Midsommar tian

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On the longest day of the year, Swedish people celebrate Midsommar. The party goes on all night (because there’s ‘daylight’ all night long!) and is accompanied by dancing and lots of local delicacies. IKEA celebrates Midsommar with its customers and coworkers, and I’ve created this recipe in the spirit of Midsommar. During the feast, they traditionally eat things like potatoes with dill, smoked salmon, hard boiled eggs, cheese… This recipe is based on those ingredients, but with a twist – I’ve combined them in a tian, a traditional French layered oven dish (I discovered the tian through Elizabeth David, you could say her versions are comparable to quiche, without the crust and the cream). Very easy to make with whatever leftovers you have in the fridge/garden and pop into the oven!

Ingredients for four people:

500 grams potatoes
olive oil
five (organic) eggs
a bushel of fresh dill
a handful of leaves of spinach/chard/…
4 stalks of scallion
200 grams of (IKEA) smoked salmon (I used 100 gr lax gravad and 100 gr lax najad, they’re already flavoured with Swedish marinade)
40 grams of grated cheese (e.g. IKEA ost)
pepper and salt

How to:

Peel and cook the potatoes in salted water until tender but definitely not overcooked, as they go into the oven later. In the meantime, heat the oven to 180 degrees. Drain the potatoes and cut into cubes. Put the potatoes in an oven dish with a bit of olive oil and salt and pepper. While waiting, you can place them into the oven that’s heating up.

Beat the eggs in a bowl. Chop the dill, spinach and scallion and cut the salmon into strips. Mix with the cheese into the beaten eggs. Add pepper and salt to taste (be careful with the salt, most smoked salmon is quite salty by itself)

Add this mixture to the potatoes and carefully scoop it around with a spoon. Put the dish in the oven for 30-35 minutes, until the eggs are no longer liquid. Serve with bread and some fresh salad!

Mango speculoos no bake cheesecake

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This cheesecake is one of the closest things I have to a ‘family recipe’: I remember having it at birthdays and summer parties at home and helping my mother with the preparations. I first made it myself when I was studying abroad in Spain, because it’s such a refreshing and fruity summer dessert. Over time, I’ve created my own version, keeping the basics but substituting the ‘accessories’. The original recipe uses petit beurre biscuits that you arrange on the bottom (no crumbling) and canned abricots as fruit – in fact, I don’t think mangoes existed in the Belgian supermarkets when I was a kid. My version uses speculoos biscuits, fresh mangoes and passion fruit. Basically, you can use any kind of dry and sweet biscuits/cookies (no chocolate chips or any of the sort though) and fruit, I’ve also made it with strawberries for example. The recipe is not complicated, but there are some tricks you can apply to make it succeed, so follow the instructions. It takes about an hour to make and needs several hours to set properly, if possible you can make it a day ahead. Enjoy!


Ingredients for a 26 cm cake tin

8 gelatin sheets (I prefer these to powder, but powder will probably work too. If you’re a strict vegetarian you could use agar agar, but I have no experience with that. 8 gelatin sheets are about 13 grams.)
200-250 ml of (tropical) fruit juice/pineapple juice
juice of one orange
3 passion fruits
200 grams of sugar
500 ml of heavy whipping cream
4 bags of vanilla sugar
500 grams of no-fat fresh white cheese/quark/plattekaas (this is a very basic product in Belgium, but somehow it’s not always available in other countries. Use a fresh, soft, white, unsalted cheese, for example ricotta, if you can’t find it.)
200 grams of dry biscuits of your choice (I used Vermeiren speculoos)
75 grams of unsalted very soft butter (not melted!), use only if you’re going to crumble the bottom
2 mangoes

Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water. Squeeze out the orange into a measuring cup and add the contents of two passion fruits. Fill up with fruit juice (pineapple, tropical…) until you have 300 ml. Heat the juice with the sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Squeeze out the gelatin and add into the warm juice, stir well. While this is cooling down, stir every now and then so the gelatin doesn’t set too much yet.

