Italian Breadcrumbs

Every now and again you stumble onto a recipe that you know will be with you for a very long time…..an absolute piece of pure genius that every time you eat it, you enjoy every single bite and cannot wait to make it again

Well this recipe for Italian Breadcrumbs is one such recipe…..

Better late than Never

Pepper plant moved to get full sun, Carrots & tomatoes going great

Finally I am happy to announce that I think I have cracked this gardening lark. After a slow start after my first seeds did not sprout I can happily say that my second batch are coming along nicely.

My tomato plants are really taking off and all going well I should see some fruit from them at the end of the summer. The Pepper plant I moved last week to the front as the Rosemary was blocking it from the sun. In the front bin only my carrots appear to have taken as the onions & lettuce got attacked by birds! 

To be continued......

Smoked Salmon & Prawn Pies

I came up with this recipe after a couple of times making my Salmon in Cream & White Wine. I have said already many times that the Pies that are on Food Devil are very tasty. Especially the Lamb Potato & Caramelized Onion Pies with chilli, coriander & ginger if you have not tried these you really have too.

But onto this post. I wanted to make a Fish pie and I also wanted to make it in Cream & White wine so I came up with the below recipe. In the pie you have poached Tiger Prawns and when the pie in placed into the oven the cream/wine & leek sauce is poured over smoked salmon so that will also poach during the cooking process. By using frozen pastry it all makes it super easy and quick and the end results are super tasty.

Poached Salmon in Cream & White Wine

This Pasta is a very welcome addition to my weekly menu as yet again it all can be gotton together in about 15 minutes. As the pasta takes about 10 minutes I generally start to cook the pasta after I have sautéed the onions and just before I add the brown sugar.

A good tip at the end it to add your cream to your cooked pasta first and add your onions & Salmon pieces when you serve the dish.

Rooftop Gardening: Take II

I learnt from the mistakes of my first attempt at planting my seeds by doing the following:

Coriander & Spring Onion Marinade

I have been working on this marinade for the first few BBQs of this summer. I always keep my marinades with a consistency of 2:1 in terms of oil & vinegar. By keeping to this ratio the marinade will penetrate the chicken and you will be truly amazed with the flavour. The rule of thumb for marinades and Chicken is that you want to marinade for a minimum of 3 hours.

What I like to do with my marinade is to use half Balsamic & half Applecider vinegar for the contrasting sharpness and also the darker colour of your marinade

Rooftop Gardening: Back to Square One

OK as much as I regret to say I think I got to start over again.....these fingers of mine are not so green after all it seems.

It’s been 3 weeks now since I started the garden and still there is nothing happening. I had a little sprout last week but nothing more than that. The mistake I made was not fully understanding exactly it is I was trying to do. I was way too busy with the mountain of information I was trying to digest on the gardening process that I forgot to understand the principle of a seed sprouting. Also I think starting the seeds outside was a little early too, as it is only in the past week that the good weather has really arrived.

Rooftop Gardening: What did I plant?

What did I grow?

I thought it would be a useful idea to run thru everything that I planted in my garden on an individual basis and outline the special areas to consider in terms of when to plant, where to plant, how to water?, How long to harvest etc.

Also for myself it is a good way for me to understand what exactly I need to do over the coming days, weeks & months per each vegetable. Already I realised that the carrot should be planted in a moist soil up until they are almost mature. I had read the instructions wrong and thought they needed to be watered twice a week which I had in fact done as 3 times a week as the weather has been very dry recently. I am glad I caught this mistake early, we will see I guess if it had a drastic effect on the success of the crop.

Straight away I can see the benefit of the square foot gardening method as in the case of the carrots, their watering pattern differs from the others so it is easy to just water their square and not the others. Also with the excellent drainage in each pot any excess water will be drained away

Rooftop Gardening: The Start

(Before we start let me say that a foot is 30cm. An inch is 2.5 cm)

Concept
The concept of squarefoot gardening is very simple. You will condense down your garden into a series of square feet . In my case what I have chosen to do is make a rooftop/patio garden which will be 3 feet long and 1 foot wide. In my larger pot I will again have it 3 feet long but 1.5 feet wide.

