Fusilli with tomato&soy sauce, roasted pine nuts and minced rucola

I prepared this for lunch yesterday and it really made my day!

Ingredients (x2):
160 g fusilli
70 g grinded soy
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
2 tomatoes
1 tablespoon white winegar
50 g pine nuts
30 g fresh rucola
salt
pepper
olive oil
parmesan cheese

Preparation:

Roast the pine nuts on a frying pan if they are not readily roasted.

Chop the garlic and the onion finely. Peel the tomatoes and remove their insides, and then cut them into cubes. Pour some olive oil on a pan and add the garlic. Heat it on relatively high heat until the garlic has gained some colour, and then add the onion. Remember to mix. Soon after lower the heat a bit and add the grinded soy and the winegar, and dust some salt and pepper on it. Mix the soy frequently and let it gain a bit darker colour. Next, add the cubes of tomatoes on the pan. Keep a medium heat and mix the sauce in 5-7 minutes every once in a while.

Cook the fusilli in salted water.

Rinse the rucola and stuff it into a mixer. Add a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Mince the rucola with the mixer.

Pour the water off the pasta. Mix the soy&tomato sauce and pine nuts with the pasta and then (separately) add the minced rucola. Turn the pasta around a bit so that the rucola spreads more evenly. Add grated parmesan cheese on top.

Tunaballs

Here's a really nice Saturday lunch recipe for tunafish balls. I tend to eat them with potatoes and a lemon-ish sauce.

Ingredients (x3-4):
2 cans of tunafish
1 small onion
250 g bread
2 eggs
3 tablespoons of olive oil
bread crumbs
salt
pepper
more olive oil for frying

Preparation:
Open the cans of tuna and press the water off the tunafish. Put the tuna into a bowl. Tear the bread into small pieces with your hands and mix it together with the tuna. Add into the mix the eggs, olive oil, salt, pepper and the finely chopped onion. Mix well. Add some bread crumbs if the dough is still too soft to handle. Spread bread crumbs on the working surface and start to form balls out of the dough with your hands. Roll the balls in bread crumbs.

At the end fry the balls in olive oil until they have gained a bit of colour. Serve them warm.

Pipe rigate with tomatoes from the oven and rucola

This is a very easy-to-prepare dish. It will always come out good, unless you add too much (sea) salt, like I once did and made my boyfriend's heart go too fast... Only a few ingredients and a fresh, warm taste.

Ingredients (x2):
175 g pipe rigate or another short pasta
2 big or 3 medium-sized tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 onion
olive oil
black pepper
salt
1 bundle of rucola
parmesan cheese

Preparation:
Chop the garlic and onion. Cut the tomatoes into slices in shape of a half moon. Lay these tomato slices on each other in domino-like rows on an oven plate. Add the chopped onion and garlic all along these rows on top of the tomatoes. Grind black pepper on top and dust some salt. Pour a bit of olive oil throughout the rows of tomato. Put the oven plate into the oven and bake it for 30 minutes on 180 c degrees. Meanwhile cook the pasta in salted water and rinse the rucola. Pour the water off the pasta when it is al dente. When the tomatoes have been baked, take them out of the oven and mix them with the pasta and add the rucola into the mix. Serve the dish with grated or sliced parmesan cheese.

Soup of beans, leek and potato

Ingredients (x2):
400g green beans
1 small onion
1 clove garlic
1 leek
1 big potato
500ml chicken bouillon
1,5 tablespoons olive oil
salt
(croutons or bread)

Preparation:
Chop the onion and garlic and cut the washed leek into rings. Cook these ingredients in a pan with olive oil and add the beans. Cook this mix of vegetables on low heat for 10-15 minutes. Peel the potato and cut it into cubes. Prepare the bouillon by letting a bouillon cube dissolve in water. Add the potato cubes to the rest of the vegetables and pour the bouillon on top. Cook the soup covered, on low heat, for one hour. When an hour has passed, take your immersion blender and give the soup a puré-like composition with it. Add salt according to your taste. Serve the soup with croutons or bread.


The recipe of the bread pictured above can be found here.

Mushroom fusilli

I have usually been doing this dish with tagliatelle, but due to my boyriend's kitchen experiments of one evening, I didn't have tagliatelle left anymore and I opted for fusilli. It was a good choice (these fusilli here are by a Dutch brand and their shape reminds me more or less of worms ;) I have made this with different kinds of mushrooms. Make sure your mushrooms are not poisonous!

