THE|SIX|BASICS: main courses

Chicken with Sauerkraut

O Sauerkraut, Sauerkraut.

Wherefore art thou Sauerkraut?

When I was a child I hated you passionately.

As much as a child can hate something.

You were my arch enemy.

Wherever you were, I never wanted to be.

The smell of you - a torture.

The taste of you - an agony.

You are a true evidence, that people do change.
The grown me loves you passionately.
Mostly during winter.
You are one of my best friends.
Wherever you are, I want to be.
The smell of you - still not so great.
The taste of you - H E A V E N.
Sometimes I'm thinking to wrap myself with you.

Call me Shakespeare. Or crazy Shakespeare. I ate so many things with sauerkraut lately and these are the side effects. Among others (like flawless digestion). I just had to make a poem about sauerkraut. I was thinking of maybe making only a haiku, but please. Sauerkraut deserves more than that. So it's a poem.

I'm not quite sure when my obsession with sauerkraut started. Some people are addicted to cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, coffee, sweets, sports, shopping...BORING! My latest addiction is sauerkraut. Sometimes I sit in the office and just dream of sauerkraut dishes. Sweet, sweet, sauer day dreams. And honestly sometimes I google sauerkraut dishes. Weird things come up. Sauerkraut with seafood is one thing I can not imagine tastes good. But maybe one day I'll try it. After all wise Justin Bieber said "Never say never". I just googled Justin Bieber. I didn't want to write his name wrong and totally embarrass myself. I mean knowing what Justin Bieber said is not embarrassing.

When I was a child everybody used to make sauerkraut themselves. Not sure how my parents and grand parents did it exactly, but I think: you take cabbage, salt and water put everything in a container, close the lid, wait for about 3 weeks or more staring the container, not letting it get out of your sight and do a little ritual dance around it with some singing. And BAM! the sauerkraut party can begin.

For my dishes I bought sauerkraut. But I did the ritual dance anyway.

So to make it short: for this dish you'll need:

INGREDIENTS

500g/1lb sauerkraut
500g/1 lb chicken breast (diced)
1 cup dry bulgur
2 tbsp chilli powder
4 tbsp paprika
salt
olive oil/sunflower oil

DIRECTIONS

Put chicken breast in a large deep pan and steam at medium-high until cooked. Add all of the other ingredients and about 1 cup of water. Stir everything well and cover the pan. Maybe you will need to add more water, so don't get too carried away with other things. Cook, and stir from time to time until chicken and bulgur are ready - should take about 10 min. Make sure you put enough oil, because if it's too dry this dish does not taste this good. I think about 4 tbsp should be enough. When ready - take from the heat, move in a backing tray and bake in the oven for 5-10 min at medium high temperature. Then serve with bread or without. This will make so many portions, normally I eat it 3 days in a row. Happy three days.

I still can not believe I brought Shakespeare, Justin Bieber and the phrase "flawless digestion" together in this post.

Bulgur with broad beans

Hello bulgur lovers (and soon to be bulgur lovers like my mother)!

To be completely honest here I just tried to copy a recipe from my aunt. She made this very delicious dish for Christmas with rice and broad beans. It was the first time I've eaten broad beans in my life. More than six months have passed since then, and I still can not forget this dish. I've tried to get over it with other dishes...lots of them. Nothing worked. Two results - a fat belly and a broken heart.

And the saddest thing is I couldn't even buy broad beans, because they were not in season. I've tried with dried and canned, but they tasted disgusting (to put it delicately).

This month my torture was over, because I finally found broad beans and was able to make a dish similar to the one my aunt made. Of course I substituted the rice with bulgur, are you kidding me? Not that I'm an enemy of rice, but bulgur is more nutritious and very easy to prepare.

INGREDIENTS

1 kg/ about 2 pounds fresh broad beans (large)
2 cups bulgur
1 bunch parsley
1 cup of spearmint
2 onions
2 tbsp dry basil (if you have fresh - even better, put as much as you like)
1 tsp paprika (ground red pepper)
salt
olive oil

DIRECTIONS

1. The first thing you need to do with the broad beans is free them out of their pods, boil them for 1 min and free each bean out of its coating.

Removing the beans from the pods

Free broad beans with coating

And after just 1,5h of pure fun BAAAM - all the broad beans are freed out of their pods and coats and are ready to get steamy.

