Broccoli pasta with peppermint

During one of my journey in the endlessly-seeming list of foodblogs and different recipe-sites, I somewhere found the idea to pair peppermint, orange and lemon and use them all together in a pasta dish. Sounded like fun, so I decided to try. Unfortunately I was in a mood for this dish on the very day I did not have any fresh mint leaves at hand. So here’s what I did - I substituted the leaves with peppermint tea. Just made a strong cupful using regular Lipton tea and poured it into the sauce.

You might want to be careful with the orange rind, as in case you add too much of it, you’ll end up with a rather bitter sauce and there’s nothing you can do to fix it…so be careful. And what else…I guess you can play around with the veggies, but I would recommend some mild-flavored vegetables such as broccoli, as you need something which taste wouldn’t overpower the fresh marriage of lemon and peppermint.

Serves two:

200 g pasta (penne, rotini, farfalle)

200 ml cream

200 ml chicken broth

1 small onion, chopped

2 gloves of garlic, crushed

olive oil

1 tsp chili powder

100 g chopped broccoli florets

1 tsp grated orange rind

2 tsp grated lemon rind

50 ml strong peppermint tea (or a handful of fresh peppermint leaves)

1 tbsp flour

4 slices of prosciutto

grated Parmesan (optional)

# Heat the oil in a heavy saucepan and fry onion and garlic until translucent.

# Add chicken broth and cream into the saucepan and continue simmering for 5 minutes. Add chili powder together with the grated lemon and orange rind. Stir, and also add broccoli florets into the sauce.

# Mix hot peppermint tea with flour (avoid lumps). While stirring the sauce, pour the tea-and-flour-mix carefully into the sauce. Continue simmering until broccoli florets are soft enough for you (I don’t like them very mushy, so 10 minutes was enough for me).

# In the mean time prepare the pasta (in a water seasoned with salt). When cooked, drain and pour over with some olive oil, stir to coat. Then pour the pasta into the sauce, stir carefully and serve immediately (otherwise the pasta will suck all the sauce in it and you’ll end up with super-sized pasta and no sauce).

# When serving, you may want to top the pasta with some prosciutto and grated Parmesan.

Peppermint is undoubtedly the most important ingredient of this dish - without that it would be the same old creamy pasta…Very fresh, delicate and filling at the same time. Although I had a feeling that J made some faces while eating it (I mean, you can tell if one truly enjoys the dish or doesn’t)…I guess he was trying to figure out where did all this peppermint and freshness of this dish came, as there were no visible mint leaves…but in any case, he did finish the plateful and told me it was delicious. Well trained, all I can say.

Warm pasta salad with basil and avocado

So, finally something that is not sweet for a change. One has to limit the amount of sweet dishes, after all, it is summer and going-to-the-beach time. That is why I decided to use avocados in the salad that I made, because this green little fruit is very useful for your health. Did you know that avocados help to lower cholesterol and regulate blood pressure and can even offer significant protection against breast cancer?

Firstly, some tips for you on how to choose a perfect avocado from the shop or in the market:

- A ripe, ready to eat avocado is slightly soft but should have no dark sunken spots or cracks.

- Choose the avocado which has a slight neck, rather than the one which is rounded on top. Slight neck means that it was probably tree ripened and will therefore have better flavor.

- If you are not planning to use the avocado right away, you might want to choose a firmer avocado. It will ripen in a paper bag or in a fruit basket at room temperature within a few days. It is not recommended to refrigerate avocados until they are ripe. Once ripe, they can be kept refrigerated for up to a week.

These kinds of tips. Maybe they might come to use. In this salad I did not use the very ripe avocados, as I wanted them to keep their texture. Warm pasta and chicken also softened it a bit, so I think it was a good decision to choose a firmer avocado.

The recipe serves two:

150 g pasta (penne, rotini)
1 avocado

150 g chicken fillet, chopped
handful of fresh basil leaves
salt and pepper
1 tbsp lemon juice
handful of finely shredded Parmesan cheese
olive oil

# Boil pasta in water seasoned with salt.

# Meanwhile fry the chicken in a frying pan and season with salt an pepper.

# Using your hands, shred basil leaves into small pieces.

# Peel and chop avocado and place in a salad bowl. Drizzle over with lemon juice and season with salt and pepper. Add shredded basil leaves and mix everything together.

# Place cooked chicken pieces into the salad bowl on top of the avocado-mixture.

# Drain pasta and add some olive oil to it. Mix to coat the pasta with olive oil and place pasta in the salad bowl. Give everything a good toss and adjust seasoning, if necessary. You can add the Parmesan to the salad or just sprinkle the platefuls over with some of it - up to you. Serve when warm, as then you’ll feel and smell all the nice flavors dish easy salad has to offer.

I liked it a lot. At first I was afraid of the taste of warm avocado. Never had had it before, that is why…but it was all okay - and mainly because I used not so ripe avocado, which could keep its texture while warm.  And the taste! The tender avocado together with strong Parmesan cheese - perfect combination.

