size.
1/2 cup margarine (113g)
3/4 cups sugar (150g)
zest of 2 lemons
1 1/2 (180g) flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 Tbsp cornstarch (I used banana flour)
1/4 tsp salt
2 Tbsp milk (soy, almond or any other of your choice)
Beat the margarine and the sugar with a mixer. Add the lemon zest and beat again until fluffy.
Sift the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, salt.
Mix the wet and the dry ingredients. Add the milk if needed.
Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper (my oven is small so I had to do it in four batches). Make the cookies: I used a teaspoon and they were big enough. Celine said that this cookies don’t spread too much, but mine did. A lot. So, just in case, flatten a little and be careful to leave enough space.
Bake for 12-14 minutes. Let cool a little before transferring. Enjoy!
How many of you have tried tempeh? I have been a vegan for more than three years and only tried it last week. Don’t ask me why it took me so long. Sometimes I don’t understand myself either.
And I actually liked it. A lot. It has a difficult to describe taste: some people say it tastes like mushrooms and nuts. I only know it tasted great, but as happens with tofu, it depends on how you cook it. The second time I just sauteed it with some olive oil and although it was tasty anyway, it couldn’t be compared to the orange glazed tempeh I did the day before.
Orange glazed tempeh
From: 101 Cookbooks
Serves: 2-3
Ingredients
1/2 cup orange juice (1-2 oranges)
1/2 Tbsp grated ginger
1 Tbsp sugar (I didn’t have maple syrup)
1/2 tsp ground coriander
2 small garlic, crushed
280 g of tempeh (5 ounces. In my case it was half of the package)
oil
lime (optional)
To make the sauce: Mix the orange juice with the juice of the grated ginger, not the pulp. Add the sugar (or maple syrup), coriander and garlic.
Stir fry the tempeh for 5 minutes on each side or until golden. Add the sauce and simmer for another 10 minutes or until it’s almost evaporated. Be careful not to burn it.
Serve with a squeeze of lime juice. I ate mine with some stir fried green beans and brown rice. I saved a little bit of the sauce for the beans, adding it a few minutes before finishing.
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Besides being delicious, tempeh is also good for you health. It’s a good source of manganese (around 70% of the recommended daily intake in 100g of cooked tempeh), copper, phosphorus and riboflavin.
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How have you been? This time I don’t have excuse for disappearing this way. I feel terrible saying this, but I just didn’t feel like posting. Or cooking, by the way. Well, I have been cooking: I need to eat like any other human. But not the kind of things you’d share on a food blog. Or maybe it’s just something I say to myself to feel less guilty.
So I tried to overcome my laziness/blogger block and finally give signs of life. The result? This zucchini pancakes. Nothing glamorous or spectacular but incredibly tasty. I don’t know where they originated, but they are a very popular dish in Russia. Traditionaly, they are made with eggs and served with smetana (a soured cream product similar to the crème fraîche). But there are good news: the eggless, vegan version is as delicious as the original. I used to add a tablespoon of ground flaxseeds as a substitute, but I recently discovered that you don’t need them at all. They hold together well even without an egg replacer.
Zucchini pancakes
I wrote a list of ingredients with the amounts, but I was tempted to leave just the ingredients. Why? Because I actually never mesure them. I never did, never will and it always worked for me: I just throw everything in a bowl in the proportions I think I should. Too thick? Let’s add another splash of soymilk. Too liquid? More flour! So don’t be limited by what I wrote here: experiment until you have a medium consistency, not too thick, not too runny. It shoud be but on the liquid side though. When puring the batter in the saucepan, it should come of the spoon easily. Think about it as what they are: pancakes. How do you cook your pancakes? That’s all you need to know.
Serves: 20-30 pancakes, depending on the size.
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(571 words + 8 images, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)
If I had to name one thing I couldn’t live without…well, it would be difficult to decide, but I’m sure chocolate would be in the list of candidates. This is why I was so excited when I found this recipe: a chocolate mousse with only two ingredients: chocolate and water. Yes, no cream, no eggs, nothing. Sounds impossible? Give it a try. I didn’t believe it would work at the beginning either, so I used a 55% cheap chocolate …wrong! Since you only have chocolate and water, your mousse will be as tasty as the chocolate.
I recommend using an electrical mixer at the beginning: it can take a little to thicken (three or four minutes) and then switching to a hand whisk, because once it starts to thicken it thickens really fast. Actually, the first time I whisked too much and ended with a giant chocolate truffle which I had to melt to whisk again.
The key is the temperature change. You have to transfer the hot and melted chocolate and water mixture into a bowl inside another bigger bowl, filled with water and ice (like a bain-marie, but in cold). Be sure to use enough ice or even better, put water in a plastic bottle and put it in the freezer until it’s really cold (at least 30 minutes). If the water is not cold enough, you can be whisking forever. Oh, and use a big enough mixing bowl. It turned out that mine wasn’t, so after I finished my hands, arms, the kitchen sink and part of the walls were covered in chocolate. If the splashes where red instead of brown, it would have looked like the scene of a multiple murder.
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(616 words + 11 images, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)
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