Curry Noodle Soup

Just attempted this evening to match the tastiness of a soup I had at a restaurant in town--theirs was a curry noodle soup just with the additions of shitake mushrooms, but I wanted to make one a bit more beefed up on the ingredients, and this combo was very tasty:

Ingredients:

1 jar of red curry paste (I made mine by not-very-exactly following this recipe: http://thaifood.about.com/od/thaicurrypasterecipes/r/redpaste.htm)

~ 1/2-1 Liter water

1 can of coconut milk (with a decent amount of coconut solids)

A pack of woodear mushrooms

a pack of tofu

two thick green onion stalks

half a pack of thin egg noodles

~2 Tbsp soy sauce

~ 1 Tbsp brown sugar

~ 1 Tbsp olive oil

Olive oil into hot skillet, toss in diced tofu, cook until getting just a touch of firmer texture, press the curry paste into skillet through a sieve, to remove larger chunks from the broth. Use the water to finish getting any liquid flavor out of the curry paste leftover in the sieve, then discard the fiber. Add enough remaining water to get it to a soupy broth of appropriate volume. Add the can of coconut milk, chopped woodear mushrooms, noodles soy sauce and brown sugar, and let simmer for a few minutes to cook the mushrooms and noodles, then finally add the chopped green onions, and test for the right amount of salt (if not enough, add a little more soy sauce, or boullion)

YUM! photo coming soon once I get un-lazy to upload it!

Veggie Rich Dinner!

I've find this to be a delicious, filling meal in the evenings which is lightweight, because its vegetable rich, hence low-carbohydrate, low-calorie, and high vitamin. :-)

Making this as a meal a few times a week has been really helpful to me to have a low-caloric evening meal, and also to have enough in my stomach from the volume of vegetables that I don't feel nearly as tempted to indulge in a dessert afterwards. So I highly recommend this to anyone looking to improve their diet or become leaner.

Easy Preparation:

Preheat oven to a good roasting temperature of about 200 C (390F)

Thinly slice 1 eggplant and 2 zucchinis and put into a big bowl

Slice up one red and one yellow bell pepper into thick strips, and add to bowl

(Optionally mix-and-match any vegetables into this, like an onion, or some partially pre-steamed broccoli, some cherry tomatos, or very thinly sliced carrots, or even vegetarian "sausage" like I used in the batch in the final plated photo)

Season the pile of veggies in the bowl with a few tablespoons of olive oil, then loads of herbs (oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary), and I add sweet paprika powder, garlic powder, onion powder, pepper, and then either a spoon of salt, or better yet a heaping spoonful of some vegetable bouillon powder for extra flavor (or alternatively, just some salt). Then a dash of some vinegar (I've used some apple vinegar, or balsamic).

Toss together all the veggies well, so that the herbs coat everything, then lay them out onto a baking sheet.

Roast in the oven for about 20-30 minutes or until the eggplant and peppers have started to get nicely tender-- just make sure that none of the veggies start to burn, in case they're more thinly sliced than the rest, or in case your oven has hotspots like mine ! :-)

Let cool slightly, then I slice up a round of quarter-fat fresh mozzarella, or very thinly slice a sharp hard cheese (I like Sbrinz, for example), to pair a little bit of its zesty flavor into the dish, and layer it onto a plate.

Also tasty to add a little bit of balsamic viniagrette dressing on the top at the end, if you like. Enjoy!

Any leftovers are really fantastic in sandwiches-- I recommend spreading some herbed cream cheese on an open face sandwich, topped with a layer of the roasted veggies and warmed up.

Cranberry-apple upside-down cake

Fruity upside-down cakes are probably my favorite kind of cake to make...

This one, I did with a mix of cranberries, grated apple, cinnamon, and some ground hazelnuts, with some brown sugar (doesn't need much, with the nice fruit, and I like to leave it a bit tart) and some oil as the bottom fruity mix, and the usual egg-mixture cake batter, beating the whites separately with some salt and the sugar, the yolks with a spoon of oil and some citrus zest, and folding those together,then folding in the small quantity of flour with the baking powder.

This time, I was just missing having some fresh whipped cream on top as a perfect dessert...

The apple-cranberry bottom:

Eggs all whipped up and ready for folding:

Folding egg yolk mix into egg-white mix:

Then folding in the flour mix in 3 parts until all incorporated like this: (important to use folding motions, to not lose its volume and bubbliness)

Fill the batter over the fruit:

Bakes about 30 min till set and a bit spongy in the middle bounces back when gently pressed:

Invert:

Voila!

Just would have loved freshly whipped cream with vanilla!

TAMALES! YEAAHHH!!

I'd probably sound nuts to inarticulately express how much I like tamales--the concept, the excitement of making them, the taste, texture, everything, so I'll skip the attempt.

