Shadee’s Blog

This is one I loosely based on my dad’s Minestrone. Today I was feeling a bit under the weather and I was really in the mood for some Minestrone soup. I didn’t like the sound of any of the on-line recipes I found because they used a lot of shortcuts and that tends to end up tasting like the nasty canned stuff. So I decided to grab some stuff from the super market and wing it. And it actually turning out pretty good. So while I didn’t really write down what I was doing while I was doing it I’m going to try and put the chaos into recipe form. Hope it’s right.

Ingredients:

About 8 plum tomatoes
1 large onion chopped
3 cloves of garlic chopped
4 fresh basil leaves chopped
2 large carrots chopped
5 potatoes chopped in about 1 inch pieces
Fresh green beans (ehrm about 2 hands full I guess) ended and cut in about 1 inch pieces
1 1/2 cups of green peas
2 cans of vegetable stock (could do water too but I used this this time and it was tasty)
1 can of Garbanzo beans
1 can of Cannelloni beans
1 can of Roman beans
1 pound of ground beef
1 cup of Ditalini pasta (or whichever small soup pasta you prefer)
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic powder

First the tomatoes need to be peeled. If you don’t want to go through the hassle I guess you could get something canned instead. But it’s not that huge a deal. Just fill a pot with enough water for the tomatoes to float around in, add the tomatoes and put it on high heat. Then put cold water and a bunch of ice cubes in a bowl. Wait for the water to boil or until you start to see some of the tomato peel starting to hang loose. Don’t leave them in for too long or they’ll turn to mush. Turn off the heat and move the tomatoes into the bowl with ice water. You should be able to peel the skin right off now.

Cut the tomatoes in half or quarters length wise and use your fingers to extract the seeds. The less seeds remaining the better but don’t go nuts trying to get each and every one of them unless you have OCD and it makes you happy.

Cover the bottom of a large soup pot in olive oil, add the chopped garlic, the de-seeded and de-skinned tomatoes, the chopped onion, chopped carrots, chopped basil, the garbanzo beans (not the other two bean types because they’re mushy already) and one can of vegetable stock. Let this simmer for over high heat until the tomato is starting to melt. Add the other can of vegetable stock and re-fill the can with water three times and add that too. Add the chopped potatoes, the chopped green beans and the peas. Return to boil and let boil for about 30 minutes.

In the mean time season the ground beef to taste with salt pepper and garlic powder. Make little 1 inch meatballs out of it and cook this in some olive oil in a different pan. Start on high and once they all look mainly cooked on the outside lower heat to medium, cover and cook until the insides are done too. I cut one in half every once in a while to see.

Drain most of the fat and oil from the meatballs, add them to the soup. Also add the pasta and keep boiling the soup for the suggested cook time of the pasta. Then add the cannelloni and roman beans and keep on heat until they’ve been heated.

Serve and (hopefully) enjoy.

-Dee.

but it had to be done.

Sidekick = my DK.

-Dee.

This one’s a great recipe for when you want to lose weight.

Ingredients:

1 liter of water
1 cup of raisins
a pinch of salt
1 ts of sugar
1 ts of vanilla extract
few shakes of cinnamon powder

Use a saucepan to boil the water.
when it’s boiling turn down the heat to low. Add a pinch of salt and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. Make sure to constantly keep stirring so the salt granules don’t stick together.
Turn off the heat and let it cool down.

In the mean time, get the cup of raisins and chop them into quarters.
This will give the cake a better texture than when using whole ones.
When the mixture has finished cooling down, get a bowl which will hold 1 liter and will still have room to whisk.
Pour in your cooled down mixture.
Now slowly whisk in the chopped raisins, the sugar, the vanilla extract and the cinnamon.

Do NOT stop whisking until the mixture is thick and creamy.

Then bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.

-Dee.