Broad beans without coats

At some point I felt like I've been uncoating broad beans a lifetime. But if you listen to some nice music you might even not have the urge to hang yourself. I recommend that.

If you don't want to use all the broad beans right away, you can put them in a freezer bag and freeze them. They should be good for about 1 year, so you'll have some time to think about what you want to do with them.

2. Next - in a large non-stick pan, at medium high temperature, place the chopped onions, the broad beans, add some olive oil, paprika (ground red pepper) and the basil stir for 2 min, add some water (not too much - 1/3 cups) and cover for 3-4 min.

3. Add the 2 cups of bulgur and coat with water (about 1 cup, maybe you'll have to add some more) and cover the pan for about 7-8 min. Check every now and then, if there is enough water in the pan, and if bulgur and beans are ready.

4. In the end - turn off the heat, add chopped parsley and fresh spearmint, stir in and cover the pan for 2-3 min.

And then you're ready!!!

Now I don't remember anymore how many portions this made. But it was a lot, because I remember I ate it for 3 days, I even took it as a lunch at the office. And I have to say - it was very good, but after eating it for 3 days and peeling broad beans for 1,5 h I don't think I'll be making this dish another time this year.

Serve it with some salad - mine was tomatoes, arugula, hot green peppers and some olives.

Shrimps in tomato sauce? Yes, please!

Black tiger shrimps in tomato-coriander sauce

I start drooling just by looking at this picture and I have to concentrate to give you the recipe, but it's million degrees outside. Yesterday I was so desperate that I jumped into a very very dirty pond, swum for 3 min and felt a little like a sweet little piggy. Don't have pictures of that! But I must admit it was very refreshing. Might even do it again, but for now I just can't wait to go to a real beach next week and possibly catch some shrimps with my bare hands. Because then I could cook this dish again.

Is it a shrimp, is it a tiger, a black tiger? Oh it's a black tiger shrimp. Many black tiger shrimps on a plate in something red. Poor delicious creatures.

When I was a student (the first time) and had even less money than now I couldn't even afford to dream of a shrimp. Now look at me - living the dream and eating...like 10 black tiger shrimps at a portion. So what do we learn out of this - don't give up, dreams do come true!

INGREDIENTS

1 cup of cooked black tiger shrimps
2 tomatoes
1 big bunch of fresh coriander/cilantro
1/2 cup chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves
2 tbsp olive oil
tomato paste
dry chilli

DIRECTIONS

1. In a large non-stick pan add shrimps, olive oil and chopped tomatoes and cook at medium heat for 5-6 min.
2. If the sauce is too fluid add some tomato paste and cook until the sauce gets thicker.
3. Add pressed garlic cloves, dried chilli and chopped cilantro and parsley, salt to taste, cook for 2 min and turn off the heat.

And that's it. It's very possible that you would like to eat this dish every day. That's what happened to me. I ate it for one week without any regrets.

Pasta bolognese

Hello hello!

My mission of getting fit is staring today! Yay! And because I have a cold, let's celebrate this with a big tasty portion of pasta bolognese.

Getting fit during the next 4 weeks will be a piece of cake. In other words, because I'm the worst cake maker in the world, for me it will be difficult. And with this cold even more so.

I make pasta bolognese a little differently than anybody else. My bolognese-version is healthy and it's not that dense in calories. Means if I don't eat the whole thing by myself tonight, I might not turn into a fat cow at midnight. At least Cinderella turned into a pumpkin - a healthy fruit-vegetable, not ground beef. Or maybe she didn't. John Grisham didn't report on that in The King of Torts. YET.

But enough about me and Cindy. Let's see what the pasta is doing.

Me: "Looking good pasta! Is your name Google?"

Pasta confused: "No, why?"

Me: "Because you have everything I've been searching for."

And then the pasta is mine. Best pick up line. Ever. I feel like fat Joey from Friends, when he said to some chicken or cheese nugget: "How you doin' "? I loooove it! And this video is such a great quality.

Anyway, I used whole-wheat penne for this recipe.

To anybody who's not exactly fond of whole-wheat products (like me) - I didn't notice any difference between this penne and regular penne. You cook it about 5 min longer, but that's it. Taste is pretty much the same. It doesn't contain less calories, but it has considerably more fiber and minerals. So do something good for yourself and start substituting regular pasta with the whole-wheat version.

