Roasted Veggies: Getting my raw materials ready for the week!

How to eat healthy, homemade food, save time and not end up with soggy rotten veggies in your fridge at the end of the week?

I have blogged before about prepping veggies in advance for the week. It ensures that even when you are dog tired and don't feel like cooking at the end of a long day, you can still eat something delicious and healthy at home!

This week I bought a bunch of veggies at the market on my day off and got them all ready in no time by using the oven to roast them. The advantage over other kinds of cooking is a) the flavor and versatility of roasted veggies and b) the fact that you are free to read, blog, nap or watch cat videos on YouTube while your veggies cook!

Veggies all chopped up and ready to be seasoned in the bowl!

Fresh ingredients this week:

• 1 zucchini
• 1 eggplant
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 red onion
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 carrot
• 5 cloves of garlic

Other ingredients:

• Sea Salt
• Black pepper
• Dry Thyme
• Olive Oil

Before cooking, the seasoned veggies are all spread out on a baking sheet/pan.

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius
• Wash and chop the veggies -- I sliced the eggplant and carrot into rounds, quartered the onion and tomatoes, cut the bell pepper into thick strips and left the garlic cloves whole, with the skins on. The zucchini was chopped into bite-sized cubes.
• Put all the chopped veggies in a large bowl.
• Add salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle some thyme and add a few lugs of olive oil.
• Toss to coat.
• Spread onto a baking tray.
• Pop into the oven for 45min. or so. Go do something fun.

These ingredients are to be transformed throughout the week into delicious meals, different every time so you don't get bored. Stay tuned!

Cooked and ready to be transformed into any delicious meal!

Steamed Veggies for a Week of Healthy Eating

I spent a few hours on the weekend chopping, washing and steaming a bunch of veggies, including squash, onions, garlic, spinach, cauliflower and broccoli. I also made a good portion of whole rice mixed with barley to keep in my fridge, and defrosted some black beans i had cooked a while back. I have talked before about how my busy schedule makes it hard for me to cook during the week, and I have found that washing and cooking the veggies in advance helps me eat home cooked meals throughout the week!

Reimagining the veggies and creating dishes with them later in the week is fast and easy! A bit of vegetable broth and I have soup, a few spices and I have curry, a blender and I have a dip or purée to eat with chips or pita...

This pic is of the veggies eaten pretty much straight up, with some salt, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some olive oil! Yum!

Pauper's Dinner

Came home from yoga absolutely ravenous and knowing full well there was no food at home and I was in no mood for cooking any...

I opened the fridge and found some leftover sautéed spinach! Spread it cold on some toast and poached and egg and voila! Pauper's dinner, light enough for a late, post yoga eat, delicious and only took like 3min to make!

Super Seafood Tray Bake!

Last night I had friends over for dinner in my new place for the first time and broke my own rule about not making something I've never made before when I have guests over... I broke the rule because:

• I have been dying to try this recipe from Jamie Oliver's app.
• It looked pretty fool-proof.
• I wanted to do something in the oven so we could chat and hang out while the food was getting ready (best way to eat with guests!)

Photo courtesy of Jamie's app since I totally forgot to take pics until we had devoured almost EVERYTHING!

I did not regret the decision! This dish was flavorful but light, ideal for a late evening meal. it was citrusy and minty, and the smell of the fresh parsley stalks as I cut them reminded me of my childhood for some strange reason I could not quite place...

It was the first time I bought fresh seafood at the wet market! It's weird but all the live fish have intimidated me for a LONG time and it was fun to finally overcome my squeamishness. But more than that I haven't really cooked with seafood very often before either, except for the odd grilled salmon dish or shrimp stir-fry, so it was nice to have this recipe to guide me!

The main ingredients were seafood (Jamie says any kind will do, and his recipe called for jumbo shrimp, shells off but tails still on, and scallops. I added squid to mine on top of that!) and tomatoes. Jamie says a variety of tomatoes, adding up to 1lb (around 450 grams) for 4 people, but it is hard to get much variety in tomatoes here in Shanghai. I ended up using some red cherry tomatoes, some orange cherry tomatoes and a large tomato on the vine. The carb that gave some sustenance to the dish was couscous, and it was light and flavorful!

