• 1 tbs butter
• 3 large ripe plums
• 2-3 tbs brown sugar
• ½ cup rum
• 1 cinnamon stick

Slice the plums into half inch discs. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the brown sugar and plums. Coat the plums with the butter and brown sugar mixture and let simmer on low heat until plum skin isn’t firm any more. Add the rum and drop a match stick into it. Let the fire burn out by itself and add the cinnamon stick. Let simmer in the remnants for about 5-10 minutes or until plums are soft.

Pro tip: Serve with vanilla ice cream, I didn’t have any – but any compote is good on ice cream ;)

Kicking off this theme weekend with plantains :)

For this simple recipe you’ll need:

• 1 plantain
• 1½ cup water
• 1 tbs salt
• 3 cloves of garlic
• vegetable oil

Peel and cut up the plantain into about half inch thick pieces. Fill up a frying pan with vegetable oil, it should cover up about half the slice of plantain, so this will vary depending on the size of your frying pan. I used a small 8 inch skillet and used about half a cup or so. Fry the plantains for about 2 minutes on each side on medium heat.

In a separate bowl: mix water, garlic and salt.

Take out the plantains from the frying pan and let them soak in the salty garlic water for about a minute or so. Heat up the oil again and refry them for  2-4 minutes (until tender).

WARNING: Use a splash screen when refrying the water soaked plantains in the oil. If you don’t have one, pour out the oil and refry them as if you were frying eggs. Good luck :)

I mixed together some ingredients and added ginger to the mix and let me tell you, it was so much better than I thought it would be – definitely Kingly Foods worthy!

My mix:

• 1 head of red cabbage
• 1 inch cube of fresh ginger
• ½ cup red wine
• salt & pepper to taste
• dash of Tabasco

Cut up the red cabbage into strips, about 2 inches long. Add some olive oil to a frying pan and let it heat up. Pour in the cabbage and pour over the wine. Put the ginger in a garlic press (you will be surprised with what you can do with these!) and press over the cabbage. Add salt and pepper and let simmer until the wine is all absorbed/steamed away. Stir occasionally. Finally add the Tabasco and serve :)

What we need:

• 1 can of coconut milk
• 1 can of water
• 1 can of jasmine rice
• 2,5 tbs unsweetened shredded coconut
• a pinch of salt

As you see I use the measurement “can” in this recipe. As simple as it sounds you just use the same can that the coconut milk came in. As a rule rice is cooked two parts liquid and one part rice. So it works out great.

In a pot pour in about a teaspoon of vegetable oil and grease up the bottom and sides. It just has to be a very thin layer. This will help the rice not stick. Pour in the coconut milk, water, rice, shredded coconut and salt and let boil up. Stir every now and then. When the mixture has come to a boil lower the heat to the almost lowest possible and let steam covered with a tight fitting lid for about 20 minutes. Check in on the rice around 15 minutes into steaming and see how much liquid is left, if already has been all absorbed then you can turn it off and let steam for another few minutes without heat.

The rice is ready to serve! It is rather sweet and my suggestion is to serve it with something spicy and slightly fruity. Mangoes and shrimp in Thai chilli sauce maybe?

Served with home made tomato based curry
chilli sauce. Shrimp and broccoli.

For the salad you will need:

• 1 red bell pepper
• about 1/3 cup kalamata olives (10-15 olives)
• about 1/3 cup sun dried tomatoes
• 3 garlic cloves

Pit the kalamata olives and cut them in half. To pit them I have two ways to go:

1. Cut of the top of the olive and squeeze out the pit.
2. Smash it with the back side of a knife (or any other big flat tool you have) then squeeze the pit out.

Cut up the sun-dried tomatoes into little squares.

In a small frying pan, melt some butter (or oil) and mince in one of the garlic cloves. Cut up the bell pepper into long inch thick strips and fry on high heat until slightly scorched.