The above size is just what suited me you can make it as big as you want with the standard squarefoot garden being 4ft by 4ft 

Rooftop Gardening: An Introduction

The traditional view or thought of gardening is something I have never been overly interested in. I think it all stems from my teenage years having to mow our massive garden at home. But when I read an article about a unique gardening concept called Square Foot Gardening I was very keen to give it a go as this Spring/Summer is my first one being able to enjoy my new Roof Terrace.

Grilled Squid with a Tomato & Onion salsa

This salad is beautifully fresh and with the kick of chili & lemon it is a perfect start to any meal or even to have for a light lunch. Squid is remarkably good value if you are willing to clean it yourself. Cleaning is not for the squeamish so ask your fish monger to clean it for you if you do not want to do the dirty work.

Squid takes only 1 minute per side on a hot griddle pan so make your Tomato & Onion Salsa first.  

Tandoori Murg

This tandoori recipe is quite easy to follow, the only thing needed for it is time for the chicken to marinade. The general rule in Indian cooking is that meats are marinated twice. The first marinade removes moisture and the second introduces flavours and spices. You would ideally like to marinade in your yoghurt& spices for a minimum of 3 hours, a great idea is to marinade overnight and prepare for a weekend lunch or early dinner.

With the below recipe it is a single serving but a great idea for this recipe is to double the marinade quantities and buy a whole chicken and divide it into 4 pieces (2 legs, 2 breasts).

Using boneless pieces of chicken &  push them through skewers for a Chicken Tikka

Macaroni with Cheese

This has been a while…..

I have recently returned from a very enjoyable and long holiday and I got to admit have taken some time to get back into my routine with cooking etc. I have however found myself trawling thru my old favourites from this site as a help to get me back into things

First up on my return is a quite legendary dish from the States that is amazingly simple to get together. One note on it when choosing your cheeses: take parmesan & mozzarella for definite but then you can choose whatever other grated cheese you prefer with those 2

Top 10 posts of 2010

I begin the New Year with a well deserved holiday, 4 weeks in fact. Presently I am sitting in our apartment in Bali in T-shirt & Shorts and we are working our way towards Australia where I am Best Man at my best mates wedding. All this will mean that Food Devil will take a back seat over the coming weeks as I plan to take a break from it all and recharge the batteries fully for the year ahead.

Tartiflette

The French most certainly know how to cook & if I was to undertake any type of cooking course it would most definitely be in French Cuisine. 
So it really excites me when I come onto a French classic that I was not aware of before. The Tartiflette has its origins in the French Alps & when you eat it you can certainly see why. The Crème Fraiche & Wine combined with your cooked potato with the mixture of melted Reblochon Cheese on top is very delicious. The one thing I have learned on this recipe is that it needs Reblochon….so seek the cheese out and try it…..you will not be disappointed

Cherry Tomato Salad

Yet again the Food Wholesaler across from my house has cherry tomatoes on sale, a quite ridiculous 12 punnets of cherry tomatoes for only €1.99. The principle reason for buying so many tomatoes was to prepare double batches of both my Chutneys but now I also wanted to find something quick & tasty to go with my planned Tartiflette recipe.

The below cherry tomato recipe is super simple, the only pre-requisite would be that you let it sit for a minimum of 2 hours in the fridge.

Leek and Potato Soup

A real old favourite of mine. What I love about this soup is the simplicity in the flavours in the soup itself can be completely jazzed up with your choice of toppings that you want to add to the soup.

Minestrone Soup

Minestrone Soup is one of the cornerstones of Italian cuisine. It is essentially a vegetable broth with whatever vegetables are in season at that moment. So if you do not like one of the vegetables below you can easily remove it. Also if you want it vegetarian just remove the bacon.

The process of getting it together is actually fairly simple. The one comment I would make with my own recipe is that I was unable to locate an Italian bean such as cannellini or borlotti so I used red kidney beans. If your beans are fresh or dried you would need to obviously cook them first.

