Category: Food

  • Heartwarming quinoa

    Heartwarming quinoa

    A few days ago, i found a leftover of soup in my fridge. I wanted to finish it, but felt like eating something more substantial than soup. I took a small oven dish and put in a handful of quinoa, some dried tomatoes, a rosehip, some herbs and spices and then poured in the soup. Wow.

    The trick is to combine any tasteful, light soup with quinoa (or couscous, or bulgur) and herbs and put in the oven. Here we have a tomato soup from soup veggies, tomato paste, cooked chick peas (half of those mashed) with cumin, paprika and laurel. If you like spicy food, now is the time to add some harissa or curry paste.

    In an oven dish, make a 1 cm layer of quinoa/couscous and for every person, add about 1/2 tbs curry powder, 1/2 tbs sundried tomato, some cinnamon, some kaffir lime leaves (or thinly sliced lemongrass, or grated lemon rind) and other herbs and spices to your liking.

    Combine with (leftover?) soup so that there is 3 cm of food in the dish, stir gently and put in the oven, about 30 mins at 180 C.

     

    Even better the next day; reheat with a little bit of soup and serve with crunchy lettuce.

  • How to open a coconut

    How to open a coconut

    Dear people, let me present to you: the easiest way to open a coconut and get the juice out and flesh out. It’s safe (no axes, no nails) and clean.

    1. Pour out the coconut juice (water)
    2. Break the coconut open
    3. Take the flesh out
    4. Doe something nice with the shell

    Here’s how:

    1. Pour out the cocojuice

    Every coconut has three dents, one of which is always softer than the rest. Using a chinese chopstick or screwdriver or anything else long and thin, push through the softest dent. Shake out the coconut water. It’s delicious and healthy. Drink it pure of mix with fruit juice.

    2. Break the coconut open

    Using a hammer, hold the coconut and start hitting, gently and steadily, around the coconut, following its ‘equator’. Take care: the goal is NOT to break the whole coconut in pieces with three hits. By hitting gently and steadily, you’ll create a weak zone in the coconut’s wall. After a number of hits, the coconut will break open following this line.

    3. Take the coconut flesh out

    Hold half a coconut and a small sharp knife. Carf in the white coconut flesh, starting in the middle (the bottom) and carfing straight up towards the edge. Repeat until you have around eight lines going up from the center. You now have eight triagular pieces of coconut flesh. Now use the knife to break each triangle loose from the wall. They may come off easily, or it may require some effort and they will be in pieces. The older and drier the coconut, the easier it will be. So in this way, hard is good ;). The white coconut pieces will have a brown skin, you can eat this or shave it off.

    4. Do something nice with the shells

    Use them for growing sprouts,  fill with potpourri, use in a treehouse. In the tropics, they are used to make ‘stands’ for your feet when climbing a palm tree.

    Coconut recipes

    What tot do with your freshly cut coconut? Well, this:

    Grate/chop: great in pies and desserts and with Indian or Asian dishes (with peanut and/or fried onions, for example).

    Roll: make blissballs by chopping and combining dried fruits, raw cacao and nuts or muesli and roll the in coconut flakes.

    In pieces, for dipping: serve with marmelade or pureed fruits (banana, mango, pineapple). That’s a healthy snack!

     

  • Gazpacho: Spanish cold tomato soup

    Gazpacho: Spanish cold tomato soup

    You know that camping feeling? Living with little, in a tent or caravan, wearing flip flops to the toilet, wet grass tickling your toes… That’s me right now! Not because i’m on holiday, but just because i CAN.

    Well, and because my relationship broke up.

    I went to live somewhere i can be with my feet on the ground: in a friend’s caravan (thank you!) on the premise of another friend thank you too!).

    Now that i am processing and waving bye to nine years of love and also some mutual pain, too much pain in the end, many things are shifting. Sadness, incomprehension and especially: all the more love. Everything is open. And what happens? A world of new opportunities, new possibilities and new encounters is appearing. Wow. And yes: outch :(.

    As i’m embrazing the raw truth, much of my food here is also raw. It’s full of life and has all sweet and bitter tastes life has to offer. Every morning i wake up in my caravan, make a nice pot of tea and then blend a smoothie of vegetables, fruits and other healthy ingredients (check this one, for example: Morning glory power smoothie). Quick and easy, beautiful start.

    Raw is also the soup i’m sharing today: gazpacho with carrot. Throw all ingredients in the blender together en put itin the fridge for a while. So make sure to use clean ingredients; the carrot used in the soup was cleaner than the one in the picture. (My friend who saw the pic wanted you alt to know that. So now you do ;).)

    Gazpacho

    (cold tomato soup)

    serves four plates

    Blend

    4 large tomatoes
    one half bell pepper
    one half onion
    one carrot
    handful of basil
    small handful of celery leaf
    one garlic clove
    two tablespoons tomato paste
    some water

    Add pepper, salt and herbs to taste. You may also want to add some sweetener.

    Cool in the fridge while preparing the rest of the meal.

    Enjoy!