This one has to be my favorite dish.
It’s a Family recipe, my dad invented it, and it’s been my family’s X-mas dinner for as long as I can remember
It’s the one dish I usually can’t eat without getting uncomfortably full.
Because I can hardly ever say no to a 2nd or sometimes even a 3rd helping :S

Ingredients :

Turkey breast, about a pound I guess.
Potatos, About 4 decent sized ones.
chestnuts, Pound
Green peas, big can
Black salt and oil cured olives 2 cups
White wine
Garlic
Salt
French bread

Recipe :

Peel the potatos and the chestnuts (some people like to roast the chestnuts over a fire in a pan with holes in the bottom for easier peeling, just don’t burn your fingers if you do that because they stay hot for a long time).
Cut both the Turkey breast and potatos into about 1 inch chunks.
Bake the turkey chunks in a little bit of olive oil in a deep souppan with some salt and garlic.
When it’s done, add a bit of white wine and enough water for the potatos to cook in. Add the potatos, chestnuts and olives.
Wait until the potatoes are done and turn down the heat to a simmer.
Add the peas and just leave it on the heat until the peas are hot.

It’s now ready to serve with a side of French or Italian bread for dipping.

Enjoy!

-Dee.

Ingredients :

1 pound of ground beef
Ham (Optional)
1 big can of tomato sauce (the standard variety, no pasta sauce)
1 small can of cherry tomatoes
Dry Lasagna leaves
Grated Cheese (something young and not too salty that will melt nicely like mozzarella or gouda. )
Flour
Butter
Milk
Sugar
Salt
Pepper
garlic
Basil
Nutmeg

This recipe will need you to prepare 3 different base ingredients.
So to make this easier I’ll start off by breaking it up into those 3.
The last two are started at the same time.

Tomato Sauce:

Cook the ground beef in a few drops of olive oil with some salt and fresh garlic until it’s well done.
(Same as my chili recipe, just stir it around until it’s reduced to small pieces).
Drain the meat of any fat and juices.
Take out about 6 slices of the ham and cut this into small squares.

Now put both the can of tomato sauce and the cherry tomatoes in one pot and squish the cherry tomatoes a little bit to open them up, add the ground beef and the ham in the same pot. (Make sure it’s big enough to hold all of this and still stir it).
Add about a teaspoon of sugar and some salt (Why both sugar and salt? Well the sugar will take the edge off the tartness of the tomato sauce and the salt is there to help balance out the flavor. Don’t want sweet tomato sauce) also add garlic (powdered or fresh finely cut), a dash of pepper and a few good shakes of basil. (or 4 or 5 fresh leaves if you have them). Keep the heat low on this and stir occasionally.
The Ground beef is already cooked so with low heat and about 15-20 minutes all of the flavors will blend in nicely.

Lasagna leaves:

How many of these you need will depend on the size of your ovendish.
They won’t change much in size so just take a dry one and figure out how many it would take to cover the bottom of the dish 3 times. And that’s your amount.
Take a large pot and fill it with lots of water. the Leaves need a lot of room to cook properly and not stick.
Add some salt to the water and bring this to a boil.
Add the lasagna leaves, make sure they’re not all stacked directly on top of each other But fanned out so they won’t stick as easily.
Then follow the mentioned time on the packaging (usually 10 minutes). Make sure to stir occasionally.
(While these are boiling you might want to start with the Bechamel Sauce btw.)
When the lasagna leaves are done empty the pot into a strainer. and rinse them with cold water for a few seconds. (This’ll prevent them from sticking together and will cool them off a bit and make them a bit more pleasant to handle )

Bechamel sauce:

Warning, despite the few ingredients of this sauce it’s the most tricky to make.
Melt a stick of butter in a sauce pan. Now turn down the heat to low.
Now comes the hard part. You’ll need to add a little bit of flour at a time and stir like mad (with a wooden spoon!)
And make sure you don’t get lumps. (This one may take a bit of practice).
Keep doing this until you’ve created a thick yellow paste.
Unfortunately the hard part isn’t quite over yet because now we’re going to work our way back to a sauce.
By doing the same thing with milk. Add a bit at a time and stir it in making sure it doesn’t become lumpy.
Do this until you get a white sauce not too thick and not too liquidy but somewhere in the middle.
If you added too much milk just keep it on the heat and keep stirring occasionally. The flour will keep thickening it .
Now stir in a few shakes of salt and some nutmeg.
I don’t recommend tasting this sauce, it’s not very good on it’s own but combined with the rest it’ll make the lasagna nice and creamy.

Turn on the oven and preheat it to 350

Now for the fun part.

The Lasagna Layering!

Grab the oven dish and start off with a thin layer of the red sauce. (Prevents the lasagna leaves from burning and fusing to the bottom of the dish).

