Parmesan meatballs with creamy sauce

I did this recipe the other day inspired by these two recipes in A Cup of Jo.

This one and this one. This was a very flavourful recipe. But it did take a long time let's be honest, so I'd only recommend it for those days when you are feeling  creative and have a long saturday morning ahead of you...

But it was very tasty and fun too.

INGREDIENTS:

1. 300 grs. of pasta
2. Some parmesan cheese.
3. Requeson, creamy cheese (200 grs).
4. A brick of tomato sauce (200grs)
5. 2 cloves of garlic.
6. Some cherry tomatoes.
7. Minced chicken.
8. Pepper and salt and some italian herbs.




STEPS:

1. Mix the grated parmesan cheese, the herbs, the salt, and the pepper in a plate.
2. With the chicken mince, create mince balls and make sure the meat is properly mixed with the parmensan cheese and herbs.
3. hen set them up in a sauce pan and fried them, evenly.
4. Now put the tomato sauce with the creamy cheese together and mix it up. I added two cloves of garlic for extra flavour.
5. Now add the meatballs to the tomato sauce, the cherry tomatoes and the garlic and let it simmer for a little

6. Add it to the pasta and voila. Pretty pretty tasty. The sauce is real awesome friends.

American chocolate chip cookies

A classic here from the US.
I did this recipe while living in San Joaquin 3 years ago with my roommates and Nicole. It was a fun time. These are the ingredients and pictures will tell the rest of the story:

 

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup of margarine

3/4 cup of white sugar

3/4 cup of brown sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 tsp. baking soda

2 and 1/2 cups flour

1 and 1/2 of chocolate chips

STEPS:

1. Mix it all.

2. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes, until it is all lightly golden.

Chile con carne

Another great recipe tonight from Paloma de la Rica for cold winter days. Mind you the other day I was in Strasbough and froze to death. This recipe is awesome for winter days.

All you need is:

-400 grs of mince.
-1 red pepper.
-1 green pepper.
-3 cloves of garlic.
-1 onion.
-1 can of 800 grs of diced tomatoes.
-400 grs. of red beans.
-1 teaspoon of sugar.
-1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.
-salt and black pepper.
-4 cayenne pepper.
-some oregano.
-some garlic powder.

-1/3 cup of espresso coffee.

-some corn (optional)

STEPS:

1. Dice up the red pepper, green pepper and the onion and the garlic, I do it all in the same pot (unlike this photo shows).
2. Throw it into the saucepan until it all becomes soft.
3. Add the meat and then you will have migas of meat.
4. In a deep pot, put the diced tomatoes and throw all the spices, sugar, pepper, cayenne pepper, oregano, garlic powder, etc...and add the beans. Add the expresso coffee cup! yes you read right, coffee is such a wonderful ingredient, it will make the chili taste amazing, but be very careful and do not add too much or it will overpower the whole thing.
5. Add the meat with the veggies and let it all simmer for at least 30 minutes. Season with salt, sugar, more oregano, etc.
6. Voila, done! a great dish, accompanied by rice. 

Great recipe. I made mine pretty spicy and loved it and my Bible study too. By the way...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

American Meat Loaf

Yesterday it was election day in the US!

So whether you are feeling suicidal or elated by the results, try out this awesome american recipe and gather some loved ones around you to share dinner.
So my american friend Amy brought to our B. Study this awesome dish that I want to share. My kind of recipe, good, easy and fast. Loved it. I love americans and their creativity....like Starbucks and their amazing marketing, on the left.

Of course I needed to try it:



INGREDIENTS:
-500 grs. of hamburger meat.
-3 eggs
-200 mil of ketchup or 1/2 american cups.
-1/2 onion chopped.
-30 crackers.
-salt and lots of black pepper.
-garlic powder.

STEPS:

-Mix it all up.
-Set it on a loaf pan and spread ketchup on top of it all with a spoon, like with icing on a cake.
-Bake it in a loaf pan in 170 degrees for an hour.
This is such a gret recipe, perfect for when you dont have time to make works of art, but will make you look like you actually know how to cook.
Great to serve with salad and bread.



So friends, cheers to America, democracy, creativity, dreams and great great recipes that they make up!

Carrot Cake - Tarta de zanahorias

An awesome carrot cake that is so easy and so works!!!!!!!!

