I never know whether to laugh or to cry when I read or hear about some airhead chef trying to sell Thai cuisine as the quickest way to prepare food known to humankind. That’s true… to some extent. After you’ve finished chopping, grinding, cleaning, slicing and all that jazz… yes, after all that, everything’s a quick-fix. Must be nice to have hordes of kitchen underlings to do the prep work for you…
Month: June 2016
Fire Flank Steaks, Artichokes, Poached Eggs and Chimichurri
Just a couple of months ago, two of our friends moved away. As „away“ as it gets actually – they moved to Argentina. Ever since they raised that topic I’ve been rubbing my hands and practicing my Evil Plan Chuckle™ while waiting for the BBQ season to come closer. One of my absolute favorites, condiment-wise, is the argeninian Chimichurri which goes exceptionally well with anything you could possibly throw onto hot coals. That’s me… a food-geek, if you will, drop the name of a country on me and I start flipping recipe pages in my head.
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Hazelnut-Crusted Turkey & Passionfruit-Leek Salad
As I was trying to get some sort of order into my personal collection of recipes, marking the ones I wanted to use for specific months or seasons for the blog I realized I might be running into some minor snags down the road, during the summer stretches in particular. The last couple of summers quite literally left us standing out in the rain until halfway through, then came crashing in with record temperatures without even as much as a „How do you do?“, causing havoc left, right and center for 2-3 weeks, just to poof out of existence with temperature drops from 40°C to 12°C in a matter of 1-2 days.
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GW2 Cactus Fruit Salad & Coconut Quenelles
I’m aware that a fruit salad isn’t exactly a sophisticated dish worthy of writing down a recipe for, but for one, it gave me the perfect excuse I needed to plate up the coconut quenelles I was craving for a couple of weeks now – they, or rather this type of fluffy dumplings in various types of flavors, are the usual suspects to top off my compotes during the autumn and winter months but a rather rare guest in the summery department. Plus, trying to stick to the GW2 recipe for once made me use a combination of fruit I usually don’t mix, or wouldn’t use in a fruit salad at all for that matter, and it turned out to be delicious.
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White Chocolate & Blueberry Cheesecake
I had long given up on the whole idea of baking or creating anything cake-related in my kitchen when I stumbled upon a whole new world of sweets about 5 years ago. For someone like me, not all that fond of sugary, sticky, carby, calory dense, cake-related treats, the discovery of the no-bake cheesecake was the light at the end of the tunnel. Channeling my obsession with fresh fruit and berries into experimenting around with these cakes to come up with new combinations and make them as delicious, healthy and low-cal as possible still keeps me rotating around my kitchen from time to time.
GW2 Cheese Triangle or: Gruyere Cheese Crackers
Well, at first glance, unceremoniously turning the GW2 version of a cheese platter (or roll? I’m actually not quite sure what the devs intend this to be…) into a bunch of cheese bisquits might not make a lot of sense, so I’ll give you guys the full scoop behind my choice. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t just cook my way up and down the Tyrian menu, sometimes I let the ingredients listed take me into a different direction, sometimes I somewhat stick to the general idea of the ingame recipe or, if it’s a classic, I try to wow you guys with my mad kitchen skills in the classics department… you get the picture, I think. In this case, it wasn’t the dish itself, or the ingredients that set me off, it was the name of the dish. The simple combination of the words „Cheese“ and „Triangle“ made a long forgotten childhood memory rise to the top when I spotted the ingame recipe in the list of snacks. My grandmother’s infamous cheese crackers. She used a triangular cookie cutter to shape them.
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Asparagus & Strawberry Salad
Like I mentioned in my Tyrian Edition of the Asparagus Season Celebration, I absolutely love asparagus. While I was growing up, the „usual“ way to serve them was pretty simple. A pile of white asparagus spears, a stack of crêpes or some potatoes, a selection of smoked or cured hams and a bowl of Sauce Hollandaise or Vinaigrette, with a side of fresh strawberries – what grows together, goes together, right?
GW2 Grilled Banana & Passion Fruit Caramel Sauce
Today was one of those days, the ones you wish you didn’t have had the bright idea of doing anything more than heating an instant soup in the kitchen. I felt like prepping my thai salad for dinner like I’ve done tons of times before. As soon as I tipped over the bowl I was grating my radish into, redecorating my kitchen floor in the process, I started getting that sinking feeling… but I soldiered on, having no idea what else to do with the remaining ingredients due to a sudden food brain freeze.
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Heart of Gold
„42!“ some of you might think at the mention of a „Heart of Gold“. And yes, you’re correct. For those of you who might jump to the conclusion that I’m loosing it, here’s a perfectly sane explanation.
The starship Heart of Gold is the hottest commodity in the universe, powered by a prototype of the faster-than-the-speed-of-light Infinite Improbability Drive, thanks to which the ship „passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously”. The core of the Infinite Improbability Drive, which was invented „following research into finite improbability, which was often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’ undergarments leap one foot simultaneously to the left, in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy“ turns out to be the Golden Ball of Prosperity, hence the name „Heart of Gold“. Oh, and 42 is the „ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything“, by the way.
Nahdala's Kitchen 