Finally the relentless heat of the last several weeks is easing up a little and thinking about some serious grub doesn’t make me raise an eyebrow at my own sanity anymore~! Of course, it’s still summery warm outside, so going wild with pots, pans and my stove for any extended period of time is still out of the question and anything ending up on our plates absolutely needs a zingy, refreshing component to count as “edible”.
Continue reading “Spicy Beef & Mushroom Stirfry with String Bean & Plum Salad”
Food-related childhood memories can be a serious pain in the… posterior from time to time. If you’ve ever fancied a particular dish as a kid and tried to re-create that gloryfied-by-time-and-memory experience in your kitchen as an adult with nobody to tell you the details about the dish in question, you probably know how infuriatingly frustrating the results can be~!
It’s time~! Time for hubby and me to shamelessly overindulge in one of Spring’s most wonderful products, our region’s prized asparagus! Countless ways to prep and serve them – all of them rather healthy, even with the occasional drop of Hollandaise – ranging from simple every-day quick-fixes to wow-your-crowd or lover’s-dinner stunners.
Wooooh! Today, we celebrate, we feast, we drink! A historic event has come to pass! Nahdala’s Kitchen went live exactly one year ago, today~! What a perfect day to share a dish perfectly capable of defining the term “Crowd Pleaser” – a classic Beef Wellington with you guys. And the perfect opportunity to re-define a dish off of the Tyrian Menu accordingly.
The Tyrian Chef’s Guild strikes again! Once more, the delicious library at my cooking station in Lion’s Arch compelled me to tackle a dish along the “Classic” lines~ I suppose this one sounds very familiar to… well everyone, the term “Meatball Spaghetti“ buzzing around in heads around the world on autopilot. Classic italian dish… right? Wait, what’s that… that rattling noise… Oh, yes, that’s a horde of Risen, italian chefs no less, aiming to hit you over the head with rusty frying pans without further ado.
I was so waiting for a chance to share this one with you guys! This was one of the first handful of GW2-inspired dishes I cooked up a few years back, and one of the first times I intentionally used the Guild’s recipe list as a source of information and inspiration. Well, it seems, the time to pull this one out of my hat has come! Finding myself flat on my back with a nasty case of the flu brought back vivid memories of a very similar situation a few years back, when this recipe came to life for the first time.
It’s mushroom season! Stores and markets around town are finally showing off wonderful displays of the huge variety of mushrooms growing in our forests this time of the year. After a couple of sneak-peeks into the matter, a handful of chanterelles as salad toppings here and there, just to name one, I decided to officially kick off mushroom season in my kitchen two or three weeks ago. With that idea in mind I purposefully hoofed to the next best farmers market to pick out some pretties for I-don’t-know-yet-but-there-will-be-mushrooms-in-it – just to pull out blanks as I was facing the somewhat overwhelming display of different options.
Chilli con Carne. In 35°C weather. You might think the heat in- and outside of the kitchen has finally taken it’s toll on my sanity. Well, believe me, I’ve considered an extended trip down to the looney bin on several occasions myself. This isn’t the result of slowly-stewing grey matter though, this is the result of the GW2 recipe list rudely kicking a part of my subconscious, usually hibernating during heatwaves, to life without offering it some coffee first.
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.
Asparagus season! Finally! I have been eyeballing the Tyrian Steak & Asparagus dish for months now, internally drooling and ticking the days off on my calendar, the X marking the beginning of the season. I know, I know, basically everything is available at any given time (if you ignore outrageous prices), but some things, for me, just have to remain a seasonal thing, something to look forward to and revel in once it arrives. Cherries, strawberries, plums, mushrooms… and asparagus. Only once did I make the mistake of giving in to the allure of a box of pretty-in-white asparagus I found some time around christmas. Apart from them having a terrible texture and no flavor, eating asparagus in winter was just plain weird.
Nahdala's Kitchen 