Ingredients: (for 4 people)

• 8 sea scallops (getting these was hilarious; in the end I had to ask the guy at the market to please kill them for me!)
• 12 extra-large shrimp, shell off, tails on (it was a struggle with the lady at the market over this too! She insisted the heads were delicious, along with the "yellow stuff" inside them, and really wanted me to keep them!)
• 1 1/2 cups couscous
• 1lb mixed ripe tomatoes
• 1 cup jarred roasted peppers
• 3+1 cloves garlic
• 3 cups arugula
• 4 spring onions (Jamie calls them scallions. Also, the ones in China are tiny compared to the ones in Jamie's photos, so I used more than 4.)
• 3 lemons
• 1 bunch fresh Italian parsley (I have no idea what is meant by "Italian" parsley... I just used parsley!)
• 2 tbsp fennel seeds
• 6 sprigs fresh cilantro
• 6 sprigs fresh mint
• olive oil
• sea salt
• black pepper

How To:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit/200 degrees Celsius.
• Quarter the large tomato and halve the cherry tomatoes, leaving the very small ones whole. Put them in a big mixing bowl. Then add the roasted red peppers (from a jar), roughly chopped.
• Slice up the spring onions finely, and add to the bowl of tomatoes with the juice of one lemon. Add some salt and pepper to taste.
• Pick the leaves off the parsley and separata them out for later; chop the parsley stems up finely (this is the smell that reminded me of my childhood!)
• Peel and finely slice the garlic cloves; pound the fennel seeds with a pestle and mortar. 

ASIDE:

I am such a disorganized cook! I pounded the stupid fennel seeds and then totally forgot to add them to my dish later on! Haha! I wonder how different it would have been...

• Bring some water to a boil in a saucepan or kettle, and meanwhile heat some olive oil in a frying pan and add the garlic, parsley and fennel seeds (I FORGOT THE FENNEL SEEDS!). Stir and fry until the garlic is golden, then add the dry couscous and stir so it gets coated evenly in the oil. 
• Add 1 and 1/3 cups of boiling water to the couscous and stir until all the water has been absorbed.
• Tip the couscous into the roasting pan and spread it out to make an even layer.
• Add the shrimp, scallops, and any other seafood (in my case, squid!) to the bowl of tomatoes, add some olive oil and toss to coat everything evenly. Then spread this somewhat evenly over the couscous.
• Drizzle everything with olive oil, add some salt and pepper, cover with aluminum foil and stick it in the hot oven!
• Cook for 30-40min (I left mine in a little longer, around 45, and it was fine!)
• While it's doing its thing, pick the leaves from the mint and cilantro, add to the parsley leaves and mince it all up really finely with the zest of one lemon and a clove of garlic.
• Wash and dry the arugula.
• Squeeze the juice of the zested lemon into a glass jar, add twice as much olive oil and some salt and pepper, cover the jar and shake. Use this to dress the arugula once dinner is ready to serve!
• Serve scattered with the chopped herbs, a squeeze of lemon juice and a side of lemony arugula. This dish was a huge success!

To be honest, the only problem is that we all might have eaten a little more if there was any left!

Note: Avocado Lady has the couscous, lemons, mint, parsley, arugula, and other foreign ingredients necessary for this dish! I bought the jar of roasted bell peppers at City Shop on Nanjing Rd.

Basil's got Back!

I trimmed my basil back a few weeks ago only to find that it bounced right back and was starting to get really tall again!


I also noticed that as the plant was getting taller, some of the leaves were losing their dark green color and fragrance as the plant was spending a lot of its energy growing upwards. The stems were also getting thicker and the leaves fewer and more far between!

Slightly out of focus, I know... but you can still see the green, right? This photo does not do justice to just how awesome this SMELLED!

I intervened with a pretty dramatic trimming and made this delicious basil pesto that I just had to eat immediately with fusilli and a glass of Italian wine!

I had about 4 cups of basil leaves and added a pinch of salt, a clove of garlic, and a good amount of olive oil and just put it all in the food processor. Once it was done I added about 1/4 cup of grated Parmesan cheese and served it over pasta. So good!

Fusilli :D

I am hoping after the big trim that I can get another basil harvest before the cold sets in. I'm also going to try to see if my basil plant can survive the winter in a hold Chinese apartment... Any tips would be greatly appreciated!

