Asian fruit salad with a Europian twist

Posted on October 9, 2015 by elsje

This is a tasty Asian fruit salad is known as rojak in Malaysia. It makes a great side dish with a (Malaysian) curry but it also makes a great accompaniment with grilled meat, fish or poultry.

Traditionally Roedjak is made with tropical fruit but I have found it is also delicious with tart apples and crunchy cucumber. The dressing sort of preserves your salad, making it possible to make your salad one or two days in advance.

Asian fruit salad with Dutch fruit

1 cucumber in cubes
2 apples in cubes
1 union thinly sliced
Optional: 1 mango, 2 peaches and/or ½ a pineapple in cubes
To taste: 1 red chili pepper thinly sliced and/or a handful of coriander
Dressing:
- 2 tbsp ketjap manis/sweet soy sauce
- 1 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 2 tbsp sweet chili sauce
- 2 tbsp mirin or lemon juice

Mix your dressing ingredients.
Slice your ingredients, mix and combine.

Find more salad inspiration here.

Broccoli feast

Posted on September 28, 2015 by elsje

I am always looking for a way to make broccoli more interesting. Somehow this veg does not apeal to me, but I love it with cheese! This recipe makes my life easy. Especialy because I can do all preperations the day before. All I need to do when I get home is heat the dish in the oven.

We like eating this simple broccoli casserole with roast potatoes and maybe a salad on the side. As the sauce is so rich, we like having this broccoli feast as a vegetarian dinner. As a variation to this dish you could mix in cauliflower or maybe .

Broccoli feast

1 head broccoli, broken into florets
For the cheese sauce:
- 1 onion, finely sliced
- 30 grams butter
- 30 grams flour
- 150 ml white wine
- 150 ml milk
- 150 ml stock
- 1 tsp mustard
- 2 cups of grated cheese, I like old Gouda or a gruyere for this dish
- salt, pepper and a pinch of nutmeg

Boil your broccoli until tender. Rince with cold water to stop the cooking process. Place the broccoli in an ovenproof dish and set aside.
Gently fry the onion in the butter intil soft.
Add the flour. Stir this mixture on a low heat for at least 2 minutes.
Do not skip this stage to prevent a grainy, floury taste.
Add the liquids gradually, while mixing and incorporating into a thick sauce.
Stir in 1 cup of the cheese and the mustard.
Season with nutmeg, salt and pepper to taste
Pour your sauce over the broccoli and sprinkle with the rest of the cheese.
(You can prepare this dish a day before and keep it in the fridge.)
Preheat your oven at 220 degrees C. Bake your broccoli for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden brown.

Lunch salads

Posted on September 15, 2015 by elsje

Recently I descided to challenge myself and eat more healthy for lunch. What this comes down to is lots of salads! I would like to share to tasty simple salad recipes here.

Each recipe makes a tasty one person lunch or a great side dish or starter with dinner.

Eggy salad (1 serving)

2 soft boiled eggs in wedges
1 spring onion
1 handfull of chopped flat leaf parsley
1 tomato in cubes
Simple honey mustard dressing

Simple honey mustard dressing

1 tbsp of dyon mustard
1 tbsp of honey
1 tbsp of mayo (find a recipe for making your own here)

Combine the dressing ingredients in a jam jar and shake.

Fig and blue cheese salad (1 serving)

2 handfuls of your favorite salad leaves
1 tomato, diced
1 handful of fried bacon cubes
1 handfil of chopped nuts (I used almonds here but walnuts or pecans would be perfect!)
2 fresh figs in wedges
1 hanful of crumbly blue cheese
Drizzle with olive oil and a good balsamic vinegar
Sprinkle with sea salt and freshly crushed black pepper

Corn muffins

Posted on August 6, 2015 by elsje

These corn muffins make a great side dish with Mexican food or a barbecue. I first made these when I was looking for a side dish with a chillli that I could make a day in advance. They are silky and soft. These muffins don’t dry out too quickly. They are great with a generous helping of butter or dipped in a hearty chilli sauce.

Corn muffins (10 muffins)

125 grams of plain flour
75 grams of corn flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
20 grams of sugar
175 ml of butter milk (or regular milk)
1 egg
35 grams of butter
1 cup of corn kernels
Optional: handful of semolina for the crunchy top
Optional, for extra filling:
- Fried onion rings
- Slices of jalapeno peppers

Preheat your oven at 200 degrees C.

