Delicious oven tomato sauce

A friend of mine recommended making tomato sauce this way so I thought why not test it out whilst testing out my homemade gnocchi!

First off turn on your oven to 180 degrees

What you do if you’re 3-4 people is take a oven tray put oil in it and cut up the tomatoes into halves or quarters! The skin should be facing upwards and they should be fully oiled!

Then put the tomatoes in for 30 min! The oil should look brownish once it’s taken out! If not pop it back in for a couple of minutes..

In the mean time chop up some garlic and onion.

Take out your tomatoes again and toss the garlic and onion mixture onto it, placing it back into the oven for 5 minutes.

Once that’s done you can take it out of the oven again and mix it all together, you can also take off the tomato skins if you want!

And that’s it! Extremely easy to make, tastes delicious and I will surely make it again!
Also spice as pleased!

Tomatoes in the oven

Tomatoes out of the oven

Adding the onion and garlic and more olive oil

The final outcome! I forgot to take a photo of just the sauce!

Easy Peasy Avocado Pasta

If there's one food I'm addicted to it's avocados so when I found a recipe for avocado pasta I knew it was love at first sight and I had to make it immediately for my dad and uncle.

We finished the WHOLE bowl of pasta, and it sure as hell was a lot of pasta! 

Look at this beautiful avocado.. mhmmmmm

What you'll need:

1x Avocado

1/2 Lemon

1 Garlic Clove

A handful of basil 

A handful of tomatoes 

and pasta as you please.

Boil the pasta and mix together the lemon, avocado and basil leaves. I used a hand blender, it came out nice and creamy. Once the pasta is ready, drain it put it in a serving bowl mix in the avocado mousse and add the cut up tomatoes.

Here's a photo of the massive avocado pasta portion I made :) Mhmm mhmm mhmmm 

I can highly recommend this if you're home and want something easy and quick to make ;)

Mini Zucchini, Potato cakes

A couple of weeks ago I made some potato, zucchini cakes. I got the recipe off the internet somewhere but I can't find it anymore..

First off preheat the oven to 180 degrees C :)

I used: about 5 potatoes

1 huge zucchini

2 eggs

a bunch of parmesan 

and that's it :) 

So cut the potatoes and zucchini into slim slices, mix together the eggs, cheese some salt and pepper and pour it over the potato and zucchini slices as shown in the photos below.

Once you've mixed the potatoes and zucchini with the egg mixture as good as one can place the pieces into a cupcake form baking tray. 

 Place the tray into the oven and keep it there for 20-25 minutes.

Whilst the food was baking I made a salad, some lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber and avocado.

 Tada, once these beautiful babies are out of the oven they look like this (points down)

Bonne Apetite 

Summer Sunshine Grilling Time

It's warm, sunny and the family is together! What better thing to do than grill something delicious for lunch ;) 

I had a go at grilling King Prawns, which I've never done before as well as some Asparagus (When it was asparagus season a two or three months ago :P ) 

So I had some simple asparagus plain grilled, some salmon, zucchini and king prawns. 

I added lemon to the salmon and a garlic, ginger, lemon sauce to the king prawns.

It was delicious and highly recommendable as a light lunch for when one has time to grill :) 

Liebsteinsky - Review

I've come to terms with me not putting in the time and effort to cook, especially when I'm at work all day and get home super late from the gym, which is when I whip up some veggies with some sort of protein. 

Due to all of this I've decided to start taking photos of the food at the different restaurants I go eat at or get takeaway from for lunch at the office.

Liebsteinsky is what I've decided to start off with. For anyone in Vienna, Austria go HERE! It's at Schubertring 6 and absolutely lovely. There's outdoor seating as well as the inside of the restaurant opening it's huge glass windows allowing the inside and outside to connect making it one big winter garden ?

I had the Chèvre Salad consisting of green salad, grilled goat cheese (two big pieces I may add), orange dressing, pieces of orange, tomatoes and basil.

This salad is something I've been craving for a while now so I was glad when a friend recommended it to me and even happier when it tasted as good as it smelt! 

A bit of the inside, nice and light and clean :) 

My delicious salad, I cherished every bite.

