Artichoke's Day

Artichokes are one of my favorite food. As I bought plenty of them yesterday in Italy, today was the right day for the Artichoke's Day;) First dish: Artichokes Filled with Artichokes. For two prepare:
- 4 large artichokes
- 100 g fresh mushrooms or 50 g dried mushrooms
- 1 small onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 3 T ground almonds
- 2 T soy sauce
- 1 T olive oil
- juice of 1 lemon
Cut the stems of the artichokes, peel the hard leaves off and cut the top third off. Soak the artichokes in the lemon juice. Peel the stems removing all the hard bets. Cut into small pieces. Do the same with the mushrooms. Chop the onion and garlic.

Boil the artichokes for 5 to 10 minutes, put on them on a baking tray and spread them open. Saute the onion and garlic, add the artichokes stems and mushrooms. Saute for 5 minutes. Add the almonds and soy sauce. Stir well. Fill the artichokes with the mixture and bake in a preheated oven at 200C for 30 to 40 minutes.

Second dish: Artirisochoky; get ready with:
- olive oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, crushed
- 10 - 12 baby artichokes
- 1 t ginger powder
- 150 g rice
- cca 400 ml vegetable stock
- 3-4 T grated parmesan

Peel 3 to 4 layers of leaves of the artichokes and cut them into 4 to 6 pieces.

Heat the oil. Saute the onion and the garlic. Add the artichokes, stir and cook for some minutes.
Add the ginger, stir. Add the rice and the vegetable stock. Cook until the rice is cooked.
Finally, add the grated parmesan.

Local & Non - local

It has passed a week since I took these pictures. Time management is still not my strong point, but I'm improving. However the previous weekend I managed to prepare one local and one non-local dish. The local one is originally called "Jota". It' sort of a "thick sour turnip soup" (it can be made also with sour cabbage). You need: 1/2 kg turnip, 3 big potatoes, 3 cups beans, 3 cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. First boil the turnip (in water) with the garlic (it takes around an hour). Separately cook the potatoes and the beans. Once everything is cooked, mash the potatoes and the beans and add both to the turnip. Mix well, season and cook for another 15 minute.
The non-local dish were my Surprise Tortillas. Surprise comes from the fact that you never know what's in the tortillas till the moment you taste it. Actually it depends what you have in the fridge;) Well, this time it was the moment for tofu, red peppers and (dried) mushrooms. So I took: 4 tortillas, 2 red peppers, 150 g tofu, soy sauce, (sesame) oil and a cup of dried mushrooms.
Firstly, marinate the tofu in the soy sauce for at least an hour. Secondly, soak the mushroom. Meanwhile chop the peppers. After the tofu is marinated, fry it on (sesame) oil. Set aside. In the same pot add some more oil and cook the peppers and the mushrooms. Once done, mix everything together and put the mixture in the tortillas. Roll them. If you like cheese (who doesn't?;), put some on the top and heat in the oven or in the microwave.
The last stage was the Dark Chocolate Pudding. Very simple;) Buy the pudding, stir it in 1 dcl of soy milk. Add 4 dcl of soy milk more, bring to boil, pour in the cups and allow to cool. Serve with cacao powder and soy cream.

Mushroom Steak & Sweet Mashed Potatoes

It has been a long time since my last post. I haven't given up writing... is just that everything came over me after coming back home. But here I am again;) And here are my Mushrooms Steaks and Sweet Mashed Potatoes;)
For the mushrooms steaks you need (VegNews, p. 57):

- for the marinade: 1/3 cup olive oil, 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar, 1/4 cup marple syrup, 3 T shoyu, 1/8 t black pepper
- 4 (portobello) mushrooms, destemmed.
Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a large bowl. Submerge the mushrooms in it and allow to marinade for at least one hour. I let it for 6 hours... it's worth;) Put everything together in a saucepan and cook for five minutes.

For the Sweet Mashed Potatoes prepare one big potato, 2 T soy cream, 1/2 t ground nutmeg, 1 t dill and salt. Peel and cook the potatoes. Mash them, add all the other ingredients and mash again;) Serve with mushrooms steaks.

