Asian chicken with cold noodles

This is really good to eat, looks really hard to make and has that "wow" factor because you had to julienne those carrots to perfection:)
But it's very good, and if you're not a fan of chicken, use tofu instead.
So prepare yourself and your guests to be suprised and delighted. And if they're not, tell them gently to get out:)

Type of dish: main
Cost: medium
Difficulty: medium
Serves: 4
Time: 45 min
Prep time: 30 min
Cooking time: 15 min


You'll need:
a frying pan, blender, 4 small bowls, 1 large serving bowl, tongs, salad spoons, sharp knife, cutting board, paper towels, kettle, large bowl, strainer, spoon,

Ingredients

Dipping sauce ( make this first):

• 6 tbsp fish sauce
• 6 tbsp brown sugar
• juice from half a lime
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 small thai chiles thinly sliced with seeds, or 1 large red chilli with seeds ( you want it hot) 

Peanut sauce:

• 3 tbsp fish sauce
• 3 tbsp rice vinegar
• 3 tbsp soy sauce
• 6 tbsp unsalted peanut butter
• thumb sized ginger piece, peeled and sliced coarsly
• 1 tbsp sesame oil
• pinch of cayenne pepper
  

Chicken salad:

• 2 chicken breasts, cleaned and diced
• 1 package rice noodles
• 1 medium cucumber, deseeded and cut in half, and in diagonal slices
• 2 medium carrots, julienned
• 1 medium red bell pepper, julienned
• 1 handful of soy sprouts
• 6 scallions, chopped
• handful of fresh mint  and basil, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup roasted peanuts, coarsly chopped
• 4 limes, cut in wedges for serving
   

 First of all, make the dipping sauce by mixing all the ingredients, until the sugar dissolves, then pop it in the fridge for at least 15 min to combine the tastes better.
Make the peanut dressing by blending all the ingredients to a smooth paste, the thickness of cream. put in 2 small bowls.
Marinate your chicken by stirring together half of the dipping sauce and half of one bowl of the peanut sauce, in a medium bowl, with the chicken cubes, for 15 min at least.

Make the noodles according to package, cool them under cold water and drain, set aside. Heat your frying pan on high heat and fry the chicken, marinade and all, for max 6 min, until the chicken is cooked throughout. During the frying process, wash the marinating bowl and put the drained cold noodles in it, add the veggies, then the chicken. Pour in a few tablespoons of the dipping sauce and peanut sauce, and mix, top with the chopped hearbs and crushed peanuts. Serve with the limes and sauces for individual use and enjoy!

Or, to make it fancy and give your guests a feeling of control what's going on, serve everything seperatly with bowl for the guest to help themselves.
Does this even make sense?

Pasta somewhat Aglio Olio

No pics available yet, but I did make this, was suprised with the flavour and yes, it' fast and easy to make.
Have some parmesan  on hand so if you feel that your pasta is way too spicy for you, add some grated cheese on top to make life a bit better:)


I wasn't saying, but this time we where with Julia walking around town thinking already about late lunch on a saturday, and we decided to give it a go at home.
We are the one you talk to when you diet or want to diet. "Oh yeah, sure, I hate chocolate, I won't eat pasta because I'll gain 20000000kg, but what I really want right now is spaghetti Aglio Olio."
But I want chili peppers just because I like them and I had everything at home. Except for spaghetti. So we had taggliatele.
I know. Totaly badass.

What you do? What do we need? Where do we go? Where do you go?


Type of dish: main, pasta
Difficulty: easy
Cost: cheap
Serves: 2
Time: 15 min
Prep time: 5 min
Cooking time: 10min

You shall need:
cutting board, sharp knife, large frying pan, medium saucepan with lid, spatula, grater, 2 plates

Ingredients:

• pasta for 2, of your choice, but stringy types are best for this sauce
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• half a chilli pepper, minced
• coarse sea salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• optional: a few halved cherry or grape tomatoes.
• parmesan to grate

 This is such an awesome easy recipe.
Heat water with lid on in the saucepan. When it boils, add a pinch of salt and add the pasta. Cook according to package time.
When you boil the pasta, heat on medium high heat the pan, when still warming up, add the garlic, chili, a large drizzle of olive oil and a pinch of salt. When the garlic and chilli starts smelling really intense, open a window, add the tomatoes if you have them, and now your pasta should be already cooked and drained. Add it to the pan and swish around so every strand is coated in oil. Turn the heat off and serve on plates. Grate some cheese on top for some mildness and get on with it! Serve!

