"What I Cooked Today" Day 188

Today my family and I went to a Chinese restaurant. My Spanish family loves Chinese food, and since they claim that there aren't any good Chinese restaurants in Spain, we always go to one when they visit. Now, I never really liked Chinese food. I used to avoid it much the same way that I used to avoid things like spicy food, bell peppers and broccoli. But now that I've grown to not only appreciate, but to actually love, spicy food, bell peppers and broccoli, I refuse to believe that I am capable of dismissing one particular country's entire cuisine, especially when it concerns a big country with such a varied food culture. But, I am glad to announce that I had Chinese food today, and enjoyed all of it!

"What I Cooked Today" Day 187

Today I quickly rushed to Almelo to see my family again, but not before having some great homemade pizza, made in my new Magimix, with Jochem. He made me that great pork pizza again that we love so much!

Source: Jamie's Italy by Jamie Oliver

"What I Cooked Today" Day 186

Today was my graduation. It was my final graduation in a row of three. I now have one Bachelor of Arts in Humanities, one Bachelor of Arts in English, one Minor in American Studies, one Master of Arts in Teaching English as a Foreign Language and one teaching certificate. It was the end of an era and I celebrated in a big way. Family and friends were kind enough to attend the ceremony, including my grandmother and aunt, who came all the way from Spain. Besides receiving my diploma, I also received a lot of other things: postcards, flowers, earrings, one Magimix, and many kind words. Who can repay such kindness? I tried, though. With food, of course. By making everyone homemade brownies. With a lot of help from the kindest one of all. Thank you all, for a truly memorable day.

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

"What I Cooked Today" Day 185

Today we cooked another rerun: Nigella Lawson's pumpkin pasta with pine nuts, fresh goat's cheese and sage. I bought a pumpkin on Saturday and we had so much of it left that we had to use it again, and since this pasta was such a success, we decided to give it another go. Jochem made this by himself while I was at work, and he used much more chili which I thought was great. He somehow also managed to make the dish smell like meat, which was interesting. Either way he did improve on the dish since Saturday!

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

"What I Cooked Today" Day 184

Since we had most of the ingredients at home anyway and because we loved it so much, we decided to do a rerun of last Friday's couscous dish with caramelized red onion and grilled shrimp, only this time we used much more cucumber. Jam!

"What I Cooked Today" Day 183

You can always tell apart the days that Jochem and I spent cooking together (fresh food and beautiful pictures made by someone obviously much more patient with modern technology than me) and the days that we spent apart (great food which is heated in the oven before a quick picture is taken underneath my fluorescent desk lamp). I'm sure you'll be able to see the difference in today's apple pancakes with lavender honey!

Source: Jamie's America by Jamie Oliver

"What I Cooked Today" Day 182

Tonight Jochem and I made three dishes for dinner. I picked the first two dishes from Nigella Lawson's latest cookbook and both were inspired by Indian cuisine (quite appropriate I thought, since we'll be going to India in less than two months). First, we made potatoes from the oven with lots of herbs and spices as well as some red onion with lime juice. We also made lamb chops rubbed with the same herbs and spices.

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



For dessert we made something called 5-minute chocolate cake. Last week Anna sent me a YouTube video by the instructables about making a chocolate cake in a mug in a microwave. Since I love having pastry with tea for dessert I thought: this I have to try! It is indeed easy (I had all of the ingredients in my kitchen cupboards, minus the chocolate chips) and fast (2,5 minutes in the microwave), but it does not stand up to the real thing. It was quite dry and you really need the chocolate chips to give the cake that moist texture. So, although I enjoyed this experiment a lot, in the future I will probably opt for making a batch of brownies during the weekend which will last me all week. Check out the clip for your 5-minute chocolate cake here.

Source: www.instructables.com

"What I Cooked Today" Day 181

Y'all know how much I adore Jamie Oliver, but when I was given a beautiful new cookbook written by Nigella Lawson for my birthday, I knew that I had to give her a try. I spent quite a long time studying her recipes and admiring the pretty pictures before deciding on two dishes to make this weekend. Tonight Jochem and I made a wonderful fall pasta dish with pumpkin, pine nuts, fresh goat's cheese and sage. I must admit that I tweaked the recipe a little bit according to personal taste and convenience, but since I do that all the time with Jamie Oliver's recipes, you don't have to be alarmed. It was a very lovely meal.

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

"What I Cooked Today" Day 180

Today Jochem and I had absolutely no idea what we were doing, but somehow managed to make a great dish. First, we marinated some shrimp with sea salt, black pepper, dried chilis, olive oil and garlic. Second, we caramelized some red onion. Third, we made a cold sauce with creme fraiche, sea salt, black pepper, dried chilis, lemon zest and cucumber. Then we cooked some couscous and grilled the shrimp. Finally, we mixed in the couscous with the cold sauce, added the caramelized red onion, placed the grillled shrimp on top, and squirted some lemon juice on top of it. Fantastic!

"What I Cooked Today" Day 179

While Jochem worked his fourth late shift of the week, I was left to really scrape the barrel when it came down to preparing my dinner. When money's tight (which it often is), we have to be very creative in order to whip up a decent meal, especially now that we've developed such high standards over the years. Today I was left with nothing more than 100 grams of spaghetti, 1 garlic clove, 1/2 onion, half a can of tinned tomatoes and some ingredients that we (luckily) always have in stock, like extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, black pepper, dried chilis, Parmesan cheese (thank GOD for Parmesan cheese!) and spicy olive oil. With these ingredients I made a lovely pasta dish that was simple but nice. I only wish that I'd have had some fresh basil, but I didn't. I didn't even have dried basil, but that's probably because we never buy it, because let's face it: dried basil SUCKS. So I used dried parsley instead.