Spaghetti and feta cheese…

…will give you a nice salad together. I discovered it one day when I needed to quickly prepare something light from these ingredients and I did not want to end up with some creamy pasta dish. Light was the word to be kept in mind. So here’s the recipe which will feed about 3 persons:

250 g spaghetti

3 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic gloves, crushed

3 tbsp olives, sliced

1 tsp grated lemon rind

2 tbsp basil pesto

200 g feta cheese, chopped into cubes

2 tbsp lemon juice

50 g rocket leaves

7-8 cherry tomatoes (optional)

# Boil the spaghetti in a pot of boiling water (seasoned with some salt) until al dente.

# While it is cooking, heat the olive oil in a pan over a medium heat. Add garlic, olives and lemon rind and simmer at low heat for about 2-3 minutes. Add pesto, stir and remove from heat.

# Drain spaghetti and place in a salad bowl. LEt it cool for about 10 minutes.

# Add cubed feta and lemon juice and give the salad a good toss. Also drizzle pesto-garlic-lemon rind mix on top.

# Finally add rocket leaves, stir carefully and serve. If you are using cherry tomatoes, add them together with the rocket leaves.

# Oh, and I remember that one time I also added chopped prosciutto to the salad, together with the rocket leaves and tomatoes. So if you like meat, feel free to add some.

That kind of salad. Be careful with the lemon juice - if you add it too much, you’ll end up with pretty acid salad. It tastes the best when warm (not too cold and not too hot). If too hot, the rocket leaves will lose their shape and turn into to ugly and tasteless thingies you don’t want to eat.

Basil and lemon pair really well with feta and rocket leaves - and the salad smells very good as well. When I have heated it for lunch at work, my office is full of lovely flavours…a bonus I would say! In many cases the reheated food does not smell that good - let’s say pasta in Alfredo sauce - I have brought it to work one time and ended up being in an office full of garlic smell…not that nice…

I remember having seen a similar recipe which uses capers and lime instead of olives and lemon. It could be just as good - but I never have limes at hand, let alone capers, so I haven’t yet had the chance to try.

Find-the-meatball soup

If you happen to have meatballs on hand and you are trying to figure out what to make out of them, then I suggest you try this delicious and hearty meatball soup. I made meatballs myself, using the same recipe as I did for meat patties - I mixed ground meat with minced onion and egg, seasoned it with salt, pepper, chili powder and Worcestershire sauce and formed small balls out of the mixture. I baked the balls at 180 degrees C for around 25-30 minutes and there they were, waiting for becoming an ingredient in my next dish. They tasted pretty good, so I could have just eaten them as a snack , but then I thought they can do better which is why I ended up making a meatball soup. Once I realized I can prepare a soup, I had alrady eaten about half of the meatballs, so…this is why I called it find-the-meatball soup. Still, believe it or not, the lack of meatballs was not an issue - the soup ended up being delicious even with little amount of meatballs. For two bowls of soup:

500 ml water

10-15 meatballs

1 can (250 ml) diced tomatoes

1 beef bouillon cube

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried thyme

salt and pepper to taste

1 stalk celery, sliced

1-2 carrots, sliced

1 clove garlic, minced

a handful of fusilli

# Slice carrots and celery stalk. In a large saucepan, bring water to a boil.

# Add tomato sauce, bouillon, oregano, basil, thyme, salt and pepper, celery, carrots, and crushed garlic. Simmer for 30 minutes.

# Add fusilli and meatballs, cook until pasta is done. Top with grated cheese to serve.

This soup demanded hardly any work which is why I was actually amazed how nice it came out.

It should be just as tasty the next day as well, but in that case make sure you don’t use too much pasta, because after a while, the pasta soaks up all the soup!

Seafood pasta with sparkling wine

I found the recipe here and modified it a bit according to the ingredients I had at home. Everyone who loves seafood should enjoy the flavours of this creamy pasta. I am acutually not that big fan, but this dish was pretty tasty. Make sure you have all the ingredients prepared (chopped, diced etc) before starting to cook as making this dish is a fast process and it is better to have everything ready to throw in. For two persons:

200 g spaghetti or tagliatelle

1 tbsp olive oil

75 g sliced champignons

100 g peeled shrimps

150 ml dry sparkling wine

1 small onion, minced

4-5 cherry tomatoes, diced

150 ml whipping cream or heavy cream

3 tbsp parsley

salt and pepper

grated parmesan

 

# Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large frying pan. Cook and stir champignons in oil until tender. Remove from pan and set aside.

# Combine shrimp, sparkling wine and salt in the frying pan, and cook over high heat. When liquid just begins to boil, remove shrimp from pan.

# Add onions and tomatoes to wine; boil about 8 minutes. Stir in 100 ml cream and boil until slightly thick (about 1 to 2 minutes).

# Add shrimp and mushrooms to sauce, and heat through. Adjust seasonings to taste.

# Cook pasta until al dente; drain. Toss hot pasta with remaining 50 ml cream and parsley.

# To serve, spoon shrimp with sauce over pasta, and top with parmesan.

Next time I would add a few crushed garlic gloves and maybe try using bell peppers instead of cherry tomatoes - should come out just as good.