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Warm butternut squash salad

This delicious warm salad is perfect for cold months. Yes, it is simple but bursting with flavour, and of course it contains the main autumn ingredient – beautiful winter squash! Slightly sweet roasted butternut squash together with salted feta and fresh spinach leaves create nice and tasty salad, perfect in its simplicity.

And don’t forget to sprinkle the salad with raw pumpkin seeds (as I did.. haha)!

Warm butternut squash salad

Time: 40min
Difficulty: very easy
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Slightly adapted from here

Ingredients

1/2 butternut squash, peeled and cut into 1cm-thick slices

1 medium red onion, cut into wedges

1 orange

fresh spinach leaves, as much as you like

100-150g feta or white/Bulgarian cheese

handful of raw pumpkin seeds

Dressing*

juice of 1/2 orange

2-3 tsp white balsamic or champagne vinegar

1 tsp honey mustard

2-3 tbsp EV olive oil

freshly ground sea salt &white pepper, to taste

Method

Arrange butternut squash and onion on a baking tray, drizzle everything with olive oil, plus squash with juice of 1/2 orange. Roast in preheated 180C oven for 25 minutes or until squash is soft.
For the dressing, in a small jar combine all ingredients and shake well. *Adjust to your taste by adding more vinegar or oil.
Arrange spinach on a serving plate, top with warm squash and onion. Sprinkle with feta and pumpkin seeds. Drizzle with dressing.

Enjoy warm salad!

Kulesh

Kulesh – simple thick soup/pottage, that was popular in old times among peasants and Cossacks. It was also called “field pottage or kasha”, as it was often cooked by farmers for their lunch during field works. This pottage consisted mainly of millet and any root vegetables that were available at the moment. Garnished with some onions and salo (salted or cured fat, usually pork one), kulesh was prepared on a fire, that added a nice smoked flavor to the whole dish.

It should be thick enough but if you prefer thinner consistency add more water. Mine was thick and nourishing because of smoked meat (cooked pork belly). Using smoked meat replaces the cooking on an open fire. But feel free to make completely vegetarian version and omit the meat.

Once I wrote that millet is a healthy grain or seed. And if you still think it’s just for the feeding birds, you’re completely wrong and miss lots of benefits of this lovely grain. It’s a good source of vitamins B, calcium and iron. Here another recipes that I do love and cook at home: sweet breakfast millet porridge and autumn recipe – millet cooked in a pumpkin pot.

So, have you ever cooked millet? What are your favorite recipes?

Kulesh

Servings: 4
Difficulty: very easy
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You can add some cubes of celery root along with other vegetables.

Ingredients

4 medium potatoes, cubed

1 large carrot, cubed

200g millet

1 tbsp vegetable oil

1 large onion

150g smoked pork belly

1 bay leaf

fresh chopped parsley and spring onion, optional

S&P to taste

Method

Boil 2l water in a large pan. Add cubed vegetables and some salt. Bring to boil, reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer about 15 minutes.
Wash millet throughly under running water. You may also cover millet with some warm water, it helps to cook it faster.
Add millet to the pot along with bay leaf and simmer for 10-15 minutes more or until it’s cooked.
Meanwhile, slice or chop onion, and cut pork belly into thin slices or chop it as you like. Heat the oil in a frying pan and saute onion until it’s soft. Add pork belly and fry for few minutes.
Stir the onion-pork mixture into the soup. Adjust the seasoning.
Pour the soup into serving bowl. Sprinkle with fresh herbs, if desired. Serve with bread.

Enjoy!

Sunday Breakfast

October 9, 2016
milkandbun
3 comments
breakfast, cereal, food, food photo, food styling, healthy breakfast, mummy's breakfast, My Life, photo, photography, porridge

Good morning, lovely people!

Busy busy busy, that’s how my mornings sound. Morning is time of the day when cooking something complicated or completely from scratch is such a challenge now, moreover I’m usually very hungry, close to starving! So, I need not only a good nourishing meal but it has to be prepared as soon as possible. And here is something to help me – flakes! Not those sweet corn flakes, I’m talking about healthy stuff – oat, rye, wheat and rice flakes.

