I am however been told that it's like the 101 of microwave cooking – a style of cuisine I only have recently discovered due to work being done in our flat making the kitchen out of bounds.

So today I would like to share with you my variation on Tim Ferriss' three-minute 'slow carb' breakfast:

Ingredients:

• 3 egg whites
• half a tin of red kidney beans
• 1 small tin of carrots and peas
• 2 tablespoons of guacamole
• 2 tablespoons of salsa
• salt and pepper

Preparation:

1. Break the eggs in a bowl
2. Add salt and pepper to taste
3. Beat the eggs slightly
4. Cover loosely with a saucer or small plate
5. Cook in the microwave for two minutes on high
6. Remove from microwave
7. Pour beans on eggs
8. Pour carrots and peas on eggs
9. Warm up in microwave (optional)
10. Add guacamole and salsa

It works well with a bit of garlic and pepper but make sure you do not add any salt.

Ingredients (serves two)

• 3 courgettes
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 teaspoon Marmite (or Vegemite for a more delicate flavour)

Preparation

1. Heat oil in frying pan
2. Fry garlic clove until golden
3. Add thinly sliced courgettes
4. Cook until soft
5. Stir in Marmite or Vegemite

The dinner proved to be a success, firstly because of the lovely ladies and lads we invited, whom we do not see as often as we would like to, but also because of the selection of food.

We found out that tapas can be a very good choice for a Friday night dinner party (we had cooked some in advance, and only a little preparation was needed on the night when we came back from work) attended a varied mix of meateaters and vegetarians.

We served the following dishes and it was more than enough for a party of eight:

• Vodka flamed chorizo
• Spanish baked prawns
• Mozzarella peppers with chunky Italian dressing
• Feta and pepper tortilla
• Patatas bravas
• Manchego cheese triangles with quince preserve
• Tapenade
• Pork brochettes
• Spanish flan

All recipes (except the pork brochettes and the flan) are from bbc.co.uk, my favourite source for clear, relatively simple, tried and tested instructions to prepare good food.

We had some jugs of sangria de cava as aperitif, then wine with the tapas and dry fino Xérès with dessert.

It was really important that we got the sangria exactly as they do it at La Pinta, where we have lunch almost every day when we are in Sitges, and we used the following sangria de cava recipe contained in a selection of sangria recipes in PDF format:

• 1 bottle Spanish cava, chilled
• 1/4 cup white grape juice
• 2 tablespoons brandy
• 2 tablespoons simple syrup
• Ice cubes, for serving
• 1/2 cup sliced strawberries
• 8 mint leaves
• Stir cava, grape juice, brandy, and simple syrup together in a pitcher. Serve over ice, garnished with strawberries and mint

As we often have our laundry to dry in the open space kitchen/dining room/living room (i.e. the only room in the flat big enough to open the clothes drier), I have been trying to come up with ways to cook fish that do not stink.

The following recipe is the Easy Bacalao (Puerto Rican Fish Stew Recipe) from Recipezaar, and it does not stink very much, probably because the fish is submerged in tomato sauce while cooking. I am taking the liberty of copying this recipe here (with a couple of slight amendments) so that I can find it easily when needed.

This Puerto Rican recipe somehow reminds me of North-East Italy, where a very similar dish is traditionally served with polenta. You can otherwise have it with a couple of slices of home-baked bread, or rice, or baby new potatoes.

Ingredients (serves 3)

• 600g frozen cod or haddock
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 1 can diced tomato
• 1 chili pepper, deseeded and chopped
• 2 tablespoons sliced pimento stuffed olives
• 1 tablespoon capers
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup water, as needed

Preparation

1. Heat oil in a large high-sided pan
2. Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 2 minutes
3. Add garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute
4. Defrost fish in microwave
5. Chop fish in 1 1/2-inch pieces
6. Add fish, tinned tomatoes, chili pepper, olives, capers, oregano and salt; stir to combine
7. Add up to 1/2 cup water if the mixture seems dry
8. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes

Lately however I have tasted Dr B.'s porridge and it's so good I don't mind the extra calories. As it is not always easy to get the proportion and cooking times right, I have noted his settings down and I'm posting them here so I can find them easiliy:

• 45g oats
• 300g semi-skimmed milk
• 1 tablespoon sugar

1. Mix ingredients together in a microwaveable bowl
2. Cook in microwave oven, 2 minutes at full power, then simmer for 3 minutes
3. Stir and let it cool

Xató recipe at massrecipes.com

Serves 6.

