Monthly Archives: May 2013

May29

Zucchini, Corn And Feta Muffins

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Kathrin

Hello everybody!!

Sorry it took me so long to get back writing on my blog. There was so much on my plate the last 3 weeks or so… But more about that in my brandnew post later today.

Right now I want to tell you about my very first guest post!! Carrie from Chicago Foodie Sisters asked on her Facebook page if someone would be willing to share a recipe and a bit about themselves on her website. And I said yes!

Actually it then took some time until it all happened, but now I am very proud to say: It is finally up!! Hop on over and read on Chicago Foodie Sisters about my savory Zucchini and Feta Muffins with Walnuts and Corn!!

I liked them so very much – they were the perfect snack through any time of the day, be it breakfast, afternoon or the middle of the night! As I knew they wouldn’t be eaten all at once I froze most of them and they were even better after thawing!! I just left them at room temperature until they weren’t frozen anymore and enjoyed them 🙂

Also I tried myself on a little bit of ‘food decorating’ for this shoot – how do you like the pictures?

Zucchini, Corn And Feta Muffins

A perfect and delicious little snack, which keeps well and is ideal to put in lunchboxes or take on picnics!

Author: Kathrin @ ginger, lemon & spice

Recipe type: Savory

Serves: 12

Ingredients

2 eggs
80ml (1/3 cup) oil (rapeseed or sunflower)
300ml (1¼ cup) buttermilk
300g (2½ cups) flour (I used half white/whole wheat)
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon baking powder
100g corn* (canned or frozen)
100g zucchini*, finely grated
100g chopped walnuts*
150g feta* in small cubes

Instructions

Grease a muffin tin and put in muffin paper cups if you want. Preheat oven to 180°C (350 °F).
In a bowl mix eggs, oil and buttermilk well. Add flour, salt and baking powder on top and distribute the dry ingredients a little with a spoon. Then mix wet and dry ingredients slowly until just incorporated.
Add corn, zucchini and walnuts. Then fold in feta carefully with a tablespoon.
You can use the spoon now to transfer the batter into the muffin cups! You can make the cups pretty full, at least in my case the muffins just rose but did not spill and sank back when cooling!
Bake the muffins for 25-30 minutes. Check with a wooden skewer!
Enjoy!! 🙂

Notes

* I am sorry I can't tell how much of those ingredients you need in cups. Corn, walnuts and feta it is approximately 1 big handful of each and zucchini about ¾ of a smaller one.

Lots of love,

~ Kathrin

May14

Steak, Green Beans and Hasselback Potatoes on Mother’s Day

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Kathrin

Steak, Green Beans and Hasselback Potatoes on Mother’s Day

Hello Everybody!!

I hope you all had a great weekend! I was at my parents house, spending a lot of time in the kitchen 🙂 My goal was to make a great mother’s day lunch for my parents and me, my two grandmas and grandpa. Of course I started preparing on saturday, but got really sabotaged as I found myself persuaded to do another cake for my mum to bring to a barbecue and to prepare lunch and dinner that day too. Oh my 😉 The end of it was that I didn’t start preparing the cake that I intended to make in the first place until late afternoon!!

But actually I didn’t mind much. My mom was so very happy this weekend, at least a bit because I made all this, that it was totally worth it 😉 The only thing I wished I did different was that I didn’t take much pictures!! Especially the dinner of my Speedy Shrimp Pasta my father and me had on saturday was soooo awesome!! I thought it was already on the blog, so I wouldn’t need it, but this time I used frozen shrimps and homemade tagliatelle which made it sooo much better even!!

So what did we have for Mother’s Day lunch then? You might have guessed, as the title says it:

Beef steak prepared by my father, green beans the way I love to eat them, hasselback potatoes with lots of fresh herbs and a yummy wild garlic butter with all that! And for ‘dessert’ we had a Strawberry Oreo Cheese & Cream Cake (in Germany we say Torte for this type of cake!). It was sooo delicious!!

And you know what?! You will get the recipe for ALL of that!! And it even will be printable!! As you can see I installed a new feature on my blog which makes it possible for you to print the recipe only – and not all of the other things I am saying nor the big pictures. How do you like that?! 🙂

Steak, Green Beans and Hasselback Potatoes on Mother's Day

Prep time

2 hours

Cook time

1 hour

Total time

3 hours

Easy to prepare but soo yummy!! Perfect for any kind of holiday meal!

Author: Kathrin of Ginger, Lemon & Spice

Recipe type: Meat Main Dish

Serves: 6

Ingredients

Wild Garlic Butter

125g (1/2 cup) softened butter
200g wild garlic
salt

Herby Hasselback Potatoes

16-18 small potatoes
fresh herbs (I used rosemary and lemon thyme)
coarse sea salt
5 tablespoons olive oil

Steaks

6 beef steaks
olive oil
salt, pepper and a sprinkle of fresh thyme

Green Beans with Tomatoes

750g frozen green beans
4 big tomatoes
55g (1/4 cup) butter
very herby salt (or normal herb salt with extra herbs)

Instructions

Wild Garlic Butter

Chop wild garlic very finely. Mix with butter and salt to taste. Put on a piece of baking paper and form into a roll and put in the fridge to cool down. This is best prepared a day ahead.