  • Zucchini spaghetti

    Zucchini spaghetti

    A week and a half ago i met superchef Michael in an ayahuasca workshop. I’m not sure whether it was his fantastic guitar music and drumming and singing, or his wild ginger hairdo, his wonderful little daughter, the zucchini spaghetti he and Ariella served us, or all of the above, but since then i’ve felt a little bit in love – with the whole wide world.

    Of all those beautiful things, there was one that i could recreate at home. Spaghetti made of zucchini, isn’t that brilliant? Now that i’ve encountered it, it seems to be everywhere. But until last week the thought had never occurred to me.

    I make spaghetti from zucchini now using a julienne cutter, which i got for only € 6,95.

    Here you go, my version of the recipe by Michael and Arielle (from Restaurant Golden Temple in Amsterdam):

    Recipe for Zucchini Spaghetti

    Cook some tomato chunks (ca 390 ml) with herbs in a pan and cook slowly until the sauce thickens and tastes a bit more sweet. Roast 100gr of roughly chopped walnut in a dry pan. Chop 8 dried tomatoes with a small handful of pine nuts, a tablespoon of fresh parsley and one tablespoon of fresh basil. Stir in the tomato mixture with the tomato sauce.

    Cut one zucchini into spaghetti strings. Drizzle with some olive oil and lemon zest (grated lemon rind).

    Put the zucchini on a plate, spoon on the tomato sauce and to with walnuts and some pepper and salt and olive oil if you wish.

    Zucchini with walnut (oil) and lemon rind is really a winning combination. Try it!

    For an extra tasty, hearty tomato sauce:

    Fry a small onion in some oil until it’s brown (but not burnt). Add a small clove of garlic, fuinely chopped. fry for an additional 30 secs and then add the tomato chunks.

    In stead of onions, you can also use black semi-dried olives. Make sure to use good ones. The ones we in Holland get in the supermarket, are not good. Go to a specialist and taste a few different varieties. You’ll be amazed by the differences in taste and say goodbye to the salty supermarket crappy ones forever!

  • Basics of juicing: avocado-apple-kiwi juice

    Basics of juicing: avocado-apple-kiwi juice

    My best kitchen purchase ever: a juicer. A bought it a year ago and have been using it about every two days. Superhealthy and really, really delicious. Friends love it, too.

    Here are some good-to-knows, tips and tricks:

    How does a juicer work:
    This is how the juicer works: vegetables and fruits are grated into pulp. The pulp is being centrifuged and thus pushed outward against the walls with very fine holes. Only the juice and finest pulp goes through. The result: superfresh, naturally cloudy juice. Best is to choose a machine that fits whole apples in the shaft.

    The above is for high-speed juicers. If you want to retain even more nutrients in your juice, choose a mechanically driven slow juicer.

    What do you need for juicing?
    For fruit juices, use apples or pears as a basis. Jason Vale (Philips’ marketing puppet juice chef): apple-sandwich. Start with an apple, stuff in anything else you lie in your juice and then end with an apple again. It works for me! I always have apples, pears, kiwifruits, carrots, lemons, ginger, mint, beetroot and leafy greens lying around so i always have my favorite juice ingredients at hand.

    Don’t peel your veggies!
    Apples, pears, carrots, beets, cucumbers, zucchinis, and even lemons and pineapples (well, be a bit careful with those): don’t peel! That would be a waste of vitamins ánd time! They can all go inside the juicer without peeling.

    Juicing oranges
    Oranges and clementines do need to be peeled (but not lemons and limes), because the rind holds bitter oils which will spoil your juice.

    Juicing bananas
    Veggies and fruits with a lot of starch, are not suitable for the juicer. The filter would get clogged with pulp. Ideally, use a blender or hand mixer to blend banana, avocado, papaya, mango, prunes etc into the juice.

    Superfast juicing process
    I’ll let mr. Vale do the talking:

    Recipe for Apple-kiwifruit-avocado juice:
    Juice 3-4 apples and 1-2 kiwis. Blend the juice with one half avocado. The avocado creates a deliciously light, luffy, creamy texture. It’s like ice cream, everybody loves it!

    (Update, 4+ years later: I still love juicers, nothing beats the taste of fresh juice! But I found with all those juices, I was drinking a LOT of sugar and missing most of the fibres. And although I often used the pulp to make something different, it felt like a pity to leave so much of the fruit and veg unused. Long story short… I’m back to smoothies, using the blender. Simply add water or any kind of juice to chunks of whole fruits and vegs in the blender and you can basically drink your daily dose.)

  • Grilled zucchini with mozzarella

    Grilled zucchini with mozzarella

    Wonderful and healthy quick side dish. A great one if you own a contact grill.

    Cut the zucchini in slices and sprinkle with some salt. Let the juices come out while you cut the onion in rings and cut the mozzarella.

    Grill the zucchini and onions in the grill pan. Put on a plate, add the mozzarella and make it all beautiful and tasty using olive oil, pepper, salt and and herbs such as basil, oregano and/or rosemary.

    Enjoy!