Mince meat gratin à la Provence

Found this recipe on tasteline.com. I modified it a little bit by using beef mince instead of pork because I like beef better. A really easy and perfect midweek dinner.

Ingredients
serves 3-4
400 g mince meat
2 garlic cloves
½ leek
1 red chili, seeds taken out
olive oil
salt and pepper
oregano
thyme
1 tbsp paprika powder
250 ml cream
1 zucchini
2 tomatoes
grated cheese

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
Finely chop the chili and garlic. Cut the leek in thin slices. Fry the mince meat in the oil and when it gets some colour add the leek, garlic and chili. Fry until the leek is soft, then add the paprika powder, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper. Add the cream and let it simmer for about 2 minutes. Pour the sauce in an ovenproof dish. Slice the zucchini and tomatoes in slices and put these on top of the såsen. Pour over the cheese and some more oregano. Cover the dish with some aluminium foil and cook on the lowest shelf in the oven for about 20 minutes. Take away the foil and move the dish to the middle of the oven and cook for another 10 minutes.

Blueberry pie with coconut

Found a recipe with low GI and without added sugar so I decided to try it. It was supereasy and tasted really good. The recipe is from a Swedish website but I adjusted it slightly: http://www.tasteline.com

Ingredients
serves 4
500 ml blueberries
2 tbsp honey
400 ml dessicated coconut
2 eggs
40 g butter

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Put the berries in an ovenproof dish. Drizzle over the honey. Whip together the eggs and coconut and sprinkle the mixture over the blueberries.Shave over the butter and bake in the oven until the coconut mixture gets golden brown, approximately 10 minutes. Serve with some whipped cream.

Chicken teriyaki

A Japanese classic. Found the recipe in one of my mum's magazines and the result turned out to be quite nice.

Ingredients
serves 4
800 g chicken fillet (preferably thighs or breast cut into smaller pieces)
2 tbsp grated ginger
2 garlic cloves
½ finely chopped chili
4 tbsp mirin (Japanese rice vinegar)
75 ml soy sauce
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tsp potato flour
1 tbsp sesame seeds

Peel and finely chop the garlic. Mix mirin, soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger, garlic and chili in a plastic bag. Add the chicken pieces and make sure all are covered. Let them marinate for about 15 minutes.
Take out the chicken pieces from the marinade and fry them in some oil in a frying pan. Put the pieces in a pot instead, pour of the marinade and add 100 ml water. Simmer under lid for about 40 minutes. Mix the potato flour with 2 tbsp water in a separate bowl. Add this mixture to the pot and let it boil. Sprinkle over the sesame seeds and serve with stir-fry veggies and some rice (if wanted).

Hanna's sweet potato moussaka

I've never made moussaka before and I'm pretty sure this is not really the way to make it but I wanted to try and make my own version of it using sweet potato. Not really sure if it can even be called moussaka but that's the only name I could come up with.

Ingredients
serves 3-4
400 g mince meat
1 onion
1 capsicum
1 garlic clove
200 ml passata
cayenne pepper
oregano
paprika powder
salt and pepper

125 ml cream
150 g grated cheese
25 g butter
extra cheese for topping

1 sweet potato, peeled
1 eggplant

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
Chop the onion, garlic and capsicum finely. Fry off in some olive oil for a few minutes. Then add the minced meat and let it get brown. Add the passata together with all the spices and let it simmer together for about 5-10 minutes. While it's simmering; add the butter and the cream together in a separate pot. Let it get warm, then add the cheese and let it melt. Cut the sweet potato and eggplants into slices about ½ cm thick.
Grease an ovenproof dish with some butter. Add a layer of the meat sauce, follow with the sliced aubergine, then add one thin layer of the cheese sauce. Put on the rest of the meat sauce, then the sliced sweet potato and last finish it off with the rest of the cheese sauce and top off with some extra cheese. Bake in the oven for 30-40 minutes.

Breakfast bake

I wanted to try something else to have for breakfast other than the usual eggs and bacon or pancakes. So I found this recipe which we decided to try; Paleo Breakfast Bake. I put a little bit of whatever I had at home in it.

Ingredients
serves 3-4
6 eggs
3 beef sausages
3 slices bacon
1 onion
½ capsicum
1 tsp paprika powder
½ tsp garlic powder
½ tsp turmeric
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
Fry off the sausages and the bacon for a couple of minutes. Let them cool.
Put all ingredients in a bowl (including the sausages and bacon) and fold gently to combine everything.
Pour into a greased oven-proof dish.
Bake for 45 minutes.

Cauliflower mash

Something I've heard of lately but I've never tried was mash made from cauliflower. Yesterday we tried it and had it together with a nice steak and a few greens beans. It was really, really nice and super easy to make.

