Oven Roasted Potatoes

It seems that summer is already over here and I'm ready to go into the Christmas mood.  After waiting for summer to arrive for so long, I'm finally giving up.  Yes, there has been some nice days that were warm (hot) and sunny, but here we are again with cloudy, gray skies and with temperatures that we should have had around spring.  Somehow, after having few days of summer, then next day with winter temperature seems to be really acceptable around here.  After living for very long time now, I am finally accepting the fact that I will never ever have an uninterrupted summer of 3 months (or more) again.  A week or two weeks of summer is perfectly fine.  It saves you a lot of energy.  No need to do spring cleaning.  Who would need to have clean windows for few days anyway, especially if it will rain right after you clean them?
But if you are having a day or two of summer, or if you are one of those lucky people who has long summer season, then I suggest you make these roasted potatoes as a side dish to your BBQ.  They are so easy to prepare. There is no precooking involved. They are healthier and tastier than usual fried potatoes.
I have learned how to make these from my mother-in-law.  I had few friends who have asked me the recipe before, so here it is.  I've made few changes to the original recipe, such as adding the vinegar, which makes the potatoes a little more crispy.


Oven Roasted Potatoes

(Makes 4 servings as a side dish)

About 1 kg potatoes

1/2 tablespoon of fresh thyme

2 tablespoons of fresh rosemary leaves

3-4 tablespoons of olive oil

1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar

Salt

Freshly milled black pepper

Preheat your oven to 200° C(400° F) before you start.  Wash the potatoes very well and without peeling them slice the potatoes into wedges.  Take a deep salad bowl and put the potatoes in and then the olive oil.  Turn them around to get the potatoes coated with olive oil.  Then add all the other ingredients and mix them well with the potatoes. On a flat baking tray, place a baking paper, then spread the potatoes on.  Put them in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes.  If you want them more crispy then roast them for about 20 minutes, then take them out,  quickly turn them around a little bit with the help of a spoon or spatula, then roast them for another 10.  Depending on the type of potatoes you are using, cooking time can vary between 30-45 minutes, so check if they are cooked before taking them out.  Do not burn your fingers while doing so.  Enjoy!

Oven Baked Fish

My mother cooks fish sometimes like this one.  It's basically oven baked fish with some vegetables and some simple sauce or only some olive oil.  As I was cooking this, I also came across a similar recipe like this one in Jamie's Dinners.  It was originally made with Salmon, but I had only Pangasius fish in my fridge but it still turned out so good that I had to write it here.  I love Salmon more than any other fish here, but I thought I will try some other kind this time and that's why I ended up with the Pangasius fillets.  I also tried my new and not so thyme-like, lemon thyme herb from my freshly re-done herbs garden.  Only because it had a lemon-like smell, I thought it might go with fish.  You don't really need to put that if you don't have it, but some fresh dill or even dry dill will go perfectly with the fish.  If you need a light summer meal and you have some potatoes, some vegetables at home then try this one.  I thought it was a great dish, because it was all-in-one meal.  The carbs, veggies and fish baked at the same time without so much preparation beforehand.  I love practical dishes for our weekday lunches and I really try to find healthy and simple dishes as much as possible, although I'm not always so successful at that.  If you are a mother who has little time to cook, try this. Next time I'll be making this with Salmon. Yummy...

Oven Baked Fish

(Serves 4)

4 Pangasius fish fillets

800 g new potatoes - with skin but washed and scrubbed well

about 300-400 g of green beans - cleaned and the tops removed. 

about a cup of peas

2-3 spring onions - chopped

juice of half a lemon

half lemon - thinly sliced

some olive oil

1 tablespoon of fresh dill

1 tablespoon of fresh lemon thyme

about 1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary

salt and pepper

Start with boiling your potatoes in water for about 10 minutes and boil your beans for 5 minutes.  Leave them to cool a little while, while you prepare your fish.  Rub the fish with some salt, pepper and olive oil.  Preheat your oven to 200°C(392° F).  Half the potatoes if you want them to be a little bit crispy.  Put all of the potatoes, beans, peas and spring onions on the tray and season them with salt and pepper.  Add some olive oil and stir them so all the vegetables are seasoned.  Place the fish fillets in between the vegetables and sprinkle the dill and thyme on the fish fillets and rosemary on the vegetables.  Put a little more olive oil and add your lemon juice over everything then place your sliced lemons on the fish fillets. Bake it in the oven for about 20-25 minutes until the fish is cooked.

Potato salad

You may think "Why on earth she's putting a potato salad recipe?".  Mainly because this is by far the best potato salad on earth.  It's my mother's recipe and although I have tried other potato salads, this still remains my favorite by far.  It has plain and natural flavors, not so many ingredients.  No cream, no butter, no mayonnaise, no vegetable stock.  It has the best flavor combination.  I've tried the vegetable stock version of the potato salad, which I think is a typical way of adding flavor to the potatoes around here, however I much prefer the natural potato taste in this version.  This goes perfect with grilled meat dishes in the summer and you can keep in the fridge for 2-3 days without a problem.  I made a lot of it this time, because I absolutely love the left over of this salad.  I think that it tastes even more delicious the next day.  If you have time, prepare the salad couple of hours in advance so that potatoes can absorb the dressing a little bit more.
I have slightly modified the salad dressing this time by adding some mustard.  I would like to hear from you if you try this salad.

