Tag Archives: tomaten

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce
Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce

Hey there! 

It’s me again 🙂

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce  from gingerlemonandspice.com

We’re planning a big grilling party today with friends! So I’m a bit out of the normal 😉 Usually I am all for planning big and complex, but this started out as just a wish to turn on the grill… I talked to one of the girls I am living with and we decided we wanted to grill since it’s summer and all. Well, needless to say I was all in! I thought yeah, let’s do this as we don’t do it often in the ‘big’ city. We only have a very small backyard.

At my parents we have a big backyard and in summer time we kind of live outside. We grill nearly everyday and it usually goes without planning! When my relatives that live next to us want to do it too, they just come over with their stuff or we go to their house and then we just have a good time. It is all very SIMPLE! The basic ingredients for salads and the stuff that will be grilled we usually have at home or we create something out of the things we have.

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce  from gingerlemonandspice.com

But this thing here in the city with my flat-mates – it got kind of out of hand 😉 It is all very planned out, like a week planned ahead, who brings what so that there won’t be two kinds of pasta salad or something else that ‘horrible’. 😉 We   even hat to delay the party for a week! There are some friends coming too. All this exact planning leaded to me being a wee bit stressed out… At some point I was quite annoyed that it wasn’t the easy thing I was used to!

I feel quite sorry for that now! I know it will be an awesome evening and we will have lots of fun! I guess everybody plans very different and I have to learn to tame myself and be more tolerant! 😉 I just look back on all this with a big smile now.  Can you relate to that? Do you have sometimes feelings you’re not proud of? 😉

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce  from gingerlemonandspice.com

The recipe I have for you today is my newest invention: Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Pasta! I dreamed it up after watching Donal Skehan’s newest episode on Jamie Olivers Foodtube. He was cooking Smashed Tomato Pasta and used the word ‘mushy’ a lot 😉 Watch the video! He really is a great cook and he explains the way that you feel that everybody can do it! And his accent really is the best! So very irish 🙂 Read here why I love Ireland!

Well, I had an aubergine in the fridge to use up. So I started cooking a quick meal and while I went on stiring and stiring I was singing ‘mushy, mushy, mushy’ in my head. 😉 I think the video really got to me! At first I didn’t really plan to take pictures and put the recipe on the blog, but it tasted soo awesome and flavorful, that I just had to take the minute to shoot some pictures!! I don’t like aubergines very much usually. Only since last year when I stayed in Turkey I realized that aubergines really CAN taste great! In this recipe the flavor comes out beautifully, you will love it!

Just give it a try 🙂 Enough talk, on to the recipe we go!

 

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce
 
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A very tasty and comforting pasta dish made in the time the pasta needs to cook! Tastes like summer because of a secret ingredient!
Author:
Recipe type: Pasta
Cuisine: mediterranean style
Serves: 2
Ingredients
  • 250g spaghetti
  • 1 big aubergine (eggplant)
  • 3 teaspoons salt
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 Bratwurst - optional
  • 3 tomatoes
  • lime juice of 2 limes
  • freshly ground pepper
  • some parmesan if you like
Instructions
  1. Fill your kettle with water and turn it on. If you don't have a kettle heat a pot big enough for the pasta with water on the stove.
  2. Meanwhile preheat a non stick pan to high heat. Chop your aubergine in cubes with sides about one centimetre of length. Put them in the pan and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt and stir until the salt is distributed. Let the aubergine roast (without oil!) and stir often. There will be a bit of a coat on the bottom of the pan - just stir it loose. We want this, it is full of flavor! Just don't let it go black 😉
  3. When the water kettle is finished just pour the water into a pot on the stove and reheat on high heat until it boils. Add 2 teaspoons of salt and the pasta and set your timer on the time it says on the box of the pasta. Turn the heat down to low-medium.
  4. Now you can add the bratwurst (cut into thin slices) if you have it and add the olive oil. mix well. The aubergine should now start to soften up!
  5. Chop your tomatoes roughly in cubes and don't forget to stir your aubergine once in a while.
  6. Add the tomatoes to the pan when you have about 5 minutes left on your timer. You want the aubergine and tomato mixture to get really mushy!!
  7. Just before pasta is cooked, add pepper and lime juice to the pan. Turn the heat off. You don't need to drain the pasta, just put the pot and pan close together, take a pasta fork and fish the pasta out of the pot, let it drain a little and put it directly into the pan. We want a little pasta water to get into the pan!
  8. Now mix it all together well and serve directly. Sprinkle parmesan on top if you like! Dig in 🙂

Pasta With Mushy Aubergine & Tomato Sauce  from gingerlemonandspice.com 

Have a great day!

~ Kathrin

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

Steak, Green Beans and Hasselback Potatoes on Mother’s Day
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, hasselback potatoes, green beans and wild garlic butter recipe for mother's day by ginger, lemon and spice

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!!

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

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
 
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Easy to prepare but soo yummy!! Perfect for any kind of holiday meal!
Author:
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
  1. 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
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. Bake your potatoes in the middle rack for about 35-40 minutes. You have to have a look how crispy you want them!
Steaks
  1. 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.
  2. 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
  1. 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.
  2. 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!

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

Have a nice week!