Ingredients (x2):
180g tagliatelle, fusilli or another pasta
2 cloves garlic
300 g mushrooms
olive oil
cream (if you want it lighter, use milk instead)
a tiny bit of peperoncino
salt
pepper
parsley (fresh or dried, but preferably fresh)

Preparation:
Start boiling the pasta in abundant salted water. Chop one of the garlic cloves and cut half of the mushrooms into small pieces. Add the chopped galic clove on a pan and heat it, and soon after add the mushrooms you preciously cut into pieces. Fry the garlic and mushrooms for 5 minutes and add the spices (except the parsley) on the pan. During or after this pour the remaining garlic clove and remaining mushrooms together with the parsley into the mixer, and add a bit of olive oil. Mix these ingredients fine with the mixer in order to obtain a puré. Add this puré to the pan where the pieces of mushrooms are. Fry for a for more minutes. At the end add the cream or milk and lower then heat to below medium. Mix the sauce and take a few minutes of time until the sauce becomes more creamy. Pour the water off the pasta and mix it with the sauce. Serve with parmesan cheese.

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

I have been completely absent in this blog for several weeks, and I am really sorry about that! I was working a lot of hours each week, and even if I did make yummy food worth posting here and I even took pics of them, I never got down to updating. Now I want to update more regularly again.

So, here goes. This is the recipe of what I made for lunch today, and it was praised by my bf and he smiled for a long time after the lunch. I think that is enough to describe how delicious it turned out!

Bell peppers with mushroom-leek and soy fillings

Ingredients (for 2-3 people):

3 bell peppers (any colour you like)

filling #1:

2,25 dl cooked rice
3,5 dl table mushrooms
1,5 tablespoons butter or margarine
½ a small leek
1,5 dl grated cheese
paprika spice
pepper

filling #2:

1,5 dl cooked rice
150 g grinded soy
1 small onion
pepper
aromatic salt OR salt + half a grinded vegetarian bouillon cube
1,5 dl grated cheese

Preparation:

Cut the bell peppers in halves horizontally. Remove their insides and wash them. Cook the bell peppers in salted water for 8 minutes. When cooked, remove the water from the pan and let the bell peppers vapour.

Prepare the filling #1: Cut the mushrooms into small pieces. Heat the butter in the pan and add the mushrooms into the pan. Fry the mushrooms for 5 minutes. Chop the leek finely and add it into the pan.

When they both look good and and the leek has become more yellow, add this mushroom-leek-mix into the rice. Spice it up and add one dl of grated cheese. Mix.

Prepare the filling #2: Fry the grinded soy on a pan and add the finely chopped onion into it. Add spices. The spicing can be rather abundant. Mix the grinded soy + onion with the rice. Add 1/4 dl of grated cheese into the mix.


Place the bell pepper halves into an oven mould and fill them with the fillings. Add what remains of the grated cheese on the filled bell peppers.

Bake them in an oven heated to 200'c for half an hour.

Salmiakki Swiss roll

Swiss rolls (fi: kääretorttu) are a very common dessert in Finland. The crust can be made brown by cacao powder or it can retain a light colour. The fillings are many and diverse, and this one here is a rarity. A few friends of mine sounded astonished when they heard I was making a salmiakki Swiss roll. Fantasy, however, is a good quality! And since salmiakki (=strong salted liquorice, nh4cl) is inevitably the most fantastic candy in Finland if you ask me, I felt like trying this out! I recommend to use a kind of salmiakki that is easy to cut. Unfortunately I didn't and so I, to avoid excess suffering, left the pieces bigger.

Ingredients:

The dough:
3 eggs
1 dl sugar
½ dl wheat flour
½ dl potato flour
1 tl baking powder
2 tablespoons cacao powder
sugar
bread crumbs
baking paper

The filling:
1,5 dl whipped cream
1,5 dl vanilla flavoured quark (That's Dutch, and it's something like a very thick yoghurt)
salmiakki candies

Preparation:
Cut the salmiakki into pieces. Mix the whipped cream and the quark and add the pieces of salmiakki into it. Put the filling into the fridge to wait for the crust to be ready.
Mix the sugar and the eggs into an airy foam. Mix the flours together and add them carefully into the foam. Pour the dough on baking paper on an oven plate. Bake it in a 225 c oven for 7 minutes.
Take a sheet of baking paper and put it on the table. Dust some sugar on it. Set the crust, on its other side still attached to its baking paper, on the sugared baking paper. Remove the baking paper that was with it in the oven.
Spread the filling you previously prepared on the crust.

Roll the crust into a roll. The result is the best if you let the Swiss roll stay in the fridge overnight and serve it the next day.