Greek Gyros-spiced lamb with pumpkin rice.

Hello all.

It's time for something more traditional.

Greek gyros is meat that has spices infused to it. Usually it's set up on a rotating vertical spit and adjusting the heat from the broiler and the amount of fat in the meat is used to control how juicy the gyro is. It is usually sliced off and placed in pita with tzatziki and salad. It's similar to shawarma and donairs.

In this case, we do not have a rotating spit, so we made gyro cakes out of lamb meat. Foregoing with the tradition though, we had it with some pumpkin rice. Because hey, pumpkins are plentiful here so why not take advantage of their benefits?

And so, here is the recipe!

Ingredients (enough for 2 people, plus seconds)

• 1 kilo lamb minced meat
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp cinammon
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp coriander powder
• 2 tsp parsley powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp oregano

Looks simple, right? The only thing you need to do is to mix the lamb minced meat (or any meat of your choice) with the spices above. And if you think there's another spice that would go, don't be afraid to add it!

Form it into lamb cakes and grill it or fry it. We put it in a skillet on very low fire and let it cook.
That was actually the most time consuming part. The actual cooking time was the worst, because you can smell the delicious gyro cooking but you know it's not done yet.

Pumpkin rice

• 2 cups chopped pumpkin (we used butternut squash)
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 tbsp soy sauce 
• 1 cup chopped asparagus
• 1 cup red bell pepper - chopped
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1tsp cinammon
• 1tsp grated fresh ginger
• 1 cup rice (your choice - we used basmatti)
• 1/2 water

We put all the ingredients in the slow cooker from the morning and left it to cook 4-5 hours until we ate.
It was really good!!

Give it a try guys!

I'll also post a recipe on how to make some good tzatziki and not that sour cream crap you find in stores.

Let me know what you think :)

Choco-Rice Pudding

Hello everyone!

Sorry about my not updating lately. I had final exams and then I started a new job; needless to say I did not have that much time in my hands to sit down and write up recipes.

But, the Christmas break has begun and I have some delicious recipes to share with you.

Here is some rice pudding made for desert. The difference from the conventional rice pudding is that this isn't made with any milk.

Instead, it's made with almond milk and coconut milk. The choice is up to you, both almond and coconut milk is really good.

Also, you can add some raw brown sugar and cocoa powder in it, making it even better!

The rice used is glutinous rice (sticky rice), which makes it more sticky and much MUCH better for making any sort of rice pudding.

Start by cooking the rice in some water, half the dosage you would usually put and when it almost absorbs all of it, add the coconut or almond milk in it.

You can add the rest of the dosage you would add as water, but in reality you can keep adding as much as you want because the rice will keep on absorbing it, be the judge, it depends how firm you want your pudding to be.

 Keep on a medium fire and occasionally stir so as to prevent the rice from sticking to the pot. Add your sugar (2 tablespoons) and cocoa powder. Also, add a teaspoon or so of cinnamon, as well as some raising and dried cranberries.

And thats all folks. It's simple, lactose-free and a delicious desert for those who want a 'healthier' desert.

More recipes coming soon!

Let me know what you think and feel free to give this a try!

Haddock delight.

 This is really simple. Using the leftovers from yesterday's pork dish (aka wine sauce and potatoes and whatever else you may have), we added 4 small haddock fillets in our crock-pot along with some vegetables and tandoori powder. Let it cook for 4-6 hours, turn it on high until it warms up and then back to low.

For the rice, we cooked it (1.5 cups) separately while we lightly fried one red pepper, one yellow pepper and about 10 thin asparagus chopped up.

After frying the vegetables for a minute or two, we mixed 2 tablespoons of soysauce and 1 tablespoon unrefined, raw brown sugar and stirred it together. Add a few tablespoons of the rice into the soy sauce mixture and continue stir-frying until it gets covered well.

Add that soy sauce/rice mixture into the rest of the rice and mix.

That's it, you're done! Take a look at more photos. I hope you enjoyed this, give it a try and let me know what you think :)

Pumpkin Suprise!!

 
Aren't pumpkins great?
There are so many varieties of them and all of them are delicious.
In this case we used a kambocha squash. When we bought it we left it sitting outside next to other pumpkins in order to mature a little and get sweeter.

There are so many ways to cook pumpkins and since this squash was in such a nice shape, we decided to cut the top open and stuff it with goodies.

Remember the sneak peak last night? Pumpkin surprise

Well, the result is here:

It was sooo good!

How did  I do it you say?

Read on!

Ingredients - can serve up to 5 people with 1 medium squash

• 1 Kambocha squash
• rice of your choice - 2 cups
• quinoa - half a cup
• asparagus chopped up - your choice how many
• 1 onion
• 1 orange's zest
• apple-cranberry sauce -(homemade) - can use apple sauce instead or substitute of your choice
• margarine
• cinammon
• water
• salt to taste

 Clean the flesh from the cut pumkin and set it around your main dish.

Instructions
Start with cutting the pumpkin top open and cleaning the seeds inside. You can save the seeds and dry roast them for a snack later or if you so wish. You can also save them and use them to plant some pumpkins in your yard!
Pre-heat the oven at 400 degrees Farenheit (200 degrees Celcius).
Prepare you cookware, use margarine so it doesnt stick and come apart. I also put margarine on the pumkin slices and the main dish itself so sweeten it up.
Start cooking your rice, leave it on for 10 minutes so that it will be half cooked before adding it to the pumpking.
Add asparagus, quinoa and the rice as a filling in the pumpkin. Add the cinammon in and around the pumpkin as you can see above.
Add the apple-cranberry sauce on top of it all, as well as the onion (i spread it around the pumpkin after i took the photo you can see above) and orange zest.

Pour some water in the dish so that it can be used to cook the rice and pumpkin.

Put it in the oven for 45 minutes until the color is a nice golden one. Done!

Optional:
Put it in the over and after about 20 minutes take it out, mix the stuffing together some more (making sure the apple sauce is thouroughly mixed in), then take the softened up pumkin lying around and make a 'cover' for our squash. It will create a semi-crispy outside that is nice and leave the inside soft and moist. Put it back in for another 25 minutes until cooked.

Bonus!!

 Lactose-free/ Gluten-free rice pudding!!

Ingredients

• rice of your choice (though preferably sticky rice)
• Coconut milk
• cinammon for taste
• rosewater
• some sugar
• rice flour for thickening up

Make it as you would normal rice pudding, adding coconut milk instead of milk when cooking the rice. Add cinammon and instead of egg, add the rice flour to thicken it up and at the end when it's off the heat, add the rosewater (so it doesn't evaporate).

This turned out so good, you can eat it while it's hot, or cool it in the fridge, it's really up to you!!

Hope you enjoy it!

Sneak Peak: Pumpkin Surprise!!

The recipe is up!! Take a look here: Pumpkin surprise with bonus at the end!


Here's a little peak at the recipe coming up tomorrow.

It's a Pumpkin Surprise!  
 
A preview of the ingredients are cinammon, homemade apple-cranberry sauce and rice.

It's going to be a nice one people :) Hold on until tomorrow.

Waste not!
Try to utilize everything you can, don't just throw it in the trash. That's just a huge waste.
Here we saved the pumpkin seeds and we are going to dry them out and possibly roast them.
They are great as a snack.

Pumpkin seeds are an excellent source of zinc ( which can help in acne), vitamin E, manganese and countless others which help in sustaining a healthy body.
For more information on what they contain i suggest you look on this nutrition chart.