Avocados filled with Shrimp

This is a quick and simple recipe and it tastes great. It's easy to make the filling and bring it with the avocados to a party where the avocados can be cut and filled in no time. 

The recipe is based on this one, which uses crab meat instead of shrimps.

Ingredients:
Avocados
Cooked mini shrimp, chopped
Celery
1/2 - 1 Shallots

Mayonnaise
Cream cheese

Lemon or lime juice
Salt

Pepper

Chop celery and shallot very finely in a food processor. Mix with shrimp, mayonnaise, cream cheese, lemon juice, salt, pepper and sea food spice if desired.

Cut avocados in half and take out a little bit of the flesh to be mixed in the filling. Salt the avocado halves. Fill with shrimp filling. Add pepper or parsley to garnish.

Enjoy!

Pancakes

One Saturday I woke up realizing that I have never made pancakes from scratch. I quickly went about changing that.

Using this recipe I whipped together 

1 egg, beaten fluffy

3/4 cup of milk

2 tbs of butter, melted

1 cup of flour

1 tbs of sugar

1/4 tsp of baking powder and

1/2 tsp of salt.

Using 1/4 cup at a time I poured the batter on a hot pan and in zero-point-nothing (Null Komma Nix) I had 6 and 1 half pancakes for breakfast.

They weren't quite as fluffy as pancakes usually come (I believe it has something to do with either too much or too little liquid in the batter). But with berries, maple syrup and whipped cream they were quite enjoyable.

Chicken-Vegetable-Roll with Coconut and Peanut Butter

I've made this recipe on a whim while talking on the phone with my parents. So I was distracted. I think I originally wanted to make something else and then some ideas got jumbled up.
The ideas were:

• I should make something with this left over filo dough to finally get rid of it and never buy it again
• I should use this coconut creamer that I bought last week.
• No one is eating that unsalted peanut butter that sits in the fridge, what could I do with it..?
• Chicken and coconut and peanut butter might be good together, I should look up some recipes
• ..that fish that I cooked in milk turned out quite yummy..
• Oh, half a butternut squash in the fridge!

The result was ok, if somewhat weird.

Ingredients
filo dough (or puff pastry)
chicken
coconut milk
peanut butter
butternut squash, cut in 1 inch cubes
zucchini, cut into half slices
carrot, cut into half slices
Cashews
Soy sauce
onion, cut into cubes
salt, pepper, turmeric, paprika
egg, beaten

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 425 F (220 C). Roast butternut squash in the oven.
Turn oven down to 375 F (390 C).
Mix coconut milk and peanut butter in a pot and cook chicken in it until tender.
Fry onion until translucent, add salt and spices, add zucchini, carrot and cashews and fry until almost done. Add some coconut milk and a splash of soy sauce and continue frying for a couple of minutes.
Mix chicken, butternut squash and vegetables from the pan together.
Place sheets of filo dough into an oven pan, brushing each sheet with oil or butter. Place chicken-vegetable-mix onto the filo dough sheets and place more on top to cover.
Brush with the beaten egg.
Bake until the top is golden brown.

Bagel Chips

Bagels go stale after a day or two.

To refresh them, you can dip them into water for a second and then bake them in the oven for 3-5 minutes at 325 F (160 C).

Or you can make bagel chips.

Cut them into slices and put them on a pan. Brush them with oil and add salt, pepper and/or other spices and herbs that you like. Bake at 375 F (190 C) until they are golden.  ..that happens quite fast, I almost burned my first batch as you can see in the picture :)

Serve with soup, salad or dips.

Banana Chocolate Bread

I really enjoy reading the book BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher and there are tons of recipes that I want to try out. Most of the ones that I have tried out so far have been incredible so I was exited to try the banana bread recipe. As always I used coconut sugar instead of white sugar and I added 1 cup of chocolate chips because. The original recipe uses baking powder as well as baking soda, so I substituted the baking powder with more baking soda (not one to one as baking soda is 4 times more powerful).

1 3/4 cups of flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups coconut sugar
1/2 cups canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1/2 cup buttermilk
4 mashed very ripe bananas (about 2 cups)
1 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup whipping cream
Mix together flour, baking soda, salt and sugar.
In a second bowl, mix together canola oil, vanilla extract, eggs, buttermilk and bananas until well combined. Then add chocolate chips and roasted nuts.
Make a mold in the dry ingredients and add the banana mix.
In a third bowl whip the whipping cream until soft peaks form. Then fold the cream into the batter.
Bake in a 8 x 4.5 x 2.5 inch (20 x 11 x 6 cm) loaf pan at 375F / 190C for about 35 minutes until the center springs back when touched and a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

As I didn't have a loaf pan I used an 8 x 8 inches square baking pan. The result was disastrous. After 35 minutes the batter was still very liquid and after another 30 hour the outside began to burn while a knife inserted in the center still came out smeared with uncooked batter.
So I took it out of the oven, cut it in half and tried saving it by frying it on the stove. The result looked very sad.
On the plus side it did taste quite good and was happily received as a sweet breakfast addition on our camping trip.