Potato salad

700 g potatoes

2 spring onions - chopped

a handful of fresh parsley - finely chopped

Salad dressing

3 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons of canola oil

1 teaspoon of mustard

1 tablespoon of apple vinegar

1 tablespoon of white wine vinegar

1 teaspoon of salt

some freshly milled black pepper

Cook your potatoes by boiling them in water without peeling them.  Be careful not to overcook them.  After they are done let them cool.  When they are cool enough, peel and dice them.  After you chop your onions with their green bits, add them onto the potatoes.  Prepare your dressing by mixing all your ingredients in the above list.  Pour the dressing into the salad and stir it all very slowly.  Try not to mash the potatoes while you are doing this.  At last add the chopped parsley to the salad.  Leave the salad to rest for about an hour before you serve.  

Baked Vegetables with Cheese

As soon as the weather gets a little bit warmer, I start to crave vegetable dishes.  Especially if we are grilling in the weekends, I like to have some vegetables with whatever we are grilling.  This is something that got inspired by Sarah Wiener's cookbook Frau am Herd, which I bought recently.  It's only available in German for now, but it's a great book if you just want to cook natural and simple food.  The saute part of the cooking was a very good tip from my mother.  This is a very easy and quick way of making vegetables, but most importantly, it's very light.  You can replace any of the vegetables in the recipe with others or use another kind of cheese that you already have in your fridge.  Try this once and believe me you won't regret it.  It's so good that I made it again today, but this time I added potatoes and leeks to below combination, but excluded the onions.  It was equally yummy.  This recipe here, serves about 4 as a side dish.

Baked Vegetables with Cheese

2 carrots - peeled and chopped

3 zucchinis - chopped

1 yellow pepper - chopped

1 red onion - chopped

about half a cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon of olive oil

salt and pepper

Start with heating your oven to 200° C.  Then start sauteing all your vegetables at the same time in a pan with a tablespoon of olive oil.  Add some salt and pepper while you are doing so.  This shouldn't take more than 8-10 minutes.  When your vegetables are still looking fresh and not completely done, put them in a gratin baking dish or in a roasting tray and sprinkle your grated cheese over them.   Stick it in the oven on a top shelf for about 15 minutes.  That's all.  Enjoy your light and tasty vegetables.

Easy Hollandaise Sauce with Steamed Asparagus

When you go to the supermarkets to buy your groceries at this time of the year, the first thing you will see are probably the strawberries.  A week or so after strawberries, the asparagus starts showing up. They put them in the displays with those fancy vegetable peeling gadgets and with ready made hollandaise sauces out of the box or out of a pack, full fat, low fat, all different versions you can imagine.
I remember, the first time I tried to cook asparagus I had no idea about how to get started. Forget cooking it, I didn't even have a clue about how to peel the funny looking things. I haven't seen them in my life before I came to this country.  It wasn't something we used to eat at home.  It was my husband who encouraged me to give them a go.  As a new wife who wanted to learn more about how to cook in Switzerland, I wanted to try and see if could pull it off. The result was a total disappointment. The asparagus was not peeled right and wasn't cooked enough. The whole thing was terrible, however there was one achievement; the hollandaise sauce I made from scratch.  Even then I wasn't so into these ready made sauces so I found a recipe on the internet and made it myself.  I remember that it was so yummy and I could just eat it without anything.
This time however, I felt like I had a bit more experience in cooking asparagus so I was quite confident when I saw the first bunch in our local supermarket this week. I decided to make the sauce at home.  I started looking on the internet for a very good recipe, but I wasn't able to find one that looked easy and practical. Some looked really complicated even though they said that it's a really easy sauce. In the end I came up with below recipe for this sauce.  It tasted very good and it wasn't complicated at all. The trick was to whisk it constantly and to use low heat.
For the asparagus, I used my pressure cooker to steam them, but they ended up a little too soft. Therefore below is my recommended timing for a medium size pressure cooker.

Makes about 3-4 servings as a starter.

1 kg green asparagus
2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar
3 tablespoons of water
3 egg yolks (slightly beaten)
100 grams of butter
juice of half a lemon
some salt and pepper
a little bit of hot chili powder or cayenne pepper

Start with peeling the asparagus and don't forget to cut the rough end bits. Put them in your pressure cooker and steam them with a bit water for about 5 minutes. Cooking time can vary according to the type of pressure cooker you have. Alternatively you can use a steamer, but then you need to check the instructions to cook the asparagus for the model you have.
For the sauce, start by putting the vinegar and water in a small sauce pan and bring it to simmer. Do not boil it. Keep the heat at low temperature and start whisking the eggs in very slowly. After the eggs are in, keep whisking it for about a minute.  Slowly add the butter to the mixture bit by bit and continue to whisk. Once you have all the butter in, add some salt and pepper, then the chili powder. Give it a good stir and that is all.
Serve it on warm asparagus as displayed in the photo and enjoy.