Nachos

 

   Nachos is one of my favorite summery dishes to have from back in the days of Off the Wall, the restaurant my husband had. I love how easy it is to make, how tasty and crunchy it is and you'll love it just as much cos it's a summery MUST! So, let me teach you how to make your own Nachos to share with your friends over a party or have it for lunch or dinner yourselves :) No matter the occasion, nachos will surely be a crowd pleaser! :D

Ingredients for 1 tray (aprox. 4 people):

-4 wraps

-1 big or 2 small tomatoes

-1 stem of green onion

-corn

-beans

-olives

-2 chicken thighs

-tex Mex seasoning / chicken seasoning / grill mix

-a big roll of cascaval afumat (~250g), grated

-sour cream

-guacamole (freshly made)

Steps:

1. Cut the wraps into stripes then cut them again into triangles and fry them. Put salt on them when they come out of the pan.

2. Put the seasoning on the chicken, then pan fry it.

3. Put the nachos, the chicken and the cheese in the oven for about 5 min until the cheese melts

4. Have the veggies precut (diced) so that when you take the nachos out of the oven, you can put the rest of the veggies on top right away so that they stick with the cheese before it hardens. 

5. Dip the nachos in sour cream and / or guacamole when you eat it.  That's it! Bon appetit! :D

Umami Chicken Wrap

   We discovered this chicken wrap by accident when one evening we wanted to eat a chicken wrap (we love house-made wraps here) and we played with the ingredients we had in the fridge. What makes it umami though is the herb mayo we used and the fresh telemea :D  Do you wanna lick your fingers? 

FYI: The measurements in this dish are very subjective. Here's the recipe:

Ingredients for 3 people:

- Kania Remoulade Mayo with Herbs from Lidl

- About 500 g boneless chicken thighs 

- ”Chicken Seasoning” and ”Spicy Chicken Wings Seasoning” from Kamis (the ratio between the two  depends on how spicy you want the chicken)

- 1 medium red pepper

- 2 cucumbers

- 2 tomatoes

- 1 green onion

- 200g of ”Telemea de vacă” from Bonas (Feta cheese for people from outside Romania)

- 6 Mediteranean Herb Mission wraps

Steps:

1. Cut the chicken into strips. Season it with the seasoning mix.

2. Cook the chicken with some oil in a frying pan until it's done.

3. Cut the red pepper into strips, peel the cucumber and cut it into strips.

4. Dice the tomatoes.

5. Chop up the green onion.

6. Grate the cheese or crumble it by hand.

7. Warm up the wrap in a pan.

8. Spread some herb mayo on the wrap and then add the desired amount of each of the ingredients in the wrap. Roll it up and ... bon apetit! :D

Umami Halloumi Salad

   Guys, you REALLY have to try this salad! It's sooooooo delicious that I barely just finished eating it and I knew I needed to share the recipe with you as soon as possible :)

   We found this absolutely amazing, mouth-watering salad in a Greek restaurant (makes sense, doesn't it?) in... Munich! Yep, Munich! Because why would you only try sausages and sauerkraut while in Germany? When I saw it on the menu and I noticed it contained halloumi cheese I knew that was my salad! I can't even find the right words to explain how it tasted... every bite was heavenly! 

   What is this halloumi cheese, you ask? Just the most umami and amazing cheese in the world (and that comes from an avid cheese lover!)! Wikipedia says: "Halloumi /həˈluːmi/ is a Cypriot semi-hard, unripened brined cheese made from a mixture of goat's and sheep's milk, and sometimes also cow's milk. It has a high melting point and so can easily be fried or grilled." I found out about it in Greek Week at Lidl (of course!) and I fell in love with it ever since! I even have a picture of it on the fridge :))) I know, wacko but so not sorry! :D

   Back to present times, I really wanted to reproduce the salad I tried in Munich back at home and today was the day! (I realized Metro has the halloumi cheese full time so I didn't have to wait for another Greek Week at Lidl.) It's so easy to make and sooo tasty! Mine turned out just as amazing as the one I ate at that Greek restaurant in Munich so why not try making it yourself? Ready to explode with pleasure? :D

Ingredients for 3 servings:
- 2 medium tomatoes, roughly sliced
- 2 medium cucumbers, roughly sliced
- 1/4 red pepper, sliced
- 1 small red onion, julienned
- around 10 seedless olives, cut in half
- 250g chicken thighs (or chicken breast)
- 400g halloumi cheese (you can do 300g too)
- salt, pepper, lemon pepper, chili flakes, to taste
- a bit of oil

Optional: garlic bread on the side and balsamic vinegar on top ;)

Steps:

1. Cut all the veggies very roughly (don't worry about an exact dimension, you want to feel that tomato when you taste it with the halloumi cheese). Add them all to a bowl, mix then add a bit of salt, pepper and oil to finish the veggie salad.

2. Cut your chicken into strips, add lemon pepper and grill until fully cooked.

3. Cut the halloumi cheese in half on its length (otherwise it's too thick to grill). Then grill it until it becomes brown on both sides. Take aside and cut into strips.