Next time I would still use my square baking pan but only make half of the batter. I don't know how all this batter can fit in a loaf pan and not overflow when it rises during baking!

Pelmeni

This Russian national dish is easy to make, albeit I suspect no one would call it quick, but everyone likes it.

For the dough I used this recipe from a German website. Then I made a beef filling and a vegetarian filling.

Dough
400 g flour
2 eggs
150 ml warm water
1/2 tsp salt
Add the salt to the flour then add warm water to the flour and begin mixing. Then add the eggs and knead until all ingredients are well combined. Cover with a wet cloth and let the dough sit for 20-30 min.

Beef filling
1 lb ground beef
1.5-2 onions, blended
2 tbsp soft butter
salt, pepper, paprika, cumin, parsley
Combine all ingredients. Done.

Potato filling
boiled potatoes
milk
butter
1/2 onion
salt, pepper
Cut the onion in little pieces and fry until golden/translucent. Mash potatoes with a bit of the water they were boiled in, add milk, butter, onion, salt and pepper.

To form the Pelmeni separate the dough in half and make about 1.5-2 inch thick rolls. Then cut 1.5-2 inch pieces off, roll them into balls, use flour to dust the table and roll the dough balls out into very flat circles.
Then place filling onto a circle, fold it in half making sure to pinch the outer line of the half circle together. Then fold the edges together. (See picture)
Cook for about 10 minutes. Serve with butter and or sour cream.

Tortillas

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to learn how to make tortillas. It was a great experience and made me want to try it at home, too.
I had some left over white corn meal and eagerly mixed the 4 needed ingredients together. The result couldn't have been more different. My white corn meal was very coarse and instead of a nice dough I had a kind of mush and it was impossible to shape it into anything. Not quite willing to give it up I used a spoon to pour the mixture onto the frying pan and made a couple of sad looking, hard oval shaped ..things. I am resolved to try again with yellow corn flour some day.

yellow corn flour
water
olive oil
salt
Maria from Bolivia showed us how to mix yellow corn flour with water, add a little bit of olive oil and salt until the texture of the dough is just right and can be formed to tortillas. We made our hands wet so that the dough wouldn't stick to our hands (which it shouldn't do too much either way). First we made little balls out of the dough, then formed them into little sombrero shapes using the thumb and index finger, finally flattening out the sombrero into a nice round shape, about 1/4 inch thick.
Then we fried the tortillas in a dry frying pan and ate them with beans, salad, guacamole, cheese, and salsa.

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 :)

Spinach Puffs

I started going to a community kitchen event that happens once a week. It's a great way to learn new recipes, the people are very welcoming and the huge kitchen is great, too!

These spinach puffs might just become my favorite recipe. They are easy to make and although I usually don't like feta cheese too much, it adds a lot to the spinach and puff pastry taste AND I can use my muffin pan for yet another non-muffin recipe!

2/3 cups thawed spinach, well squeezed to get as much water out as possible
1/2 cup feta cheese
1 onion
1 garlic clove
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp dill
salt and pepper
2 eggs
frozen puff pastry (4"/10cm squares)
Mix spinach, feta, chopped onion, garlic, olive oil, dill, salt and pepper, and one of the eggs.
Place puff pastry squares into muffin pan molds.
Fill puff pastry with spinach mix.
Fold pastry corners so that they meet in the center.
Beat the second egg and brush the pastry with it.
Bake at 400F/200C for about 25 min until golden.

I could imagine changing the salmon roll recipe to fit into puff pastry cups instead of a roll! Mmmh!

Savory Corn Bread

What I didn't know before I made this: Corn bread in the US is usually sweet.
This recipe from BakeWise by Shirley O. Corriher is the second corn bread recipe I tried and, as the first one, it is not sweet. So I was quite surprised to find out that this is not the "normal" corn bread.

1 cup cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
2 cups milk, hot
4 tbsp butter
3 eggs
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 tsp baking soda or 2 tsp baking powder
1 cup grated Parmesan
Mix cornmeal, salt, pepper, nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Add hot milk while stirring constantly to avoid lumps. Add the remaining ingredients.
Bake at 350F / 180C for

This particular recipe has way too much nutmeg for my taste and if I make it again I will probably leave it out all together. Apart from that I liked it with stew and soup!