INGREDIENTS

For the pesto (that's right I made a pesto for bolognese pasta):

1 cup basil leaves
1 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup chopped spinach
1-2 garlic cloves
1/2 cup sunflower seeds
1 medium tomato - chopped
3 tbsp olive oil

....and the other ingredients are:

4 oz/ 200g whole-wheat penne
1/2 lb / 200g ground beef
3 medium tomatoes
1 carrot - chopped
some arugula to serve with
salt to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook pasta according to the label instructions.

Meanwhile chop carrots, tomatoes, pesto ingredients, process just the additional 3 medium tomatoes to a tomato sauce in your food processor and then start preparing the the pesto.

For the pesto: you simply put all the pesto ingredients in your food processor until you have a mixture that looks somewhat like this:

This pesto is not just very healthy, but it's also alkaline, so it somewhat neutralizes the acid our bodies form while metabolizing the pasta and ground beef. You will not need all the pesto for this pasta, maybe half of it. You can keep the rest in your fridge for at least 5 days (that's the longest I haven't used it after preparation)and use it in other dishes - like pizza, pasta, bread and so on.

2. Once you're ready with the pesto start with the ground beef. In a large non-stick pan put first the ground beef and add some water (not more than 1/3 cup), cover with the lid and let it steam for a few minutes. Once the meat is not pink/red anymore remove the lid and let the meat cook, until there is no more water in the pan and the meat gets brown-ish.

3. Stir in the fresh tomato sauce and 1/3 cup water and cover the pan again. Cook for about 5 min at medium heat.

4. Add 3-4 tbsp of the freshly prepared pesto, stir in, salt to taste. The sauce should not be too fluid, but thick. Turn off the heat, but leave the pan on the cooking plate.

5. Add the cooked penne, chopped carrot and stir together until all the penne is covered with the bolognese sauce. Cover the pan and leave for a little (about 2 min).

When you're ready the carrot should still be crunchy. Not only do I like the taste better like this, but vitamin losses (B, C) are also reduced. And because you consume the carrot with some fat sources (olive oil, sunflower seeds, beef) you absorb more beta carotene than if you eat a carrot alone.

And serve with some arugula. I know I add arugula to almost everything, but it's pretty great, so sue me for having good taste.

Makes 4 servings: about 360 kcal per serving with a lot of vitamin A, B, C, iron, potassium, zinc, magnesium. But like Notorious B.I.G. said in his song - More portions, more calories. Be aware of that, while enjoying this deliciousness.

Bulgur with ground beef

Guess what!!!

Time for another bulgur recipe!!! I have so many, but I promise this one will be the last one for this week.

Maybe.

With me you can never be sure. One day I say I'm stopping drinking coffee, five minutes later I'm holding a cup of cappuccino (and drink it of course, come on!).

That's just living on the edge!

Anyway. It just hit me it's the 20th of June. I wasn't even quite aware it was June. Why does time go by so fast? Now I only have like a month to get into some kind of shape, before going to the beach during my next vacation. I have to pretend I'm pregnant again. That's just cruel. I'm having a little panic attack right now.

Now straight to the recipe. Panic attacks lead nowhere.

This recipe is one of my all time favorites. My sister came up with it, and it's very healthy, extremely delicious and quite easy.

INGREDIENTS

250g ground beef
1 cup of dry bulgur
1 medium onion
1 garlic clove
1 medium carrot
1 small green pepper
10 leaves spearmint
1/2 cup chopped parsley

DIRECTIONS

1. Put the ground beef in a large pan and cover with the lid (at 2 highest temperature) for about 7-10 min. Don't add any water or oil. In the mean time chop all the vegetables.

2. Add the chopped onions and garlic and fry for a little bit.

3. Add the tomatoes, one cup of water, salt and the bulgur, stir everything together and cover the lid again. Stir every now and then (every 2 min). When the bulgur is ready and there is no water left in the pan - you're ready for the next step.

4. Turn off the heat and add the rest of the vegetables - carrots, peppers, spearmint and parsley and stir together. I also added a dried chilli, because I like spicy food.

Serve with green leafy vegetables like arugula, spinach and whatever you have in your house. I also served with some yoghurt with dill and garlic. Very delicious. Makes 2-3 portions depending how hungry you are. Altogether it's 941 kcal - so 313 per serving (if you serve 3).

Today I'm really boring so I'll stop talking. Enjoy this delicious meal. Maybe one day I'll make better pictures of it and I'll write about it again. It deserves more appreciation than this.

