Isn’t it a picture? Food that is tasty and healthy, who wouldn’t want that! And it may and can also look beautiful. Choose your ingredients not only by color, but also by shape, structure and substance; curly crispy kale, spongy soft eggplant, hard whimsical walnut. Go to work with it and mash until smooth, fry until crispy cubes, fruit in shiny rings, dip in a creamy layer and fry until crispy congealed foam. Feel, smell, see and taste: that’s delicious!
Senses
Cooking can be a very enjoyable activity every day when you think about the senses that you can caress with it. Approach cooking from that angle! Look at the many colors screaming for attention in the vegetable / fruit stand. The structures of the various cabbages and tubers, the substance of broccoli or watercress. Fire up your creativity and let go. And don’t forget to stop by the herb and mushroom stand at the market. You will be amazed at how much you can think of for yourself by mere to combine. Don’t be afraid to experiment freely with herbs, seeds, methods, combinations; the possibilities are endless.
Inspiration
Cookbooks and magazines are popular, although they also cost a lot of money. They are probably best compared to a coffee table book: beautiful photos and little text. No magazine is lacking in cooking or baking recipes with accompanying photos that make your mouth water, and the newspapers are not unaffected. Without a cooking section, you don’t really belong as a medium. And on top of that do you also have the blogs from foodies who can enjoy a large crowd of enthusiastic supporters. So, on recipes no flaw. Take advantage of it if you agree forgotten vegetables want to prepare. Or is it still just armchair dreams and then you get the ready-to-eat meal at the supermarket because you are too busy?
Relaxing
While cooking can be so relaxing! No, not if you have to cook for your new in-laws or your potential boss, just do it for yourself. Preferably start when you are a student, then you can and can still romp around. You want good food, but you don’t have a lot of money? No problem, not exactly! It’s ‘easy’ to make a splash with caviar, asparagus or any other exquisite dish, but don’t set the threshold too high, even put it as low as possible. Start with red cabbage or Brussels sprouts. Even start with what you like the least and challenge yourself to make something more than edible. You can make mistakes. You cook for yourself or a good friend who forgives you the mistake with love.
Experience
How bad can it be to go wrong? The pasta can cook for too long into one big sticky mass, the pancake too salty, or the tomato soup much too sharp. You had no idea that you have to rinse off the excess salt from an anchovy jar first … That’s not a disaster and it only happens once.
Ingredients
Another hurdle can be that recipes are packed with ingredients that you do not know and certainly do not have at home. Mexican recipes require ditto ingredients and Indonesian, Indian, Ethiopian, Turkish, each have their own seasonings. Think of trassion (shrimp paste), sumac, a crushed red berry, or ras-el-hanout (a certain spice mixture that you can also put together yourself), pickled lemon or orange blossom. Don’t let that put you off. That would be a shame. Try to buy it in a small amount so you can smell and taste what it tastes like. Add a small amount to taste and try out what goes well together and reinforces each other. Don’t use too many different flavors together, because then it won’t taste like anything in the end.
Forgotten vegetables
Forgotten vegetables pose another challenge. Especially in biological shops or at special markets you will find vegetables such as parsnip, parsley root, purslane, watercress, salsify, Jerusalem artichokes or black radish (also called radish). There are numerous sites on the internet about these vegetables, because forgotten vegetables are ‘hot’. The grocer can tell you what it tastes like and how to prepare it, otherwise you’ll find recipes for baked Jerusalem artichokes with honey and goat cheese, purslane or watercress salads, or turnips soup with colored roots on these and other sites. Give it a try, a world will open up for you!
The recipes below are for inspiration, to get started yourself.
Red cabbage soup with ginger
- ½ red cabbage
- 2 cm fresh ginger root
- Chili pepper
- 1 tsp ground cumin / djinten
- Juice of ½ lemon
- 1 clove of garlic
- 1 onion
- 750 ml of warm stock
- 125 ml of sour cream
- 1 tbsp oil
Hand blender / blender, large pan with a thick bottom
- Boil the water with 1½ stock cube.
- Meanwhile, fry the onion, garlic and ginger in a large, thick-bottomed pan.
- Finely chop the cabbage and add.
- Add the pepper, cumin and lemon juice
- Pour the stock into the cabbage and bring to the boil again.
- Let the pan simmer for about 25 minutes on a low heat.
- Puree the cabbage with a hand blender or in a blender
- At the table or when serving, add a spoonful of cream pp to taste.
Red cabbage puree
If you don’t want to make a soup, you can also drain the moisture before you mash the cabbage and put it on the table. You can use the liquid to swell couscous or boil bulgur. Delicious with crispy fried vegetable slices or spicy organic sausages, but also with cubes of tempeh.
Parsnip with capuchins and carrot
- 6 potatoes
- 1 parsnip
- 2 carrots
- 1 can of capuchins
- 1 onion
- Leftover broccoli or other vegetables
- Chili oil and basil oil (oil with fresh or dried basil)
- Peel and cut potatoes and parsnips into equal pieces.
- Cook the potatoes together with the parsnips.
- Mash everything as soon as it is cooked and drizzle with chili oil (or oil with a pepper)
- Peel the carrot and cut into slices
- Heat the basil oil and fry the onion and carrot in it.
- Finally add the capuchins with the liquid.
Serve separately.
Parsnip: also very tasty separately
Parsnip itself has a sweet taste that you can emphasize with cinnamon. Peel the parsnips and cut into slices. Sprinkle with cinnamon and fry in oil. Serve with rice, millet or bulghur and fried cubes of tofu or tempeh slices.
Puree of three white vegetables
You can also use parsnips in puree. Take equal amounts of parsnips and potatoes as well as celeriac, cut into equal pieces, cook and puree. Delicious with fish, omelette or soy product.