Girls' night - Saltimbocca

Cooking runs in my blood. When my parents got divorced, we started a tradition with my mum & sister to have dinner every Monday. We are all grown-ups now, but this tradition has stayed the same for almost 10years now. This Monday, we made Saltimbocca, an Italian dish. However, we don't take it too seriously, so this was pretty much made with what we had at home.
Basic ingredients you need is either veal or pork, both will work great, fresh sage (don't subsitute for dried) and prosciutto, which is the Italian air dried ham. You can use serrano ham (Spanish)or similar products, whatever is available. Just don't tell an Italian that...

Slice the pork/veal in thick slices (or buy ready) and then batter them thin. With pork there can sometimes be a thick fat layer, you can cut that away.

The next step is to place the prosciutto on top of your meat, and on top of that a sage leaf. I used a regular toothpick to keep the whole thing together.

Next heat up a pan, add about 1tbs of olive oil, and quickly sear the meat on both sides.

Then put all the meat in a ceramic pan that can stand the heat of an oven. Put the pan in the oven for about 10min on 220C.

 

While the meat is in the oven, you can prepare the sauce. Use the same pan where you seared the meat, add 1dl of water, 1tbs of soy sauce, 1/2 cube (or 1tsp) of stock powder, 4tbs of sherry and 1tsp of honey. Taste and att soy for saltiness or honey for sweetness. Let the sauce simmer together, and finally add some sauce thickener to thicken it up.

 prepare a nice salad. This is a very simple one with arugula, lettuce, avocado slices, roasted pine nuts and crumbled goat cheese.

Really the only trick here is to use ripe avocado's and to cut them just before you serve. Squeeze some lemon over the avocado and it will keep them from turning  brown.

Take the meat out of the oven, pour the sauce over them and serve with the salad. My mother really felt like having some potato wedges with this, but it's striclty optional. If you have a salad with avocado and goat cheese you will feel perfectly full without the carbs in potatoes. Enjoy!

 

Gluteeniton lasagna (herkkusieni & pesto) - Gluten free lasagna (mushroom & pesto)

I'm not a vegetarian, but this is a 100% vegetarian dish that tastes great! It's a mushroom lasagna served with pesto. The great thing with lasagna is it's pretty inexpensive to make a large batch, cooking for the week is done, and it stays well preserved in the fridge. It's easy to heat up a piece fast after work.

One thing with pesto is that if you need to make a large batch it can become fairly expensive fairly fast. The great thing about this pesto is that it's made with frozen spinach. Spinach is a fraction of the price of basil. For this recipe you need two bags of spinach around 40cents/each. In the 90's, and when I was a kid spinach had a "bad name" to it. It also led to me not really knowing how to use it in food, and spinach itself (especially frozen) isn't exactly a delicacy in taste. So it's all about the flavoring and knowing how to use it.

These days I love spinach! It's healthy, high proteins, has a great taste, and it's inexpensive. So if you like me had a prejudice towards spinach, this recipe is the best way to change your opinion!
If you want to make pesto the real/fancier version, use basil, in which case you need 2-3pots. 

Pesto

2 small bags of frozen spinach

1 garlic clove

1 bag of pine nuts (the less expensive version is to use almonds)

1dl of grated Parmesan cheese or Grana Padano

1-2dl olive oil

Salt to taste

I start this recipe by turning the oven to 220C and preparing the pesto. Begin with melting the frozen spinach. Put them in a pan on low heat. Once all the ice has melted and it's a soft green mush you can take the pan off the heat to cool down.

Meanwhile the spinach is melting, start by slicing mushrooms and putting them in a pan on high heat. Mushrooms have a lot of water in them, which is why high heat is preffered. Also thinly slice a garlic (this is for flavoring the mushrooms).

Lasagna

2 boxes of mushrooms (400grams total)

 dried oregano

1 garlic clove 

Semper lasagne plates

1 bag of shredded mozzarella

Once the mushrooms start to give away water and shrink, add some butter, add the sliced garlic clove and dried oregano. Keep the heat high until the mushrooms start to turn brown. Set them aside.