Bulgur with kidney beans and some veggetables

So people, the eggplant and bulgur saga continues. Now that it's out there, the fact that I substisute rice with bulgur, I'm gonna give you some recipes with my favourite grain. That being said, you can still pretend to be surprised when you see my next post. Spoiler Alert: it also contains....

........B....U....L....G....U....R.....!!!

And I am ....B....U....L....G....A....R (I)!

Man I love surprises. That's why I was totally ecstatic when I found 2 other eggplants that were about to die in my fridge today.

I don't know why but today I'm not really good with my jokes.

- When have you ever been? - you ask.

- Shut up! - I answer.

I so feel like John Grisham right now, writing these dynamic dialogues. It's like I'm there. In the scene! My heart is beating so fast and fats.

Speaking of Grisham, I've been trying to finish The King of Torts for 3 months now, and since one month I'm stuck on page 161. So 327 more to go...makes about another half a year. Hehe good times ahead. I've been sooooo busy.

But to the recipe, which btw John Grisham did not feature in any of his books. Which to me is 100% inapprehensible. Shame on you Mr. Grisham, writing about all those criminals and not about nutritious foods!

This meal on the other side is 100% vegan and 150% tasty. This is another recipe from my *use everything in my fridge* series.

INGREDIENTS

1 cup bulgur
1 can kidney beans, drained (have been there, not opened 1/4 year, i.e. 3 months)
2 of my beloved eggplants/aubergines
2 medium sized tomatoes
2 small green peppers
1 fresh onion
2 tbsp olive oil
1 cup parsley
1/2 cup coriander
1/3 cup dill

DIRECTIONS

1. Put the cup of dry bulgur in a pot, cover with hot, boiling water and cover for 10 min with the lid. After 10 min - TADAAA bulgur is ready.

2. In the mean time chop, crop, dice, cut all the vegetables.

3. Put some olive oil in the big pan, that you always need to use when making my recipes (because I only have the one). Add the chopped aubergines and steam (cover the pan) for 5-8 min at second highest temperature.

4. Add tomatoes and bulgur, salt to taste and stir. Cover for 3-5 min.

5. Add the peppers and the kidney beans.

6. Turn off the heat and add all of the other vegetables and stir.

You can serve this with some green leafy vegetables like raw spinach or any vegetable salad suits well actually. As seen in the picture above moi served it with some cucumbers.

The whole thing makes 3-4 servings, depending on how hungry you are. In my case - 4 servings, which means 350 kcal per serving. Packed with fiber, iron, magnesium, zinc, folate and vitamin C.

Enjoy everyone and good night!

Chicken breast with eggplant and other vegetables

What a creative post title ha? I'm so proud of myself, I'm giving myself a high five right now and am typing with my nose. I at times try to stop this creativity but it just spills out of me, I really can't help it.

Like for example yesterday, when I made this dish you see upstairs.

You are probably wondering what this is.

It's a salad! No it's a chicken!...It's an airplane! No it's superchicken with supereggpant!

Truth is, whatever it is, it is delicious. Maybe I'm not very objective, because I was the one who cooked it...And I must say I was starving yesterday after work, so I would've probably eaten a cockroach with sauerkraut, bananas, grapes and some gorgonzola and it would've still seem delicious to me at that point. But then again - anything with gorgonzola is a winner to me.

That's why I made the test - The Day after Today. Or as most people call it - Tomorrow. It's a pretty simple test. You just eat the leftovers from the day before, at a time when you're not starving out of your mind and decide whether you like the meal or not.

OK!!! I admit it, I just made up the test thing. I simply had the leftovers from yesterday and ate them. I didn't lie that they tasted good though.

How did I come up with the idea for this dish you ask yourself?

Simple. I bought the chicken breast (that I was craving the entire day) from my Turkish friend around the corner. All of the vegetables were already in my fridge, laying there for a while now, getting stinky and kinda soft.

And this is my problem with vegetables! Ring the alarm, we have a vegetable problem! I always buy a lot of it and think that because it's in my fridge, I would prepare something with it and wouldn't eat crap. WRONGGG! You can't imagine how many vegetables I have to throw away every week. Of course the ones that are any good I cook. And on top I spend my money on some fat- salt and -toxins loaded crap, I buy in the streets. So making this dish was my way of saving these delicious and antioxidant bursting vegetables.

Now to the recipe.

