munchies [ˈmʌntʃɪz]
While I find the idea that there are a couple of things I did not know nor suspect about the “Law” extremely fascinating, the term munchies will henceforth refer to “2. (Cookery) snacks or food collectively” on this website.
I’ve made it a goal in my life to find yummy vegetarian alternatives to meat-containing classics. In this spirit, I have thought long and hard about spaghetti carbonara today, a dish I have always loved and don’t usually dare to order in a restaurant with the addendum “but please make it vegetarian”. In very high-end Italian restaurants they might come up with a tasty alternative to the bacon, but usually, there would be only the eggs and sometimes *gasp* cream (heresy, I say! Heresy!!), which is money and calories right out the window. No, wait, the calories would go to the hips,of course, but without a tasty experience! That’s just wasteful. Wasteful of calories.
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So, yeah, I decided to come up with my own yummy, vegetarian version. Today was the first test run with garlic (always good) and sundried tomatoes (also always good and one of Hubby’s faves; also, they kinda look like bacon). It went over really well! I don’t envy my colleagues, though, because I had no parsley to fight the garlic-stench…
The recipe is pretty easy. The only “hard” part about this dish is the technique – and for some, it might be hard to leave out the bacon. I hear it’s tasty and much-loved. Well, if you want, you can make it with bacon any day of the week. Just chuck it into a little less oil than this recipe says instead of the garlic and tomatoes, and you’re good to go. Heck, you could even simply ADD some bacon to the garlic and tomatoes. Go crazy, by all means! But if you want to do this the vegetarian way, just trust me and go with garlic and sundried tomatoes solo. It’s gooooood! And less caloric! And more yummy! If you’re me, that is. Because… I’ll just go ahead and say it: I’ve never liked bacon.
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Right. Moving on: the recipe. It’s reeeeeeally yummy, if I say so myself. Just as yummy as I remember it from my meat-eating days. Not as salty, though, which is also a good thing.
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What you’ll need:
1 pound of long pasta, such as spaghetti or fettucine
6 eggs
3/4 cup of parmiggiano reggiano, grated
4 cloves of garlic
8 sundried tomatoes
1 tbsp butter
2tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
chopped parsley
And here’s what you do:
In a large pot, bring pasta water to a boil. Add plenty of salt – it should be “as salty as the mediterranean sea”.
Once the water is boiling, add the pasta and cook it until very al dente, about a minute less than it says on the package. Stir every once in a while to keep the pasta from sticking together and to the bottom of the pot.
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While the pasta is cooking, coarsely chop the garlic and sundried tomatoes. Heat the butter and olive oil in a large, heavy pot or pan over medium low heat (a dutch oven works well because it keeps in the heat, which will help with cooking the eggs).
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Crack the eggs into a bowl and whisk until combined. Add the parmesan cheese and stir it into the eggs. Season with pepper and just a little bit of salt (not too much – remember, the cheese is salty).
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About four minutes before the pasta is done, crank up the heat under the pot with the butter and olive oil in it and add the garlic and sundried tomatoes. You want them to impart all of their flavor into the hot oil and the garlic to get cooked. You’ll want the oil to be very hot when the pasta is cooked.
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And now you need to work fast:
Drain the pasta and immediately add it to the hot oil, garlic and tomatos. Stir vigorously to coat the pasta with the hot oil. Immediately after that, take the pot off the heat, add the egg mixture and stir even more vigorously, so the eggs get cooked by the hot pasta and oil but don’t become scrambled.
If you’ve worked fast enough, the eggs and cheese will turn into a creamy sauce and evenly cover the pasta. You can cover the pot with a lid and let it stand for a couple of minutes if you want to make sure, that the eggs are thoroughly cooked. But don’t put the pot back onto the heat or the lovely sauce will stick to the bottom and you’ll have made a frittata.
Enjoy with a sprinkle of chopped parsley (trust me on this – it will keep you from totally stinking up the place after this garlic-fest) and a little more salt, pepper and parmesan to taste.
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Easter is over, I do realize that. But I cannot blog about my making easter eggs myself before the fact, now can I? There you go.
