I really like fajita’s and could really keep eating it (mmm, I think I say this from all my dishes from time to time I make them myself… because everything you make or do yourself is always done better. This time I showed my buddy Nicolas  how to make them (in his kitchen)

Ingredients: (for 4 fajita’s, enough for 2 people)

• 3 paprika’s (doesn’t matter which color they have)
• 2 chicken filets (but you can also take other kind of meat)
• 1 little tin of tomato purée
• 2 bay leaves
• Salt, pepper
• 3 eating spoons or sweet paprika powder
• Pinch of oregano
• 400ml of chicken stock ( or either 400ml of water and 1 chickenstock cube)
• 2cloves of garlic
• Olive oil
• 1 onion (peeled and sliced)
• Glass of red wine

 For the tortilla dough

• 100g of flour
• Water
• Pinch of salt

For the filling:

• Iceberg salad
• Guacamole
• Emmental cheese (or another greasier cheese)

 Get started:

Peel and slice the onion, garlic and paprika’s

Put some olive oil  and the 2 peeled garlic gloves in a pot and heat the pot.

• Once the oil is hot, put in the chicken and bake the chicken.  When chicken is not pink anymore, you  add the sliced onion and cut paprika’s. (stir from time to time)

• When all the water has disappeared and you add the paprika powder, oregano, salt, pepper ,red wine, chicken stock and bay leaves.

• Cook on a lower heat until the sauce has thickened and it looks like the picture below.

Now we start to make the tortilla dough

•  Put the flour, ¼ of a glass of water and a pinch of salt in a bowl and start mixing and kneading it until you get a firm dough like on the picture below

• Make a little ball and cut it in 4

• Take one piece and start flatten it (put some flour under it, to prevent sticking)

• Grease a pan and put on heat.

• Once your pan is hot enough, put the first flattened dough and bake 3 minutes at each side (like on picture below)

Do this for all pieces of dough .

Only 1 thing left to do, serving it 🙂

I think you picture below speaks for itself

 

Let me know what you think!!

This is actually one of my preferred dishes.  I remember eating this dish loooooots of times siting under a pergola in Italy during my summer holidays in Italy (when I was young)

Ingredients:

• 250g semolina (kind of Italian flour)
• 50g butter
• 50g grated Parmigiano cheese
• 3 egg yolks
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1l milk
• Pinch of salt

For serving it

• 200g Butter
• Sage
• Grated parmigiano cheese

Get started:

• Put the milk and butter in a put and turn on the heat (not max heat).
• Just before the milk start boiling, you add the semolina. Stir until all the semola is gone and until the milk is starting to get thick (like picture below

• Add the egg yolks one by one while stirring
• Add the pinch of salt, nutmeg and the parmigiano cheese.

• When everything is mixed well, you poor the milk mix on a cutting board (wrapped in plastic foil) and try to even it out (like picture below)

• Let the mix cool down (I always have to watch out that I don’t eat it all when it is cooling it down, because it is daaaaaaaamn good)
•  Once the mix is cold you can cut out little rounds (or whichever form you prefer).

• Put the little rounds in a baking dish that you greased with some butter.

• You now put some of the butter and sage in a pot and let the butter melt on low heat

• When the butter is melted, poor it over the gnocchi and put some Parmigiano cheese on top

• Put in 180°C pre-heated oven for 10 minutes and 5 minutes under the grill

 The result looks like this:

You can eat it like this or serve it with a normal tomato sauce.

Let me know if you like it?!

This dish is loved by lots of my friends  and on top of that very easy to make.

 Ingredients: (for 2 or 3 people, depending how much they eat 🙂 )

• 250g scampi (peel them, you can use the peel for making fish stock
•  1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 dried bay leaves
• Pinch of salt
• Pepper
• 1 red pepper under oil (in case you like it more spicy)
• Pinch of oregano
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1 cube of fish bouillon (unless you used the scampi peels to make stock/bouillon)
• 250g tagliatelle
• Glass of water
• 800g peeled tomatoes
• Olive oil
• Glass of white wine

Get started:

• Cut the scampi’s in smaller pieces

• Peel the garlic and onion .  slice the onion.
• Put some olive oil and the two garlic cloves in a pot and put on the heat.

• Once you hear the garlic sizzle, you put in the scampi’s

• Add  the sliced onions and the white wine. Let simmer untill 2/3 of the wine evaporated
• Add the  peeled tomatoes, bay leaves, salt, pepper, oregano, red pepper, nutmeg, and the glass of water. Stir it all and let it cook on low heat for 15 minutes until you  notice the sauce has thickened.