Liebsteinsky is open Monday - Friday 11:30 - 00:00 and Saturday 17:00 - 00:00 

Address: Schubertring 6, 1010 Vienna.

Quiche Saturday

So I'm on holiday in the alps surrounded by snow and decided to make a quiche for my family for lunch. I was surprised at how well it turned out although I should've pre-cooked  the quiche dough a bit longer because the bottom was still a bit white but otherwise it was delicious :)

I bought the quiche dough in the shop so that made it easier as well, and I also have to mention that I didn't have a quiche baking tin so I made the quiche in a plain flat baking tin.

I used a recipe from a supermarket magazine, it's actually from one of my favourite supermarkets called "Merkur" and they took it from a Donna Hay Cookbook, so what you'll need is:

15 grams grated parmesan
150 grams goat cheese (here I used 80 grams goat cheese and 70 grams of this thing called Topfen not sure what it is in english..)
3 eggs
60ml milk
80ml sour cream (I used about 100g)
180g tomatoes 

Here are all the ingredients laid out and mixed together (below). Oil the quiche tin and put in the quiche dough (place in oven a pre cook this for about 3-5 minutes). Then mix all the ingredients together excluding the goat cheese and tomatoes. You then pour the liquid mixture into the quiche form and crumble the goat cheese and "Topfen" on top, try spreading it out a bit (perhaps put in the goat cheese mixture first) then drop in the tomatoes and put in the oven for 12 minutes :)

This is what it looks like, I know the tomatoes look a bit silly and it might not so amazing but it was amazing! I ate it with a bit of salad and cucumber :)

Bonne Appetit and happy holidays :)

Orzo Mint Salad

Without olives

With olives

I haven't gotten around to posting this recipe for a little while, as things have been very busy. I actually made this for lunch on a weekend for my parents a few weeks ago. I went over before going to Costco, and as you will know if you've ever been to Costco, it's a bad idea to go in there hungry. You will definitely need some energy to tackle the huge and wonderful store- and also to keep you from getting to the cash with a cartfull of food to feed an army and a $300 bill.

In comes this quick and easy recipe. It comes from a  recipe from a cookbook "One Pot Cooking" that Gail gave me as a present years back and had somehow gotten shelved in my bedroom instead of on the shelf in the living room with the rest of my cookbooks. Now that it is back where it belongs, I am putting it to use. I always complain about doing dishes and not having a dishwasher so this cookbook is a lifesaver. I loved this fresh easy recipe and will definitely make it again.  Please note that fresh mint really makes the dish, so it is a must!!

Ingredients:
-1 cup orzo
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- juice of 2 lemons (I just used 1)
- 7 ounces feta cheese
- plum tomatoes or cherry tomatoes
- black olives
-salt and pepper to taste
- to garnish more mint and sun dried tomatoes (optional)

The amounts are not so exact, so feel free to eyeball it.

Cook orzo until al dente and drain. Let cool, and then mix together all ingredients in a bowl. Add garnish if desired.

Enjoy!

Red lentil curry

Today for lunch I cooked a red lentil curry, one of the few things I can cook which turn out great! I got this recipe from  allrecipes.com, I didn't have all the ingredients so I used what I had and made it my own.

What you'll need is;

2 cups of red lentils

1 large onion chopped up

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

2 tablespoons curry paste

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

2 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon chili powder (didn't add this to my curry)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon white sugar

1 teaspoon minced garlic (I used one garlic clove)

1 teaspoon minced ginger root (didn't have this either)

1 can tomato purée 

I also added two carrots, which fit in quite well!

First what I think is the most important step is to wash the lentils! If you don't wash them they'll just be gross..

Secondly measure out all the ingredients and put all the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl with the garlic

Then when cooking the lentils caramalize the onions in a big pot (you'll be adding everything into there later..) once the onion's caramalized add the dry ingredients and garlic and mix on a high heat for 1-2 minutes

Add the tomato purée and the carrots and let simmer, once the lentils are cooked mix them into the pot of goodies and you're done :)

I served the curry with rice and a side salad, you could also serve it with other things.. 

Enjoy :)