Dry-Fried Sichuanese Green Beans! (干煸四季豆）

I learned how to make one of my favorite Chinese dishes the other day, at a team-building event I helped organize for work. Some of my co-workers and I joined Chef Mike at the Chinese Cooking Workshop here in Shanghai and tried our hands at a few simple wok dishes. It was a fun (and tasty!) way to get to know each other in a different context :)

Spicy, salty, crunchy and simply awesome!

Ingredients:
Green Beans
Ground Pork
Minced Garlic
Minced Ginger
Pepper Powder
Sugar
Salt
Light Soy Sauce
Dark Soy Sauce
Dried Red Peppers
Vegetable Oil (A LOT of it!!)

So the first big surprise (aka shouldn't have been such a big surprise, hello again, denial!) was that the green beans, once washed and chopped, are actually deep-fried in oil. HA! The big secret to their deliciousness...

The wok was full of really hot oil, and the green beans were tossed right in creating a lot of very-hot-oil-splatter which we shielded ourselves from by holding a metal mesh over the top of the wok.

ASIDE:
(I am not sure how I feel about this deep-frying... it is delicious and I have heard that when something gets deep-fried for a short amount of time in really hot oil it's not actually that bad for you, because it ends up not absorbing so much of the oil... (denial again?!) But still, Chef Mike said we could boil or steam the green beans instead but then guaranteed the flavor and texture would not be the same, aka not as delicious!)

The green beans were in the oil for about 30-40 seconds before being removed and drained. Then the wok went right back on the hot burner with just a bit of oil and we added, in rapid succession:
minced garlic
minced ginger
ground pork
pepper powder
dried red pepper
about 1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce

This creates a burning smoke that will cause sneezes and tears in anyone around you but somehow, due to the miracles of air circulation around the actual wok, never actually hurt the cook! (I suggest clearing the kitchen of children, pets and other loved ones for this!)

((I was surprised Mike didn't use the Sichuan peppercorns in his recipe; I will definitely toss some in when I try this at home. I just love their numbing pepperiness!))

Once the pork was almost cooked through, the green beans were tossed back into the wok to pick up all the flavors.

It was ABSOLUTELY delicious. Salty, spicy, lovely color and great texture! Hmmm!

The (Almost) Completely Homemade Tomato Sauce

Growing up in an Italian family, I was spoiled with fresh pastas and delicious, homemade sauce. I am a picky eater of Italian food and yet I do so love it, and love to make it at home. Pasta for me is often a spur of the moment comfort food, and I need to be able to have it when I want it! And I simply cannot STAND anything from a jar or can coming anywhere near my pasta... or almost nothing!

Making tomato sauce from scratch, while not rocket science, is somewhat time-consuming and really only worth doing in large batches. Growing up we would usually make about 5 litres at a time and freeze it, but I am currently somewhat limited by my small Chinese refrigerator. While I do definitely plan to make use of these delicious summer tomatos to make a batch soon, I also thought I would share a trick my Italian family often used when we were out of our homemade kind: Pomodori Pelati

The secret to having homemade tomato sauce in a snap!

Pomodori Pelati translates literally to "naked tomatoes" and it's just what Italians call whole, peeled, canned tomatoes. Except it sounds so much cooler in Italian. With a can of these, you can have the deliciousness of homemade tomato sauce in just 15 minutes, I promise!

But first things first. Even if you can't buy an Italian brand, which is perfectly fine, make sure you are getting the right thing. They should be whole, peeled tomatoes. Not crushed. Not diced. Not anything else! They should be canned in their own juice. There should be NO OTHER INGREDIENTS except for citric acid, which they need to put in to can them. Check the ingredients list! Mine says

"INGREDIENTS: peeled tomatoes, tomato juice, acidity regulator: citric acid"

Ok, so if you have the right stuff, your tomato sauce will be delicious!

Here is what you need to do:
Open the can and pour the contents into a saucepan. You can rinse the can out with some water to get the extra juice out, and add that to the saucepan too!
Turn the burner on medium and, as the sauce begins to warm up, use a wooden spoon to crush the whole tomatoes against the sides of the pot. You can have the sauce be as chunky or homogenous as you like it, depending on how long you do this for!
Add a pinch of salt.
Add a spoonful of sugar or honey (this helps to break the bitterness/acidity of the tomatoes and is the secret ingredient in many Italian family recipes!
Add a couple of dried bay leaves, whole.
Add a couple whole, peeled cloves of garlic.
OPTIONAL:
Add a dash of pepper (black, white, red, whichever you prefer!)
Add a couple of fresh basil leaves.

