Cheesy Saturday

Helloooooooo

I currently feel like I am going to explode. Oh wait, that is not a good start to this… Uhm, I have a perfectly light dish for you. Ok, it’s not light, but it’s delicious. It’s delicious because pasta is great, broccoli is great, crème fraîche is great and so is cheese. And that’s what you need for this recipe. But beware it’s really really heavy. I’m serious.

That’s what you need:

• 400g tagliatelle
• 200g broccoli
• 250g crème fraîche
• 150g parmesan cheese, grated
• 150g taleggio (or just any soft cheese), sliced
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• small handful fresh thyme, chopped
• drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

That’s how it goes:

1. Cook tagliatelle according to the packet instructions. Meanwhile, cut the broccoli. Steam or boil for about three minutes until tender.

2. While the pasta and broccoli are cooking, make the sauce by placing the crème fraîche, taleggio and parmesan in a pan over a very low heat with the crushed garlic. Add a small handful of chopped fresh thyme (oregano and majoram would work as well) and heat everything gently, stirring to mix the melting cheese, adding a grind of fresh black pepper.

3. Once the sauce is ready pour it over the cooked tagliatelle and broccoli and serve in deep bowl sprinkled with extra parmesan and a good drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

And that’s it. You can of course change it up as you like.

I got the recipe from www.redonline.co.uk

And again: beware, you probably won’t be able to eat a lot of it.

Still recovering.

Hope you’ll weekend will be great.

– Sara x

lemon cake

Hello everyone and a lovely afternoon to you 🙂

It was my brother’s birthday and I decided to bake him a cake. Usually all I care about is chocolate but I thought I’d make an exception on that day and make a lemon cake. It’s not the prettiest cake I’ve made but it sure was delicious. So, I thought I’d share the recipe to this one, which I got from the betty bossi web site. It’s called bettybossi.ch, so check it out! 😀

      Ingredients:      

• 250 g butter
• 250 g sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 4 eggs
• 2 lemons
• 250 g flour
• 1 tee spoon of baking powder

Before you start preheat the oven to 180°C. Make sure the butter is not too cold anymore and mix it until it’s soft and fluffy. Then add the sugar and salt and combine it. Add the eggs and mix for about 5 minutes until the texture is even and has a light color. Grate the rind off and add it to the mixture. Then add the flour and baking powder. Again mix it until you have an even texture and there are no more chunks of flour. Pour it into the prepared baking tin and bake for 55 minutes.

What I did is add a layer of sugar/lemon icing. For that you take one of those lemons where you grated the rind off and use the juice. You take some powdered sugar and then add a little bit of lemon juice. You mix it and continue that process until it looks the way you want it to and until you have enough to cover the cake. Wait for the cake to cool off, take it out of the tin and then apply the icing. Feel free to use as much as you want. 😉

That would be it. Enjoy! 😀

 

 

 

Healthy Spring Recipe

Hey everyone 🙂

It’s been a while since I posted a recipe but since school has started again I’m ready to get back to business. I’m excited to present you the first recipe of my spring series: “The Healthy Spring Bagel”. On a recent trip to the supermarket I discovered to my great joy that they’re now selling pre-baked bagels. I placed a pack of four delicious looking bagels into my shopping basket and on the way home I thought of all the tasty things I could fill them with. To follow my spring theme, I decided to create a healthy filling composed of chicken, fresh green salad, tomatoes and avocado and to top it off, I went for a light spring inspired yoghurt sauce. Since I made this recipe up by myself and I kind of just went with my gut feeling, I can’t give you exact indication of quantity.

You will need:

• green salad
• fresh tomatoes
• avocado
• chicken
• onions
• plain yoghurt
• wild chives
• a squeeze of lemon juice
• salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 200°C and prepare a baking sheet for you bagels. Take the chicken, chop it into small cubes and gently roast it with onion and some olive oil until golden brown. Then put the bagels into the the oven and let them crisp up for about 6 minutes. In the meantime you can start to create the sauce for your bagel. Put some plain yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon juice, some salt, pepper and some cut chives into a bowl and blend the ingredients together. If your bagels are ready, take them out of the oven and let them cool down. You can then slice them up and fill them with your chicken, some salad and some tomato and avocado slices. Last but not least you can top the bagels off with your home-made yoghurt sauce.

I hope you like my spring inspired recipe and I’d love to know which ingredients you usually use to fill your bagel or sandwich with. In case your local supermarket doesn’t sell pre-baked bagels, you can certainly use normal bread, toast or if you have enough time and motivation you can bake them yourself. I will put a link for a bagel recipe in the bottom of the post.