Microwave the other two garlic cloves for about 15-20 seconds, this will make them soft and buttery and mild. Cut them up and mix all the ingredients together.

this crop has become highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12%–18%), making it a healthy choice for vegetarians and vegans. Unlike wheat or rice (which are low in lysine), quinoa contains a balanced set of essential amino acids for humans, making it an unusually complete protein source. It is a good source of dietary fiber and phosphorus and is high in magnesiumiron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is being considered a possible crop in NASA’s Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long-duration manned space flights

Source: Wikipedia

So I went out to buy a tiny bit to try it out. It’s as easy as pasta but is prepared more like rice, but it comes without the worry of accidentally burning it (unless you really forget about it!!)

Here’s the whole meal:

• 1 cup of qunioa
• 2 zucchinis
• 2 cloves of garlic

Prepare a pot with about two cups of water and bring it to a boil, add the quinoa and let simmer for about 10-15 minutes. The quinoa is cooked through when clear and kind of see-through. While boiling, cut up the zucchinis lengthwise and put them on an oiled aluminium wrap/baking sheet. Slice the garlic cloves and put a couple or three on each zucchini slice. Salt and pepper and broil for about 6-8 minutes.

What we’ll need:

• about 1 lbs green asparagus
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 cup milk
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tbs butter
• 1 tbs corn starch

Rinse the asparagus and chop off the tips, save them for garnish. Chop up the onion roughly and then put it in a big pot together with the asparagus spears. Pour over about half a cup of the broth and let simmer/steam with lid on until all softened, about 10 minutes. Then pour the vegetable mix into a blender and mix into a purée.

In a big pot (use the one you simmered the asparagus and onions in) pour in the other cup and a half of broth, a table spoon of butter and a table spoon of corn starch. Stir until thickened and then add the vegetable purée, milk, salt and pepper.

Pour into small bowls and sprinkle the cut of spear tips onto the middle of the bowl for garnish.

The recipes for the basic meringues and the espresso zabaglione are the same, so I will only tell you what you need extra.

For the meringues you will need about 1.5oz of dark chocolate (around 54%). Melt the chocolate in a double boiler and let cool down, but not stiffen. Just so it doesn’t burn your fingers, stir it down carefully in the meringue batter. Make small cookie shapes and bake at 300F for about 10-15 minutes.If you did it right they will rise a tiny bit and be fluffy on the inside. If you did it wrong, like I did, they will be flat, crunchy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Still good though :)

And for the zabaglione we are trading the Grand Marnier for 1 cup hot espresso. So whisk up the egg yolks and sugar in a double boiler and when thickened and ready just add the hot espresso slowly and whisk it to a smooth liquid and serve in espresso cups.

Delicious!

It requires a bit of work but all in all this shouldn’t take more than 30 minutes.

Here’s what we need:

• 4-5 apples
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup gluten free flour (you can use regular flour too, same amount!)
• 2 oz of butter

Chop up the apples and put them in a greased up pan. Peeled apples are preferable. Mix the flour and the sugar together and pour the mix evenly over the apples. Cut up the butter in really thin leaves and cover the whole pan with almost no space in between the butter leaves. You can mix the butter into the sugar/flour mix before you pour it over the apples, but it’s not fun trying to mix 2 oz of butter into a cup mixture.

Put into the oven at 375F for about 25 minutes, until the top of the pie is golden brown and the butter and sugars has mixed together so there is no more floury parts. If after 25 minutes there still is, just add a tiny bit of butter on top of the floury areas.

When baked it will look crumbly and be a bit crunchy, sweet and fruity. Serve with vanilla custard. I used Marsan-sauce, a Swedish style vanilla custard that you can find at IKEA. Hey, you can even serve it with Zabaglione, it’s a custard too!

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

So it’s a hot dessert so it should be served immediately after prepared.

What we’ll need:

• 2 egg yolks
• 1 tbs sugar
• ½ tbs Grand Marnier

In a double boiler whisk together yolks and sugar until thickened like custard. Be careful about the boiling water touching the bowl you’re using as a double boiler, we don’t want the eggs to scramble! Mix in the Grand Marnier and serve in espresso cups.