Time for the white sauce = the bechamel. This is what most people struggle with, because if you don't pay attention it tends to get lumpy or burn. If you prefer to buy a ready sauce, that works too. However I haven't found a gluten free ready sauce, which is why I decided to try this myself. I use a teflon kettle, they are super practical when it comes to heating anything with milk for example, because it keeps the milk from burning to the bottom of the pan. Now that you start making the sauce nothing else should be going on: Your mushrooms are ready and waiting, your spinach is cooling down. It's all you, the stove and the bechamel. Give it your full attention.

Gluten free Bechamel (white sauce)

3 tbs butter

0,7dl Gluten free flour

1L milk

1dl grated Parmesan or Grana Padano

salt & pepper

Start by melting 3tbs of butter. Add about 0,7dl of gluten free flour. This is a little less per 1l milk than in a regular recipe because gluten free flour is more starchy --> It become thicker with less. Mix in the flour in the melted butter over low heat, it will start to look like the picture below.

Finally start to slowly add the milk while you're whisking. Whisk whisk whisk whisk away, never ever stop. As you've added the 1l milk it might feel a little loose, and here is the most common misstake. You think "oh it's gonna need a little while to heat up to thicken, I'll just..." And then the sauce is ruined. The process of when it will start to thicken is very fast, not to mention how fast milk burns. So stand by the stove, keep stiring until the sauce is thick like a gravy. Then you can turn the heat of and put the pan to the side.As you do that, add the grated parmesan cheese and flavor with salt & pepper.

Now you can make the lasagna, i start with a layer of bechamel, then a layer of lasagna plates, on top of that a layer of mushrooms + bechamel, another layer of lasagna plates, an additional layer of mushrooms + bechamel. Top the whole thing of with shredded mozzarella cheese and put it in the oven for about 40min (220C).

Meanwhile it's time to finnish the pesto now that the melted spinach has cooled down.

Pesto

2 small bags of frozen spinach

1 garlic clove

1 bag of pine nuts (the less expensive version is to use almonds)

1dl of grated Parmesan cheese or Grana Padano

1-2dl olive oil

Salt to taste

Put all ingredients in a bowl. I usually press the garlic, and I chop the pine nuts before adding to the spinach. Use a bamix (sauvasekoitin) to "puree" the wole thing. It's up to you how purée like you want it, I want it to have texture. So in fact I also add some extra chopped pine nuts after to get some bites in my pesto. Anyways that's how easy it is. Flavor the pesto with salt, and put it in the fridge to rest while your lasagna is in the oven. When it's time to serve, take the pesto out, and usually you have to add a little olive oil to losen up the consitency. If you prefer to use less oil, you can add a little water instead.

Take the lasagna out of the oven and let it "sit" for a while. This is not just to let it cool down, but also it makes the bechamel stay together better.

Finally serve a piece of you lasagna with the pesto. Enjoy the fresh cool taste of the pesto with the warm creamy lasagna!

Pasta Diavolo Semplice

Sometimes all you want to do when you get home is eat a ready meal and watch TV. This dish is so fast, and so easy it will make never eat a ready meal in your life again. The name means the pasta is spicy (diavolo is really devil, but it's getting on the same point), and semplice means easy.

Recipe

Spaghetti or Linguine pasta (gluten free if you need it)

1/2 fresh chopped chili, you can use caynne pepper or dried chili flakes instead too

1 garlic clove (pressed or chopped)

Juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt

1dl oil

dried parsely, or herbs de provence (any dried herb mix really)

Put water in a pot, bring it to boil, add salt and a dash of oil to the water. Don't add the pasta before the water is actually boiling. Otherwise the pasta will become discusting. Never add a lid, always boil pasta without a lid! Boiling time will vary about 8-12min. Read the lable, and leave the pasta al dente.

In a pan add 1dl of oil, heat it up slightly (low temp) add the chili, and garlic. Let the flavors get heated up and spread in the oil. Finally turn down the heat even more before adding the juice of 1/2 lemon. If you have white wine, this works as a perfect acid as well. Just remember when adding any water based liquid to oil all hell will break lose if the oil is too hot! Finally flavor the heated oil with a little salt and whatever dried herbs you have at home.

Finally pour the pasta through a strainer to remove the water, put it back in the pot. Add the heated oil and do like in the Sopranos: Mix together over heat for about 45sek. This way the flavored oil will get absorbed in the spaghetti. Pour the spaghetti in a bowl, and you are ready to eat! Fast and easy, and really really good..