Whip up the cream with the vanilla sugar in a large bowl until stiff. Mix in the fresh cheese in large round motions, using a spatula or spoon. While the juice is still cooling down, crumble the biscuits, using a mortar or in a food processor. They don’t have to be completely crumbled, you can leave some small chunks. Mix with the soft butter and spread out over the bottom of a 26 cm spring cake tin. Cut a mango and one half into wedges and cover the biscuits with them.

When the juice is sufficiently cooled down (it can still be a little warm but not hot), add it slowly into the cream mixture. Start with a few spoons, mix well, and continue like this. It is really important to mix in the liquid very well, or you will have jelly-like inclusions in your cake later on (which are also yummy, but not very pleasing to the eye). Now comes the most crucial part: pour the cream-juice mix over the mangoes, but do this very slowly, or the mango wedges will come floating up (once again, just as tasty but not the intention!). Slowly keep pouring until you have poured out all of the mixture. Cover with plastic wrap or a cover if your cake tin has one and let it sit in the fridge for at least 3-4 hours.

To test if the cheesecake is ready, wiggle the tin a little bit. The white top part should move as one solid mass. You can decorate the top with leftover mango wedges and the extra passion fruit. Carefully cut around the sides with a sharp knife and then remove the sides parts of the tin. Don’t keep the cake out of the fridge for too long, or it will start to get wobbly again, and possibly collapse. Enjoy!

(the pictures below are my first version of the cheesecake and the one I made for my bake sale party, as you can see they’re always a little different)


 

Pineapple upside down cake

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Ever since Bree Van de Kamp made this wonderful cake in Desperate Housewives (there’s quite a funny scene about Gaby and Bree making the cake, watch it here), I’d been wanting to try it myself. I finally had the opportunity at my charity bake sale last Sunday. The cake turned out quite well and was a lot of people’s favorite! My most important advice: if you have a regular cake tin instead of a spring cake tin, use it – the caramel on the bottom will run a little during baking, no matter how good of a spring cake tin you have. I didn’t have a full bottom cake tin and the cake still came out fine, but who knows, it might have been even better…

Ingredients (for a 26-cm cake tin), serves at least 8 hungry people:

One can of pineapple slices in juice (not syrup)
100 grams of butter, melted
100 grams of light brown sugar (or dark brown)
7 red sugar cherries (maraschino)
150 grams of butter, at room temperature
210 grams of sugar
3 eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
280 grams of flour, sieved
10 grams of baking powder, sieved (a bag of Dr. Oetker is 16 grams, you can also take one large tablespoon)
45 grams of ground coconut

Heat the oven to 180 degrees. Pour the melted butter in a closed cake tin and brush the sides of the tin with butter as well. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the butter. Let the pineapple drain and keep 150 ml of the juice. Spread the pineapple slices over the bottom of the tin in the butter-sugar mixture (one in the middle and the six others around it) and put a cherry in the middle of every slice.

Beat the butter soft in a big bowl (either by hand with a wooden spoon or with a hand mixer). Beat in the sugar and keep going until the mixture is fluffy and creamy. Add the eggs one by one and mix well. Add the vanilla extract. Now slowly add in the flour and baking powder, the coconut and the leftover pineapple juice. Stir with a metal spoon until the batter is smooth, stop when it’s all mixed well.

Scoop the batter out over the pineapple slices and smooth the top of the cake, which will later become the bottom. Make a bit of a hole with the back of a spoon in the middle, to prevent it from rising too much in the middle.  Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, until a toothpick comes out clean of the middle. Let the cake cool in the tin for 10 minutes before turning it over on a large plate to cool down. Enjoy!

