Rice Noodles with Vegetables and Shrimps

This recipe is not a typical dish of the Asian cuisine... My dear Asian friends, please forgive me if I did something wrong.... This is just my way of cooking the wide rice noodles. 
This recipe is fast to prepare and it's also really healthy. If you use the wok pan to cook, it will also be a low-cal dish as the use of woke reduces the use of the oil. I personally adore the wok cooking!!! I always use it for stir frying and for deep frying as well...  


INGREDIENTS: 
Servings: 2 

150-160g wide rice noodles
1 zucchini
1 carrot
6-8 mushrooms
1 handful of soy beans sprouts
100g shrimps 
2 garlic cloves
1 tbs fish sauce
1 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs grated ginger
vegetable oil 

Note: You may substitute some veges for the others if you like them better...


1. Soak the rice noodles for 5-10 minutes or as it's indicated on the package.
 
2. Peel the carrot and wash a zucchini. Cut them into thick sticks, I do it with the use of a Mandolina grater.
3. Slice mushrooms finely.

4. Pour 3-4 tbs of any vegetable oil to the WOK pan and heat it up over the high heat.
5. Stir fry the carrots for a couple of minutes.
6. Add mushrooms and fry for a couple of minutes more.
7. Next it's zucchini's turn to be cooked for two more minutes.
Note: Keep stirring constantly as cooking in wok requests stirring!!!

8. Add the soy bean sprouts and shrimps and stir.

 9. Drain the noodles and add them to the wok with vegetables.
10. Squeeze garlic cloves, grate ginger and add them to the noodles.
11. Pour 1 tbs of each soy and fish sauces. Taste the noodles and if needed add some more soy sauce for saltiness.  
 

 ENJOY !!!

Green Lasagna: Artichokes and Mushrooms - Lasagna Verde ai Carciofi e Funghi

Finally I got some nice artichokes and it's already ages I have been dreaming about cooking my green lasagna... Why green? Because the lasagna sheets I use for it are made with spinach and have a green colour. You may say it's a vegetarian lasagna, no meat, just veges... I do understand that in other countries it's not easy to find this type of lasagna sheets but if you cannot find them you may use the white ones. 
 
INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 4-6

250g green lasagna sheets
1 big artichoke
400g mushrooms
300-350g mozzarella cheese
100g Parmigiano
2-3 garlic cloves
salt 
EVO oil

 For Bechamel:
0.6-0.7l milk
50g butter
2,5 tbs flour
salt
nutmeg 
  
 First prepare Bechamel sauce. This sauce is widely used in French and Italian cuisine. It is basically a milk sauce thickened with Roux, that is a mix of butter and flour. In the reastaurants they prepare roux in great quantities and keep it in the fridge, they obviously use it to thicken different sauces.  
1. To prepare Roux melt butter in a sauce pan and when it just starts boiling add flour and mix well, keep cooking till the mix will get a nice golden caramel colour. 
2. Heat the milk apart, but don't boil it to avoid forming of the cream film on it.

3. Add milk to the Roux little by little and stir vigorously with a whisk to remove any crumble.
4. Cook over a medium heat constantly stirring for about 5 minutes, by that time the sauce will thicken. But don't forget stirring well!!!
5. At the end season with some salt to taste and half a teaspoon of grated nutmeg. 

6. Pour hot Bechamel into a large bowl and cover it with a plastic film paying attention to adhere the film onto the sauce surface. This will avoid forming of lumps. 
   

Now, we prepare two types of fillings for our lasagna.

1. You may use one big artichoke or couple of small ones. But take the fresh artichokes not the canned ones. Clean artichokes as it is explained HERE. As an alternative you may use frozen artichokes...
2. Slice artichokes finely and cook them with some EVO oil in a frying pan till they are nice and golden. Salt them to taste. If you like you may add some chilli.

3. Clean and chop mushrooms. Cut into halves two garlic cloves.
4. In a separate frying pan heat some EVO oil and brown a bit the onion, add mushrooms and cook them till the golden colour. Take the garlic away.

At this point we are ready to gather our lasagna. 
I use here the green fresh lasagna sheets, if you cannot find these, you may try with the usual white fresh lasagna sheets... if you cannot find these... then use the dry lasagna and check it out on the box if you need to boil the sheets in advance...
1. Prepare mozzarella: squeeze the cheese from it's whey ad cut into small cubes. You may use mozzarella for pizza, the one that is sold without whey. But please, please, don't use grated mozzarella. This Italian cheese doesn't exist grated in Italy and as the cheese is Italian, so.....
2.  Grate Parmigiano cheese finely.

3. Pour some EVO oil into a ceramic/glass pan and spread some Bechamel as well. Here comes the first lasagna sheet.
4. Choose one from the two fillings and spread on the first lasagna sheet, then spread some Bechamel sauce, some mozzarella and a handful of Parmigiano.
 
5. Lasagna sheet again, the second type of filling, mozzarella and Parmigiano.
6. Continue with the layers alternating the fillings. You need to make about 5-6 layers. 

7. Add more Parmigiano on top of lasagna.

 8. Cook in the preheated oven at 200C for 25-30 minutes. At the end the top should be nicely golden. You may try a tiny corner of the upper layer to see if it's ready. You may also try it with a knife, making a tiny cut somewhere in the centre of lasagna.