The Saturday before Easter Sunday was spent in my tiny kitchen with the unfathomable carpet in it, spreading melted chocolate over half of my kitchen equipment as well as some dark chocolate, white chocolate lemon, and coconut easter eggs. The latter taste a lot like those Bounty (in the US: Mounds) candy bars, which is not bad at all.
I may or may not post a plethora of pictures of the easter eggs later but I will tell you that I am eating another one of those delicious coconut candies right from the fridge this very moment.
In the meantime, one may follow my chocolatey endeavors on Tasty Kitchen, where I got (and reviewed) two of the recipes and posted the third.
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Look!…
Coconut Eggs (see my Review for the changes I made). Here is a picture of them still naked and awaiting their chocolate coats:
Chocolate Truffle Eggs (again, see my review; I also added honey which was hardly traceable in the finished candy)
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For this time of year, I think the dark chocolate truffles are a bit heavy, but the lemon truffles are really dreamy and so fluffy and light… Yum! 
This is my sister-in-law’s mother’s recipe, and the former passed it on to me during the time the two of us shared an apartment with my brother. That sentence sounds weird but I’m pretty sure it’s grammatically and factually correct.
Anyway, this is tasty stuff and very easy to whip up. When I made the batch pictured here, I was going to “soften” the butter in the microwave and ended up liquefying it completely. Turns out the only thing hurt by this was my nuke-timer-setting-pride. And I’m sure she’ll be okay.
So anyway, here’s what you do if you want a change from all those herbs and garlic in your rad bread spread:
1 Onion
2 cloves Garlic, or more to taste
Fresh Basil – to taste
½ cups Tomato Paste, more to taste
4 sticks Butter, softened (NOT necessarily liquefied, but, you know, whatever floods your boot)
Salt And Pepper, to taste
Finely chop the onion, garlic, and basil. Mash all the ingredients together with a fork until the tomato purée is incorporated. Cover with cling film and stick it in the fridge to give the flavors a chance to really meld (at least 1/2 hour).
Enjoy!
This stuff, like every compound butter I’ve met, also freezes very well wrapped in cling film and rolled into a cute (or mighty, depending on quantities) lump.
The other day I was feeling peckish. Like I usually do when I get that feeling, I opened the fridge to see what I could see. What I saw was a whole lot of things not fit to fight my peckishness, eggs, no milk, sparkling wine, butter, tomatoes (next to the fridge <– valuable piece of information… no?) and a toastable pita pocket. So I made a scrambled-eggs-stuffed-pita pocket. End of story, hope you liked it.
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Actually, wait – there’s more!
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You may have noticed that I specifically indicated the lack of milk in the above list of things that I could see. That’s because, usually, I like to scramble my eggs with a pinch of salt, a nice helping of freshly crushed black peppper, and a splash of milk before I fry them in a speck of butter. But not that day, oh no. That day, I fried in that usual speck of butter some eggs I had scrambled with the very usual pinch of salt, good helping of pepper, a couple of diced tomatoes and – sparkling wine which was actually left over from when I needed a cup or so for a risotto which was originally supposed to be prepared with a cup or so of white wine which I didn’t have and therefore substituted the sparkling stuff. Was also tasty.
But the EGGS! Oh. my. sweet – no – savoury. breakfast!
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Those eggs tasted just the tiniest, but nicely noticeable, bit of the sparkling wine, they were fluffy and silky, the tomatoes were floating in their luxuriously warm embrace just right… I was in heaven.
You know when you go to a fancy restaurant for a brunch of scrambled eggs, melon wrapped in prosciutto (which you leave for your meat-eating company to eat), cute little rolls, the most excuisite little jars of exotic jams, and everything accompanied by a glass of champagne? These scrambled eggs were all of that, folded into one – and stuffed into a toasted pita pocket. Glorious.
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End of story.
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No, really.
So I have this pie dish. I ordered it online after a month-long obsession with owning a pie dish (I blame that on having previously vacationed in the US) and a few futile searches for one in local (in)convenience stores.