4. Plate your salad: veggie salad at the bottom, chicken strips and then halloumi cheese on top. Bon appetit!

P.S. Original salad from Munich:

Brazilian Chicken Stir Fry

   We found this recipe on a website that was recommended to us (www.tablespoon.com) for its amazing recipes and we curiously decided to try it out especially because of its wild combinations that we thought would never work in 1000 years :))) Like who in their right mind would mix soy sauce, coconut milk and tomato paste and expect that to taste good?! And then try adding some pineapple and some chicken to the mix! Crazy, right? Crazy delicious, I'll tell you what! You GOTTA try this Brazilian recipe! Oli modified it a bit, so here's what we used in the end:

Ingredients (for about 2 servings):
- 1 tsp cumin and 1 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 1/3 cup soy sauce
- 1/4 cup coconut milk
- 1 Tbsp tomato paste
- 4 Tbsp sesame oil
- 250g chicken thighs or breast, diced
- 2 medium bell peppers, sliced
- 1 hot pepper, diced, seeds removed
- 1 cup pineapple, diced
- 1 Tbsp fresh ginger
- 2 cloves garlic, grated or minced
- 1 cup black beans
- 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
- about 130g egg noodles

*tsp = teaspoon, Tbsp = tablespoon

Steps:

1. Mix together the cumin, pepper and chili powder. Separately, mix together the soy sauce, coconut milk and tomato paste. Yes, it DOES work!

2. Toss the chicken with a drizzle of soy sauce (kind of like a quick marinade) and then leave it in a bowl.

3. Heat a wok with 2 Tbsp of sesame oil. When it's hot, throw the chicken in it, then remove it when it's cooked. 

4. Add another Tbsp of sesame oil to the wok, then add the bell peppers and the hot pepper. Stir fry for about 3-4 minutes, then add the pineapple, ginger and garlic. Cook until the pineapple starts to caramelize.

5. Sprinkle the spices over the veggies and cook for 1 more minute. Add the soy sauce mix and return the chicken in the wok. Continue cooking until the sauce has reduced and coats the chicken (for about 3 minutes). Add the black beans and remove from heat then add the cilantro.

6. Cook the egg noodles in boiling water. 

7. Serve the stir fry over the egg noodles. Bon appetit!

Creamy Sun-dried Tomato Pesto Pasta

   We tried this recipe once before from Tasty (thank God for pages like that, otherwise we'd be out of ideas frequently) and we loved it! It attracted me because it had sun-dried tomatoes in it and I just adore those! :D I'd eat them every day if I could :D But then again, too much is too much...

   The original Tasty recipe had asparagus in it but this time I decided to use zucchini instead as a cheaper option. Aaaand since I wanted to be creative and make it a bit more filling I also added some chicken and some mozarella bocancini. That's the beauty of cooking! You can start from a simple recipe and then tweak it and make it your own :D The tweaked version was sooooo yummy I already can't wait to try it out again! 

Ingredients (for about 3 servings):

- A shallot, diced

- A pesto jar (again, Barilla is strongly recommended)

- 6-7 sun-dried tomatoes, julienned

- A medium zucchini, peeled*

- 200g mozarella bocancini

- 250g chicken thighs, diced

- Grill seasoning to taste

- 100g cooking cream

- About 200g pasta (we used Fettuccine)

Steps:

1. Boil the pasta with a bit of salt.

2. Chop the chicken, then season it with some grill mix.

3. Cut your shallot and sun-dried tomatoes, then peel all the zucchini lenghtwise with a peeler until you obtain a lot of very thin zucchini slices.

4. Cook the shallot and the chicken together in a pan until the chicken is about 80% cooked then add the zucchini slices and keep cooking them until the zucchini reduces and the chicken is cooked through. 

5. Add the sun-dried tomatoes, the pesto and the mozarella and stir for a bit, then add the cooking cream (to make it creamier).

6. Add the cooked pasta and keep stirring to coat the pasta in sauce. Serve immediately with cracked pepper on top. Bon appetit! :)

In case you want to try out the original Tasty recipe, here's a video: 

Oliver's Pesto Pasta

   I showed you quite a few recipes until now but I somehow seemed to have forgotten a quintessencial recipe in our household: Oliver's Pesto Pasta! Another recipe that got me hooked from the first bite, one that I would eat every week and that made me love pesto forever (I actually hadn't tried pesto before this dish). So now you know that if you like pesto, you HAVE to try this dish! :D Just sayin'... ;)

Ingredients for 3 servings:
- a jar of Barilla pesto (it HAS to be Barilla, the other brands won't do the recipe justice - It's soooo good I would eat this pesto on its own! Oh wait, I actually did:P Other girls have chocolate, I have pesto ;) )
- a pack of mozarella bocancini (we used around 150g but the more, the cheesier!!!)
- 5 medium mushrooms
- 1/2 chicken breast
- a small white onion
- 250g Fettuccine pasta (or any other pasta you prefer)
- 2 Tbsp oil
- ground pepper to taste

Steps:

1. Boil the pasta in a pot with water and salt.

2. Dice the onion, slice the mushrooms, cut the chicken into small pieces.

3. Put the oil in a pan, then add the onion and cook it for about a minute, until it is starting to caramelize.

4. Add the chicken to the pan, then season it with ground pepper. Give it about 2-3 minutes until it's cooked on one side, then turn it over.

5. Then add the mushrooms. Cook them until they're nicely caramelized.

6. Add the pesto, the mozarella and the pasta. Stir it all together and let it simmer until the cheese is melted. Bon appetit!