Bon Apetit

Nina

 

 

 

Recipe for home-made bagels: http://www.sophisticatedgourmet.com/2009/10/new-york-style-bagel-recipe/

Spinach-Ricotta-Crêpes

Hello there!

the last week my sister had to study a lot because of exams she is going to have to take for university. Since she was quite stressed, I decided to cook something special for her. We both adore those Crêpes! It’r a recipe that I know from my grandmother, it is quite light and tastes delicious! So let’s get started with the recipe:

You need for about six Crêpes:

-80 g of spinach (cooked)

-1 tsp of melted butter

-2 eggs

-70 g of flour

– 50 g of Mascarpone

-200 ml of milk

-a pinch of grated nutmeg

-a bit of oil (I use olive oil)

-4 tsp of fresh Parmigiano

-200 g of Ricotta

– Salt and pepper

What to do:

for the Crêpes you should start with putting the butter, the milk, the salt and the flour together in a bowl. I would be good if you strained the flour through a sieve to get rid of the clumps. Now add the two eggs and mix everything together. Warm up a pan on medium heat with a little bit of butter in it and pour the crêpe mixture in it. You can make the crêpe as thin as you want, i personally like them quite thin.

For the filling:

Put your spinach into a pot (I sometimes use a little bit of onions, but you don’t have to) and wait for it to flatten. Then add your Ricotta and Mascarpone and let it cook for a few minutes. Preheat the oven on 200°C (the best tuning for this recipe is grill, if you have it). Salt your spinach to taste and don’t forget the nutmeg, it really gives a fantastic flavour! Now add the Parmigiano to the mixture and get your crêpes ready. Put the filling on the slices, make it thicker towards the middle, roll it up and repeat this step on the other crêpes. Spread some butter flakes over them and if you want to some more Parmigiano. Place them in a gratin dish and put it in the oven for about ten minutes. When you see that the cheese is getting brown, your dish is ready to be eaten!

Enjoy it! I Hope that you like this recipe and that you’ll try it someday 🙂

Wish you a lovely week

Elisa

Crêpes

 

hello there 🙂

It’s been raining for a while now but the sun seems to be coming back which is great. To celebrate the return of our missed sun I thought a little treat wouldn’t hurt. I made some crêpes and I currently feel like the happiest person alive ahah. That’s how much I love food. I usually eat my crêpes with jam, nutella or other stuff like that… (you should try jam with crushed biscuits) Anyways, today I went for the “healthy” version with strawberries. Of course there was some nutella too, making it a little bit less healthy… but hey, nutella does have some vitamines in it too :’D

Here’s a recipe that could help you make your own:

Ingredients

for 8-12 crêpes of 20 cm Ø

125 g flour
1 pinch of salt
2 T sugar
2 eggs
ca. 3 dl milk
50 g butter, liquid

I was supposed to write here a complicated step by step thing but I’ll skip that and tell you how I usually make them.
Just mix it all together and beat it untilit’s an even mixture. But remember that you don’t want it to have too many bubbles. Take a pan and heat it with a little bit of oil. Use a paper towel to remove the excess oil. Use the same to add oil after every crêpe. The point is not to have too much oil but still enough for it not to stick to the pan. I use a soup ladle to pour some of the mixture into the pan. Be quick to rotate the pa so it can spread evenly. Leave it for a while until you flip it like they do on the TV by throwing it up in the air. Try not to let go of the pan and not to throw the crêpe to high. You don’t want it on your ceiling. You can eat them with whatever you want. If you want them salty just leave out the sugar and add a little more salt.

Have a great week! 😀

– Sara

layered cream cheese brownies

hello there!

I love chocolate and I love cream cheese so I was quite happy when I discovered this recipe. As you can probably already tell because of the title or the picture, I made some brownies with a touch of cream cheese. Now I was not so sure about how they would turn out since I had never tried it before but I have to say that I am quite satisfied with the result. A delicious result that is already in my family’s and my tummy. I found the recipe I used on the official web site of Philadelphia, the cream cheese we have here in Switzerland. If you like cream cheese you should definitely check it out because there are a lot of different recipes and ideas for sweet or savory food. The link to the Swiss page would be www.philadelphia.ch and since that page is in German and French I figured I’d translate the recipe I used. It might not be word for word but it should work. If you decide to try these yourself you should definitely tell me how they turned out.

What you’ll need is:

• 150 g butter
• 150 g dark chocolate
• 2 eggs
• 180 g sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• 1 vanilla bean (or 1 packet of vanilla sugar)
• 140 g flour
• 200 g Philadelphia Nature
  (every other cream cheese should work too)
• 1 T lemon juice
• 1 T milk

1. step
Preheat the oven to 175 °C (convection). Take a square pan (23cm length) or a 19 x 17 cm one or just anything that makes sense and grease it or use baking paper.

2. step
Melt the butter and chocolate in a pot at low heat; then let it cool off. Meanwhile mix eggs, sugar, one pinch of salt and the marrow of the vanilla bean and beat it with a mixer until it has a creamy texture. Add the chcolate-butter-mix, mix again then add the flour and mix in as well.