Mix and combine your dry ingredients. Mix and combine your wet ingredients. Combine all your ingredients.

Divide the batter over the muffin tins. Place the filling in the middle of the muffins. Sprinkle each muffin with some semolina for a crunchy top.

I like to hint at the filling by placing a pepper or onion ring on the top. This prevents my toddler from eating a spicy muffin.

Bake your muffins for 20 minutes or until risen and golden.

These muffins taste great warm but they also keep or freeze very well.

Read about more BBQ favorites here.

Simpel starters: salmon salad

Posted on August 3, 2015 by elsje

Salmonsalad2 This salad is a great way to make the most of slices of smoked salmon. This salad is inspired on carpaccio. It is an easy way to impress your guests without too much fuss. If you buy good quality salmon, you just need to bring the ingredients together to create a beautiful harmony of flavors and textures.

I like making 4 individual servings, but if you want you can make a large serving platter.

Salmon salad (4 servings)

200 grams smoked salmon
2 handfuls of your favorite lettuce leaves
1 (spring) onion finely sliced
1 handful of pine nuts
olive oil
1 lemon. Use half for dressing the salad and cut the rest in wedges for presentation.
parmesian
Optional: sliced tomato and cucumber

After slicing your ingredients, assemble your salad. Dress your leaves with olive oil and lemon juice and divide them over the plates. Spread your ingredients over the leaves. Finish with an extra drizzle of olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkling of sea salt.

This salad also works great with slices of fresh tuna.

Quick and easy mini veggi pizza

Posted on July 27, 2015 by elsje

This is not a recipe for real pizza (Read more about pizza dough and pizza toppings). These mini pizza are delicious glutenfree vegetable bites. My son loves making these and having them for dinner. But they would also make a great party treat or be part of a great high tea. MiniPizza2

Once you have sliced your ingredients, you can assemble these mini pizzas with your toddler.

Mini veggi pizza’s

Eggplant/aubergine in 5 mm slices
1 cup of my no fuss Tomato sauce / or a jar of ready made sauce
1 cup of grated Parmesan
1 mozzarella cheese ball in slices
1 tomato in small cubes
optional: 1 onion in small cubes
Oregano

Lay your eggplant slices on a baking sheet. Spoon a small spoon of sauce on each slice. Sprinkle with some oregano, then add your tomato and union. Sprinkle with Parmesan and top with a small slice of mozzarella.

Bake in a 220 degrees C oven for 15 minutes and enjoy!

We tried this recipe with courgette as well, this worked fine but we just love eggplant more.

Read more about cooking with toddlers here.

4 principles for a tasty salad

Posted on July 21, 2015 by elsje

A good salad is about balance and contrast. If you keep the following 4 principles in mind, you can make special salads every day of the year.

Don’t combine too many ingredients, the best salads have around 5 main ingredients. This ensures you taste every ingredients shines.
Make a simple dressing that compliments your ingredients. If you insist on using a complex dressing like a ceasar dressing, keep your salad even more simple: using up to 3 ingredients. For more information on ceasar salad read about my dutch ceasar salad here.
Balance your flavors. Make sure you have a sharp/spicy, sweet, salty, sour, savory and bitter component in your ingredients and dressing.
Sparpness can come from unions, chili or pepper.
Sweet can come form honey in your dressing or some fruit or sultanas.
Salty can come from some cheese, bacon,salty nuts or even sea salt.
Sour can come from sertain lettuce leaves or butter milk in your dressing.
Savory kan come from nuts, croutons or bacon.
Bitter notes can come from your choice of leaves, cheese or fruits like grapefruit.
Balance your textures. Make sure you have a variety of textures. Croutons or nuts for some bite, soft cheese or pears, creamy dressing and crunchy lettuce or cucumber.

The other day I made a tasty well balanced salad using endive leaves, feta cheese , union, tomatoe and bacon with a simple honey mustard dressing. For the honey mustard dressing combine equal quantities of mustard and honey. For a more runny dressing add water of (butter) milk to this mixture.

