Healthy breakfasts: oat pancakes with cinnamon apples and vanilla ice-cream

The more people I observe the more I understand why they rather skip breakfast than cook something.. Some of them decide that eating in the morning is not important and coffee prevents hunger. The other category grabs some croissant from the bakery on his way in a hurry. And I still don't get: Why?! Morning makes the whole day work, so I truly believe that if your morning starts good, the day will be even better. Wanna know the strongest reasons to eat in the morning? Check here.

Ingredients:

1 banana

1 egg

1/3 cup oat flakes

1 big apple

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp butter

vanilla ice cream (*optional)

Ground oat flakes into flour. Keep in mind that when choosing from a wide range of the oat flakes take whole wheat ones, as they contain more fiber and nutritional benefits for you body. It takes a little bit longer to cook them, but will definitely bring only the best to your body.

In a blender, combine the peeled banana, egg, oats.

Allow to blend until the mixture is as smooth as you want it and blended well.  Allow the batter to stand for 10-20 minutes until thickened slightly.

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat.

Fry spoonfuls of the batter until golden brown on both sides.

Melt butter on the same pan. Wash and peel an apple. Cut into 10-12 pieces, fry from both sides with cinnamon.

Serve the pancakes with vanilla ice cream and enjoy the beautiful day.

Asparagus: basic recipe

Spring is Asparagus season. That is a tradition in Germany.
April-May is a period of the year, when in every restaurant of Hamburg you will definitely find dishes with asparagus. Supermarkets offer different types of this beautiful spring vegetable: green, white, violet. Imported or German one :) Therefore asparagus is very popular in Germany, as it is grown here. Around Hamburg it is easy to find little farms with family business - Cultivating of asparagus. And real gourmets know that vegetables from region have the highest nutritional value.
So let us also start our own asparagus season with a simple, yet very tasty basic recipe.

Ingredients (2 portions):

2 eggs
8 cherry tomatoes
6 potatoes
300 g asparagus

For Hollandaise sauce:

3 egg yolks
1 tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
10 tbsp butter (unsalted)

First thing we have to start with when cooking asparagus is peeling. Lower part of this cute stick is a bit woody and therefore we peel it a bit and cut about 1-2 cm of the bottom end. Peel potatoes as well. *No special tricks here :)
Boil a big (preferably high) pot with salty water and cook asparagus for about 2-3  minutes. Meanwhile prepare ice cold water. Directly from boiling water put asparagus into cold water. This little trick will ensure crunchy fresh taste. In the same water boil potatoes until you can easily stick a fork inside. Fry eggs on medium-low heat.

Last, but not least - the sauce.
Sauce Hollandaise during this time of the season you can, of course, find in every shop here. But if you want your food to be home-made and cooked with love here is one easy recipe of this magic suitable for asparagus sauce.

Melt butter. Blend egg yolks with salt and lemon juice using low speed in your blender. The yolks have to lighten in color before you add melted butter and blend again at low speed until the sauce is well mixed.

Serve asparagus with tomatoes and fried egg, sauce and potatoes.

And enjoy the season.

Healthy breakfasts: Polenta with mushrooms and pancetta

Healthy breakfast is not only boring oatmeal. Indeed, even oatmeal can be absolutely fantastic, if cooked as in one of my previous posts here. Today I am happy to present you very healthy and sometimes forgotten porridge made from cornflour. Polenta as you may often see in cookbooks and read on the shelves of the supermarkets. Italian variation with crispy pancetta chips and mushroom mixture is full of flavors and magic aroma that will spread around the house on one of those weekend mornings... That will make even your neighbors curious ;)

Ingredients:
*For 2 portions:

4 Pancetta slices
1/2 cup dried mushroom mix (*or 300 g of mushroom mix)
 1 little onion
25 g Parmesan (or other sort of Italian hard cheese)
1 panicle of cherry tomatoes
2 tbsp olive oil
150 ml milk
150 ml water
80 g cornflour (polenta)

30 g butter

salt, pepper, nutmeg
kress grass

Boil some water and soak mushroom mix if dried for about 10-15 minutes. Drain well. In case you have fresh mushrooms wash and peel them, cut into halves or 4 pieces. Cut the onion in middle sized pieces. Grate the cheese.