Gnocchi with a simple sauce

I like gnocchi. They are similar to polish Kopytka, except you make them with less flour, cook them shorter, but they are still de-li-cious.
Man, I made some today and even though I ate a whole bowl, I could still eat more of those fluffy delicate clouds of potato mash.
Yes, potato mash. Made mashed potatoes yesterday? Great, set aside a bowl of the mashies, they're gonna make great gnocchi.
Look at them:

So, what do you need to know about gnocchi? They are not that hard to make, you can skip the fork mark, you can freeze some non cooked gnocchi, you can add fresh or dried herbs to the potato mix for extra taste,  you can add some frozen spinach for colour. I even added grated parmeggiano and butter, because I was making mashed potatoes the day earlier. I added eggs, which you can omit, but try them with eggs and without.
To tell the truth, this is poor food made fancy. But it's got everything I like in it, so I really don't care.

Let's get it cracking.

Type of dish: pasta, main
Cost: cheap
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 2
Time: 25 min
Preparation time: 15 min
Cooking time: 10 min


You'll need:
cutting board, fork, saucepan, frying pan, spoon, spatula, sharp knife, slotted spoon, plate for serving, medium mixing bowl,


Ingredients:
 For the sauce:

• 5 slices cured bacon or pancetta, diced or cubed
• 1 handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1 small onion, diced
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 a small chili pepper, sliced, diced ( optional)
• 1 pinch dried basil /or 10 leaves fresh
• shaved parmesan cheese
• olive oil
• 1 tsp butter

For the gnocchi:

• around 300gram mashed potatoes
• 1 egg and 1 yolk
• 40 gr parmesan grated
• 1 pinch salt
• 2 tbsp butter
•  1/4 cup flour (have some extra for cutting)

 Heat up your frying pan on high heat, add some olive oil, when hot add the onion, garlic and chili and fry up until very fragrant ( your eyes might sting), add the bacon/pancetta,  after 2-3 minutes, add the tomatoes. At this point, lower the heat to medium, and stir avery now and then.
Heat up water in the saucepan on medium with a lid on. This won't take long, and neither will making the gnocchi.
In the mixing bowl, add together all the gnocchi ingredients,and mix with your hand until you have a small ball of not that sticky dough. It will be sticky, but fluffy- this means they'll be fluffy.
Tear the dough in 4 pieces, sift some flour on your working place, and gently roll out the dougn in long ropes but thick as your thumb. Sift more flour over them and using a fork, take off gnocchi sized pieces ( the length of a long fingernail? ) and press the tings of the fork over to make those fancy marks which are supposed to make the gnocchi hold sauce better.
When your water is boiling, add a tsp of salt, stir and using the slotted spoon, gently put in max 20 gnocchi at once. They will fall to the bottom of the pan, so stirr around so they don't stick together. They will emerge in a minute, so remove them then to a plate, or, in the sauce in the frying pan.
Cook how many you need, toss the ready ones with the sauce and serve with shavings of parmesan cheese and a sprinklung of fresh chopped basil for extra colour.
BEWARE: this is a spicy sauce, so remove the chili from the ingredients for the sauce if you can't stomache this.

Pasta Arrabiata Mathafacka

Well Hello:)
We're very sorry for the lack of posts- AE had to leave to live the dream life in Italy
 ( I'm SO jealous:)), while I'm left behind without a camera. So if you don't mind the lack of picture's for some time, I will post some recipes.
Some I learned in ITALY:)
Sooo good... And yummy, you won't belive me if I tell you, that italian cuisine is hot damn simple? It is. Only problem we had ( I had) was the total lack of salt ( my beloved) and peppery pepper
( I missed you P!) We even had a brief thought of starting to carry around some of those paper sachets od S&P from some fast food place, but decided we would look way not cool. Hence, the pleading looks at our waiters, begging them to give us the s&p shakers. Tourists.
Apart from that, the freshness of the products Italian have, is unbelivable. Stuff in the supermarkets is better in quality than the stuff here straight from the bushes, as we say. Which, to me, is weird. I always heard about the great polish produce, without GMO's and other crap, but what it really lacks, is .....
SUNSHINE!
Tada.
Anyways, if you're craving some simple pasta, here's how to:
Pasta ( whatever type you have - but not lasagne!)  with the true arabiata tomato sauce

Get ready for some choping actions.

