Dear ArenaNet,
Looking at more than 10 of your recipes involving a combination of 1 head of garlic and 1 leaf of a herb or 1 seed/nut – my personal favorite being the hummus made from 1 head of garlic, 1 chickpea and 1 sesame seed – I get the feeling some of you might either be posessed by or famously obsessed with the humble bulb. Either way, to prevent me from giving myself a whiplash, shaking my head at these bizarre concoctions of yours, I decided to embrace the garlic and dedicate one of my top three crowd-pleasing condiments to you guys. Get ready to have lots of personal space around you in the office for a couple of days.
Xoxo,
Nahdala Darkwind
Tag: Minor
Beetroot-Blackberry Carpaccio with Goat’s Cheese and Orange Vinaigrette
There’s something to be said for classic combinations. Goat’s Cheese and Beetroots is one of them – regrettably underrepresented on the big stages of the food circus for years, lately I’ve been delighted to see more and more beety things appearing on menus. While I’ve always loved beets, goat’s cheese was an acquired taste. One specific pivotal moment almost closed the lid on the whole goat’s cheese thing for me, but in the end, while it made me tread more carefully around that cheesy matter, it not only made me really like the stuff but also brought on the answer to the “why” of cheese being so often combined with fruity or sweet things.
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Picknick Cups
Finally it’s time! Time for garden parties, brunches, picknicks and other outdoorsy things calling for quick-to-make, transport-friendly and easy-to-eat things that stay yummy for some time. With the weather finally having stopped yoyo’ing from major flood scenarios to making everyone feel like vampires crisping up in direct sunlight, creating a country-sized outdoor-steambath in the process… Now, making plans for more than just 30 mins ahead is possible at last. In my case, this translates to long days in the park, a hiking trip with hubby here and there and the occasional brunch buffet or BBQ in someone elses garden calling for my kitchen skills.
GW2 Avocado-Apple Salsa & Chilli Cigars
One thing stews from all over the world generally have in common is: they’re even better the next day. A Chilli Con Carne is no exception to that rule. After my inner vamp was satisfied with last weeks Chilli Con Carne however, I couldn’t stand the thought of actually warming it up again, so I tried – and succeded~! – to find a way to make a yummy, summery picknick or late-night snack out of the leftovers with as little stove time as possible.
GW2 Strawberry-Spinach Salad
As promised last week, here’s the remedy for the stomachache inevitably following an overdose of sugar. To make the decline from a sugar rush to some sort of normal state a slow and steady one, rather than going cold turkey, I’ve given one of my favorite veggies a very-berry twist.
Avocado-Cucumber Gazpacho, Two Ways
Several of the food-related reasons for me to love a good heatwave every once in a while are provided by the unending variety of cold soups, just asking to serve as a refreshing, speed-of-light-quick-fix tummy-filler when it’s too hot for anything else. A few weeks ago I was trying to figure out a way to skip the traditional baguette/chiabatta/toast deal and replace it with something on the healthier side of things without loosing the filling-factor of the soup – after all, I was trying to make dinner, rather than serving a bowl of… well, juice. After a couple of moments, twiddling my mental thumbs, pondering all kinds of gazpachos, juices and green smoothies, it hit me. Avocados! Oh, oh! River crabs go well with avocados! And grapefruit! Apples? <insert visual of mental sock-drawers being turned over here>.
Thai Style Salad & Chicken Satay Skewers
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…
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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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?
Nahdala's Kitchen 