Lentils and Vegetables Indian Style

This recipe was an emergency vegetable saver as I had quite a few squash that were going bad after a weekend away. It was also my first try at makeing an Indian dish.

lentils
onion
garlic
ginger
turmeric
cayenne pepper
chili flakes
salt and pepper
leek
carrots
squash
Cook the lentils in water with a bit of salt.
In a frying pan, heat up oil and fry the onions. After a couple of minutes, add garlic and ginger. Add the spices.
Add leek and carrots. After a couple of minutes, add squash. Add spices if necessary.
When almost done, add the lentils and cook until done.

I liked the flavorful result, but it wasn't as spicy as I had hoped, I might have been too careful with the chili flakes. Next time I want to follow an actual recipe to make an Indian dish :)

Vegetabel stock from scraps

I stumbled upon this brilliant idea a couple of weeks ago. It is quite simple:
1. Collect your veggie scraps in a container in the freezer.
2. Cook the veggie scraps with herbs in water for about an hour.
3. Drain. Use the stock.

This site has a useful picture to show which vegetables make good stock and what should be avoided.

Whenever the containers containing veggie scraps begin to take up too much space in my freezer I make a pot of stock (or rather I assume this is what I will continue doing, thus far it has only happened once) and make a soup with the stock.

So easy!

Chicken Pie

I tried baking mini Chicken Pot Pies in my muffin pan. I didn't actually look up a recipe and the only Chicken Pot Pie that I ever had was the microwave Chicken Pot Pie the day before which led to me thinking "Hm, I bet I can make this myself!"
Apparently I couldn't and the result didn't taste like Chicken Pot Pie usually tastes. So I am calling it a Chicken Pie

For the Crust:
1 cup of flour
1/2 stick of butter
2 eggs
salt, pepper
Mix together, roll out between two sheets of cling foil. Lift the upper foil and use a big cup to cut out circles to press in the muffin pan molds. Safe some dough for sealing the pies. Blind bake at 300 F for about 10 min.

For the filling:
onion, chopped
broccoli, cut into small pieces
peas
carrots, pealed and cut into small pieces
chicken breast
Fry the onion in some oil and add the vegetables. Fry for a couple of minutes, then add the chicken and fry until chicken and veggies are done. Cut chicken into small pieces.

For the sauce:
Turkey stock
corn starch or flour
butter
cream
paprika, salt, pepper
lemon juice
Melt butter in a hot pan, add corn starch or flour and spices. While stirring fast add the turkey stock and cream until the sauce has the desired consistency. Add more salt, spices and lemon juice if needed.

Mix the sauce with the veggies and chicken and fill the muffin pan. Add dough lids and bake until lids are golden for about 20-30 minutes.


I need to learn how to use my seasoning and spices. The pies had too much pepper and not enough salt. But otherwise they were quite tasty.

Spring Rolls

From an Asian supermarket I got rice paper circles and filled them with the following ingredients.

Spring Roll filling:
1 carrot, grated
1 small cucumber, grated
1 green onion, cut into small rings
1/4 red onion, cut into small cubes
chicken (optional)
mushrooms, washed and halved
2 tbsp peanut satay sauce
1 tbsp cream cheese
paprika, pepper, salt
Melt some butter in a pan, add spices. Place green onion, red onion, chicken (optional) and mushrooms an in the pan. Cover and let sit at medium heat for about 5 minutes. Turn over the chicken if necessary. When chicken and mushrooms are almost done, take them out of the pan and add satay sauce and cream cheese to the remaining onions.
Soak the rice paper circles in water for about 5 seconds, then fill them with carrot, cucumber, chicken (optional) and mushrooms. Top with sauce before rolling them up.
Makes about 5 spring rolls, enough for 1 meal or a snack for 2.

The result was very tasty. And I assume, once I get a bit better at rolling them it will also be quite a fast recipe as the cooking doesn't take too long and most of the ingredients are raw. With the sauce inside instead of on the side it's also a perfect finger food for work!

Vegetable Stew (with beef)

For this stew I have combined ideas that I found online with what I had in the fridge. This recipe can easily be done without the beef and as a vegan/vegetarian version.

Vegetable Stew

beef for stews (optional)
oil mustard and dressing
4-5 cups of broth
1/2 can of tomato paste
spices: bay leaves, oregano or basil, pepper, salt
3 carrots, sliced
3 big potatoes, diced
5 celery stems, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, sliced
1 apple, diced
3 tomatoes, diced
1 cup mushrooms, sliced
3 tablespoons of flour
3 table spoons of water
In a large pot, fry the beef in oil, mustard and dressing until done on the outside.
Add broth, tomato paste and spices, bring to a boil and then simmer for 30-60 minutes (I used this time to cut the vegetables). Add carrots, potatoes, celery, onion and leek. Cook until potatoes are soft. Add apple, tomatoes and mushrooms and cook for another 10-15 minutes.
Whisk together flour and water and add to the stew, cook for another 3 minutes until the stew thickens.

Outcome:
- I couldn't taste the mustard and dressing at all and I wonder if they are necessary (I think I would have liked a little mustard taste, so I will try to add more mustard next time).
- The stew had a very strong tomato taste which I wasn't expecting since I only used half a can. I want to try to leave that out next time.
- Another thing I wasn't expecting was that I couldn't taste the celery much. I don't like raw celery and for that reason haven't used it in cooking either. Maybe it was masked by the tomato taste, but in the future I will not avoid it anymore.
- I added the apple because some sites say that it goes well will celery or celery root, but I don't think that one apple made much difference. Maybe it was also masked by the tomato taste.
- What I really liked was how the stew thickened slightly with the flour and water mixture that is added in the end.

Russian Salad "Olivier"

To go with the leftover Tarte Flambee from yesterday I made:

a Russian salad with the name of "Olivier"
3 big potatoes, cooked and diced
4 eggs, cooked and diced
4 carrots, grated
1 cup of corn
1 cup of peas
1 cucumber, diced
1 pickled cucumber, diced
1/2 onion, chopped in the food processor
quite a bit of mayonnaise
a bit of mustard
salt and pepper
Mix everything together in a big bowl or pot. Enjoy for the next couple of days :)

I used fresh carrots and grated them instead of slicing and dicing them. It seemed like less work, I wonder if I could even chop them in the food processor like I did with the onion.
The mayonnaise turned out to be much saltier than I was used to, so I will need to either not add any salt at all or add it right at the end.