main dish

Pumpkin soup -vegan!

Publié le 23 Février 2020 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #soup, #recipe, #vegan, #faith, #food, #life experience, #life lesson, #main dish

Is it Halloween? No, it's the lent before Pascha (or Easter, depending on who you're asking), and pumpkin soup is a vegan dish. We're supposed to eat vegan dishes during lent.

It's also one of the easiest dishes I came across! And honestly, i have no idea why I waited for so long to make it! No, I do know why: I thought it's sweet, since I associate pumpkin with the pie. I was wrong, or at least this soup didn't turn out sweet.

INGREDIENTS:

pumpkin
carrots
salt
powder black pepper
water (of course)
the tool to mash potatoes (in this case, pumpkin)

METHOD:

You need to peel the carrots and dice them.

Throw the carrot cubes in a large enough pot, with water and salt. Place the pot on fire. Carrots cook slower than many other vegetables, hence it's ok to have them on the fire for a little longer.

Cut the pumpkin in smaller pieces, and remove the skin. I used my knife for this part. You might want to cut the pieces even smaller, to help with the cooking time.

Throw your smaller pumpkin pieces into the pot as well. Hopefully you can tell the pumpkin pieces in the pot are smaller than on the cutting board.

Turn the heat up, and make the whole think boil for some 20 minutes. You might want to adjust the time, depending on the quantity. You have to make sure the pumpkin is cooked. It has to be soft when you poke it with a fork.

Now you want to take the tool you use for mashing potatoes, and use it to mash the boiled carrots and pumpkin.

When you're done, you might want to add more salt, and some pepper. You can serve hot or cold.

Bon appetit!

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General and vegan stew with potatoes

Publié le 25 Février 2019 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #food, #recipe, #tips, #main dish, #vegan

Today I decided to make a stew and also share the process as well. This stew is 100% vegan, as i made sure not to use anything that was made by animals, or with their meat.

I'm hungry, so let's start the recipe already. Here are the ingredients:

potatoes -more than 1 kg (2.5 lbs? 3 lbs?)
2 medium carrots
some 300 grams of green beans (less than 1 lbs)
1 bell pepper (any color)
1 teaspoon of salt ? (depending on how salty you want it)
1 or 2 spoons of cooking oil
sweet or hot paprika (powder)
black pepper (you can use both powder and whole, or either one)
aromatic herbs - packed individually. -see the image below

You can also add a small eggplant in this stew, if you want. I don't recommend zucchini nor baby pumpkins - I tried and I found the experiment rather unpleasant.

METHOD:

Take the beans and 2 spoons of oil, and put them in a large enough pot, that you place on a small fire or heat source.

Peel and dice your carrots, and place them on top of the beans. Also pour some water and some salt, and cover with a lid.

It's time to peel, wash and dice your potatoes. Potatoes cook much faster than carrots, and if the fire or heat is on medium to low, there won't be much to worry about.

Once this is done, drop the cubed potatoes into the pot, and fill with water just enough to cover everything,much like in the image below. Now leave the pot to cook over medium heat for some 45 minutes.

When the time is up, you add the condiments, herbs, chopped bell pepper (mine was frozen, so you can't see it well), and 2 spoons of tomato sauce.

Now, after you added all that, mix and let sit on the fire for some 15 minutes more. This is enough time for the bell pepper to cook and for the aromas to mix up, and flavor the dish.

Next, you can serve lava hot if you feel like it, but I recommend you wait some 30 minutes for it to cool down a little - it will still be delicious. You can serve it as is or with lettuce or Greek salad, fried tofu or fried soy meat substitute.

FOR MEAT EATERS:

You can also serve with chicken, with fried eggs, fish, and even with steak - basically anything that can be fried or roasted. You can put smoked bacon in it during cooking, if you really want to, for more flavor.

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Romanian style spinach - with milk!

Publié le 18 Janvier 2019 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #advice, #recipe, #main dish, #Romanian food, #food

This is the first entry for 2019, so happy new year! I will try to update you soon (fingers crossed) with how I managed to keep my last year's new year resolutions, and which are the new ones.

You know I have (paid) work to do when I start writing or doing anything else out of stress. .. as long as I can get some stuff done, I should be forgiven? no? only if I meet the deadline on Friday? I'll meet it. ;)

And now on with the recipe! First I have to tell you that this recipe first appeared on my old blog, back in March 2017. However, last night I re-made it and took more pictures, so I post this as a fresh entry, but with both old and new pictures.

They say spinach is very healthy for you, but not everyone likes it. I must say I REALLY like spinach for some reason. Too bad I'm not eating more of it, though.

I'll not go into why is it good for you, or give one hundred reasons to eat it. I'll just advise you to try new recipes for the foods you don't really like.. or better-said vegetables you like least. I'll share a rather simple recipe that hopefully will make you curious enough to try it out. Perhaps you'll even like it.

There is a bit of garlic in this Romanian recipe - in the original version which I want you to try. You probably know by now I don't eat or cook with onions or garlic, but I will share this recipe exactly how it is done - as I believe most of you will like it better this way. Let's say that you can easily get nauseous because of this food if you don't add garlic, and you can't use onion instead either.