Sweet Greens with Fresh Tomato

Being in NZ allows me to enjoy all summer things, including all fresh summer veggies. It's amazing having two summers in a year;) As I have quite enough of pasta, I bought some milet. BTW in Nelson I also found an organic shop (http://www.organicgreengrocer.co.nz/), it's not 100% vegetarian, but they are quite well stored. And they are the main reason why I prepared the Sweet Greens with Fresh Tomato;) I bought: a small onion, avocado oil, 120 g green beans, 70 g milet, 1 tomato and fresh herbs. Of course you need some salt.
Cook the milet. Meanwhile chop the onion, heat the oil and saute the onion. Cut the beans and add them to the onion after some minutes. When the milet is cooked add it to the beans. Stir well. Then the tomato, fresh herbs and salt come. Stir well and enjoy it with a local NZ's ginger bear;)

Peas Noodles

Although I had noodles three day in a row while tracking, it really appealed to me today to have them again. Human beings are sometimes really strange, aren’t we? However preparing noodles is one of the simpliest thing in the world. For the Peas Noodles I just boiled the water, put the noodles and the dried vegies in it (you get a little sack of them in the noodles’ package). Tol enrich a bit, I add half of the peas from can and some cheese. Well, typical backpackers I’d say;)

Kumara Mussaka in Christchurch

Remember what is a kumara? It’s the special NZ’s potato, which is a bit sweeter than the regular one. So why not use it as any other potato in recipes? We decided to make a Kumara Mussaka. We bought: 2 large kumaras, 1 large eggplant, 250 g silken tofu, 150 g cheese, oil (this time we used the avocado oil), nutmeg and herb salt. Preheat the oven at 200 C. Cook the kumara until soft and cool it. Peel it and sliced it into 0,5 cm thick slices. Meanwhile slice the eggplant into slices of the same thickness, season them with salt. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the eggplant. Slice the cheese into thin slices (use the slicer;) and mash the tofu with some salt and nutmeg. Assemble the mussaka in a 30 cm round baking tray. Start with half of the eggplant, than a third of the cheese, half of kumara and half of the tofu mixture. Repeat this ending with cheese on top. Bake for 20 minute. … and enjoyed it with some authentic NZ’s merlot;)

Quick Mushrooms Goulash

Mushrooms are quite often on my home menu. Observing the local groceries I’d say that the same applies for NZ. If the shiitake and the porcini mushrooms are often on our plates at home, here the Portobello mushrooms are a must. I really don’t know why our shops don’t sell them. However, the last evening in Queenstown was very suitable for a Quick Mushrooms Goulash. I filled my shooping basket with some olive oil, a big onion and a lot of Portobello mushrooms. The cooking part is really simple: chop the onion, heat the oil and saute the onion for at least 15 minutes. When making a goulash make sure that you saute the onion very well. Slice the mushrooms and add to the onion. Cook for another 10-15 minutes. Season and serve with polenta.

Destination Organics

As already told one of my must in a city is to visit a vegetarian restaurant and/or organic shop. In Queenstown I found Destination Organics (http://www.destinationorganic.co.nz/), which is both - a shop and a small caffee/restaurant. The shelves were filled with all kind of delicious food, from fresh veggies to Italian imported red pesto. After some quick shopping (of course I’d buy everything if I was at home;) we tried their special salad and the natural plate. The salad (picture on the left) was a mixture of lettuce, coleslaw, really great avocado, tomatoes, hummus and lentil salad. On the other hand the Natural Plate (picture on the right) offered us the opportunity to taste the home made bread with fresh veggies and some dried fruit. Both were good, but I preferred the salad plate more.

Zucca Pizza in Queenstown

After four days of dry food and more than 60 km walking we decided that is time to have a pizza. Although I can have pizza at home, I didn’t have any objections to have a Zucca pizza at a restaurant in Queenstown (btw Zucca in Italian means butter squash). I have never eaten or even thought to have butter squash on my pizza. But I have to confess that it tasted pretty good. So the butter squash was baked in oven an put on the pizza with feta cheese, olives, red peppers, spinach and tomatoes. It tasted delicious and I’m determined to do a bis back home;)

Noodles in NZ's mountains

One of the must in New Zealand is to do some trekking or how they say it here - tramping. When planning the trip, we were looking for the Milford Sound track in the South Island. Unfortunately we were not able to book it as you have to do it at least one year in advance. After some brief reading on the net we took the decision to do the Kepler track, which is also located in the Fiordland (also South Island). Further research showed that things in NZ’s mountains are a bit different as in my home country. As a salesman in Wellinghton said to us: ”You are spoilt!” He was refering to the fact that in most of the European mountains’ hut you can buy food and beverages. Of course the menu is not like in the restaurant, but you can have at least water, tea, coffee, beer and some soups, pasta etc. Well here things are different. Beside the commodity to book the hut on-line, that’s it. If you want to eat something while tramping, you have to bring everything with you. As we were not inclined to have dry food for four days we had to buy a stove and some cooking pots adapted for tramping. The most “complicated” dish we made were noodles in a soup;) To have some variety we cooked every day a different soup: tomato, mushroom and thai vegetable soup;) Let’s say I have enough noodles and instant soups for a while;)