~ Kathrin 

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms
Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

Hello everybody!

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

I hope your last week was nice? Nicer than mine, at least? 😉 I had to study, study, study, sleep a little and then again study,… You might have guest it: It was the week of my exams at university! I don’t like this time at all… But it is necessary.

So yesterday was my final exam for this period, and now I am FREE!! I can do whatever I like!! At least for a few days…

 

Also I had written a ‘what to do after the final exam’ list – which included watering the plants, hoover and clean and of course, write a new blogpost. As you might have noticed, this was not what happend! 😉

So when I finally went home yesterday what I did was starting a movie. I really love movies!! No special kind – I just like digging in another reality for a few hours! Of course there are good movies and bad movies for me too, but I would watch all of them – and the good ones more than once.

When I came home yesterday I felt the need to disengage myself from all the stress of the days before and watch a film. Not any kind of film! I wanted romance, I wanted the feeling of an idyllic world and a little bit of action so I turned on Twilight. Don’t judge me!! 😉

I haven’t seen the movies for quite some time now! And last time I did, I thought they were embarrissing because they are such a tear jerker (I hope that word exist – that’s what my translater tells me! ). So this time, to make them less awkward for me I watched them in english. It helped a lot! I really think you could say anything in english even if it is way too much in german. I actually did enjoy them so much that I watched part 2 and 3 right after the first and went to bed at 1 o’clock…

Yes – I don’t know what was going on with me either 😉

So today is the day for the list – all the stuff that needs to be done and was postponed because of the exams! It includes preparing for the studying period for the exams in april  but I decided to do the ‘fun’ parts first. Here I am, writing just what comes through my mind and hoping you don’t think I am too awkward, strange or crazy 😉

 

But I have brought you something, too!!! As my meals needed to be quick I didn’t do much cooking in the last two weeks. But one thing I did was these Tagliatelle with frehs tomatoes, ham and mushrooms! It was a really quick lunch and very delicious!

 

Tagliatelle with Tomatoes, Ham & Mushrooms

for one person

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushroomsTagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

 

Ingredients:

Tagliatelle for one person (I used wholemeal – approx. 100g)

100g mushrooms

100g ham

3 big tomatoes

75 ml cream

salt, pepper, parsley for decoration (I used frozen)

 

Directions:

1. Cook Pasta according to package.

2. Put a nonstick frying pan on medium heat. Chop the mushrooms in half slices, ham in stripes and tomatoes in cubes – or the way you like them.

3. Put mushrooms and ham into the pan, and let the mushrooms loose some water (5 min maybe). Add the tomatoes on top, let them sit on top for 2 min then stir. Add salt and pepper to taste.

4. The Pasta should be ready now. Put the pasta into the pan using a pasta scoop with holes in it to get rid of most of the cooking water. Add the cream to the pan. Stir everything and let the sauce and pasta reheat until it bubbles (2-3 min). Maybe add some more salt (the cream takes away some of the saltiness).

5. Put Tagliatelle on a nice platter and sprinkle with some parsley.

Enjoy!!

~Kathrin

Tagliatelle with tomatoes, ham & mushrooms

Caprese – Tomatoes, Mozzarella and Basil Salad

Caprese – Tomatoes, Mozzarella and Basil Salad
Caprese – Tomatoes, Mozzarella and Basil Salad

Hello everybody!

 

Today I want to share a recipe of the italian salad caprese with you.

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I made it this weekend for my parents and I think it was really delicious! Usually I am not at my parents house, as I am studying at a university 110 km north of my hometown. The last times I went to visit my family over the weekend or for some days around christmas and new years, it became a habit for them to pronounce me as their cook 😉 I have free hand – I can cook whatever I want and usually they eat it, so it can’t be too bad. I like being creative and think about what meal they might like and how to make a meal a little less in carbs – as that is what we are trying to change our diets into since the new year. So a little caprese salad really fits well into this plan – and it also looks very delicious because of the italian colours!! And for an extra bonus it is very quick and easy to make.

 

Also I got to spend the weekend with the beautiful Sony DSLR  camera of my godchild. It was soo fun to work with it! The pictures are just waaaay better then with my own pocket digital one. And all the options!! I am totally in love ♥ ♥ ♥

 

So enough talk for now – of to the recipe we go!

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Caprese salad

 

About 5 tomatoes (depends on size)

1 ball of mozzarella (about 125 g)

basil leaves

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 tablespoons dark balsamic vinegar

salt, herbs (I used a dry mixture called pizza herbs, it contains thyme, oregano, basil,…)

 

1. Hold tomato on the side and cut it into 5mm slices from bottom to top. If you do it like that, all the kernels will stay in their place!

2. Cut the mozzarella into very thin slices.

3. Put tomatoes and mozzarella slices diversified and variantly into a dish. Your dish needs to have a rim to hold the oil and vinegar later on! Put as much basi leaves in between the layers as you like! I didn’t have much basil left which is why I only did a little decoration.

4. Mix the vinegar, oil, and herbs in a little bowl. Salt the tomato and mozzarella layers just from the top, that is enough. Take a spoon and drizzle the vinaigrette on top.

5. You can let it sit for half an hour or just eat it straight away! It won’t go bad if it stays for a little while. Enjoy!!

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Kathrin