The one with the leek tart

What you'll need:

• 2 eggs
• 3 big tablespoons of mascarpone
• 3 sheets of ready made dough (150 grams)
• 3 leeks
• blue cheese
• 2 tablespoons of olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste

Pre-heat the oven at 190 C / 375 F, and start by lining a pie tin with baking paper. Cover the thin with the dough and set aside. Heat the olive oil in a skillet and add the washed and chopped leeks until they get soft. Remove from the heat and let this cool down a bit.

 

In a bowl, mix the eggs, mascarpone and season this with salt and pepper. Add the leeks and give it all a good stir. Fill the pie tin with the mixture and crumble over the blue cheese. Let it bake in the preheated oven for about half an hour, or until the top has a nice golden colour. Wait for 10 minutes to cool down and remove the tart from the tin. Enjoy!

More recipes are over here. Have you made something worth sharing in the kitchen recently? I'd love to see your links in the comments below, I can always use a good recipe!

The one with the Brussels sprouts salad

After all of the holiday hustle and bustle (which involved quite a bit of food and some last minute orders from my shop), I am craving something that doesn't involve too much trouble to make and that's somewhat healthy as well. I've made this recipe a couple of times now, the original recipe can be found here. As a kid, even hearing the words 'Brussels sprouts' made me cringe. It amazes me how much I've come to like sprouts over the years.

What you'll need (lunch for 4):

• 500 grams of brussels sprouts, washed, halved and the outside leaves removed
• 100 grams of blue cheese
• 1 cup of walnuts
• 1 cup of dried cranberries
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 2 tablespoons of honey
• 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil

What you'll need to do:

Heat the butter in a frying pan and add the halved sprouts once the butter has melted and bake them for a couple of minutes. Test of they're ready, they still need a bit of a bite. Add the walnuts and honey and stir this all together quickly, until the sprouts have caramelized a bit. Take the pan of the heat and transfer the mixture to a bowl and add the cranberries and season with salt and pepper. Crumble and toss in the blue cheese. Drizzle with the olive oil and you're ready! I like this salad most when it's still a bit warm.

This time I used walnuts, but you can also use pecans. The salad goes well with fresh, warm bread. A while ago, I posted another recipe with sprouts over here.

The one with the brussels sprouts pesto

As most kids, I used to dislike brussels sprouts when I was young. Fortunately for me, my mom also didn't like these miniature cabbages, so I didn't have to eat them very often. A couple of years ago, I discoved that they can actually taste pretty good! They are quite the healthy guys, containing vitamin A, vitamin C, folic acid and dietary fibre. Also, they contain sinigrin, which is believed to protect against colon cancer.

What you'll need (dinner for 4)

• 350 grams of brussel sprouts
• 2 (small) cloves of garlic
• 6 tablespoons of roasted pinenuts
• lots of extra virgin olive oil (around 1/4 cup)
• pasta for four
• salt and pepper, to taste
• 60 grams of grated parmesan cheese for the pesto, plus extra for the pasta.

 

Wash the brussels sprouts, remove the bottoms, the outside leaves and slice in half. Bring a large pan of salted water to a boil, add the sprouts and cook them for 3 minutes. Take them out of the pan, into a colander and let them cool down. If you're in a hurry, you can rinse them with cold water.

Prepare the pasta, as said on the packaging. While the pasta is cooking, Toss together the brussels sprouts, garlic, the pine nuts, and grated cheese in a blender, and mix until it's smooth. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Add the pesto to the pasta and serve with extra cheese on top.

 

More recipes can be found over here

The one with the tomato and pepper soup

Fall has begun. I don't like saying goodbye to summer, and the only thing I like about fall, is that soupseason has started. Here's a recipe for tomato-pepper soup. Most recipes require to roast the pepper, and do the whole-cool down in a plastic bag-and peel thing. I've tried this once, and it was way too much work for me. I've experimented before with non-roasted peppers (I'm a bit of a lazy cook), and that works out fine too.

What you'll need (for four bowls):

• 4 bell peppers
• 4 big tomatoes
• 1 cup full of cherry tomatoes
• 1 small onions
• half a pack of blue cheese
• 1 litre of vegetable stock
• salt and pepper to taste
• olive oil, no need for the good stuff, it's just for stir frying

 

What you'll need to do: 
Chop the onion, peppers and the big tomatoes in quarters, and the cherry tomatoes in half. Get a big soup pan on the heat and fry the onion softly in olive oil. Add the peppers and do some more frying. Then, add the vegetable stock and the tomatoes. Let this cook slowly, until the peppers are soft. This took about half an hour. Remove the pan from the heat and blitz the soup with a handheld mixer, and season with salt and pepper.

 
Serve the soup with the blue cheese.

The one with the cauliflower

A very deliciously looking cauliflower-soup caught my eye on Pinterest. It didn't taste half as good as it looked. Normally, I don't say no to a second bowl, but with this one I did. I didn't use the whole cauliflower, so the rest of it was turned into a salad the next day. This one did taste well. I tossed in some lettuce, arugula, red bell pepper, radishes, danish blue cheese and a mustard-honey-dressing.