"What I Cooked Today" Day 359

Today Bic, Mag and Mar came over for dinner and I didn't cook at all, nor did I plan any part of tonight's meal. It's all part of my plan (yes, my 'plan') to stop planning. I know it sounds like a paradox, but it works! I didn't do anything for a change and my friends came up with the most amazing meal. Bic and I cook very differently - I like to try out lots of new recipes, while Bic prefers to work with a couple of beautiful ingredients and make something out of it. It actually says a lot about our personalities, I think: I like to plan ahead and Bic treats life as it comes. When it comes to food, though, I think we can all cook our way around the kitchen. Today we ate a hamburger that I'm sure was inspired by the Burger Bar:



Plus we had this amazing fresh chickpea salad:



Mag mentioned that she missed fries, but I didn't, actually. The salad was delicious and didn't leave me as full as I'm sure I would've been with fries. We also had mango and apricot ice cream for dessert, but that was premade, so nothing to write home about. Thanks girls for a great meal!

"What I Cooked Today" Day 358

Today was not only sunny - it was warm. Apart from the fact that I spent most of the day in the office, it was really nice. I caught a few glimpses of sunshine after work on our teeny, tiny balcony while wearing my Rainbows for the first time this season. And then we had spicy pasta again for dinner and a slice of cheesecake for dessert. Jochem made it for work and he left me a piece. I bathed it in maple syrup, because I found it just a little bit boring (I tend to enjoy the overly rich peanut butter and chocolate kind). It was bad, but so good.

Source: Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home by Nigella Lawson

"What I Cooked Today" Day 357

Today Jochem and I prepared a spicy tomato sauce with pancetta, roasted eggplant, mozzarella and egg. The dish was just spicy enough to be nice and hot without killing your taste buds - a difficult balance to find, I think.

Source: The Silver Spoon: Pasta

"What I Cooked Today" Day 356

Today was definitely a lazy Sunday.

We slept in, had breakfast around lunch time, and went to the park to feed the birds. Then we had a drink and some snacks in a café opposite the park. Then we came home and prepared this incredibly easy yet incredibly delicious lamb curry.

Source: Nigella Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home by Nigella Lawson

"What I Cooked Today" Day 355

When I got home from work today, Jochem and I engaged in somewhat of a cooking frenzy. First, we made this lamb dish, which was quite complicated. The lamb goes into the oven, then you make the potato puree, then you prepare the cabbage, and finally you make gravy with the juices from the lamb while the lamb itself is resting. In this picture the cabbage is quite green and the potato puree is orange because we used more carrots than potatoes, but it was a wonderfully homey dish.

Source: Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver

For dessert we made one of my favorite things ever: English pudding with whiskey cream. I tend to enjoy desserts that are more in the pastry family, like cakes and muffins, and I also like anything with chocolate (chocolate mousse, homemade chocolate bars, chocolate crepes et cetera), but this little baby has stolen my heart. You need 1,5 kilos of orchard fruit like apples, pears and plums, which you then softly boil in butter, brown sugar, bay leaf, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon. Then you make a pie with your homemade batter by making layers of fruit, batter, and fruit again. Put it in the oven and then serve with whiskey cream.

Source: Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver

And after all that, we also made this drink with some leftover rhubarb. This is a creamy rhubarb cocktail with tequila and Turkish raki mixed with vanilla pods. Pretty AND delicious!

Source: Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver

"What I Cooked Today" Day 354

Today we made fresh tagliatelle again with a chickpea sauce, except this time we added some milk (in lieu of cream) to make the sauce a little creamier.

Source: The Silver Spoon: Pasta

"What I Cooked Today" Day 353

Today was my weekly day off. Jochem had to work and had an office party at night, so I spent most of it alone, which was fine. I got up early and walked to the dentist instead of biking in order to get some exercise, but the rest of the day was spent browsing the internet, watching tv and doing some yoga. And I cooked of course. I was tempted to just order in, even though I can't really afford it, because I can be very lazy when I have nothing to do, but I knew that I would not enjoy it at all. So I made a quick trip to the green grocer's where they gave me a beautiful red chili for free (I know - I love them). Then I made this very simple spicy pasta dish with garlic and said chili. It actually reminds me of the first dish that I ever made in this apartment - it was in the summer of 2005 and I used one of my mom's recipes (I never really cooked anything at UCU besides chicken tandoori from a package because of our lovely dining hall). I totally screwed it up, though, because I didn't know that chilis were spicy and that beginners should remove the seeds. I also burned the garlic so it was a total disaster. This was much better then. I also added some fresh parsley because I wanted some green and I remembered it from a Jamie Oliver recipe in Jamie's America. This recipe, however, comes from The Silver Spoon: Pasta. And, as you can see, I also added lots and lots of Parmesan. Just because I felt like it.

"What I Cooked Today" Day 352

Today I had an amazing day at work. Not because anything particularly special or exciting happened, but because I enjoyed it so much. At home, however, that nice, happy feeling was quickly overrun by a horde of chaotic thoughts - as we speak, my head twists and turns with errands to run. I object - I was finally getting into a nice groove and I don't like to see these errands rearing up their ugly heads again. So let me tell you quickly about today's dinner: we had homemade tagliatelle with a chickpea, rosemary and garlic sauce. Now I want to rush off and forget about these errands by biking (whilst listening to Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights on Jochem's i-pod) and doing yoga before heading off to bed with Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary. Are we about done here?

Source: The Silver Spoon: Pasta

"What I Cooked Today" Day 351

Today Jochem and I scrambled any and all leftovers in order to make this dish. I grabbed some chicken leftover from Sunday's bbq and put it in the oven with some spices and a splash of leftover cream. We boiled some rice and added chopped spring onion, cucumber and tomato, all leftovers.

Then, after dinner, I had some of these peanut butter M&M's with my tea. They come from New York City. My boss goes to New York to visit friends a couple of times a year and this time I asked him to bring me some of these (come to think of it: I really should've asked him to bring me Tazo's green tea with ginger as well! Maybe next time?). One of the many things that I love about my current job is that my boss (and I'm not just talking about my supervisor here - this is the founder and CEO of the company) brings me peanut butter M&M's from the States.

"What I Cooked Today" Day 350

Jochem and I felt so culinarily uninspired today, that we ate nothing but a little bit of leftover 5-cheese spagetti while sharing a glass of leftover rhubarb bellini. What can I say? It is Monday.