Variable 3 or 4, becoming west or southwest 5 at
times.
Slight or moderate.
Thundery showers, fog patches.
Moderate or good, occasionally very poor.
Summer. Heat. And the
children are back. Like all good students during the summer. Well, one so far,
but the others are due tomorrow. Hence I wont blog a lot, since I only cook for
one, once they are gone or visiting friends. Or if one of them
wants an extra lunch. Or I want something different.
It is actually a bit
difficult. While I enjoy the time with my son, and I am sure he enjoys the time
with me, he is also bored. Don’t forget I moved from the place he grew up with.
Were all his friends are. Also back for the summer. So its only me for
entertainment. And no matter how good our relationship, he misses his friends.
And London. Hence I chucked him more or less out for 36 hours and “chased” him
towards London. It will be better in the next days because the rest will be
also back. But ultimately this is now my place, no longer a memory from
childhood and growing up.
I guess it just takes
time until this will be “home” for them.
On a different note, my post Fried Radishes with Herbs and not Quark was quite popular.
Especially with people who are familiar with the idea of boiled potatoes and
quark. I was also told that my claim, that quark can be purchased in every
supermarket in the UK, is wrong. They are right, it seems to be a London thing.
I cant buy quark here (unless I order it from Ocado). And while I really liked
the Labneh with Kefir, sometimes even I don’t have always Labneh.
The following recipe is
very simple to make and something you could have come up yourself but I just
use it to share another cool trick. Soft garlic. Yes, you heard it all before
and I bet you have roasted your garlic in the oven. But first of all it is not
very energy efficient and second: Who wants to heat the oven when it is hot?
But this garlic is
something you can rustle up in no time and it keeps in the fridge for a few
days. It has several advantages: Hardly any garlic breath, quickly done and incredible
versatile. Versatile as in: use it just mashed up with grilled lamb; add it to
cream and chives and pour over grilled prawns; add to mash; into a salad
dressing; spread it on bread, top with tomatoes and grill it like a Bruschetta or
spoon it into your fake quark.
All you need to do is
cook it with its skin.
Separate a whole bulb of
garlic (or more) into the individual cloves. Remove the outer papery skin but
leave the skin on the individual cloves. Into a pot, fill with water and cook
for 30 minutes until they are soft and can be squeezed out of their skin. They
will look like a paste, like something you can buy in a jar but without the
preservatives. If you want to keep them, don’t peel until you need them, but
put them into a container, top with the cold water they cooked in and put into
the fridge until needed.
As to the Fake “Boursin”
½ pack cream cheese
4 tbsp plain yoghurt
3 soft garlic cloves
salt and pepper
as many tbsp of finely
chopped fresh herbs you like. Frozen is fine!
Mix the cream cheese (Philadelphia
is okay), the squeezed out garlic and the yoghurt. Take a whisk and beat the
hell out of it. You want to achieve a whipped cream like consistency. Just carry
on whisking. Feel free to add another spoon full of yoghurt until it gets
nearly foamy. Add salt and pepper and whisk again. Once you are happy with the
texture, fold the herbs in, put everything into a container and put it in the
fridge for as long as possible.
And if you steam your
new potatoes at the same time as the garlic cooks, you have a meal. Either the
next day (just pop the spuds into the microwave to heat them through) or now.
Just serve the hot
potatoes with the fake herb cheese which is like a quark but not really, and
you have a meal fit for a hot summer`s evening. Just make sure you cook it
either early morning or the evening before. When it is cooler and you drink
your G&T. Just remember to set the kitchen alarm and next day`s dinner is
cooked while you relax.
No comments:
Post a Comment