• Cook the pasta.
• Once pasta is cooked you put it back in the pot you cooked it in and add a little bit of the sauce
• Head it together (this will give better taste to the pasta)

One thing left to do, eat 🙂

Crespelle are actually pancakes, but instead of putting sugar, you put salt (not the same amount of course).  I like to serve them with a ricotta and spinach filling accompanied with a tomato sauce completing the dish. It might seem that it takes a long time to make this dish, but this is absolutely not true. Just try it!

 Ingredients: (for 4 people)

Crespelle:

• 250g flour
• 6dl milk
• Pinch of salt
• Fresh parsley
• 2 eggs
• Butter/margarine

 Stuffing:

• 250g ricotta
• Spinach (frozen is good enough) as a measure I usually take the plastic box of the ricotta and fill it to the top with spinach. And that is the amount I use for this stuffing
• 1 lemon
• Paprika powder
• Nutmeg
• Parmesan Cheese (grated) 
• Basil
• Salt & pepper

Tomato sauce:

• 3 thin cans cubetti (peeled tomatoes) 
• 1 Chicken stock  cube
• Pepper & salt
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Fresh basil
• Pinch of sugar
• Salt & pepper
• White wine (glass)

 Getting Started:

We gonna start by make all the “pancakes”.

• Chop the parsley (only the leafs)  very very small (you can  either do it by hand or machine). After chopping it put it on paper towel to dry a little bit.  We do this by first putting the flour in a bowl.
•  Add a pinch of salt and some of the milk. Stir it all until it becomes a nice smooth mass, now add the rest of the milk and again stir.
• Add the first egg, once this egg is nicely mixed add the second egg.  
• Add the parsley. Let the mix set for 5 minutes

• Take  a pan (if you take a bigger pan, you’ll have less pancakes, if you take a small pan, you’ll have more 🙂
• Put some butter in the pan (when the pan is very warm)  and spread it with a piece of paper towel.
• Put some of the milk mix in you pan with a Ladle (pollepel) and while poring it in your pan you turn your pan until you mix is equally spread (and you have a round form). Don’t put too much in the pan otherwise your pancakes will be too thick. Turn the pancake when  you see that the top is less liquid.

•  Keep doing this until you have finished all the mix. You now let the pancakes cool down.

The filling:

•  We first have to defrost the spinac . I usually just put it in a pot on a low heat. Once everything is defrosted, I let it leak through a sieve (zeef) to get rid of all the water that the spinach has absorbed. You can leave it for about 15min.
•  Continue with putting the ricotta in a bowl
•  Add a handful of grated parmesan cheese, handful of thinly cut basil, some lemon zest (you use zest grater for this), a little bit of nutmeg, pepper and salt. I also add a little bit of Red paprika powder (sweet) And Finally add the spinach. FYI for the handful’s if you have small hand, add a second hand 😉
•  Mix it all together.

The Tomato sauce.

For this dish I want to keep the sauce a little bit sour (not too much of course.

• Put  your pot on the heat and put some olive oil in the pot. Add a garlic clove (peeled)
• Once you hear the garlic starts to ‘bake’ you can add the thins of tomato.
• Add the glass of wine, a handful of cut basil, pepper, salt and the chicken stock cube
• Don’t throw the tins from the tomatoes away (or not yet). You notice that there is still some tomato in it. Just fill one of the thins with water. The poor that water in the next one. Then in to the last one.  Now you can poor it in the pot.
• Let the tomato sauce cook for about 15 to 20 minutes on low heat.
• Mix the sauce.

Now we have made all the basics, we can start  assembling everything  🙂

•  You take a pancake,  spread some of the ricotta mix  on the pancake (like you would be spreading on a sandwich, you can take a bit more than you would usually put on your sandwich )

•  Roll up the pancake and put on a backing tray. First put some of the tomato sauce on the bottom of the tray
•  Once tray filled. To it all with tomato sauce and spread some grated Parmesan cheese over the top.

Once you want to serve it, put it in a pre-heated oven of 190-195°C (374-383°F) for about 15-20 minutes.

Let me know how it worked out?!

Red Raspberry Cheesecake is a very nice dessert. You can replace the red raspberries by blueberries, blackberry and I think maybe strawberry could also do the trick.

 Ingredients:

• Short crust pastry (kruimel/zanddeeg) you can either make it yourself, but I usually buy it prepared.