You see, Germany has never really gotten the hang of pies. We make cakes and tortes, we build cars and highraise buildings, we don’t bake pies. So yeah, I got it online, eventually. It’s deep dish, light green on the outside, cream colored on the inside, and has this lovely rippled border (yes, I could just take a picture and show it to you, like I did with the hasselback potatoes, but seriously: where’s the fun in that?).
So it’s just delicious in itself. My mouth waters whenever I look at it. Or think of it, for that matter. Right now, for example, I’m practically drooling all over my keyboard, which is mildly upsetting because it’s not even actually mine.
On my last trip to the US I bought another pie dish, a glass one from the big W Mart. I haven’t even used it yet, because the other one’s just so much more… flashy.
Anywho, this pie dish I have, the lovely green frilly one, needs to be used from time to time to justify my going on the internet and using highly dangerous methods of payment (yes, I mean credit card). So I make pies. The other weekend I made a yummy if not completely set strawberry pie. And yesterday I whipped up this baby:
Look, it’s a spinach pie.
I made it because I happened upon low-fat puff pastry at the store, because I had cheese and yogurt and eggs in the fridge, because I had some creamed spinach in the freezer, and because I could. Because I have this pie dish, you know. By the by: You can see some of the cream colored wavy edges that make me salivate so much in the picture. Do you see them? Are you all drooly and googly-eyed yet? I know I am!
Anywho, now you know why I call this the “Because Pie”. I make it because. Because of all the wonderful things I find at the store, because of all the wonderful things I have at home, because Hubby was staying over, and because I can.
I also make this pie because it is just so versatile. I used yogurt, eggs, corn, kidney beans, cheese and creamed spinach as a filling to pour into the puff pastry lining, and mozzarella slices to top everything off. (Also, as I would like you to ignore in the photo because (there it goes again!) they don’t look very becoming, I have used some leftover puff pastry strips to “decorate” the top of the pie. Please don’t notice the pasty looking little bow in the middle.) I have also prepared this pie (not in this pie dish, though, but in a springform that has by now paid its debt to nature) with yogurt, eggs, corn, cheese, and tomato slices on top. Also very, very yummy. I can also imagine this pie without any corn or spinach at all and some broccoli instead. Or caramelized onions and leeks. Heck, even strawberries. Although I’d suggest going easy on the cheese when using strawberries. Also, the seasoning should probably differ. But seriously, you could make a sweet version of this pie any day. Or substitute the yogurt with cream cheese, which would basically make a cheesecake… oh, well.
In case you’re interested, here’s a list of ingredients and directions for this particular Because Pie:
1 package of (low-fat) puff pastry
1 cup of yogurt (I used low-fat as well)
1 cup of shredded cheese (I bought it shredded, because I’m lazy, but I’m sure this could be much more gourmet if you shredded a good cheese yourself)
1 small can of corn, drained (adds a lovely crunch)
1 can of kidney beans, drained and washed (adds protein and color)
3-4 large eggs (they add stability)
1 box of frozen (creamed) spinach (yes, frozen. Because (!) I’m lazy. My suggestion is: thaw/cook it according to instructions on the package before chucking it into the pie filling)
spices (I used cajun seasoning salt, pepper, nutmeg, nutmeg, garlic, and nutmeg)
1 ball of mozzarella, sliced (adds garnish and yum)
preheat your oven (or your neighbor’s, if they’re fine with that sort of thing) to the temperature indicated on the puff pastry package. (Peel peas permanently, preferably peering at people passing.) Line the loveliest pie dish you have with the puff pastry. Next, whisk the eggs and mix in all the remaining ingredients, except the mozzarella. Please do not go easy on the nutmeg! Potatoes and spinach need nutmeg. Period. Pour the filling into the prepared puff pastry pie pan (peruse the peeled peas if you please), and place the dish in the oven for about an hour. Take it out, place the mozzarella slices on top and put it back in the oven for another half hour.
Note that ovens are nasty little things that sometimes vary the temperature to burn our food. Just make sure to check from time to time if the filling is still jiggly. Once it stops jiggling it should be just about done. To keep it from getting too dark on top you can simply cover it with a piece of aluminum foil.