3. step
Take half of the dough, pour it into the pan and smoothe it out. Mix the Philadelphia with the lemon juice and milk until you have a smooth texture and then spread it over the first layer of brownie dough. Then carefully spread the rest of the brownie dough on top of that and smoothe out again, the Philadephia layer should be completely covered. Bake in the preheated oven for about 25 minutes. Let it cool off and then enjoy! (It’s worth the wait, it’s a lot easier to cut it in pieces when it’s cold)I really hope some of you will try it out because they are delicious! (AND EASY TO MAKE)
Have a lovely week!- Sara x

 

Happy Easter

Hey there happy happy Easter egg bunny time!

I absolutely love Easter. Probably because it’s in Spring and the weather is getting better and there are all these flowers and  trees blossoming and everything is just so happy and nice. Plus there are chocolate eggs and bunnies everywhere which means I am constantly in a good mood. I spent friday painting some eggs with my mom. The colors we used were a little bit sticky so they ended up being everywhere and not so much on the eggs where they should have been. But I do have to say that one ended up looking quite decent. I am really proud of that egg.

Another thing I wanted to share with you is something I made yesterday. I think it’s quite the traditional dish or maybe not I don’t know but I think a lot of people make it for Easter. I made an Easter cake! There are probably a lot of different cakes called Easter cake but the one I made is the one known here as the Easter cake: Osterchüechli. It usually has sultanas in it which I left out because I don’t really like them except when they’re coated with chocolate but that’s a different story.

I found the recipe on the swissmilk page. I am in love with that web site because you can find an easy recipe for absolutely everything. They have a nice layout too. Here I am advertising something again. But they’re really cool so you should check them out if you don’t know it yet.

Here’s what my Osterchüechli turned out like:

Anyways I wish you a happy Easter Sunday and a good start to your week!

 

– Sara x

4 Fresh Spring Recipes

A clear blue sky, blossoming cherry trees and chirping birds. There is no doubt about it: Spring has finally arrived! Since it is my favourite season of the year, I decided to not only spring-clean my room but to freshen up my usual repertoire of recipes as well. In the following month I am going to post a new spring inspired recipe each week. There are definitely going to be two salty dishes and I’ll probably post a dessert and an easy lemonade recipe as well. Because spring is such a fun time of the year and the good weather makes me feel all spontaneous and creative, I made up my mind to spare cookbooks and make up the recipes by myself. I have to admit that I’m not quite sure yet whether my plan will come off or not but I’m definitely ready to give it a try!

Take care and stay tuned for the first recipe next week!

❤

 

Let’s go out!

Hey everybody
It’s me again.
So today I want to post something about a really good restaurant. It’s called Nooba and it’s asianfood kitchen. You can order from japanese noodle soup to a tipical fried rice quite everything. It’s a perfect restaurant for young people, because it doesn’t costs a lot but the food is still delicious and the atmosphere is very fashionable.
The service is always really friendly.
If you like discovering different kitchen and you like eating, this will be a awesome experience for you.
They also have their own internet-page: http://www.nooba.ch and their adress is:

Kreuzplatz 5, 8032 Zürich

and if you prefer to make a reservation, here’s the number:

(0041) 043 243 60 06 

I can only recommend this restaurant to all the people, who are going to visit Zurich one day.

much love
– Laura

The pictures are from:
http://www.nooba.ch
http://www.twospice.ch/betriebe/nooba-ag/

 

 

 

red velvet cupcakes

Hello everyone!

Here comes the forth post on our blog and with that my very first. Since I am not a very talented cook and enjoy baking far more I figured that I should leave the healthy stuff to my friends and start off with something sweet like cupcakes. I love them because they are so nice to look at and absolutely delicious at the same time.

The cupcakes in the picture above are so called ‘red velvet’ ones. I personally love them because of their red colour, which also is  why they are called red velvet (who would have thought that?!). What makes them interesting apart from the look is that you can’t tell what they taste like from the name. So while chocolate cupcakes also taste like chocolate red velvet ones do not taste like velvet… Not that I have tried to eat velvet but it’s what I figured. Anyways, red velvet cupcakes have this chocolate vanilla mix kind of taste which is not very strong so that  cream cheese frosting goes perfectly with them. Some people use vanilla or chocolate frostings but I would not do that, and I’m saying that as a chocoholic so that does mean something. You can of course use what you want, but they’re heaven on earth with cream cheese.

I would post the recipe but the one I used here is not mine. I am working on my own so I’m going to update you on that soon. The recipe I used for these cupcakes is by the hummingbird bakery. They have tons of great recipes for all kinds of cakes, cupcakes, muffins and other things like that, sweet and savory. Another reason why I like them is probably because there is an actual hummingbird bakery in London, which I plan on visiting one day to see if my cupcakes come at least a little close to the original ones. 😉

– Sara