I add some milk into a bowl of mixed flakes, then allow it to stand for a while (if I’ve got a time), then it goes to the microvawe (bless God the man who created it!), stir, add fresh berries and chopped fruits (I used blackberries and nectarines this time), sprinkle with almond flakes. Adding a pinch of nutmeg or cinnamon makes the morning cereal only better.

Sooooooo simple and full of amazing textures and flavours! Yum! 🙂

Sunday Breakfast: Baked quail eggs

When it’s not a weekend, sometimes being pressed for time can make hard to prepare anything for breakfast, and I’m not saying about to sit down and enjoy it, and you probably skip it day by day.. I never skip breakfast, and studies show that those who eat breakfast regularly lose weight! So be sure you eat a good and tasty breakfast! Like this protein-based, that starts your metabolism and your energy level will be fired up.

You only need to put all ingredients together in a baking dish (small-individual or one large to share), crack small&tasty quail eggs in it and bake for few minutes. Meanwhile, you can make a fresh tea or toast some bread.

Baked quail eggs with Gruyère cheese, ham and spinach

Time: 15-20min
Difficulty: very easy
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Ingredients

butter, for greasing baking dishes

fresh spinach leaves

cooked ham slices (1 large per person), cut into strips

5 or more quail eggs per person

1-2 tbsp grated Gruyère cheese per person

salt, crushed pink peppercorns to taste

Garnish

extra grated cheese

chopped parsley

cherry tomatoes

bread

Method

Preheat oven to 200C.
Grease baking dishes with butter.
Put in spinach, ham, 1/3 of cheese. Crack eggs, season with salt&pink pepper and sprinkle with some cheese.
Bake for 6-10 minutes or until the egg white is set.
Sprinkle with parsley, garnish with cheese. Serve immediately with cherry tomatoes and bread.

Enjoy!

Have a lovely and delicious weekend breakfast!

Russian roll with Argentinian pears

Everything is simple here. A few days ago, Argentinian pears were sold in a supermarket here, I’ve never tried them before and the price was attractive, so I bought a huge pack. Even though they turned out juicy and very delicious I still had some not-so-ripe left. Good to highlight, that using a bit hard but ripe pears that retain its shape during the baking process is a key to the good and not mushy filling.

I added tvorog (as I mentioned many times in my blog – it’s very Russian product) into the dough for my roll, it makes the dough softer and more tasty. Don’t worry, the dough won’t rip but make sure you carefully roll it out on a floured surface.

The roll looks like a strudel, but the dough is absolutely different, it’s not that thin and thus much easier to roll out! It is tender&delicious and absolutely deserves to make it again and again. Another bonus, the dough can be make a day ahead! Plus juicy pears, sweet black raisins and crunchy nuts in the filling! Doesn’t it sound luscious? It is! 😀

Russian roll with Argentinian pears

Servings: 6-8
Difficulty: moderate
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Ingredients

Dough

250g tvorog

90g soft butter, at room temperature

1 large egg

1 tbsp white sugar

200-210g plain flour

a pinch of fine salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

Filling

40g black raisins

hot strong black tea or water

1 egg white, optional

80-100g roasted almonds, chopped

450g (3-4) pears, cut into small cubes

2 tbsp brown or raw sugar

Glaze

1 egg yolk

2 tsp milk

1 tbsp demerara or raw sugar, optional

Method

For the roll dough, whisk tvorog with butter.
In another small bowl, whisk egg with sugar until pale. Add beaten egg into the mixture.
Sift the flour along with salt and baking powder into the dough. Combine to get the soft dough, shape into the disk. Cover in a plastic wrap and put in a fridge for 30-60 minutes to cool.
Preheat oven to 180C/360F.
Wash raisins and cover with hot strong black tea or water. Leave to soak while ready to use. Drain.
Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface into 30x40cm rectangle, making sure it doesn’t stick to the surface.
Brush the surface of the roll with egg white (optional). Sprinkle with nuts, spread pears and raisins. Sprinkle with sugar. Slightly fold in all sides (thus the filling will stay inside the roll and don’t fall out). Roll the dough into a barrel.
Carefully transfer the roll on a greased lined baking tray. Brush the roll with egg glaze and sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden-brown.
Leave to cool for 15-20 minutes. Slice and serve as is or with whipped cream/frozen vanilla yogurt/ice cream.

Enjoy!