I've been meaning to post this one forever but never got to it, but thought, next time I do it, I will post it.

I did it for my birthday and brought it to work and also did another one for my Bible Study. EXITO ROTUNDO, as we, the spanish say.


INGREDIENTS:
-225 grs. of flour.
-2 teaspoons of baking powder.
-2 teaspoons of grounded cinammon.
-1/2 teaspoon of salt.
-250 mls of sunflower oil.
-200 grs. of sugar.
-3 eggs
-4 carrots.
-2 handful or 60 grs. of wallnuts.

And for the icing:
-125 grs of cream cheese.
-75 grs of butter.
-100 grs of sugar.
-1 teaspoon of vanilla essence.

STEPS:
1. Mix eggs and sugar with a hand mixer. Important, not by hand because you need to get a nice emulsion.

2. Now add the oil, little by little and mix with hand mixer. Do it carefully because it can split, like it happens with mayonnaise. I had to throw a whole mix away because of this.

3. Now in another bowl, place the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Mix them all together.

4. Now add the dry ingredients to the wet ones.

5. Now grate the carrots and add and stir, and the same with the walnuts.

6. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and then set it on the medium tray to 175 degrees. Leave it for about an hour in the oven until a toothpick comes out dry.
7. Leave the cake outside and let it cool off before adding the icing. 

8. For the icing, mix the cream cheese, butter and sugar. I cut the sugar of the original recipe in half because it was way too sweet for my taste, but the original recipe says you should do 250 grams. Way too sweet....perhaps for american taste. (YES THIS IS TOTALLY RIGHT!!! I followed the original recipe and it was a disaster with so much sugar)

9. You can also add another layer of frosting in the middle of the cake, to make it more glamourous. And of course, top it off with something fancy and fallish decoration.

I hope you enjoy it. 

Copyright: Paloma de la Rica, your recipes are just amazing from another world and they ALWAYS work...thank youuuuuu you make our lives better.

Spaghetti with Tomato Basil Sauce

Hello readers!!

it is is fall again and thus the time to be home hearing the rain fall and light candles. Mind you, I hate cold weather, but one of the things that gets me through this time of year it's to think of fun and original recipes....

So, this fall apart from doing 3.000 different things, like being in a music band, learning french, and many other things, I have started a Bible Study at my house. Every other Tuesday at 8pm at my house, we are studying Galatians. Anyone want to join???

As I am hosting it, I have volunteered to cook as well! So this is the perfect chance to actually bother to learn new recipes and post them. So my hope is that I will be posting. So here is the first one from last Tuesday.

Spaghetti with basil tomato sauce. VERY GOOD and easy. So this is the tomato sauce recipe that I tried the other day and that I want to remember:

Ingredients:

-6 pear tomatoes.
-2 tomate frito bricks.
-a bunch of basil, like a lot, a hanful.
-two garlic cloves.
-olive oil.
-some herbs with no specific flavour.






1. That's it. Basically I diced up the tomaotes and then put them in a saucepan with the two tetrabricks of tomato sauce.
2. I added the two cloves of garlic and let them simmer slowly for about 20 minutes.
3. Then I added a bunch of basil, yes a LOT, because this is the magic of the recipe, the awesome basil taste. And let it simmer for another 15 minutes.
4. I added the olive oil to  make it runny and nice.


Oh my goodness, this sauce was awesome. So balanced, full of flavour, sweet and salty, it was delicious. Then I added some mince and spaghetti. My friends loved it too. Success on my first Bible Study. Try it out. This was our table.

Easy Hummus

My basic hummus recipe from Amy my Malasaña roommate.

INGREDIENTS

• 400 grms of chickpeas.  
• 3 spoonfuls of tahini. 
• 1 clove of garlic.
• 1 lemon. 
• 60 ml  olive oi.t
• pepper and salt.
• some cumin.
• cilantro or parsely.
• paprika.
• optional (150 grams of red peppers if you want to make it red pepper hummus)

No steps to this recipe, just mix it up with a blender.

 And then serve on plate garnished with olive oil, paprika, cilantro.

Yummy. 

Chinese Broth

"Worries go down better with soup"
-Jewish Proverb-


I know, I know, all I do lately is post recipes of soups and teas, teas and soups, but it's all my body's been craving these days, cold, rainy, and just kinda depressing really.