Let the sauce simmer until you have the desired consistency. If you are making pasta, 10-15 minutes should be plenty. If you want to use the sauce for lasagna or pizza and need it to be thicker, let it simmer longer.

I sometimes make extra and freeze or refrigerate this kind of sauce for later too.

Notice no oils or fat of any kind are added! This is important since the heating process changes fats, altering their flavor and making them less healthy. In my family, we only add the fats/oils once the pasta is ready to be served, i.e. AFTER the sauce has been poured over the hot pasta! Once this happens, you can add a spoonful of butter and/or a drizzle of olive oil to the pasta and sauce together. The pasta will be hot enough for the butter to melt and it makes the sauce SO rich and creamy! And olive oil is just delicious and healthy and Italians add it to pretty much everything.

Enjoy!

Cool as a Cucumber Salad!

This salad is an adaptation of a recipe I saw on the NYTimes and it is a deliciously refreshing, easy and tasty dish that can be eaten alone or used as a side. It keeps for 3-5 days in the fridge, so I often make extra so I can keep munching on it for a few days. It makes for a wonderfully cooling lunch eaten on pita bread :)

Fresh freshness, radishes credit of Avocado Lady ;)

Ingredients:
Cucumber
Radish (turnip works too, if you can't find radishes!)
Plain yoghurt
Garlic
Salt to taste

Optional:
Red Pepper Flakes
Mint

I used 2 medium cucumbers and 3 radishes, but you can alter the proportions of the ingredients to suit you and make tons more of the recipe if you want to keep it for a few days.

I cut the cucumbers lengthwise twice, and then slice them up so it's as if each slice is quartered and the cucumbers are little cubes. The radishes I just slice.

Add one clove of garlic, crushed through the garlic press (or more, to taste, but I feel like one fat clove already gives this plenty of kick!) and salt to taste. This time I also chopped my recently harvested, fresh mint leaves and added them in, mixing in two big spoonfuls of my homemade plain yoghurt. I added a bit of red pepper flakes, for extra kick, and it offsets the refreshing flavors of cucumber, mint and yoghurt pretty well!

Once the salad is allowed to sit for a while, the cucumber releases some water and there is some separation of the yoghurt. This is normal, so just mix it up before you eat and you are good to go!

This salad rocks my summer!

Fancy a Rugula?

I have been getting home really late. Mostly it's because I have been going to Yoga class in the evenings, and by the time I bike home, sweaty and exhausted, I am really not up for much cooking or much heavy eating for that matter.

Getting creative with salads can help, since they make for light, healthy and quick late-night meals!

Spicy arugula, creamy mozarrella, flavourful tomatoes and the crunch of walnuts! Yum!

The ingredients for this salad included arugula, fresh mozzarella cheese, sundried tomatos and walnuts! These ingredients go so well together, and the gourmet feel of the salad makes the meal and indulgence even though it's very light.

I seasoned mine with salt, ground black pepper, balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Yum!

Quick Sandwich!

Feeling uninspired to prepare a real lunch, I decided to go with a quick sandwich!

Sorry, I totally forgot to take a picture until after I bit into it!

I mixed some of the pesto I had made with a generous spoonful of plain yoghurt and got a delicious spread I used to flavor the bread.

The bread is a new experiment of sorts, bought at a new bakery I decided to try (more on this in a future post!) and it wasn't quite as delicious as the German bread I usually buy at City Shop... oh well!

It was a simple affair, lettuce, tomato, and cheese. A light, simple lunch!

Basil, Pestle, Pesto Presto!

The little bit of basil I harvested the other day turned into a little bit of pesto! I used a mortar and pestle, which I don't usually do for larger quantities because it is too laborious, but I was weighing the relative advantage of doing a little more work to squish the basil vs. having to clean my food processor just because of a tiny bit of pesto... Well, I am a reluctant cook after all!

First you smash it, you smash it!

To make the pesto I added a bit of salt and one clove of garlic, crushed through the press. Then I drizzled olive oil ad added a bit of black pepper.