Now cover the bottom with lasagna leaves. (fold them over if some of them are too long).
Add a layer of red sauce.
Add a layer of Bechamel sauce.
Add a layer of cheese.

Repeat this. And make sure the top layer is just Lasagna leaves topped with red sauce topped with cheese (leave out the Bechamel).

Now stick the dish in the oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the top layer of cheese has turned golden and melted.

Time to serve.
Now I can’t give you any tips on how to serve home made lasagna without it falling apart a little.
If you find a way let me know

Enjoy!

-Dee.

I was thinking about the very few personal recipes I have and how much I love them.
So I thought, hey, why not share them ?

I’d always been a bit anal about that because in a perfect world I’d want to cook it for ya because ofcourse the way it’ll turn out will be different. Especially if it’s your first time cooking a new dish. But meh. I want other people to enjoy my recipes. Maybe even experiment with them and make their own versions
So I will share.

Now, know that I’m not much of a writer, so if any part of the recipes I post is confusing, let me know and I’ll try to revise them.

Well, here’s my first one

Chili Con Carne:

Ingredients:

1 lbs Ground beef
2 ts of Tomato paste (Not tomato sauce!, the paste variety usually comes in tiny cans.)
1 large Red Bellpepper
1 large or 2 small yellow Onions
1 small can of light red kidney beans and 1 big can of Dark Red Kidney Beans (Or both the standard dark red if you can’t find the light variety. I just like them because they tend to soften up before the dark ones do and give the “chilijuices” a bit more flavor)
Salt
Paprika powder
Chilipowder
Cholula Hot Sauce
Italian/French bread

Instructions:

First of all my advice is to open all the cans and spices before you do anything with the stove.
I hate having to keep the food in the pot from burning and try to open tin cans at the same time.
Especially since some parts of this dish will go pretty fast.
The last time I forgot to open the cans beforehand, one of the lids nearly cut off part of my finger
Now I didn’t mind cooking and eating chili which literally contained my blood, sweat and (damn those onions) tears, But I wouldn’t recommend serving that to other people

Remove the core and seeds from the Bell Pepper
Chop the Red Bellpepper and the Onion(s) into small cubes
(Or rectangles, doesn’t matter, as long as they’re not huge chunks).

Put some olive oil in a deep pot (Soup pot or something similar) and put this on medium heat.
Add the ground beef with some salt. Stir and pull the ground beef apart with a wooden spoon
until it’s no longer a huge clump but small pieces (it’ll do this on it’s own as long as you
keep poking it and keep moving it around. Keep going until the Ground Beef is well done.
Now add some Paprika- and Chili Powder (Taste and add more salt if necessary aswell).

Turn the stove down to low heat and add the 2 ts of tomato paste and stir it into the ground beef.
Add both the chopped Bell Pepper and onion and stir them in along with some of the juice of the small can of beans to keep things moist and to keep it from burning.
(It’s ok if you accidentally drop in a few beans, they’ll melt in and add to the flavor).
Put on a lid and let this simmer stirring occasionally. Keep this going until the Onion and Bellpepper
cooks and softens up a bit.

Now it’s time to add the beans, all of them. Then fill the small can about halfway with water and add this aswell.
Make sure the heat is still on low because you don’t want this to boil. It’ll break and melt the beans and you’ll
end up with a pot full of tough chewy empty bean skins.
Add some more Chili- and Paprika powder, some more salt and about a teaspoon of Cholula Hot sauce.
(add more or less depending on how spicy you can handle. Just know that with this recipe you can not measure the spiciness by tasting one spoon full.
It’s a spicy that sneaks up on you the more you eat So be careful not to add “too” much hotsauce).
Now it’s all just a matter of stirring occasionally until the beans are hot.
taste again to see if you think it needs any more salt or spices (this all depends on your own taste).

And you’re ready to serve!
Some Italian or French bread ‘ll go very well with this for dunking and cleaning up those last tasty bits

Enjoy!

-Dee.

(Btw, The new Wordpress interface sucks donkeyballs. I’ve had to fight with this damn editor more than I used to with MS Word So please excuse the crappy text format. You might wanna tidy it up a bit yourself if you do end up wanting to print it out. Sorry about that. Just cba to fix this right now. It’s too warm. Maybe later. And I’m sure there are lotsa typos in there still, I’ll get to those later too.)