Food.
Food. Food. It doesn't matter how much we talk, write, photograph food, and even
though sometimes it is just too much to handle, still we can not resist
to it. We all need to eat and we all know the old saying We are what we eat. So
why don’t we spare a moment and gather a bunch of good friends to share tasty
food concentrating on what and how we eat.
On Friday
night Ugne cooked some simple and beautiful food for some simple and beautiful
people. She is one of my friends that is passionate and patient leisure cook.
We
started the evening with spicy vegetable-noodle soup to kickstart upcoming
winter season. Aromas of
sweated in pan onions, ginger, chili, garlic and cumin filled the air. The soup
was made as follows: Sauté all the mentioned ingredients in the pan, add 1.5
vegetable stock and rice noodles and bright to a boil. Add thinly sliced celery
and carrots at the end to keep the vegetables crunchy. Leave aside to sit for
few minutes with a lid before serving. Crunchy, spicy and very filling.
For the main course we had Sous Vide Salmon
with green peas mash. The inspiration came from one of the cooking websites
that Ugne follows (http://www.chefsteps.com). Cook sous vide salmon
for 35 min. and then fry it for 1 min. on the skin
side just before serving. While salmon is cooking (sous vide), on the side in another
pot cook peas with a pinch of salt, water and knob of butter over medium-high
heat until peas become tender. When peas are ready remove from heat, strain,
add lemon, pepper, coriander, mint and mix with an
immersion blender. Flavour green peas mash with few knobs of butter. Garnish
with salad on the side seasoned with olive oil and vanilla flavored balsamic vinegar
cream.
To
finalize this evening with a sweet note I made (under the supervision of Ugne) an
Apple/Raspberry Crumble with mint ice cream. Recipe found in Ugne's notebook goes as follows: sauté
six apples in the pan with half of a lemon juice and knob of butter for few minutes to make them
tender and shorten the cooking time in the oven. For the crumble mixture combine
approximately 100 gr. of flour and 75 g. butter. Mix in few crushed oat cookies with 4 Tbsp of
light brown sugar. Lay apples and frozen raspberries on the large pie plate and
cover everything with the mixture. Cook in the oven preheated up to 180 C for 15 min. Add mint ice-cream just
before serving. Voila Voila. Bear in mind that I made all the measurements
based on my inner instincts because you always gotta trust your own guts in the end :)
Thank
you Ugne!