Wait for about 10 minutes before serving as a just-ready lasagna burns.... 

Buon Appetito!!!  

   

Filled Chicken Pocket

Chicken breast is one of the dishes that people cook very often, it's low in calories and very digestible. 
This recipe can become a festive one as it presents itself well. You only need to pay attention to the size of the chicken breasts: you should buy the smaller ones so they can become one per portion...

INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 4

600-700g double chicken breast
200g mushrooms
4-5 slices of speck /smoked ham
1 medium potato
150g Stracchino cheese (creamy fresh cheese)
1 garlic clove
2 rosemary sprigs  
salt
EVO oil

1. Peel a potato and boil it till it's ready.

2. Slice mushrooms and fry them with some EVO oil and a garlic clove cut in halves (remove it when the mushrooms are gold in colour)
3. Cut in stripes smoked bacon, or as I used, speck, add it to mushrooms and cook for a couple of minutes to add to the dish a nice smoky flavour.

4. Cut potatoes in small cubes and mix with mushrooms and speck.

5. Add Stracchino cheese and mix well, add some salt if needed.

Note: Stracchino is and nothern Italy young cow's cheese, has no rind, creamy texture and slightly soury taste. It's normally eaten by itself or spread on fresh bread. In some Italian regions it's used to fill in Focaccia or Piadina, typical bread Liguria and Emilia-Romagna.
If you cannot find this type of cheese, you may use Philadelphia or any fresh creamy cheese.

6. Divide the chicken breast in two parts, cut off if necessary the excess parts in order to have two neat filets. 

7. Insert a sharp knife into the larger part of the meat and try to make a cut inside the meat to create kind of a pocket. Be careful not make holes in your the pocket...

8. Fill in the pocket with the filling you prepared before.
 
9. Seal the opening with some toothpicks.
10. In a glass/ceramic pot pore some EVO oil and place the chicken breasts inside.  
11. Pour some more oil on top the meat and add some fresh rosemary.

12. Cover the pot with aluminum foil and cook in the oven at 250C for 30 minutes. Then uncover the pot and cook for 10 minutes more on the upper rack to brown the top a bit.

13. Serve with the it's sauce and Bon Appetit!!! But don't forget to remove the toothpicks...  

Note: A piece of advice: To make a neat and sharp cut wait till the meat is warm, if it's hot you won't be able to cut it well.           

Fettuccine Boscaiola

I was surfing in the net and saw sooooo many awful pseudo-italian recipes... Aghrrrrr.... Why do people abroad think that all the italian dishes contain CREAM? They don't.... we use more TOMATO!!!! 
In this dish I used fettuccine pasta, this name comes from "fettuccia", ribbon in italian. And the name of the dish comes from "bosco", forest, as the ingredients in part come from the forest... :-)

INGREDIENTS:
Servings: 2
  
160-200g fettuccine
50g pancetta / bacon
100g mushrooms
100g green peas 
1/2 onion 
250ml tomato purèe
black pepper
salt 
EVO oil
Parmigiano cheese 

1. Cut bacon in sticks and chop onion. Slice mushrooms.
2. Pour some oil to a frying pan and start cooking first mushrooms, then bacon and finally onion.
3. When the first ingredients are ready add green peas and just give a mix.
4. Add tomato purèe, couple of pinches of sugar and salt, and pepper. Add some spoons of water that you prepared for the pasta and cook the sauce till it thickens.
 5. Cook fettuccine al dente and add them to the sauce, mix carefully and serve with grated parmigiano on top. 

Golden scalloped potatoes

Today I decided to go back to my teen-age.... When I was quite ignorant about healthy cuisine and when I had to cohabit with the climate that didn't give any chance to have so many fresh green veggies during winter season, so we used to eat veggies that could be stored: like potatoes, carrots, cabbage, beetroots and so on... Oh dear, that is not so bad to tell you the truth but my cooking was different....
So, today's dish will be kind of a tribute to my adolescence! 

INGREDIENTS: 
(dose to your liking, here is for 2 persons)

4 potatoes
200g mushrooms
mayonnaise
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
pepper
rosemary
salt
EVO oil

1. Slice mushrooms and cook till golden colour with garlic cloves (cut into halves), salt and EVO oil.

2. In the meanwhile, peel potatoes and slice them with the use of a mandolina. Slice the onion the same way.  


3. In a glass/ ceramic pot spread couple of spoons of mayonnaise and start arranging 1/4th of potato slices in a layer, spread some more mayonnaise over the potato layer, then distribute some mushrooms.
4. Salt a bit each layer of potatoes.
5. Arrange one more layer of potato, then mayo, then onion rings, pepper and chopped rosemary.
6. One more layer of potato slices - mayonnaise - mushrooms (you can add some more onions if you want to).

7. Last layer will be: potato - onions - rosemary and pepper - mayo (in order to have a nice and golden colour of the top and not to burn onion rings).
  

8. Cover with a aluminum foil and cook for about 30 minutes at 220C, then uncover and finish cooking to have a nice crisps on top.    This is what you'll have at the end. Sorry for the burnt sides of the pot, but you cannot avoid it....


Here I served the potatos with the sautèed chicory and Roasted Pork Loin (check for a post HERE) as a suggestion :-)