Ingredients

• 2 Heads Curly endive
• 3 Garlic cloves
• 8 Almonds; peeled and toasted
• 1 Or more Sharp chili peppers (or powdered cayenne pepper)
• 1/2 c Olive oil
• 1/4 c Wine vinegar
• 3/4 ts Salt

Preparation

1. Blend all the ingredients except the endives to make the sauce
2. Wash the endives
3. Separate the leaves
4. Soak the leaves in the sauce for at least one hour
5. Serve with cured ham, cold sausages, anchovies, marinated fish

Icelandic pepper cookies recipe at allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• 1 1/4 cups butter, softened
• 1 1/4 cups white sugar
• 3/4 cup light corn syrup
• 2 small eggs
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

Preparation

1. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar. Stir in corn syrup and eggs; cream well. Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and pepper. Add dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until smooth. Refrigerate dough over night.
2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
3. Roll out dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out cookies with a 2 inch round cookie cutter. Place at least 1 inch apart on cookie sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes in preheated oven.

He came back with two kilos of brown Basmati rice, made two curries in a week with some of it, then left me to go through the rest when he realised that the rice he bought took over forty minutes to cook instead of the twelve minutes claimed on the label.

I remembered a technique I had once read in a Chinese cookbook to put rice on, set a timer and come back to beautifully cooked, fluffy rice that needs no draining.

You can follow my step-by-step instructions on how to cook rice at Instructables.com

Watched rice never cooks, originally uploaded by bitful.

The other night I offered to relieve Dr B.'s grumpiness and frustration at not sleeping much because of continuous calls from work (he is on 24-hour support until the end of the weekend) by cooking a chicken Caesar salad. Halfway through it, we looked at each other and realised how much we'd both missed it.

A word of warning: although this is called 'salad', and my version is the healthiest around, the basic ingredients are very nutritious, and the whole thing can set you back several hundred calories, depending on quantity.

Ingredients

• Romaine or Cos lettuce
• Chicken breast, whole
• Thin smoked bacon rashers, light (or trimmed of all fat)
• Blue cheese, crumbled
• Caesar salad dressing
• Oil and vinegar

Preparation

1. Sear the chicken breasts on high heat on both sides in a non-stick pan
2. Turn the heat down, cover and let the chicken cook through slowly
3. In another non-stick pan, fry the bacon
4. Cut the bacon in small pieces
5. Chop and rinse the letttuce
6. Dress the lettuce in a little olive oil and vinegar
7. Place lettuce on large plates
8. Slice chicken sideways thinly and place on lettuce
9. Sprinkle with the chopped bacon and cheese
10. Top with Caesar salad dressing

Chicken Caesar salad, originally uploaded by bitful.

]]> http://www.bitful.com/2007/08/12/sunday-lunch-chicken-caesar-salad/feed/ 0 http://www.bitful.com/2007/07/22/sunday-lunch-bacon-butty/ http://www.bitful.com/2007/07/22/sunday-lunch-bacon-butty/#comments Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:55:35 +0000 Luca http://www.bitful.com/2007/07/22/sunday-lunch-bacon-butty/ Most often enjoyed on Sundays at lunchtime, this simple British classic recipe goes very well with headaches, queasiness, the need to maintain a horizontal position, bad (yet compelling) TV and other signs of a hangover.

This sandwich is such an institution that experts at Leeds University have come up with a mathematical formula to make the perfect bacon butty:

N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta

More details on this formula in Scientists' 'perfect' bacon butty on the BBC News website.

Here is the quickest, simplest version you can have, as was lovingly prepared for me earlier today by Dr B.

Ingredients

• Bacon (any kind, but 2 to 3 rashers of back bacon are recommended)
• Bread (any kind, but traditionally you will need two thick slices of white Farmhouse bread)

Preparation

1. Fry bacon
2. Slice bread
3. Sandwich bacon between two slices of bread, add brown sauce (optional, to taste)