So I was feeling creative last sunday night and decided to give a try to this "recipe" my friend Priscilla roughly scribbled down for me when we met a few years ago. So I kinda made it up following her notes and it worked!  I don't want to lose this recipe so here it is. It may not be my favourite chinese soup but it tasted pretty good and is pretty chinese. 


Ingredients: 

•  2 litres of water.
• 2 chicken stock cubes.
• 1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder.
• 4 teaspoons of rice wine.
• 2 teaspoons of soy sauce.
• A bunch of parsley.
• Optional: pasta, shiitake mushrooms and tofu or whatever you want.

1. So simple! just put the water and chicken stock and then add the parsely finely chopped and the garlic powder.
2. Once it boils add the rice wine and the soy sauce.
3. Now add the pasta if you want and mushrooms and finally add the cubes of tofu. 

Lemon, Cinnamon&Ginger Tea

Mountains of Ginger in  Jordan, Amman 

Been sick and sick and sick in January and February. And this week we have the worst cold spell of the whole winter. But honestly it was about time because it hasn't been cold at all.  Anyway, I've been drinking this tea in gallons these days. Ginger and lemon tea.

INGREDIENTS:

-2 lemons

-10 slices of ginger

-a stick of cinammon 

-2 litres of water

STEPS:

1. Bring to a boil it and then let it simmer for about an hour 

2. Add honey in each cup if you want.

It will do wonders to your throat. I love the way lemon kinda dries your throat, it feels like salt in your wounds, but in a good way, like it dries the inflammation so that you can stop coughing. Also the ginger gives it a superwarm flavour perfect for winter. PLUS your house will smell wonderful from the steam !!!!

Also! you can put some green tea into the combination and it tastes really good, I just didnt add it here because I'll be going to bed soon.
Another addition is to put a little whisky to give it some flavour. You can't go wrong really with this tea. It all tastes real good. Don't you think nature is amazing????  Blows my mind all the natural flavours God has created for us....
I read this quote thought it was quite cool.


“Perfume was first created to mask the stench of foul and offensive odors...
Spices and bold flavorings were created to mask the taste of putrid and rotting meat...
What then was music created for?Was it to drown out the voices of others, or the voices within ourselves? I think I know.”  ― Emilie Autumn, The Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls

Chinese Egg Drop Soup

Singapore

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

(Just Kidding! it is a coincidence that I am writing this recipe right around this time of year)

AWFUL day at work but came home and did this soup that totally warmed me up. Amazing! And so easy! The only tough thing about this is soup is buying the ingredients and having them in your kitchen. But once you have them in your pantry, this soup is an easy one.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of water
• One and a half pieces of chicken stock. (1 pastilla y media)
• 1 tablespoon of grated ginger. (very important)
• 1 tablespoon of dry sherry (jerez seco).
• 6 shitake mushrooms, thinly sliced. (amazing this ingredient)
• 1/4 teaspoon of ground white pepper (so good this ingredient!)
• 1 large egg.
• 1 tablespoon of cornstarch (maizena) to thicken up soup, dissolved in a little water.
• 1 handful of sliced green onion or a little parsley.

Very easy.

1. Put the water and the chicken stock and bring it to a boil.

2.To slice up the mushrooms you need to soak them in water for about an hour. I boiled the water and then sank the mushrooms. They do need to be in the water for about an hour because they are so dry and hard. Boiling water because them soften up much faster. Now, squeeze the water out and remove the stem, the stem is very hard and now slice them up.

3. Bring the heat down and add the shitaki mushroom sliced.

4. Now add the grated ginger. This is great because it spices it up and gives it this warm flavour.

5. Now add the little bit of dry sherry or chinese wine. I cold not find the chinese wine so I bought dry sherry, en español, jerez seco.

6. Now add cornstarch dissolved in a little water. This thickens up the soup.

7. Now add the white pepper, this makes it warm and spicy and gives it an awesome kick.

8. Now add the egg, beat it up in a bowl and slowly swirled it around.

9. Finally add the green onions or a little parsely (perejil). Parsley might be a little strong, but whatever, just a bit is good and makes it coulourful. 

Oh my. I loved this soup. PERFECT FOR WINTER. And so so so Chinese. Do you ever go to a Chinese restaurant and wonder, HOW DID THEY DO THIS?? Well, this how it is done, at least for this recipe is just awesome, the real deal. Thank you Jaden. 

Singapore