Italian-style dinner

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The sun is shining! Finally! As usual, my mood turns completely must-have-some-Italian-style-sun-ripened-food at the sight of the first shiny rays of sun. As one of  my classes was moved, I had some time to cook a more elaborate dinner tonight, which I did! Healthy (veggies!), Italian (eggplant!), vegetarian… All you need is a lovely glass of wine to enjoy it with!

It was my first time making artichokes that didn’t come out of a can. I love artichokes, but frankly, I’ve always been a bit intimidated by them. They appear so… rugged. So today, as I got off the bus and towards the grocer’s, I overcame my fear and bought some, remembering I had a step-by-step recipe from delicious. magazine. What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, right? They require a little work but it’s really worth it, and not that hard at all!

The second dish is a classic eggplant-tomato-pasta. I’m a big eggplant fan and so I tried this recipe, which came out of ‘Una Bella Spaghettata’ – a book about Neapolitan pasta I’ve had for quite some time but haven’t really used so far. I changed some things (you’re supposed to add in a lot of mozzarella but I left that out) and it came out exactly as it shoud – a tasty, light Italian pasta dish. Give it a try!

Stuffed artichokes

Ingredients:

4-5 artichokes (depending on size)
half a lemon
50 grams of panko (Japanese breadcrumbs, some ground dry old white bread will work too)
50 grams of parmezan cheese, (freshly) grated
2 eggs
handful of basil, torn into small pieces
1 big tablespoon of capers

Place a pan of salted water on the fire. First, you have to ‘clean’ the artichokes. This is not as hard as it seems, but you need a good sharp knife (preferably a bigger chef knife). Start by cutting off the upper side of the artichoke, more or less at the widest part, cutting off a good part of the upper artichoke. Then, cut off the stem, including the base and cutting off the outer hard leaves. Now, take a spoon with sharp edges and remove the inner parts of the top, you will notice that this is a bit ‘hay’-ish. Keep trimming the leaves and taking out the dry inner part until you have a shape that’s somewhat like a ‘finger bowl’ with all smooth sides, then quickly brush the sides with a half lemon to prevent it from oxidizing. Repeat this with all the artichokes (you will notice, it gets easier as you get more practice) and then but them into the (by now boiling) water. Cook them for about 15 minutes, until they’re al dente but not completely soft (they will continue in the oven later).

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 180 degrees and prepare the stuffing by mixing all the other ingredients. When the artichokes are out of the water, let them cool down slightly, place them on a baking tin with parchment paper and then fill them up with the stuffing, mimicking the ‘artichoke/pyramid shape’. Now, place them in the oven and bake for 20 minutes, until the tops turn golden brown (I turned the temperature up a bit at the end and turned the grill on to reach this effect). Before serving, you may need to remove some extra outer leaves that have become hard in the oven. Enjoy!

Eggplant tomato pasta

Ingredients for 4 servings:

2 eggplants
salt
olive oil
4-6 tasty tomatoes, depending on size, chopped (I used a mixture of more fleshy tomatoes and yummy cherry tomatoes)
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
400 grams of good quality pasta, rigatoni or penne or another shape that will soak up the tomato sauce well
80 grams of Parmezan cheese, freshly grated
a handful of fresh basil
Cut the eggplant into thick slices (about 1,5 cm), sprinkle with salt on both sides and let them sit in a colander for at least 30 minutes. (Note: I love eggplant, but it took me a long time to figure out how to make it the best way. You really need to do the salting beforehand, because the eggplant will lose some water in the process and soak up less oil later. I also find that it becomes rubbery if you don’t do this. You can then either let it fry quickly in hot oil until the sides are becoming brown, or let it simmer quietly – my preferred style, when it starts falling apart and mixing itself into the sauce… yum! Anyway, back to the recipe.) Then, squeeze as much liquid out of the slices as possible, and pat with paper towels. Heat a generous amount of olive oil in a large heavy-bottom skillet, let it get really hot and then add the eggplant. Fry, turning until its sides are golden brown. Take the slices out of the skillet and put on paper towels to drain.Leave a few tablespoons in the skillet and reduce the heat.