In a saucepan boil 150 ml water and 150 ml milk, add nutmeg and salt. Pour polenta and stirring all the time cook at middle heat for another 10-15 minutes. On the frying pan fry pancetta slices until crispy texture. Let them drain on the paper towel.

Heat the frying pan with some olive oil. Fry onion and mushrooms 5 minutes. Spice the mixture with salt and pepper, add 15g of butter and set aside. 2/3 of Parmesan and rest of butter add into polenta. Pour the porridge on the wooden tray, cover partly with mushroom mixture and pancetta chips. Use kress grass to enrich the vitamin intake. Serve with cherry tomatoes and rest of Parmesan.

Apple pie with crispy filo pastry

Home made pies - what can be better?! It reminds me of those weekends in my childhood, when mother baked and the charming smell made me wake up... It is an opportunity to spread pleasant flavor around and enjoy the moment we are in.

Of course, I usually advise to prepare everything on your own. Then you know what you combine in the recipe and you are sure that artificial flavors and ingredients are avoided. But when you are in a rush and have only twenty minutes, you can always choose this magic and easy recipe with Filo pastry.

Filo (from Greek "leaf") is typical type of dough usually used to make baklava. This is product number 1 (after dried dates, of course), that I usually buy in Turkish shops here:) To tell the truth it can be used for sweet pastry, as well as for salty pies or little snacks. 

Ingredients:

filo pastry - about 10 sheets
2 big apples
3 tbsp raisins
Christmas spices (or mix of ground cinnamon, anis, cloves etc.)
2 tbsp melted butter
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tbsp almond leaves

When working with filo, make sure the surface is clean and dry. The pastry should be kept in the fridge in vacuum package, and if taken out  - should be covered by wet towel and not kept reachable to fresh air. It gets dry very fast and might crack before you prepare the pie :) But no stress. It is not a big deal. You will definitely handle it.

Before putting everything together wash the apples and cut them thin. Pour some lemon juice that will save them from getting darker. Soak raisins in hot water for 15 minutes and drain them well. Take about 6 sheets of dough and put them on the baking paper. Make first layer from apples in the center. Put the raisins and spices on the apples. Make one more layer from apples and spice them.

Melt some butter and oil the ends of the filo sheets and using your hands form some folds around the apple layers as shown below.

The rest of the sheets take together and butter the upper sheet and only ends of the other sheets as possible. Form the top of the pie and put it on the apples. Put almond leaves all over the pie for extra nutty note.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 180C.

Here you go. Perfect, easy and tasty pie! And the biggest benefit - quickly:)

Super easy mini cheesecakes

It happens from time to time with all of us: a strong wish to eat something sweet and not a single candy nearby... I have always a solution for that. Either a fantastic chocolate souffle or this time - tiny mini tasty cheesecakes. Little portion of heaven taste. Takes minimum of your time and brings maximum of protein and benefits.

Ingredients:

500 g low fat cottage cheese

2 tbsp raisins

1 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs

2 ripe bananas

vanilla extract or 1 tbsp of vanilla sugar (if you like it sweeter;)

The recipe takes 2 easy steps:
Mix ----> Bake

Just preheat your oven  to 180°C. Mix the cheese, mashed bananas, cinnamon, vanilla sugar or extract. Beat in 2 eggs, raisins (previously soaked for 15 minutes in hot water and well drained) and mix thoroughly. Pour into muffin forms. I use silicone and find them especially perfect for this recipe as there is no need to fat them before and the little cakes are easily taken out of the forms.

Last step - bake for 10 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 150 °C and bake another 25 minutes.
Let the cakes cool down and then only take them out from the forms. Otherwise you will probably ruin the whole form of the cakes. But the taste does not disappear... if you are in a rush for something sweet :)