In any case, I made them today! BIG batch just for ME!
I invested in a bag of the prepared masa flour from the Mexican foods store downtown Zurich (El Maiz), (check out the receipt total: 16.00! Indeed, it's that expensive here--hence any guests visiting me from the US/mexico are enthusiastically welcomed to bring me a housewarming present of either corn husks or masa flour for the purpose of making this dish in the future.) I remember buying the equivalent in Texas for $1.50... (and mind you the swiss franc is stronger than the dollar now)
So, I prepped two fillings-- pulled chicken/turkey and BEANS. I do the meat one by heating a pot, pouring in some oil, slamming in the chicken breasts and turkey fillets (1.2 kg in total), and covering it to slightly brown and simmer them down for a good while. In the meantime I chop some onions (about 4), then toss those in, as well as a serious load of spices: garlic, paprika, onion powder, oregano, basil, cayenne pepper, CUMIN, salt, and black pepper. I use a similar spice mix for the beans filling (~1.2 kg beans), also adding some sauteed chopped onions (~5-6), and tomatoes (~400 g), and olive oil.
I prepared the masa not using lard, but a vegetarian version that also does not use vegetable shortening--a product of hydrogenated (hence solidified) unsaturated oils which leaves me suspicious. I've done this before, and it worked fine--so again this time-- a mix of butter and olive oil, giving a decent mixture or the saturated and unsaturated fats that can get the masa dough to a nice texture-- I prefer what's probably considered a bit firm... Don't freak out over the quantities, since this makes a LOT of tamales-- so with the 2 kilograms (4.4 lb) masa flour, I added also over 2 kg water (2+ Liters), 350g olive oil, and 350g butter. Hence I have about 5 kilograms (ll lbs) of masa dough in that bowl there.
In any case, I also season the masa flour with paprika (gives a nice golden-orange texture and I like the flavor, too), a "little" cumin, pepper, onion powder and veggie boullion. Then bring that up with water.

Then when the meat's cooked, let it cool down, and then get all in there with your hands to pull it apart into nice tendrils, mixing all those spices and chopped cooked onions into it.
Okay! Assembly time!!! Best with company.... but allright, with some good music, still fun alone.

I prefer pretty large tamales with lots of filling (opposed to ones with lots of the masa dough), so this is how I like to do mine:

Great! Assembled 28 large chicken/turkey ones, and 21 bean tamales:

So here's my big pot for steaming:

I learned long ago from my friend's mom Yolanda, that it helps for steaming to put extra corn husks to make a sort of cone in the middle of the pot, then the open end of the tamales can angle upwards for the steaming process:

All packed in, so ready to steam! About 2 hours does it...

A finished chicken-turkey tamale, with homemade salsa and sour cream for dinner:

And many more to enjoy later:

And with tamales this large, just 1-2 is a good-sized meal :-)

Soybean hummus

Delightful.... I had pre-soaked for 1.5 days some soybeans which I needed to then cook and use that night, so searched "soybean" on epicurious.com and saw a recipe for soybean hummus-- in essence replacing chickpeas for soybeans. Liked the idea! So, I boiled the soybeans, and in my food processor, blended those with some garlic, a pile of spring onions, fresh juice of one lemon, salt, chopped HOT red peppers and impulsive quantities of the following spices: onion powder, paprika, cumin, ground black pepper, oregano, thyme... and I think that was it. Blended, adding olive oil and water to achieve the right smoothness texture, and presto!
I made some "garlic butter" to make some garlic bread to spread it on-- the garlic butter including half butter and half olive oil for the fat content, then lots of garlic, and basil, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper, also blended, spread onto the bread and baked in the oven (wrapped in foil). Yum!

First attempt *FAILED*

:-D Here's the result of my first attempt at making corn tortillas (with none of the right ingredients, since I didn't have any of the right ones in stock!) hahah No doubt... it failed, awefully! ...both in terms of flavor and more importantly in texture, giving tortillas far too brittle, and too thick (to even keep them remotely intact)
BUT the concept of the meal I do love: homemade "corn" tortillas with fresh-sauteed peppered fish, sliced cabbage, a sort of herbed cream sauce made with quark and a onion-tomato-cilantro pico de gallo....
Just need to work on the corn tortillas, and next time for an honest re-do first attempt at them, should use the right ingredients and perhaps even *gasp* follow a recipe hahah ... sometime... or go back to making flour tortillas which are really easy.

Tuna-Pasta

Fast and delicious pasta with tomato sauce and tunafish... Learned this combination from my housemate years ago, which he makes quickly and easily (and still very tastily) with just some jarred pasta sauce and a can of tuna tossed with the pasta. But instead of using canned tuna, it's definitely a step up in deliciousness to use a fresh tunasteak!
So this time, I sauteed the tunasteak which was peppered and garlic-ed on one side with some red onions (and randomly also included the more crisp chopped stems from some fresh basil), then poured in the tomato sauce, seasoned it with oregano and basil, more garlic, more fresh ground pepper, and some of my seasoning salt (which I throw together on occasion to contain usually 1/3 salt and 2/3 whatever dried herbs I have with some paprika, and onion or garlic powder), then let that simmer until the tunasteak is cooked just enough to let it start flaking apart when prodded with a spoon. Then I layered that over some pasta, with some mushrooms that were sauteed in olive oil with some more fresh garlic (haha, yes this is getting garlicy, but I like that!), and best topped with more fresh basil, and some grated sharp cheese if desired!