Type of dish: pasta, main
Cost: cheap
Difficulty: easy
Serves: 2
Time: 30 min
Preparation time: 5min
Cooking time : 25-30 min



You'll need:
cutting board, a sharp knife, a teaspoon, colander, deep frying pan, medium saucepan, spatula, medium bowl to stir things up, and plates (bowls) to serve.

Ingredients:

• 4-5 medium ripe tomatoes ( geez, if you don't have them, try chopped canned tomatos)
• 2 small chilli peppers
• 4 garlic cloves, pealed and finely chopped
• 1 small onion, finely diced
• s&p
• fresh basil leaves, choppe or torn, whatever, they'll wilt in the sauce anyway.
• lemon juice
• pinch of sugar
• pasta ( as much as you need. For types like penne and that sort, the way to measure how much to cook is to use a bowl in which you will serve. One full bowl of pasta equals pasta for 2 ppl. and so on. Pretty easy, huh?)
• water to cook pasta
• olive oil

Heat water in suacepan, and cut on each tomato a cross on the round side. Put the tomatoes in the water for about 1 min, take them out and peel them. Then, using the spoon, take out the seeds and dice the rest up. Turn off the water.  Heat up the frying pan on high heat, add olive oil, add the garlic, onions and chilli and fry until onions are translucent. Then add the basil and tomatoes, sugar and lemon juice. stir it well, keep the heat now on low. The tomatoes should fall apart leaving a sauce behind. You'll gradually add more olive oil in the next 20 minutes- this will make the sauce stick well to the pasta. Mix every once in a while. Add the S&P to taste, and when the consistency is like a oily paste, boil the water again, cook your pasta, add 2 spoons of the pasta water to the sauce, drain pasta, toss in bowl, toss in the suace, mix all well, and serve.
Wou can add more basil leaves chopped up to the serving bowl for extra color but the fragrance will kick your shoes off anyway.
Remember! This is spicy! Hot! Hot! Hot!
But if you want it mild, don't add the chilli's.
So long!

Crunchy Caramelized Nuts

While I was writing in agony my thesis, I remembered hearing nuts are great for concentration and the brain in general. I was in desperate need for anything for my brain, and I was also craving sugar. (I sometimes have that). Then I remembered that I want something not only crunchy and sweet but also spicy, to get a kick out of it. So here’s how you make the yummy stuff.

Type of dish: dessert, snack

Cost: cheap

Difficulty:  easy

Time: 10min

Serves: 4

Preparation time: 0min

Cooking Time:5 min

Cooling time: 5 min

What you need to make this dish:

A small saucepan with a thick bottom, a wooden spoon, aluminum foil (or parchment paper)

Ingredients:

•          ¼ tsp. cayenne powder

•          Small grained salt

•          1 cup of any nuts

•        1 cup of brown sugar

How to prepare:

Turn the heat on the stove to high, place the saucepan on it , pour in the salt, sugar and cayenne powder, and the nuts. Aside the stove, put down the aluminum foil- this will be for cooling the nuts. And stir. Wait until the sugar starts melting, and when it does, act fast. Mix everything so the sugar syrup coats the nuts, then  pour out the nuts on the foil, trying to get them out in clumps, so they cool faster. You can additionally sprinkle some more salt on them now, while they’re still hot. Once they’ve cooled down, put in a bowl and let you taste buds and brain enjoy!

Additional information:

You can store these nuts in an air tight container up to 3 weeks, but remember to keep in a cool place. Also, if you're not a fan of chilli, you can leave it out like we did today and it was still great! Try it!