(Please, do let me know if you want the recipe for making it yourself, then I will give it to you)

 For the filling:

• 1 dried vanilla fruit (vanillestokje)
• 2dl milk
• 80g butter
• 4 eggs
• 200g sugar
• 80g flour
• 500g fresh soft cheese  (verse kaas)
• 300g Red Raspberries (or whatever fruit you choose ) (fresh or frozen)
• 1 tablespoon of powdered sugar

 Get started:

•  Grease your springform pan with some butter. And spread your short crust pastry in the springform.

• Put the milk & butter in a cooking pan. Cut the vanilla fruit in 2 and take the seeds. Add the seed as well as the vanilla fruit to the milk and put this on stove. This until the butter is melted (don’t cook the milk)
• Split the eggs (put egg yolk and white in a separate bowl). Add the sugar to the egg yolks and mix until it gets a creamy look.
• Add the flour.

• Add the milk (first take out the vanilla fruit stick) and mix it all until it is a homogeny (homogene) mixture. Let this mixture cool down.
• Pre-heat your oven at 180°C (356°F)
• Once the mixture is cooled down, add the fresh cheese and mix until it is nice and fluid. Add the flour. mix

• Beat the egg whites with a whisk until you gets a nice stiff mass .

•  Add this to the mixture (gently as otherwise you will lose the lightness of the cheesecake)

• Put some of the mix in the already prepared springform. Put 140g of the raspberries on top. Put again some of the eggs mix on top. (it might be that you still have some mix left over, then you can just make a few extra small cheesecakes. I usually do this for my girlfriend as she is a big fan of cheesecakes)

• Put in the pre-heated oven for 55 minutes and afterwards let it cool down.
• For the dressing you take the remaining amount of Raspberries and put them in a cooking pot and add the powdered sugar (I always also add a sprinkle of water) and let it simmer on a low fire for about 15-20 min. and it is up to you if you prefer it like that or if you want to sieve it (zeven).

Only 1 thing left to do, slice the Cheesecake, put some Raspberry coulis and enjoy!!

I wanted to add a picture when the cheesecake was finished, but some greedy people ate it before I could take the picture 🙂 🙂

 Let me know if you liked it?! Or maybe show me your result ?

I’m a true pizza lover, but the only unfortunate thing is that there are not too many places where they really serve good pizza. So therefore I just make it myself and it only takes a few minutes (rising not included, but you don’t have to stay next to it so …). Lately I always use Whole flour (volkoren), but you can easily use regular flour.  And if you have leftovers of the dough, you can make little sandwiches with it…

Ingredients:

Dough:

• 500g flour
• 350ml water  (room temperature)
• Salt
• Yeast ( fresh or dried, if dried  1 ½ teaspoon)
• Olive oil (if wanted and it doesn’t have to be fancy oil)

Topping:

• Polpa di pomodoro or a thin can of peeled tomatoes
• Salt, peper oregano and red paprika powder
• Mozzarella
• Grated Parmigiano cheese
• Whatever you want 🙂 , I put ham or parmaham with rucola (the parmaham and rucola after it comes out of the oven)
• Olive oil  Get it on:
•  Put the flour in a big bowl and make a hole in the middle
• On the side of the four you put the salt (don’t be afraid to put enough, ½ eatingspoon)
• In hole you made, you put the water (and olive oil like I usually do) and the yeast.
•  Start mixing it all until you get firm dough (like for bread) (see pic below).  I recently bought a machine to do this for me (but before that always done it manually
• Put the dough under a moist towel and let it rest for at least 45min (you could also make it in the morning for the evening)

• After the 45 min, you split the down in 2, 3 or 4 pieces and make again little balls; this would then for the pizza itself. 

• Take 1 ball and start flattening it with a rolling pin. Try to get your pizza as round as possible or at least in a form that can fit on your oven tray  🙂  (but don’t worry they pizza police won’t arrest you if it’s not round )
•   Spread some olive oil on the bottom of your oven tray  Lay your flattened pizza on your oven tray.
• Pre-heat the oven on 250°C or 482°F
•  Put your polpa (tomato) in a mixing bowl; add some olive oil, one finely chopped garlic clove, salt, pepper and the paprika powder.  Stir it all. In case you used peeled tomatoes in a can, you should mix it all that all pieces are very little
•  Put some tomatomix on the pizza, chop the mozzarella and also put this on the pizza.
• Spread some grated parmigiano on top and add the topic you like. If you would use a salty dried meat or so (like speck,pancetta,Parmaham) put it after it comes out of the oven.

         

• Put it in the pre-heated oven for about 10 to 15 minutes (feel if the crust is crispy, if not leave longer)

Buon apetito