INGREDIENTS: (4 servings)

1 kg (2 pounds) fresh spinach *
5-6 tablespoons oil
5-6 garlic cloves
3-4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
800 ml cold milk
salt [to taste]
8 eggs [2 for each serving]

METHOD:

Wash your spinach well, several times if needed. Make sure you have only nice looking leaves in there. [skip this step if you use a frozen product like me]
Boil it for a few minutes in salted water. It should look cooked. Strain.
Grab your wooden chop board and a non-metal spatula or spoon** and finely chop your spinach. [you'll skip this step for frozen products, as they might already be chopped]

Heat oil in a pot large enough to hold 4 pounds of food, as you'll add all the ingredients in here. Chop or mince your garlic*** and add it in to cook a bit. The garlic should become a bit translucent not brown (or the food becomes bitter) just enough to give some flavor.
Add your flour and mix well and wait for it to become a bit brown.
Add half of your milk and let it simmer for about a minute - you should have a white [thick] sauce at this point. Mine was a bit lumpy because I didn't mix/stir well enough. Avoid lumps in your sauce [if you can].
Add your chopped spinach and stir.

Add the remaining milk until you get the desired consistency. Don't forget to add salt. Let cook until it becomes steamy again. I personally didn't feel I needed etra milk.
OPTIONAL: add a teaspoon of sugar and vinegar (or juice from a half lemon). I didn't add these, so I'm not sure if it will taste better. Apparently, some older women cook it this way. ****
Fry your eggs sunny side up, and place 2 on each serving, and serve!

Bon-appetit!

You can also serve with fried chicken liver like seen below, but it simply tastes better with eggs. We eat fried liver in Romania - chicken and pork liver are most popular and delicious when hot!

NOTES:

*I used frozen spinach because it is impossible to find fresh one in December, around here.

**we have special butcher knives made of wood or silicone.

***I'm not sure if there is a taste difference, but the idea is not to use the garlic cloves as they are.

****The first time around I didn't add neither lemon nor sugar. Last night I added lemon. I used the juice from half a lemon for the whole quantity of food.

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Refilled bell peppers

Publié le 6 Août 2014 par Charly C.

Catégories : #Cooking, #recipe, #main dish, #tips, #food, #advice

Hello world~~~

Today's dinner will be "refilled bell peppers" with pork, carrots, and rice. People here love this dish, and so do I. This recipe calls for cooking both on medium heat and in the oven. It can be done all in the oven too, if you prefer. ;) This is a main dish, and I actually forgot what you can eat it with. Maybe a tomato salad, some yogurt or sour cream. You might want bread too, if you're a fan. The dish can be served warm or cold, depending on when you serve it. Sometimes these peppers taste better cold, or the next day if the person cooking them is really talented. If you ask me, this dish doesn't really need other side dishes.

Most main dishes use onions and (or) garlic, but I am allergic to them, so I used shredded carrots instead of onions. I hope the dish still tastes good. I had 10 bell peppers in total, but I only managed to use 7. That's how many fit in my pot, and not all of them had the same size. I broke 1 pepper and I didn't use it anymore for this dish, but I will use it for a sandwich, or some other dish. I will give you the quantities I used, and I want to mention before hand that I have some left overs I placed in the freezer for a future batch. You need a tall enough pot in so the peppers would stand on their tips. I used pork meat, but you can use a mixture of pork and beef, or just beef. I think beef will cook for longer, though, I'm not sure.

serving idea

INGREDIENTS

500 g pork meat. [1 pound?]
500 g uncooked rice [1 pound?]
2 long carrots
condiments: black pepper, salt, paprika,
thick tomato sauce
2 eggs
200 g sour cream [tastes better than yogurt]
3 table spoons of cooking oil [I used sunflower oil, the most commonly found and used here]
bell peppers [7 or more]

METHOD

First, wash the rice, and leave it in some water until you're ready to mix it. Peel and shred the carrots. Now, remove the core with seeds from the peppers, and wash the peppers. Make sure you don't break them. It is time to mix the meat, condiments, eggs, shredded carrots, 2 spoons of tomato sauce, and rice.

soaking rice, counted peppers, and the filling before mixing everything

With a spoon fill each of the peppers, but leave some empty space at the top as the rice will swell up. Place the filled peppers in the pot, with the opening up. Fill with water to cover them, and place on medium heat for an hour. I think you need medium heat, as I used low heat and things were going nowhere.

While the peppers boil, mix the sour cream with some 4 tablespoons of tomato sauce, some salt, some black pepper, the oil, and some water.

When boiling time is up, your pot is supposed to be half full with water. I had a lid over my pot and the water level never went down. This turned out to be a good things though, as I used some of the water in the sour cream and tomato sauce mixture. ;) The mixture has to be rather liquid, like tomato juice.

i edited this entry in july 2017, when i re-cooked this

When putting the sauce mixture over the peppers, make sure you cover them as well. Place the pot in the oven for 20 minutes. I stopped the fire in the oven after 25 minutes, and then I left the pot in there as it wasn't yet dinner time.

my leftovers before freezing time. can you tell I forgot to put tomato sauce in the mixture? hahaha.

Some notes:

This recipe can be altered for those who do not eat meat, by replacing all the meat with rice or soy. It is best to use some sort of lid for the peppers after filling them, so there will be no leak. You can use slices of tomatoes, potatoes, or pieces of peppers, like I did.

You might have figured out by now, that broken peppers may leak or break further, and you don't want that. Depending on the size of the peppers and number of people at the table, the serving size is 1 or 2 peppers per person. Use at least 2 table spoons of sour cream or yogurt on each pepper after you place them on the plates.

The same filling can be used for refilled zucchini or refilled tomatoes.

Please leave your questions in the comments below.Bon Apetit~~~

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