Fall Stew

Autum is the right time for warm and hearty foods. Gardens and fields are full of bursting ripe goodies that are crying to get eaten, so grab a pot, toss in the nicest looking, smelling and tasting vegetables and get the pot bubbling!

Sweet Fall Stew

Ingredients:

Use quantities to suit your taste.

• onions
• a clove of garlic
• potatoes
• carrots
• pumpkin
• apples
• pepper
• instant stock (Once I said that using instant stock is one of the worst kitchen fails, but since I live in a dorm I have found the little cubes rather handy)
• oil
• sour cream

Method:

Chop garlic and onions finely (a little trick for onion chopping- cut off the top part of an onion but leave the bottom where roots come out intact, peel off the skin, cut in half lenghtways. Sit them flat side down on a chopping board and make cuts starting from the top end and going nearly to the bottom, but not quite to the end so that the onion resambles a comb and holds shape, than chop the comb crossways) Heat some oil in a saucepan and brown onions and garlic well. Add scrubbet and diced carrots (at this stage you can brown them as well if you have time, but this step can be omitted), peeled and diced potatoes, peeled, deseeded and diced pumpkin and apple pieces. Add some water, pepper and instant stock, simmer slowly until everything is tender or mushy, stir through some sour cream and serve!

You can add different vegetables, herbs and spices, if you have them on hand and omit instant stock bor replace it with real stock, feel free to improvise. Remembet, this is just another example of dorm cooking, so it's less fancy than my usual style, but still tastes great!

A Little Bit of Greece

I know it's a little bit too late for a spinach recipe, as the season is over, but you still might get some, and even rather old and tough leaves will do for this recipe. Spinach is rich in iron, and iron is essential for producing hemoglobin (hemoglobin is that stuff that makes your blood red and more importantly transports oxigen through your body)
Spinach and feta pies are traditional for greek folk, I have never tried an authentic one, so mine are e far cry from the original greek recipe, but my family loves it.

Spinach and Feta Pie

Ingredients:

• 1,5 cups of flour
• 100 grams of butter
• 1 teaspoon of baking powder
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• a few tablespoons of milk
• 300-400 grams of spinach
• a block (300-400 grams) of feta cheese
• 2 eggs
• a handful of cashews
• pepper

Method:

Grate cold butter with a coarse grater, sift together salt, baking powder and flour, rub it together with butter to form crumbs. Gradually add milk until stiff dough forms. Roll it out and use a bit more than half to line a loose-bottom round baking tin.

Put spinach in a microwave proof container, add a spoonful of water and microwave on high for a minute or so. Let the spinach cool down for a couple of minutes, than squeeze out the liquid and chop it up. Chop the cashews in smaller pieces as well and brown them in a dry pan if you wish.

In a bowl mix eggs, feta, pepper, spinach and cashews (feta is salty, so you won't need any salt). Fill the dough shell with filling, cover it with the rest of the dough, pierce the top in a few places and bake in 180 degrees for an hour.

Serve warm or cold or pack in a lunchbox :)

Uni meals: rice, veges, saveloys

So, I have started that delightful part of my life- living in a university dorm. And it means cooking myself or eating crap or starving. Obviously I choose the first option!

Dorm cooking has certain qualities and you must mind a few things.
Cooking for one is a hassle, so one must cooperate. [check, my groupmate Egija is happy to cook together]
You won't have a whole lot of fancy equipment. [I have one non stick pot, two plates, a large mug that suits as a bowl as well, a good knife, fork, spoon, wooden stirrer+ Egija has got a similar pot, mug, bowl, knife, fork, spoon at least for now, we are going to get some more pots and pans, chopping boards, but not much more]
You are on a short budget [let's not talk about money, but you can imagine, can't you]
You do not want to shop every day, the time can be used for sleeping or studies and shops are full of temptations [see the statement above]

I and Egija decided to cook togeather on Thursday. At that stage she had no money but some rice, 3 saveloys, a little bit of sour cream, some gerkhin and mustard sauce in the bottom of the jar and instant stock. I had nothing, so I bought a bottle of ''extra virgin'' rapeseed oil (one letter and one step down from my favourite grapeseed oil, but 3 times cheaper and still tastes ok) salt, mixed pepper, some carrots, a garlic, parsley root, 2 small red capsicums, two onions (one smallish and one large) and half a loaf of rye bread and a bag of dried dates for breakfasts and suppers. That's what we made for two lunches!

Orange Vegetable Rice

Ingredients:

• a bag of bagged rice
• half of the parsley root and some leaves
• a smallish onion
• one clove of garlic
• a carrot
• a red capsicum
• 2 tbsp of sour cream
• 1 cube of instant stock
• oil
• pepper
• 2 saveloys

Cook the rice in unsalted water. In another pot brown finely chopped onion, parsley root and garlic in oil, add diced carrots and capsicums, add some spoonfulls of water and cook until carrots are semi-tender. Add the instant stock, season with pepper and add the cooked rice. Put saveloys in the same pot cook until carrots are done, add sour cream and chopped parsley leaves. Serve with love!

Sauteed Onions and Saveloys with Orange Salad and Rice

Ingredients:

• A large onion
• 1 saveloy
• 2 carrots
• a capsicum
• a clove of garlic
• 1 bag of rice
• oil
• pepper
• instant stock
• salt
• gerkhin and mustard sauce

Slice onions in rings and saveloys in fine slices, brown them in oil and season with salt and pepper. Cook rice in water with instant stock. Dice carrots and capsicums, chop garlic finely, mix them together and add oil, salt and pepper. Serve onions and saveloy over rice with salad and gerkhin mustard sauce on the side!