In the meantime, cook the pasta as directed in salted water. When done, drain and then put the pasta back into the pan. Now, add the garlic to the skillet and let it fry a bit. Then, add the tomatoes to the skillet (I tend to add a little white wine here for the sauce, but this is optional of course). Let the tomatoes heat and simmer, when they’re starting to fall apart add the eggplant back into the sauce and let it simmer on a low fire for a while, until the eggplant starts to fall apart and you have a consistent sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste. Turn the fire really low and add in the pasta and parmezan cheese, turning over and under until all the pasta is sufficiently mixed with the sauce. Sprinkle with basil leaves and serve!

 

Liebster Blog Award

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A while ago, Hot Cuisine de Pierre gave me a Liebster Blog Award, an award for blogs with less than 200 followers. I was very honored, promised to hand it out to others right away, and then of course I waited a few months before actually doing it. The truth is, I just haven’t had much time the last couple of months to visit and find other people’s blogs, however much I like doing so. But anyway, here we go, my favorite blogs that deserve a Liebster Blog Award (even though I’m not sure all of them have less than 200 followers, so I don’t mean to insult anyone!)

My thoughts on food, another foodie from Brussels with interesting recipes ánd thoughts on food! (and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her and tasting her creations in person!)

The Yummy Blog Sisters, two Flemish sisters who share their food experiences – great to see two sisters sharing a passion.

Jonge Sla, for her great vegetarian recipes and because I really enjoy reading her articles in print (De Standaard) as well!

Three (actually, four) women with lovely culinary writings, keep on blogging ladies!

Home made granola

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I love grains for breakfast. They’re healthy, they’re tasty, and I can last until noon on them. The kind of grains I love most for breakfast is granola. In Belgium, we don’t really have granola: breakfast grains, even the ‘sticky’ kind, are called muesli. In the USA or Great Britain, muesli that’s been baked with honey into crunchy clusters, is called granola. A few months ago, I bought a little book on how to make muesli and granola, and I finally had some time to give it a try. It’s actually quite easy, but the whole process takes some time. I’ve been enjoying my homemade granola every morning since (actually, it’s almost time to make a new batch). You can alter it to your own taste as you like, mixing up the grains and nuts.

Ingredients:

300 grams of oat flakes (try to find bigger ones than the regular Quaker kind, although mine were that size and it turned out fine – no ‘instant oatmeal’ though!)

120 grams of mixed nuts, for example:
40 grams of roughly chopped pecan nuts
40 grams of roughly chopped hazelnuts
40 grams of almond flakes

120 grams of mixed seeds, for example:
40 grams of sesame seeds
40 grams of pumpkin seeds
40 grams of sunflower seeds

1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (I use cheap homemade stuff with vanilla pods soaked in vodka for at least two months)
200 grams of sweet stuff such as liquid honey, agave syrup, maple syrup… (I used a mixture of honey and agave)
200 grams of fruit compote (apple, or apricot,… but not with big chunks, you can mix it if necessary)
2 tablespoons of sunflower oil

How to:

Preaheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius. Toast the oats, nuts and seeds in a heavy skillet until slightly golden and fragrant, add salt and cinnamon. Set aside. Heat the sweetner, compote, vanilla and oil until completely liquid, then mix carefully with the dry ingredients until they are completely covered in the syrup mixture. Now spread the mixture over two baking tins and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Every ten minutes, take the granola out of the oven and turn it around with a spoon to let it bake evenly. When it’s al baked, dry and golden brown, take the granola out of the oven (you might need a little longer than 45 minutes, I did – it depends on your oven, how much it cools when you open it, etc…)

If you want to add in dried fruit, this can be done after baking. Keep the granola in an airtight container. Very tasty with some yoghurt and honey or syrup.

