Zizi's Adventures - Real Food, Real Stories

Spinach-Walnut Penne

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I made this recipe a few months ago but I forgot to post it. Did it happen with you too? 🙂 I found the photos on my computer and I was glad to remember the recipe. The worse is when I find food photos and I don’t remember the exact quantities of all the ingredients – this way I can’t post the recipe on my blog. 
Spinach goes really well with walnut and goat cheese. I added some broccoli too, it was a leftover in my fridge and I wanted to use it. It is an easy pasta dish, the result of some improvisation and the ingredients are still seasonal (except walnut).

Spinach-Walnut Penne

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 200 g penne pasta
– 1 big handful of fresh spinach, chopped
– 1/4 of a whole broccoli, florets and stalk
– 100 g walnut halves
– 100 g goat cheese + 25 g for serving
– 1 cup (2 dl) dry white wine
– 1 lemon’s freshly squeezed juice
– 2 cloves garlic, peeled and finely chopped
– olive oil
– salt, pepper

Method

In a dry pan roast the walnut with salt for 5 minutes. Set aside. Boil the penne in salted water al dente (according to the insturcitons on the package), drain and set aside. In a pan heat olive oil and saute the garlic for 2-3 minutes, then add wine and lemon juice. Stir around, cook for 2 minutes before adding the broccoli. Cook for 7-8 minutes, add spinach and goat cheese while stirring. Let it simmer for 5 minutes before adding the cooked penne and the roasted walnut. Season with salt and pepper, stir for another minute and make sure the penne is covered with this wine-lemon-goat cheese sauce. Turn off the heat. Serve it with goat cheese on top. Yum!

Creamy White Bean and Chard "Risotto"

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I have been using and cooking with chard for a while now. Chard is not very known in Hungary and it is not easy to find in markets. In Hungarian, we call it mangold. I usually buy it from my favourite producer, Matyas at the largest organic farmers market in Budapest. 
Chard has shiny green ribbed leaves, with stems that range from white (most popular in Hungary) to yellow to red, depending on the cultivar. It has a slightly bitter taste. Fresh young chard can be used raw in salads. Mature chard leaves and stalks are typically cooked or sauteed; their bitterness fades with cooking, leaving a refined flavor. Its taste has similarities to spinach and maybe kale. Chard is high in vitamins A, K and C, and also rich in minerals, dietary fiber and protein. I adapted the recipe (with a few things changed) from Green Kitchen Stories.

Creamy White Bean and Chard “Risotto”

Ingredients
– 2 cans white beans, washed and drained well
– 3-4 bigger chard leaves (if you use smaller, you need 6-8 leaves), stems dices, leaves slice into thin strips
– 1 onion, finely chopped
– 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped
– 2 and 1/2 cups (375 ml) vegetable stock
– 6 tablespoons mascarpone cheese
– 1/2 organic lemon’s zest and juice
– fresh thyme
– coconut or olive oil
– salt, pepper

Method
Heat 2 teaspoons coconut oil or 1 tablespoon olive oil in a large saucepan on medium heat, add chopped onion, garlic and stems of the chards. Saute for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until get tender. Pour 1 cup (250 ml) stock into the saucepan and cook and stir the vegetables until the stock almost evaporated. Now add the sliced chard leaves, the beans and the remaining 1/2 cup (125 ml) stock. Cook and stir for 5-6 minutes, then add mascaropne, thyme and lemon juice. Season with salt and pepper. Serve it with lemon zest on top.

Flour free Banana and Blueberry Pancakes

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I love making pancakes on lazy weekends. It’s so good not getting up early, not rushing to work. Instead of these I go to the kitchen, make the batter; then we sit down, eat the pancakes and just enjoy the delicious moment of the morning.
I found the recipe on one of my favourite healthy, vegetarian blogs, Green Kitchen Stories. I love David & Luise’s recipes that are so comforting, nutritious and oh so delicious. After making these pancakes I did a bit of searching on the Internet about berries and currants. There are so many of them, I didn’t even know about. In Hungary we ususally grow, use and eat strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries and redcurrants. These are the most known berries. I know about mulberries, lingonberries, jostaberries, whitecurrants and blackcurrants but these are difficult to find in markets. 
The most interesting ones I haven’t heard about: olallieberry (a cross between the loganberry and the youngberry, each of which is itself a cross between blackberry and another berry – raspberry and dewberry, respectively), loganberry (an octaploid hybrid produced from crossing a hexaploid apomictic blackberry and a tetraploid raspberry), youngberry (is a hybrid between a blackberry and a dewberry, both members of the genus rubus of the rose family, first cultivated in the western United States), dewberries (a group of species closely related to the blackberries, they are small brambles with berries reminiscent of the raspberry, but are usually purple to black instead of red), boysenberries (a cross between a European raspberry, a common blackberry and a loganberry), and pineberries (a strawberry cultivar owned by breeder Hans de Jongh and commercialized by VitalBerry BV in Made, The Netherlands, and publicized in Germany in April, 2009, as Ananaserdbeere, or white pineapple strawberry). Wikipedia still mentions a few like Pacific blackberry, Himalayan blackberry, Santiam berry, Chehalem blackberry and marionberry. Hope I can try all of them one day.