Tzatziki

Posted on July 18, 2015 by elsje

My husband loves a good barbeque. But before the meat is ready we like knibble on something. For us, that’s crispy bread and taziki. This yoghurt dip ticks all the boxes for me, both the garlic flavour and the smooth and rich, creamy texture. Normally such a delicious sauce is based on so many fats, like your mayo based sauce. But a taziki is yoghurt based and by comparison much healthier. This is why I must insist you use full fat greek yoghurt for this, non of that crazy diet stuff. Plus, full fat yoghurt contains more nutrients as well.

Feel free to replace my 2 favorite soft herbs with other options such as chives, dill or parsley.

I know this is hard, but try to let this sauce stand in the fridge for an hour, so the flavours are properly combined.

Just enjoy this sauce with crunchy bread, pita’s, falafel, naan’s, roast meat or with potato chips!

Tzaziki

1 cucumber
4 tbsp salt
full fat greek yoghurt
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 handful of fresh mint
1 handful of fresh koriander
2 cloves of garlic

Grate your cucumber with a course grater. Now we will drain the water out of the cucumber to intensify the flavour. So bear with me and add all the salt to the cucumber. Mix this well in a bowl and leave to stand on one side while you continue with the other ingredients.

Finely chop the mint and coriander. Grate the garlic cloves.

In a large bowl add the Greek yogurt, lemon juice, chopped herbs and garlic. Season with a small amount of salt and pepper.

After 10-30 minutes of steeping rinse your grated cucumber in a collinder. This should clean away all that salt. The cucumber needs to be as dry as possible. I do this by first pushing as much water as possible through the collinder. After this I squeeze the grated cucumber between my hands. Add the dry handfuls of cucumber to the yogurt mix.

Stir your tzaziki thoroughly. Let it stand in the fridge for an hour (or overnight), and salt to taste before serving. This sauce will keep for a couple of days if stored in the fridge, that is, if there is anything left!

Tzaziki is also great with some oven chips, or as a side dish with a Greek lamb stew.

Barbecue side dish: beetroot carpaccio

Posted on July 10, 2015 by elsje

Beetroot is a vegetable I had to learn to appreciate. Beetroot carpaccio always does the trick for us and our guests. I make it on a festive and large dish, this recipe serves about 2 people. In these fotographs I used yellow beetroot.

I make this dish very often, so I like to vary the ingredients depending on the contents of my refrigerator. Just discover your own favorite set of ingredients and let me know how it turns out!

Beetroot carpaccio

Three boiled beetroots (boil in water for 75 minutes and then peel)
Use mixed colors of you can.
200 grams white cheese – my favorite is soft goats cheese, but feta cheese works as well. On occasion I have use crumbled Boursin as well.
Generous sprinkling of fresh or dried herbs. I like using mint, basil and/or dill.
2 spring onions finely sliced – although your plain onion would work as well.
Honey
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar or other sweet vinegar
Optional extras:
- Ribbons of smoked salmon
- Capers

1. Make fine slices of beetroot and arrange these on your plate.

2. Crumble your cheese on the beetroot. I like a generous cover of cheese.

3. Sprinkle on the herbs and onion. (And optional extras.)

4. Drizzle with honey, vinegar and a generous helping of olive oil.

5. Season with freshly crushed black pepper.

Tip: This salad tastes great on a piece of fresh bread too.

Simpel starters : Bruschetta

Posted on June 22, 2015 by elsje

We love eating dinner al fresco. But not every food is equally appropriate for this. This snack makes perfect finger food with a glass of wine in your sunny garden.

Combined with a pasta salad and some veggies it makes a lovely summer meal or a great starter at a barbecue.

You can make the garlic oil by simply finely slicing the garlic and covering it with olive oil. After half an hour the oil will have a lovely garlic flavor. You can keep this oil for a few days.

Rockin Bruschetta (about 12 servings)

1 jar of Rockin Rocket pesto
12 slices of mozzarella
Cherry tomatoes in different colors
Slices of old bread
Garlic olive oil
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Brush the bread slices with the garlic oil, then grill or toast them. Season the slices generously with salt and pepper while they cool. I quartered all bread slices to create the right bruschetta size.

Halve the tomatoes, dress them with a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Season the tomatoes and toss to dress them.

Spread the Rockin Rocket pesto on each slice. Layer the mozzerella and a few tomatoes on each slice. Take your bruschetta and enjoy.

metnlintje

the art of gifting

Tag Archives: side dish