INGREDIENTS

2.5 cups (350g) chicken breast (chopped)
1 eggplant
2 small green peppers
2 medium tomatoes
1 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup coriander leaves
1 cup raw spinach
1 garlic clove
olive oil (1-2 tbsp)

DIRECTIONS

1. Chop the chicken breast and steam in a big pan (covered) for 10 min at the second highest temperature.
2. In the mean time chop, slice, dice all the vegetables.
3. Next up - when the chicken is steamed - add the olive oil, garlic (pressed), chopped eggplant, tomatoes and peppers. This is the before

... and this is the after picture. After 10 min steaming that is.

4. Turn off the heat and add all the green leafy vegetables at last. Leave for 1-2 min

5. Oh yeah I added some olives also. Why? Because I had olives and I love them. Keep it simple.

Makes 2 big portions, each 445 kcal, high in pretty much all the good stuff - protein, iron, potassium, zinc, vitamin C and phytochemicals among others.

I served this with some delicious white bread and I don't intend to eat whole grain bread ever again. It doesn't taste right.

Today with the leftovers I didn't have any bread and added a cup of bulgur and stewed again. Looked like this

and again was delicious.

Happy eating!

Looks Like Falafel

Hello hello everybody!

This here is a recipe for all the falafel lovers out there, but also for all non-falafel lovers. Like Britney said in a song - "There's only two types of people in the world, the ones who love falafel and the ones who doon't"...I'm pretty sure she sang that somewhere...Anyway if you're good at exclusions, you would notice, that it's a recipe for everybody.

3-4 years ago, I would have never thought, that I would ever enjoy eating something meatless as a main dish. Now I really enjoy vegan meals (as much as non-vegan meals). But still if someone offers me a beans stake, I would just roll my eyes, probably stab him with a fork in the hand that's holding the bean steak and run. Some things just were not meant to be vegan. A steak is one of them.

I had so many failures trying to make a really good falafel, but last time I tried it turned out great.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups of dried garbanzo beans (chickpea)
2 cups of chopped parsley
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
1-2 dried chilies
salt to taste
olive/sunflower oil (for frying)

DIRECTIONS

1. Soak the garbanzo beans (chickpea) overnight in water
2. Drain and rinse the soaked garbanzo beans (NO BOILING/COOKING)
3. Process garbanzo beans, parsley, chopped onion, garlic and dried chillies in your food processor/blender. The mixture should look something like this:

4. Form hazelnut-sized balls from this mixture. I don't remember how many were there at the end. BUT MANY. I think more than 20.

5. Put oil in the pan, heat it and add balls. Fry the balls until they turn golden brown (turn one time).

6. Take falafels out of the pan and drain on a paper towel.
7. EAT! Should still be green inside.
8. If you're patient and not crazy hungry (like I was) you could serve with carrot sticks, some green salad you like and hummus. If not you know what to do.

My score was 10 out of more than 20 in about 5 min, and I was not sitting, just walking around taking pics. Try to beat it and tell me about it.

Have a great falafel day!

Salmon and Crème Fraîche Pasta

I decided not to start with an ultra healthy recipe for now. Let's just take it slow and delicious. Step by step, we'll still have time to drink red beet juice, but life is too short to not try out this recipe right now.

I was drooling during the entire photo shoot, maybe you can see some of that on the picture. It was still delicious.

To make this not-so-weight-loss pasta (4 servings) you'll need:

2 salmon fillets
2 tomatoes
1 tbsp dry basil
3 tbsp crème fraîce
1 garlic clove
2 medium green onions
1/2 cup chopped parsley
salt to taste
200 g/7 oz fusilli pasta (I used mixed tomato and spinach pasta)

DIRECTIONS

1. Cook the pasta according to the directions on the package. In the meantime chop salmon and steam in a non-stick pan (cover pan with a lid)
2. Chop tomatoes and add them to the salmon. Stir and cook for 2-3 min (again covered with the lid)
3. Add basil, crème fraîce, chopped garlic, chopped green onions, salt
4. Drain pasta, add to other ingredients and stir. Remove from the heat.
5. Add parsley and it's all ready

To make it even better serve with a handful of rocket.

I don't know how many calories one serving has, but I don't even care. Sometimes you just gotta eat what you want to eat. I recommend keeping it up to one serving though. You can have one for lunch and dinner. And if you're anything like me, sometimes even for breakfast.

Wish you a very nice day!

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