Herby Hasselback Potatoes

Preheat oven to 200°C (375° F). Brush and wash your potatoes thoroughly. Take a sharp knife and cut into the potato far but not through. It has to be attached a little! Make more of those incisions about 2-3 mm apart. To make sure not to cut through the potato you can hold your knife peak downwards like a landing airplane! Once you touch your cutting board with the peak just stop cutting.
Chop your herbs very finely. Seperate the cuts of the potatoes a little bit with your fingers and sprinkle herbs in. Arrange all potatoes on a baking tray covered with baking paper and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle sea salt on top.
Bake your potatoes in the middle rack for about 35-40 minutes. You have to have a look how crispy you want them!

Steaks

About 2 hours before you want to cook them take the steaks out of the fridge and let them reach room temperature. Brush them with oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. When your potatoes are ready turn the oven off and start cooking the meat.
We used a griddle (electric grill with two griddle pans pressed together) to cook the steaks as I was occuping the pan with the beans. So preheat whatever you are using and once it is really hot put the steaks in. They only need like 3 minutes on each side! You want the insides to be rose. Put the steaks on a plate, sprinkle with just a little of finely chopped thyme and put them in the turned off oven (where your potatoes are - you are just using the left over heat) for a few minutes until you are finished with the beans.

Green Beans with Tomatoes

Put green beans in a large pan on high heat and cover with a lid. Meanwhile chop your tomatoes in chunks. Once the beans are thawed remove the lid and continue heating the beans on high heat and stir. When the beans are warm and most of the water is evaporated add the tomatoes. At the time the tomatoes start to soften turn the heat off and add the seasoning and butter and stir until the butter is melted. You can add more salt or herbs if you feel the need to.
Serve immediately and dig in!! 🙂

Beef steak, hasselback potatoes, green beans and wild garlic butter recipe for mother's day by ginger, lemon and spice

The recipe for the Strawberry Oreo Cheese & Cream Cake will be in the next post!

Have a nice week!

~ Kathrin

May4

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Kathrin

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

$Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad$

Hello everybody!

Today really is a nice day!! The sun is shining, not brightly, but still and it is quite warm outside! I was already on tour this morning – I went to the flea market and looked for nice probs, went to a nice store in the city where I looked for more probs 😉 And then went to the supermarket to buy all the ingredients for this yummy Tex-Mex Taco Salad!!

I was craving this salad because of all the delicious Cinco de Mayo recipes posted all over the food blogging world… I didn’t even know what Cinco de Mayo was. I had to google it!!

For those of you who don’t already know: It is a national holiday in Mexico where they celebrate the victory over the French army in the village Puebla which happend on the 5th of May in 1862.

So I suggested you get into your kitchen and look if you might have already all those ingredients at home or you go for a quick stop at the supermarket and buy them to make this fresh and delicious salad right now!! 🙂

The flavors mix together really well, it has the freshness of the iceberg salad and tomatoes, the creaminess of the sauces and the beans and just the right amount of a little spice of the chilis in the Texicana sauce. I just ate this salad for lunch, it is quite filling and you don’t feel like a tightly stuffed sausage afterwards. In fact I could go outside again and do some more cycling! 🙂 I hope you like it too!

Just a quick note before I continue with the recipe: I made only half of the recipe this time. So the salad bowl you see on the pictures is just half of what you will get!

Mexican Style Tex-Mex Taco Salad

Ingredients:

1 head of iceberg salad

400-500g minced meat (I used half & half low fat)

1 onion

1 can of corn

1 can of kidney beans

1 bottle (500ml) of Texicana Salsa Sauce (or something similar)

2-3 tomatoes

200g sour cream

4 tablespoons milk

200g shredded cheese (I used Emmentaler)

optional: Taco Chips or Nachos

Directions:

1. Put a pan on your stove and heat up on high heat. Meanwhile peel and cut your onion into small squares. Put meat and onion into your pan all at once. reduce heat to medium and stir often. The meat should be very crumbly and in small pieces! Once your meat is done set it aside and let cool.

2. Wash your salad and dry it with a salad spinner. Take a very big bowl and put the iceberg salad in it and make it even. Layer the meat on top. Drain Beans and corn and sprinkle them evenly over the meat. Pour your Texicana Salsa on top and try to create an even layer. Cut the tomatoes in cubes and sprinkle on top.

3. Take a little bowl and whisk together your sour cream and the milk. Pour the mixture on top of your salad and distribute with a spoon. Take the shredded cheese and sprinkle on top!

4. The salad tastes best if you cover it and let it rest in the fridge for 1 hour. If you want you can add the taco chips on top (whole or crushed) or give them as an extra! I usually don’t eat any with my salad because I just don’t need it and I’d rather save the calories 😉 It is important that if you want them you put the taco chips on top of your salad just before serving!! They will become mushy otherwise.

As with all layered salads you should take something of every layer when you put salad on your plate. Enjoy!! 🙂