A sad day in Brussels – Een trieste dag in Brussel

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Today, a man working for the Brussels transportation network was beaten to death. For no real reason, other than the bus (not even the one he’d been driving) got in an accident with a car. It was one of those moment where you think about the bigger picture, the insignificance of everyday matters, about useless cruelty, about the state of things, about this society we live in and why some people are driven to absurd deeds like this.

In a moment of reflection, I thought back to the habit I started for myself last year, when I moved here. Every time I enter a bus in Brussels, I try to nod, smile or say hello to the driver. It doesn’t always happen, usually because of the business when entering the bus – but to me, it’s an important habit. Firstly, it’s a way to wish them a good day – something we should do more often to each other, to every one around us. But it’s also a sign of appreciation, recognition, for the people to whom we trust our lives every day. On such a sad day like this, I hope more people will resolve to show some appreciation to the people who make our lives easier every day, like the bus driver, or the man who cleans our park, or the policeman regulating our traffic. Let’s give it a try.

 

In het Nederlands:

Vandaag werd een man die werkt voor de MIVB, het Brussels vervoersnetwerk, doodgeslagen. Zonder enige reden, behalve dan dat de bus (die hij zelfs niet bestuurde) in een ongeval met een auto was verzeild. Het was zo’n moment waarop je even stilstaat bij het alledaagse leven, bij onze eigen ‘kleinheid’, bij zulk nutteloos geweld, bij de ‘normale’ gang van zaken, bij deze maatschappij en bij de reden waarom sommigen tot zulke absurditeiten gedreven worden.

In gedachten ging ik terug naar de gewoonte die ik vorig jaar ben begonnen toen ik naar Brussel verhuisde: ik nam me toen voor om telkens ik op de bus stapte, de chauffeur even te begroeten met een knik, een gebaar of een goeiedag. Het lukt niet altijd, omdat het soms te druk is bij het instappen, maar ik vind dit een belangrijke gewoonte. In de eerste plaats om de chauffeur een goeie dag te wensen, iets dat we vaker zouden moeten doen voor iedereen in onze buurt. Maar het is ook een teken van appreciatie, van erkenning, voor de mensen die we elke dag ons leven toevertrouwen. Op zo’n triestige dag als deze hoop ik dat meer mensen zich voornemen om een blijk van erkenning te geven aan de mensen die ons leven elke dag makkelijker maken: de buschauffeur, de vuilnisman die onze straat proper houdt, de politieagent die ons verkeer regelt. Laten we hopen.

Vegetable lasagna

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Spring has come around, so I’m getting excited for delicious sun-ripened vegetables! Seems like the perfect moment to post this vegetable lasagna, which I found as an external post on Jamie Oliver’s website and then tweaked it a bit. Basically, this is a really rich (but healthy!) lasagna using 4 different vegetables. It takes a while to make this lasagna (about two hours), but it’s really worth the wait. It’s a vegetarian-safe dish but I’ve served it to several carnivores and they all agreed, it doesn’t need meat at all!

This amount is good for 5-6 servings.

Ingredients:

2 large eggplants, cut into 1 cm-thick slices
2 medium zucchini, cut into 1 cm-thick slices
3 red or yellow peppers
9 sheets of lasagna (depending on the size of your baking pan, you need 3 layers of lasagna)
250-300 grams of ricotta cheese
400 grams of fresh mozzarella cheese, cut into small cubes or slices
150 grams of grated parmesan cheese
2 egg yolks
a handful of basil, leaves torn
a handful of chopped parsley leaves
500 ml of good tomato sauce or your own fresh tomato sauce (fry some oil with garlic, add tomatoes, perhaps a bit of white wine or extra passata and let it simmer for a while, season to taste with Italian herbs and salt and pepper)

Get cooking:

Heat the grill/broiler function on the oven. Lay the eggplant slices in a colander and sprinkle on both sides with salt, let them stand for about half an hour and  then squeeze as much liquid out of them as possible, then pat dry with paper towels. Lay them on a wire rack, brush both sides slightly with oil, sprinkle with pepper and salt and grill them on both sides until tinted (not brown) and soft. If your oven is small, you may need to repeat this a few times.

