Posts Tagged ‘sauce’

 

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Lemon and Herb Butter Sauce

Saturday, October 4th, 2008

This baby that I’m posting now has been sitting on my flickr for ages waiting to get posted and loved. It truly deserves some love, it’s so good it should be restaurant food. And not one of those cheap restaurants you go to when you’re really hungry and you need something right now. No, it’s like that restaurant you go to on your first date when you want to impress your date with good food, nice wine and show them that you’re a sophisticated person, really. Never mind the fact that in a few hours you’ll be trying to go for third base when you didn’t even cover first and second yet. Anyway, it’s a good recipe!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi

This is not a healthy recipe, but it’s tasty and great with a salad. The butter sauce tastes light and isn’t at all heavy. Yum!

Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Lemon and Herb Butter Sauce:
Serves 4

  • 200 gram (7 oz) sweet potato
  • 200 gram (7 oz) potato
  • about 3 dl ( 1 & 1/4 cup) (bread) flour

Microwave the sweet potato for about 6 minutes until it softens, or bake it in a 200C (390F) oven for 40-60 minutes. Boil about 250 grams (9 oz) of potatoes until they are soft. Cut the sweet potato in half and press it in a potato ricer into a large bowl. You don’t have to peel it, the peel stays in the ricer. Take the peel out of the ricer and discard. Peel the potatoes and press through the potato ricer. Add most of the flour and mix together. Put dough on a floured surface and knead. You might have to add more flour. You want a smooth dough that doesn’t stick, but be careful not to add too much flour. Roll the dough into rolls about the thickness of your finger (if you’re a fatty like me, they’re a bit thicker, if you’re skinny, use your thumb as a guide). Cut off little ‘pillows’ from the rolls, about 2 cm (or 1 inch) long. Using the back of a fork, press the gnocchi against it to create ridges for the sauce to gather in. Put the ready made pieces on a floured piece of parchment paper and stick them in the fridge until you’re ready to use them. Boil the gnocchi in well salted water for about three minutes, until they float to the surface. Only cook as much gnocchi as you need for every meal.

Lemon Herb Butter Sauce:

  • 50 grams (3 tbsp/2 oz) vegan margarine
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 2 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
  • 2 tsp grated lemon zest
  • 3 tbsp finely chopped parsley
  • a bunch of garlic (about 20 leaves or so), julienned

Melt the margarine in a pot. Finely mince the garlic and add it to the pot so it heats up with the butter to release all the lovely flavour. Add grated lemon zest and the lemon juice. Add the chopped parsley and the basil, salt and pepper to taste. Take the sauce off the heat.

Put the gnocchi in a bowl, pour the butter sauce over it and mix well. Serve immidiately with some extra basil as garnish and enjoy!

 

Tofu balls!

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

The first tofuballs recipe I ever made was from a cookbook called Vegetarian nosh4students. The name is terrible and so is the book. The tofuballs were really good though but looking through it just now (Tania asked me where they were from and I was going to e-mail her it as I didn’t think I should post it) I realised the version I make doesn’t really have that much in common with the one in the book. I’ve heavily modified it. Anyway. These tofuballs are the bomb. I love them with a chunky tomato sauce.

Oh and btw, I don’t know what lamingtons are. They apparently like them in Australia. They’re also just like a Swedish baked treat that I love, Kärleksmums (love yumms!). It’s basically just sponge cake dipped in a chocolate frosting and then immediately dipped into desiccated coconut. They’re lovely. I got the idea from Shmooed Food a long time ago and when we had left over sponge cake from making the ‘trifle’ I thought we’d give it a go.

Tofuballs w tomato zucchini sauce

Tofuballs with awesomesauce:

Tofu balls – Serves 3 – 4 people. We usually only get three servings, but we’re chubby and like to eat much.

  • 1 large onion / 2 small ones, finely chopped
  • 2 small cloves of garlic, minced
  • 1 pack of tofu 500 gr / 17,5 oz (18 or 17 works)
  • 1,5 dl (2/3 cup) of fresh breadcrumbs /1 dl (½ cup) ready bought
  • 1,5 tbsp flour
  • 2 tsp soy sauce
  • 3 tsp dried herbs (basil, marjoram, thyme, parsley, oregano, whatever rocks your boat, and is in the pantry)
  • salt and pepper to taste

Turn oven on to 190C or 375 F.

Just crumble the tofu and squeeze some of the water out. Chop onions and garlic finely.
If you don’t have breadcrumbs ready, mix some plain bread in a food processor to make crumbs.

Put all the ingredients in a big bowl and mix them well. Form into smallish balls (the small ones are tastier!) and put on an oiled baking tray. Spray them lightly with oil and oven them for about 25 – 30 mins. Take them out when they are browned and firm.

Chunky sauce - Serves 3 people.

  • 1 Tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 (400-500g / 15 oz ) can tomato sauce (that’s the smooth kind, not seasoned, not juice and not chunks)
  • ½ courgette
  • 1 yellow bell pepper
  • Salt and pepper
  • 1 tsp herbs (thyme is good, or basil)

Chop everything finely. I mean finely! Heat up a pan with oil in and fry the onion and garlic for a few minutes. Add the courgette and the bell pepper and fry for another few minutes. Add herbs, salt and pepper and the tomato. Turn heat down and let simmer together for 5 mins or so.

 

Simple apple sauce

Sunday, September 9th, 2007

I should be cleaning and cooking right now, but I needed a break! Most of the day has been spent listening to sexist music, cleaning, shaking my fat ass and cooking. Instead of doing that for a little while I’m going to share the most perfect apple sauce recipe ever. The reason it’s so perfect is it’s simplicity. Forget about spending hours in the kitchen, peeling the apples, deseeding and boiling. You just pop this baby in the oven, blog about your day, file your nails, do your hair and then press those suckers. That really is all you do.

homemade applesauce

Awesome sauce:

You will need a potato press for this recipe (It looks like a giant garlic press, check it out here or here!) if you don’t have one then I advise you to not even try this recipe out, it’s not worth the hassle.

The apple sauce doesn’t use much sugar, I don’t like it when it’s too sweet. Taste your sauce (haha, that sounds rude, sorry!) and decide if you want more. It has no preservatives and it is delicious!

  • apples
  • sugar

Turn oven on to 200 C (390F). Take your apples and ‘fork’ them (that is, pierce them with a fork) in several places. Put apples on a parchment paper on an oven tray. Put as many as you can fit on there. The bigger your tray the more apple sauce you will get. Bake apples in the oven for about 40 minutes. If they fall apart, don’t panic, they’re supposed to. When the apples are done, take them out of the oven and immediately start pressing them into a big bowl. Don’t worry about trying to remove the peel, just press a few apples at a time in the press, the peel and the seeds will stay in the press and the apple purée will go into the bowl. Open the press, remove seeds and peel. Repeat with more apples. After they’re all done you add the sugar to your purée. Measure how much puree you have and add sugar accordingly. For every 4 cups of purée add ½ cup sugar. (Or if you’re Swedish like me, or just use metric anyway, for every litre of purée, add 1.5 dl sugar). Stir together and freeze in little bags. The apple sauce keeps for about 1-2 weeks in the fridge as it has no preservatives.

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