Did you know about all these kind of berries? Which is your favorite one?

Flour free Banana and Blueberry Pancakes

Ingredients (serves 2)

– 1,5 ripe bananas, peeled, mashed with a fork
– 3/4 cup blueberries (frozen)
– 3 organic eggs
– 60-70 g desiccated coconut
– 1 tablespoon cinnamon
– coconut oil

Method

In a bowl whisk the eggs then mix together with the bananas. Add desiccated coconut, cinnamon  and blueberries and stir it together. Prepare a non-stick pan with 2 teaspoons coconut oil on medium heat. Spoon batter into pan, forming 2 small pancakes. Cook until lightly brown on the bottom. Turn and brown the other side. Serve with blueberries, honey or maple syrup.

Spicy Udon Noodles with Cabbage and Shiitake

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I mentioned earlier that I have been a fan of oriental noodles – udon, soba, vermicelli, etc. – for a while. Udon is a type of thick wheat flour noodle popular in Japanese cuisine. The origin of udon in Japan is credited to Buddhist priests who traveled to China around the beginning of the 9th century to study Buddhism. He got back to Japan with the recipe of udon.

Udon noodles are served chilled in the summer and hot in the winter. Toppings are chosen to reflect the season and to balance with other ingredients. Most toppings are added without much cooking.

Spicy Udon Noodles with Cabbage and Shiitake

Ingredients (serves 2)

For the noodles
– 200 g udon noodles
– 6 dried shiitake mushrooms, stemmed, soaked in water for about 30 minutes, caps thinly sliced
– 1 small cabbage, thinly sliced
– 4 cloves garlic, chopped
– 150 g tofu, diced
– 1 small piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
– 4 spring onion, thinly sliced
– 3 tablespoons sesame seeds
– 1 tablespoon coconut oil
– salt

For the sauce

– 2 tablespoons soy sauce
– 2 tablespoons water
– 1 teaspoon dried chili

Method
In a dry pan toast the sesame seeds over medium heat for 3-5 minutes until pale golden, then transfer to a small bowl and set aside.
Heat the coconut oil in a pan, add garlic and ginger and saute them until fragrant. Add shiitake and saute, stirring frequently until it gets tender. Reduce the heat to medium and add tofu, after 5 minutes cabbage and spring onion too. Cook, stirring occasionally until tofu and cabbage is crisp-tender and a bit golden brown. Pour over the sauce, simmer 2-3 minutes more. Set aside but keep it warm.
While cabbage is cooking, cook udon in boiling salted water until the noodles tender. Drain well, transfer to a large bowl, give the vegetable mixture, sprinkle with sesame seeds and serve with fresh chopped spring onion on top.

Vegan Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancake

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Weekdays I only have time to drink freshly squeezed juices and herbal or yogi tea for breakfast. At work I eat fruits until lunch. I love weekends when we have time to make proper breakfast and we can laze around for a while. Last time I made Alkaline Sisters’ vegan pancake. This is a similar version, I only changed a few ingredients.

Vegan Lemon-Poppy Seed Pancake

Ingredients (makes 8 pancakes)

– 1 and 1/4 cup whole grain spelt flour and white spelt flour mix
– 3 tablespoons ground almond
– 1 tablespoon poppy seeds
– 1 and 1/2 tablespoons aluminium free baking powder
– 1/2 vanilla bean, split and seeded
– 1 organic lemon’s zest
– 1 cup oat milk
– 2 tablespoons sunflower oil
– 1 tablespoon agave syrup
– pinch of salt
– coconut oil for the pan

Method

In a bowl mix together the dry ingredients: flours, almond, poppy seeds, baking powder and salt. In another one mix together the wet ingredients: oat milk, oil, agave syrup, vanilla and lemon zest. Give each mixture a stir then add the wet to the dry combining just until mixed. Set aside for 5 minutes to allow batter to rise. Prepare a non-stick pan with 1/4 teaspoon coconut oil on medium heat. Spoon batter into pan, forming 2 small pancakes. Cook until lightly brown on the bottom. Turn and brown the other side. Serve with lemon wedges and agave syrup.