Pasta🍅Pomodoro🍅

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🍅🍅🍅 Yummy 🍅 Healthy 🍅 Easy🍅🍅🍅

When I feel like a good home meal but have no time to cook or simply not exactly in the mood for a kitchen day, Pasta Pomodoro is the first thing that comes to my mind. It is a basic, quick and easy dish that requires only a couple of ingredients yet the outcome is a fusion of simple earthy flavors and aromas that makes it a great dish for the whole family.

The key to a flavorful Pasta Pomodoro is fresh, local and preferably organic ingredients.

Ingredients (4 portions):

· 500g whole wheat pasta

· 8 to 10 ripe tomatoes skinned* and diced

· 3 to 4 Tbsps. extra virgin olive oil

· Fresh basil leaves

· Crushed peppercorn, salt

Pour olive oil in a saucepan over low heat, add tomatoes and cook for 30 minutes or until tomatoes are soft. Add black pepper.

Meanwhile, bring lightly salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add pasta and cook, stirring occasionally for 8 to 10 minutes until pasta is al dente. Drain pasta.

Serve pasta with sauce on top or mixed. Garnish with basil. #SimplyYummy #LessIsMore!

*To skin the tomatoes, make a cross at the top with a knife then put them into boiling water for a couple of minutes. The skin will come off easily.

Holy Soup 🍲

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Ramadan is not here yet but I thought I can start rehearsing my lentil soup 🍲

Here is the yummy, healthy and the easier than easy recipe:

           Ingredients:

  • 2 cups of red lentils (orange color) rinsed
  • half an onion chopped
  • water
  • 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp black pepper, 2 tsp salt

Add oil, onion and spices to a pot and stir fry. Add lentils, cover generously with water and let it simmer for at least 30 minutes. Add lemon juice on low heat for 5 minutes. Blend then serve preferably warm and garnished with pomegranate, chopped parsley and grilled pitta bread 🍲

Nostalgia in a Crunch 🍏

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I wait for those green crunchy plums every single Spring! whether in Montreal, New York, London or Abu Dhabi, I try to look for a Lebanese grocer that brings them from Lebanon during their short season. Each of these mini green spheres is a great dose of nostalgia which transports me back to the tastes of my hometown (remember the scene from Ratatouille where the cynical critic tastes the final dish? Yup that’s what happens to me!). So today I’m crunching into my wild happy childhood, one “Janerik”(sour plum) at a time! 

Home food 🍲 Sweet 🍲 Home

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  It’s a great comfort coming back home after holidays to healthy home food. Having been in the French capital for more than a week, our family had a large dose of croissants for breakfast, French onion soups for lunch, macarons and chocolate for afternoon snack and cheese and wine for dinner. Today, I couldn’t think of a better side salad to accompany our spinach stew dish, a great choice to help get us back to our healthier yet delicious food routine. I found those fresh yummy fava beans in a local organic market, yes they are in season at the moment! I steamed the beans, mixed them with the rest of coriander and garlic paste I used for the spinach stew, added some olive oil and lemon juice and voilà! The tastiest in-season-salad.😋

Produce Inspo 🍅🍇🍊🌼

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Here’s me coming full circle, as just like this one, my very first post was also an ode to the beauty and inspiration of French market produce… Colors, shapes, patterns and textures, inevitably leave me dreaming of possibilities after a trip to a fresh market. Thanks to its abundant variety and creative nuances, I’ll always be a disciple of nature when it comes to taste!    
    
    
     

   
 

Courgette Chocolate Cake

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Among all the February celebrations, my warmest is my hubby’s birthday. For the past couple of years, my daughter and I started a habit out of baking a cake on that day. I don’t often bake, so this makes this day extra special as it gives us the opportunity to share memorable, exciting, messy, one-off funny/panicky moments in the kitchen before we polish everything up before daddy comes home for the big surprise (well perhaps not-so-surprise anymore as he’s starting to notice the tradition now).

This year my daughter and I decided to bake a… Zucchini Cake! Credit for this idea has to go to my daughter’s amazing former nanny who introduced us to this cake.

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I know some of you may be cringing and despite the nutritionist in me, I myself was initially skeptical, but the result is AMAZING and it’s almost impossible for someone to figure out that Zucchinis were involved in the mix! In effect, none of the people I served this cake to suspected this twist. So here you’re thinking, why should I ever try a Zucchini cake and to that I’d say:

  • Zucchini replaces the butter and gives the necessary moist to the cake (ideal for people trying to cut on fat-calories since Zucchinis have close to zero fat!)
  • Introducing vegetables in cake-baking with your kids is a great way to promote vegetables to them as appealing and fun
  • It is actually VERY TASTY IN ITS OWN UNIQUE WAY and you will only believe me once you try it so here’s the recipe:

 

Ingredients (10-12 servings cake):

  • 2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 cups sugar
  • 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 2 tbsp. canola or other mild vegetable oil
  • 4 large eggs
  • 2 cups blended zucchini (about 1 large)

 

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 350° F (175°C). Grease a 10-cup Bundt pan.
  2. In a bowl, stir together flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
  3. Mix eggs and oil and add to the dry mix. Add blended zucchini and stir.
  4. Pour the evenly mix into the prepared pan. Bake 60 minutes in the preheated oven.
  5. Cool the cake completely before decorating it with your favorite garniture. Here I sprinkled on my beautiful blossom-shaped Bundt a bit of confectioners’ sugar then left the final touch to my daughter who decorated it with her favorite fresh berries!

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