While the oven is hot and you’re waiting for the eggplant, you can start with the peppers. Cut the peppers into large flat pieces (two or three parts per pepper) and remove the seeds and inner parts. Lay them on a wire rack and grill until they have black ‘boils’, then put them in a plastic freezer bag and let them steam so the skin will come off more easily. Peel off the skin when cooled (watch out, they’re hot). If you have a really thin peeler, you can try peeling the skin off this way.

Steam the zucchini slices for a few minutes until tender but with enough bite left. The way I do this is by putting a ‘pasta colander pan’ into a fitting pan with a little bit of boiling water on the bottom. You can also use a steamer if you have one, or just add a little bit of boiling water in a regular pan and blanch the zucchini shortly.

Cook the lasagna sheets shortly in salted water if this is indicated on the package and let it drain (the best quality Italian lasagna has to be cooked beforehand).

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsuis (about 350 Fahrenheit). Mix the ricotta, mozzarella and half of the parmezan with the fresh herbs, season to taste with salt and pepper.

Brush the sides of a 25 x 25 cm baking pan (or one about the same size, around 625 square cm) with olive oil and add about 1/4 of the tomato sauce. Arrange the eggplant slices on top of this layer.

Now add 1/3 of the cheese mixture and top with lasagna sheets.

Add another layer of tomato sauce.

Now top with the zucchini slices.

Repeat with the cheese and the pasta. Add another layer of tomato sauce.

Now top with the peppers.

Repeat the process again, using up all the cheese mixture. Top the last lasagna with the remaining tomato sauce and sprinkle with parmesan cheese.

Top the baking pan with tin foil to prevent burning. Put the dish into the oven and let it bake for 55 minutes, then remove the tin foil and let it bake for 5 more minutes. Take it out of the oven, let it cool for a little bit and enjoy!

My worm box project

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Attention: this may not look like a food related post at first, but I assure you it is! You see, as a home cook I like to work with fresh vegetables as much as possible. This usually results in having some leftover potato peels, or less attractive pieces of veggie, or inedible parts of fruit… you get the picture. At home with my parents, those organic leftovers go to the domestic animals (dog, sheep, chickens) or the compost heap. Most cities offer a program in the garbage schedule to pick up organic stuff. Unfortunately, Brussels doesn’t. And ever since we’ve moved here, it’s bothering me to throw away my organic waste with the other plastic and styrofoam stuff, since these bags usually end up in the incinerator. I started thinking of other ways to get rid of the organic stuff. We don’t have a real garden or yard, so making a compost heap isn’t really an option. Then, I read about an alternative for gardenless people like me: a worm box.

It sounds a bit icky at first, but it really isn’t. A worm box is a type of mini eco-system, designed to get rid of your organic waste and get organic worm fertilizer and fertile ground instead, all the while feeding our little worm friends. It’s the perfect solution for city people who want to get rid of their organic waste but don’t have a garden to do so. Here’s how it works:

You have a box that contains your worms, in their natural habitat, which is some decomposing and already decomposed organic soil. On top, you put your organic waste (such as vegetable and fruit peel – no bread or cooked meals, also no large amounts of citrus fruits). This will decompose and the worms will then turn it into organic soil. Your ‘worm bin’ has small holes in it and is on top of another bin with a slight space in between the two. This is because the worms produce a fluid (called ‘worm percolate’) which is extremely fertile for plants. So, the fluid will seep into the lower box through the holes, from there you can dilute it with water and it give it to plants. Once the organics have been turned into compost, you can add another box on top with holes in the bottom through which the worms can crawl. You add organics to the top box and once the worms are ‘done’, they’ll start moving up toward new food. This way you can use your other soil for plants, and restart the cycle.