Since everything was done in minimal quantities, this turned out to be a very intense little bit of pesto, super concentrated and perfect for spicing up any dish or sandwich :)

Crunchy Granola -- Breakfast of Champs!

I always eat breakfast. Without it, I am a grumpy shell of a person. Yet lately, I've been feeling really uninspired to eat in the mornings... Maybe it's the heat but once I start brewing my coffee, there seems to be nothing I want to have with it.

She said she was Grano-lah!

Eggs? Meh. Toast? Hmm... meh. Too hot for oatmeal. And the cereal has been getting old. And suddenly I realized I was craving granola!

Sweet, crunchy granola over yoghurt and fruit!

So, I made some!

This is what I used today:

• 4 cups of oats
• 1/2 cup almonds, coarsely chopped
• 1/2 cup raisins
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 tbsp. vanilla extract
• 1 dash each of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger powder
• 1 pinch of salt

1. I preheated the oven to about 165 degrees Celsius (around 250 degrees Fahrenheit) and mixed all the ingredients except for the raisins in a large mixing bowl.
2. I spread everything evenly onto a large baking sheet; it was about 1/2 inch thick.
3. I baked for approximately 25 minutes, mixing the granola every 10min or so, so it would brown evenly.
4. I usually add the raisins in for the last 10 or so min, but I totally forgot! So I just added them to the hot granola when I removed it from the oven and it's fine :)
5. The granola is ready when it's a nice golden brown!
6. I get the granola off the baking sheet while it's still hot, so that none of it sticks! I find this much better than letting it cool on the baking sheet and then having to scrape it off later. It also avoids the use of aluminum foil or parchment paper, which I find totally annoying and unnecessary. You can let the granola cool in the mixing bowl before you transfer it to an air-tight container for storage.

Making granola is easy easy and you can pretty much put anything in it that you want, as long as, when you stick it in the oven, the mixture is moist and evenly coated. Different nuts, such as pecans, walnuts or cashews do well; different (fancy!) oils like almond or walnut or coconut oil add delicious flavor; applesauce and other fruit purees can substitute for part of or all of the oil; other dried fruits such as cranberries, dried apricots, coconut, etc. can also be used instead of raisins. And of course you can also use different types of grains and grain mixtures if you prefer!

Enjoy with milk or yoghurt, over fresh summer fruits!

Guacamole Quickie!

Tired, hungry, not in the mood for cooking, haven't been to the market yet this week! But I found a tomato, a ripe avocado, half a lime, and the red onion I had barely scratched the day before. Guacamole for dinner?

I like snacking for dinner sometimes and, as long as it's a healthy snack, why not? Snacking + Dinner = Snicker?! or Snacker?!

Guacamole Snacker!

1. I cut the tomato in half, cored it, and cut it into small cubes. 
2. Then I cut open the avocado, removed the stone and scooped it into a bowl using a soup spoon.
3. I sliced some of the red onion finely.
4. I put a large clove of garlic through the garlic press and added it to the mix.
5. I squeezed half a lime into the bowl, and added a large pinch of salt and a smaller pinch of coriander powder.
6. I mixed it up nicely and ate it with pita bread. Yum, Snacker!

I add just a tad of red onion, very finely sliced, since I can't really stand the onion breath!

I don't always core the tomato, but I was in the mood today!

Yummy avocado!

Quick Chinese-Style Meal!

Chinese celery and dry tofu, stir-fried with numbing Sichuanese peppercorns.

I am not one to venture into the realms of Chinese cooking very often, because I have a husband who does that better than me... but once in a while I give it a shot!

I had bought some bags of dry tofu in the convenience store. They come vacuum-packed and ready to eat, and are not really "dry" but rather just firmer and dryer than regular tofu. For this reason they can keep for a pretty long time, and it is possible to slice this kind of tofu pretty thin to use in stir-fries, without it falling apart.

This is what the dry tofu looks like, vacuum-packed and ready to eat!

Since my husband made some dinner the other day, we had some left-over Chinese celery I don't normally cook with.

I chopped up the celery and tossed it in a wok with some oil, garlic, salt, and Sichuanese peppercorns. Then I added the dried tofu.

The result was a pleasantly spicy dish, since the mild celery did a lot to offset the peppers.

It took all of 10min to prepare, so I was a happy camper!