Boil the florets of a cauliflower head until soft; about 10-15 minutes.
Drain the water.
Add a big nob of butter (or however much you want) then mash using a hand mixer until smooth.
Add in some cream (I only used about 2 tbsp since I thought the mash was already quite soft).
Season with salt and pepper and serve.

Very easy, very tasty and a perfect alternative in order to have a low carb meal.

Home-made raspberry jam

I've started wanting to make condiments and sauces lately. I don't really know why but I think it has something to do with the fascination of how easy it actually is to make something that you normally would just buy in a jar and the flavours are much fresher and better. Then I also think I feel as if I've accomplished something buy making it myself. And everytime you open the fridge, there's that pretty jar without labels and preservatives. Today I decided to make some jam to go with my English muffins/scones.

I found the recipe on http://www.mommypotamus.com

Ingredients
makes about 240 ml/1 cup
480 ml/150 g fresh raspberries
120 ml honey
2 tbsp lemon juice


Coarsely mash the raspberries with a potato masher. Transfer the raspberries to a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Bring the fruit to a simmer and cook down for a few min. Add the honey, stirring well to combine. Continue to simmer the mixture for about 15-25 min stirring every once in awhile to keep it from burning. In order to know whether it's ready or not, keep a close eye on the mixture, stirring more frequently toward the end of the 15 min. It will then begin to thicken pretty quickly and as you are stirring, draw a spatula through the mixture and you can see that before it is ready, the mixture fills in the space created very quickly. As it becomes ready, it will fill the space in more slowly, leaving an open space for a few seconds as it slowly fills in. Leave on the heat until you get the consistency you want. Keep in mind that the mixture will thicken even more after it cools though. Remove from the heat, stir in the lemon juice and let it cool.

Marinated chicken with balsamic ruccola and cucumber tossed in lime vinaigrette

They had thin chicken filets on special in our supermarket this week so I decided to make a simple marinade for those and then just have some veggies with it. I wasn't very good with measuring the ingredients to the marinade so I'm afraid you will have to taste your way to it. The marinade shouldn't be too runny so don't put too much olive oil in.

Ingredients
Chicken marinade
paprika powder
turmeric
cayenne pepper
garlic powder
salt and pepper
olive oil

Mix all the spices together in a grinder, add the olive oil bit by bit until it becomes smooth. Put the chicken in a plastic bag and add the marinade. Let it sit in the fridge for at least a couple of hours.

Balsamic veggies with ruccola
½ zucchini, sliced
1 red capsicum, diced
1 onion, sliced
150 g ruccola
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
olive oil

Fry the onion and capsicum in some olive oil. Add the zucchini after a couple of minutes and fry for about 5 minutes. Add the ruccola together with the balsamic vinegar and let it fry together for a couple of minutes.

Lime vinaigrette
3 tbsp lime juice
½ tsp Dijon mustard
180 ml olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Combine the lime juice, mustard, salt and pepper in a blender. Slowly add the olive oil until it's all combined.

Thinly slice some cucumber and put in a bowl. Add some vinaigrette and put in the fridge for a bit. They almost taste like pickled cucumbers.

Fish with carrot salsa

I really couldn't think of what to have for dinner tonight but I took out a piece of fish of the freezer earlier so I needed to do something with that. Since I wasn't feeling like cooking too much I just threw together some veggies and fried the fish.

Ingredients for salsa
2 carrots
½ red onion
1 garlic clove
2 tomatoes
½ tbsp olive oil
2 tsp balsamic vinegar
dried basil
salt and pepper

Chop the red onion finely and crush the garlic clove. Finely chop the tomatoes and finely slice the carrot. Mix it together in a bowl. Add the oil, vinegar, herbs and spices. Just fry the fish in some butter and season with salt and pepper. Very easy.

Pork with capsicum and tomato sauce

I got the inspiration for this dish from tasteline.se Modified it a bit so that it suited whatever I had at home. I also took the opportunity to use some of the roasted capsicum sauce I made yesterday.

Ingredients
serves 2-3 people
300 g pork cutlets
1 red capsicum
50 ml greek yoghurt
50 ml cream
1 tbsp roasted capsicum sauce
1 tomato, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
½ tsp paprika powder
½ tsp dried basil
1 pinch chili powder
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees.
Start with making the sauce by putting the yoghurt, cream, tomato, garlic, capsicum sauce, paprika powder, basil, chili powder, salt and pepper in a bowl and mix thouroughly. Taste it to see if you want more of anything. Cut the red capsicum in large wedges. Put the pork cutlets in an oven proof dish. Cover with the sauce and add the capsicum pieces on top. Cook in the oven for about 30 minutes.

