The Author – Bart Busschots
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Aug
13
Tasty but Heathy Cauliflower Recipes
Filed Under Cooking & Food on August 13, 2022 | Leave a Comment
It’s so easy to cook Cauliflower poorly, leaving a bland colourless tasteless mush. That’s probably why so many people have such a poor opinion of this wonderful vegetable. One solution to this flavour problem is to add a bunch of salt and fat and turn a healthy daily side into a calorific threat food — just add some bacon and cheese, et voila! I definitely do this from time to time, as a treat, but that kind of exuberance is not a part of my daily diet. I want to enjoy cauliflower while keeping it healthy, and at this stage I’ve found lots of ways of doing that. In this post I’m going to share four of my favourite cauliflower recipes, and I’m going to focus on just those where cauliflower can be the only vegetable in the recipe. If you want to add some colour to the mix, you can replace up to half of the cauliflower with broccoli in all these recipes, and some are actually a little nicer when you do that, but the all work really well with cauliflower, and only cauliflower as the main ingredient. I might share some of my other recipes pairing cauliflower with things like courgettes (?? zucchini), sugar-snap peas (?? snow peas), shallots, red onions, and even cooking apples in future, but today I want the much maligned and under appreciated cauliflower to be the star of the show!
Oct
29
Pumpkin Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on October 29, 2011 | 2 Comments
It’s been a LONG time since I posted to this series, but I was preparing for Halloween today, and decided I may as well grab some pictures while I worked so I could share my recipe with the world. Because it was un-planned the pics are not great, and my kitchen was less than spotless, but still, I think the shots are good enough to illustrate this quite simple recipe.
Ingredients:
- Half a small pumpkin
- Four onions
- Four potatoes
- Parsley (fresh preferred, but dried OK)
- Thyme (dried)
- Salt & Black Pepper
- OPTIONALLY – Nutmeg, Coriander, and Cumin
- VERY OPTIONALLY – Cayenne Pepper, and Curry Powder
May
11
Making the Most of Frozen Brussels Sprouts
Filed Under Cooking & Food on May 11, 2011 | 7 Comments
In an ideal world we’d all eat fresh vegetables every day, but in reality, we often have to make do with frozen veg instead. That’s no reason not to make the most of them though, so today’s very simple recipe describes how I make the most of frozen Brussels Sprouts. BTW – apologies for the poorer quality of these photos, I left it too late in the day and the light was poor.
The list of ingredients:
- Frozen Brussels Sprouts (75-100g per person)
- a knob of Butter
- salt, black-pepper, and ground nutmeg
Apr
9
Traditional Belgian Vegetable Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on April 9, 2011 | 10 Comments
I think every Belgian mother and Grand Mother makes a version of this soup – all very similar, and yet all slightly different. This is my own take on it, which is a hybrid of my Mum’s version and her mother’s version.
Lets start with a list of ingredients:
- Three medium-sized Onions
- Three medium-sized Potatoes (accidentally omitted from the photo below, sorry!)
- 2 medium-sized carrots
- 2 Sticks of Celery
- 1 big Leek
- 1 Litre of vegetable stock
- 1 to 2 Litres of water
- Parsley & Chives (preferably fresh, but dried is OK)
- Salt and Black Pepper
- Vegetable Oil
Mar
11
Pan Fried Pork Chops
Filed Under Cooking & Food on March 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment
This isn’t so much a recipe as a quick and simple tip for making fried pork taste great. You can use regular pork loin chops, or some of the more exotic cuts like gigot Chops.
All you’ll need is your pork, some ground Nutmeg, crushed black pepper, salt, and a little vegetable oil.
Feb
27
Leek & Potato Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 27, 2011 | 1 Comment
with all this being sick of late, I’ve gotten very fond of always having a pot of fresh soup in the fridge. This is a lovely soup which takes about 30 to 40 minutes to make, and will keep for three days.
The list of ingredients is nice and simple and cheap:
- 3 medium sized Onions
- 3 medium sized potatoes
- 3 average sized Leeks
- 2 litres of water
- ground salt & black pepper
- fresh or dried Parsley & Chives
- a little vegetable oil
Feb
15
Pan-fried Salmon With Rosemary & Dill
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment
Just a very simple recipe today – not sure it even counts as a recipe, more of a quick tip really. One of my favourite ways to cook salmon fillets, or indeed salmon steaks is to simply pan-fry them with the appropriate seasoning.
Feb
7
Red Lentil & Tomato Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food on February 7, 2011 | 8 Comments
This is a recipe I got from my mother, and what I love about it is how quick it is. All-in-all it doesn’t take much more than 30 minutes to go from a craving for soup, to tucking in, and most of that time is just to let it boil! You can easily make this soup while you are cooking the rest of the meal or doing some house work.
Below are the list of ingredients, you’ll get four good portions out of these amounts:
- 3 Cloves of Garlic (Mum only uses two, but I much prefer three)
- 1 Onion
- 170g of dried Red Lentils
- a 400g tin of chopped Tomatoes (I like to use organic)
- 850ml of Vegetable Stock (I use a gluten-free Vegetable Bouillon instead)
- Parsley (ideally fresh, but dried will do in a pinch)
- Salt & Black Pepper
Jan
29
A Quick & Easy Oriental Salad
Filed Under Cooking & Food on January 29, 2011 | 2 Comments
When I started this experiment with blogging food stuff, I said that cooking was all about sharing, no post better illustrates that than this one. This is my take on a recipe that I got from Bren Finan, which he got from a friend of his, who got it from her mother, who probably got it from hers, and so on back through the ages. Bren’s friend’s mum happens to be Japanese, hence, this is an oriental salad. I’ve made my own alterations to the original as Bren thought it to me, and goodness know how many other alterations there have been, so the chances are very little of the original is recognisable!
This is a wonderfully imprecise dish, and open to infinite variety, so please please please experiment. Just use this post as a starting point, not as an end point.
Anyhow, when I make this salad I use the following:
- A family pack of mixed leaves (i.e. a 100g bag with pre-washed lettuce of different colours in it)
- One Apple
- Half a block of mature red cheddar cheese, i.e. about 100g (bet this bit isn’t traditionally Japanese!)
- A quarter of a cucumber (I like to get organic)
- A handful of Cherry Tomatoes (I always get Organic, especially for a salad)
- Some Mixed chopped nuts (I just use a small sprinkling, and you can use whole nuts too)
- Olive Oil
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Soy Sauce
- Freshly ground black pepper & salt
Jan
23
Lemon & Balsamic Vinegar Marinated Steak
Filed Under Cooking & Food on January 23, 2011 | Leave a Comment
This week I thought I’d share my favourite way to cook steaks. Despite the fact that I do marinate the steaks, you don’t have to do any prep work the day before or even a few hours before. You can leave the steak marinating while you prepare the rest of your meal, it only needs about 20-30 minutes.
Since this recipe describes the process per-steak, it’ll yield as many steaks as you make 🙂 As for ingredients, the amounts will vary depending on the size and number of steaks you do, but you’ll need the following:
- The steaks of your choice (I love Strip Loin)
- A few cloves of Garlic
- Lemon Juice
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Olive & Vegetable Oil
- Fresh or Dried Rosemary
- Freshly ground Black Pepper & Salt