That’s the theory. I’m not that far yet. After a failed trial to obtain worms in early February (it was too cold so they refused to be caught by me, even if for benevolent purposes), I finally got around to collecting my worms from my parents’ compost heap. We just overturned soil until we found a spot with a lot of worms and ecolife going on with millepedes, centipedes and other fun little creatures. I scooped a plastic bag of the soil and sought out some extra worms and subsoilers. At home, I filled the bottom of my box with the dry remains of some plants that didn’t survive the winter season. I then added the soil containing the worms. I then added some food leftovers like the peel of a pear, some old herbs, some potato peels and some cardboard stuff like egg cartons… Now I’m supposed to let the worms ‘acclimatize’ for a week or two. I’m really excited to see what happens!

   

 

Wok with kohlrabi, shiitake and noodles

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I don’t consider myself an adept at the SouthEast Asian kitchen, but I do love its flavors. Every once in a while I try something myself and this improvised dish came out particularly well! I started with kohlrabi (koolrabi in Dutch), a kind of ‘forgotten’ vegetable I really love – it’s like cabbage, but sweeter and crunchy. By chance, I found myself at the Wednesday bio market at Sint-Katelijneplein in Brussels (a true foodie experience!) and while I was munching down a fish burger from the seafood store as lunch, I spotted kohlrabi at one of the vegetable stalls and couldn’t resist buying some. This neigborhood also harbors a mushroom-specialty store which I’d been dying to check out and several Asian supermarkets – et voila, my dinner was born. I even managed to sneak in tofu without complaints, adapting from a marinated tofu recipe I once made. It’s important to marinate the tofu for at least an hour, because tofu itself is a little tasteless. Also important is to use a wok that can get really hot (mine is from IKEA) on your largest fire pit.

Ingredients for 4-5 people

300 grams of firm tofu
3 pieces of kohlrabi, peeled and chopped into thin match-size slices
300 grams of shiitake mushrooms (or Parisian brown mushrooms, if you can’t find shiitake)
250 grams of thin noodles
1 onion, chopped
3 cm of ginger, finely chopped
sesame oil
1 large tablespoon of sesame seeds

for the tofu marinade:
2 tablespoons of liquid honey
2 tablespoons of ketjap manis
3 tablespoons of (dark) soy sauce
1 small chili pepper, finely chopped
2 tablespoons of sesame oil
2 tablespoons of sweet and sour chili sauce

Get cooking!

Mix all the  ingredients for the marinade. Cut the tofu into 2cm cubes, put them in a bowl or box and cover with the marinade, carefully spoon the marinade through the tofu. Cover with a lid or plastic foil and let it soak for at least an hour. Scoop the liquid marinade from the bottom over the top of the tofu a few times.

Boil water in a saucepan and cook the noodles as instructed. Drain and set aside.

Drain the tofu in a colander above a bowl, keep the marinade. Cut the larger shiitake in half. Heat a wok on a high fire and add a swig of sesame oil, let it get really hot, until it’s smoking. Add the mushrooms and stir-fry for five minutes, until the small mushrooms are starting to shrink. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Empty the wok into a bowl and set aside.

Heat the wok up again, add some sesame oil and bake the tofu. Stir-fry carefully or shake the wok every now and then to let them brown evenly. When the sides are turning crispy and golden brown, remove the tofu from the wok and let it drain on paper towels.

Heat up the wok again with sesame oil and add the onion and ginger. Stir-fry until soft and add the chopped kohlrabi. Stir-fry the kohlrabi until it becomes a little more tender – don’t let it become too soft, it should still be crunchy. Add a little of the marinade to the vegetables and keep on stir-frying. Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. When the kohlrabi is al dente, add the noodles, stir-fry a little and then add the tofu, shiitake mushrooms and the rest of the leftover marinade. Mix everything until the marinade is soaked up and the entire dish is hot and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Taste and season with pepper and salt if necessary. Enjoy!