The €5 euro meal

As someone who loves to cook I have found that the vast majority of my disposable income will go into food and in general cooking my evening meal. So much money in fact that in recent times, I have really researched and invested a lot of time into the following concept.

‘The €5 euro meal’ 

What I have always thought and do strongly believe is that if you have the will to do it, it is possible for you to eat your evening meal for 2 people for just €5 a day. So in 30 days or a month you can spend only €150 on your evening meals and you can eat very well during that time.

A few tips however before we start:

 
- Bulk Buying: Plan out in advance what you want to cook and buy in bulk. This way you can only buy what you need and you will avoid waste. Purchase your meat in bulk and freeze in dinner servings until needed.

- Ignore Brand Loyalty: this is not the time for spending your cash on those expensive brands you might always turn too. Now is the time to buy the generic brands that are considerably cheaper.

-  Make a list: Before you shop make a list of what you want & stick to it. (no impulse buying)....Never shop when you are hungry!

- Shop Local: get to know your neighborhood & shop local for cheaper options.

- Weekly Specials: get to know the specials in your supermarkets & plan meals around them.

- Buy Seasonal: buy seasonal vegetables instead of their out of season more expensive cousins.

- Store your vegetables properly to keep them freshest the longest.

The Meals:

What I do here to keep the meals interesting is to break them down into separate price categories. That way you can play around yourself and decide when and what you want to cook. As you can see with the recipes you have a vast selection of options open to you at any time so it will never get boring.

Remember however that if you have a €7 meal you then in turn must cook a €3 meal to compensate.

Always plan your recipes in such a way that you will use up all your ingredients whenever you buy them, do not ever throw anything away.  

€3 or lower meals                                                    Cost per Meal      Hamburgers                                                                       €2.20

Broccoli & Cherry Tomato Pasta                                            €2.50
Tomato Sauce with Pasta                                                    €2.80
Fusilli with Bacon & Cream                                                    €3.00

€4+ meals
Roast Veggie Pasta                                                             €4.00
Sausage Pie                                                                       €4.00
Chicken Stroganoff                                                              €4.00
Potato & Roast Vegetable Quiche                                           €4.50

€5 meals
Spaghetti Bolognese                                                          €5.00
Tomato Sauce with Meatballs                                              €5.00
Pepper Pesto Pasta                                                           €5.00

€6+ meals
Musilitos de Pollo                                                              €6.00
Pink & Green Pasta                                                           €6.50

€7 meals                    
Quiche (3-4 people portion)                                               €7.00
Salmon Dinner (with roast veggies & potatoes/rice)                €7.00
Beef Steak Dinner (with roast veggies & potatoes/rice)           €7.00

Side dishes
Egg Fried Rice                                                                   €1.20
Potato Gratin (3-4 servings)                                                €2.50   
Mozzarella Garlic Bread                                                       €1.00
 

To obtain my prices I used www.ah.nl as my reference point. Albert Heijn is not the cheapest place to shop so if you know your local stores and plan you’re shopping better the above prices are definitely possible at a lower price.

Note: With the above prices I will assume that your kitchen will already have the stable goods such as Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, Spices, Flour, Soy Sauce, Fish Sauce, Sambal, Sweet Chilli sauce etc. 

As these products have a shelf life of longer than a month it is always useful to have these as they are the cornerstone to any meals you may have now or in the future
        

ENJOY!!!

Broccoli & Cherry Tomato Pasta

The simplicity in this dish is what really makes it so special. As part of my €5 meal concept this meal is less than €2 to get together once you have the ingredients in-house.

To prepare the dish it is just so simple and it all can be done in the time it takes to cook your pasta. You will flash fry small florets of broccoli in garlic & chilli. Then this will be added with chopped cherry tomato to cooked pasta and chopped fresh herbs (if you have some available). All served on a warm plate with grated parmesan on top.

Super Quick, Tasty & Cheap……really the perfect combination to any meal