Steamed salmon with vegetable rice and sauce of roasted capsicum

I've been thinking about this dish for a while but I just never got a chance to make it. Now I had time and it turned out quite well actually. It's the first time I steam salmon and the result is actually better than I expected.

Ingredients
Rice
300 ml rice
500 ml water
½ yellow capsicum
1 big red onion
2 garlic cloves
2 carrots
1 tomato
3 tbsp olive oil
50 ml water
salt and pepper
paprika powder
garlic powder
dried parsley

Salmon
2 salmon fillets
paprika powder
dried parsley
salt and pepper
lemon juice

Roasted capsicum sauce
180 g roasted capsicum from a jar
1 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1 pinch chili powder (or however much you want)
1 tsp garlic powder

Start with boiling the rice. We have a rice cooker so the measurements of water vs. rice might be slightly different for someone else. Cook according to the packet. Chop the vegetables into slightly smaller bit size pieces. Fry the vegetables on medium heat in some of the olive oil. Lower the heat and let them cook until soft. Once the rice is ready then add it to the vegetables. Add the water together with all the herbs and spices. Mix it all together and then add the rest of the olive oil and mix in.

For the salmon; place the two salmon pieces on a piece of aluminium foil. Make sure you have enough foil so that you can wrap it around the salmon. Squeeze over some lemon juice. Put the salt, pepper, paprika powder and dried parsley on top of the salmon and close the foil. Put in a steamer and steam for about 10-15 minutes depending on how big your salmon pieces are.

Add all the ingredients for the sauce in a blender and blend until it becomes a liquid. Season with whatever you feel like.

Rhubarb pie

My mum found this recipe in some magazine a while back but it's definitely worth a try since it's so crunchy and delicious.

Ingredients
500 g rhubarb
100 ml caster sugar
1 tbsp potato starch (flour)

300 ml flour
2 tsp baking powder
200 ml caster sugar
1-2 tbsp lemon juice
grated zest of 1/4 lemon
1 egg
50 g butter + butter for greasing the dish

Preheat the oven to 225 degrees.
Peel and chop the rhubarb stalks in about 1 cm big pieces. Put them in a bowl together with the 100 ml sugar and potato starch. Mix together and let it sit for a while.
For the dough; mix together flour, baking powder, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and egg in a bowl and work together to form a crumbly dough. Put half of the dough in a greased pie dish (approximately 24 cm diameter), add the rhubarb pieces on top and finish with the rest of the pie crumble.
Put the pie dish in the oven for about 10 minutes. Take it out and shave the butter on the top. Then put it back in the oven for another 10 minutes until it has a nice colour. Serve with some lightly whipped cream flavoured with some vanilla sugar.

Lunch omelet

We had some veggies in the fridge that were getting old so I decided to just throw together a quick omelet for lunch.

Ingredients
serves 1
3 eggs
4 paksoi stems and leaves
½ red capsicum
½ leek
2-3 slices of parmaham
salt and pepper

Fry off the leek and capsicum in some olive oil for about three minutes. Add the paksoi and fry for another couple of minutes. Add the parmaham last and just let it fry togehter for a minute or two. Turn the heat off. Whisk together the three eggs and season with salt and pepper. Add this to a pan greased with a bit of olive oil and fry on low heat. When omelet is almost set on the top, flip it over and add your veggies on one half of the omelet. Let it fry for a couple of minutes, then fold it in half and transfer to a plate.

Banana pancakes

We had a lot of bananas that started to become uneatable so I decided to prepare tomorrow's breakfast today already. I made a batch of banana pancakes that I can just heat up again in the morning tomorrow. Perfect.
The batter is kind of difficult to handle so I recommend that you fry very small pancakes; maybe 5 cm in diameter otherwise they are quite difficult to turn without breaking.

Ingredients
serves 2 people
4 ripe bananas
2 eggs
4 tbsp almond butter
100 ml almond flour
100 shredded coconut

Mash the banana and add the eggs. Mix together well. Add the almond butter and make sure that mixes in properly. Stir in the almond flour and coconut until everything is thouroghly mixed together. Fry little pancakes on both sides in some butter on medium heat.

Banana bread

I've been wanting to make banana bread for a while now because it seems like one of those things that would be good to keep in the freezer and just take out every now and again. I found the recipe in the Paleo Recipe book.

Ingredients
3 ripe bananas
240 ml almond butter
240 ml almond flour
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees.
Mash the bananas with a fork in a bowl. Add the almond butter, almond flour and eggs. Mix together. Add the baking soda and baking powder and make sure it's thouroughly mixed in. Fill a greased loaf pan with the batter and bake in the oven for about 40 minutes.