Healthy Little Sauce

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Hello, everyone,

When it comes to sauces, I prefer to work with only natural resources. This means that I prefer not to cook with things with synthetic ingredients. Therefore, I avoid tomato purées (I know some are said to be fully natural, but I still avoid all of them).

I just had a late dinner and I made a little sauce with it. With this sauce, my aim was to preserve as much of the nutrients in the ingredients as possible and to keep the sauce simple. So, I didn't cook the sauce for a long time. I'll put my recipe below:

Ingredients

A quarter of a red bell pepper

A little bit (less than the pepper) of an onion

A little sprinkle of black pepper

4 fresh tarragon leaves (picked from my garden)

Preparation

Slice the red pepper into not-so-thin strips and chop the onions and the tarragon.

Heat a little oil in a pan turning off the heat when the oil's hot.

Pour the ingredients together into the pan and stir for approximately 8 seconds.

Take the ingredients out of the pan and onto the dish you plan on serving it in.

And.....that's all.

With this process, a smaller amount of the nutrients in the ingredients are destroyed due to the heat used in cooking.

I am done eating and I can tell you that that little sauce was good!

Here's another healthy sauce recipe:

Ingredients

Fresh vine tomatoes sliced into quarters or sixths depending on the size of the tomato

Half of a medium sized onion, chopped

A pinch of black pepper

Herbs of your choice in your desired quantity

A tiny bit of ginger (and garlic if desired)

Bell peppers of your choice

A bit of olive oil

Preparation

Toss all the ingredients in a bowl till they are well mixed.

Cover the bowl with cling film making just one hole in the middle.

Keep the bowl in a warm, dry place for about 2-4 hours.

And....that's it! 

The second recipe doesn't require any cooking so, I guess it's even healthier. Okay! I don't guess. I KNOW it's healthier.

Let me know if you try out these recipes and what you think about them.

Enjoy! :)

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Recipe: Yorkshire Pudding

In my family, we absolutely love Yorkshire pudding! My cousins and I, when we were younger, came up with a silly theory that it was because we're Yorkshire. By the way, I've never been to Yorkshire, believe it or not. Anyways, here's a recipe for my beloved Yorkshire pudding:

Ingredients

140g plain flour or all-purpose flour (this is about 200ml/7fl oz)

4 eggs (200ml/7fl oz)

200ml milk

sunflower oil, butter or vegetable oil, for cooking

1 1/2 teaspoons sugar (optional)

1/8 teaspoon salt (optional)

Preparation method

Heat oven to 230C. Drizzle a little sunflower/vegetable oil (or cubes of butter) evenly into 2 x 4-hole Yorkshire pudding tins or a 12-hole non-stick muffin tin and place in the oven to heat through.

To make the batter, pour 140g plain flour into a bowl and beat in four eggs until smooth. Gradually add 200ml milk and carry on beating until the mix is completely lump-free. You could use a mixer at medium speed if you don't want to mix the ingredients manually.

Season with salt and sugar and mix.

Pour the batter into a jug

Remove the hot tins from the oven.

Pour the batter into the holes carefully and in equal quantities.

Place the tins back in the oven and leave undisturbed for 5-10 mins then reduce the heat to about 175C still leaving the tins undisturbed until the puddings have puffed up and are golden.

Serve immediately.

Thanks for reading!

If you try out this recipe, please let me know what you think about it. 

 

The Different Ways to Cook Plantain

No, these are not bananas!

I made reference to plantains in my last blog post.

In Nigeria, plantain is eaten quite often, alone, with chips (french fries), with different rice dishes (when fried), with yams, sweet potatoes, anything but soups (but I eat it with leafy Nigerian soups instead of the "traditional" things those soups are eaten with (I can't stand those things), but I only eat Nigerian soups once in a long time (maybe once or twice a year, dunno)).

The semi-ripe (ripe) and ripe (very ripe) plantains (the plantains to the left and at the centre in the picture above) are usually the ones eaten. However, from time to time, my mum makes the unripe (green) one into some dish for me to eat because the unripe plantains are rich in iron and I am anaemic (iron-deficient).

Anyways, there are different ways plantains can be cooked. However, I am only going to talk about plantains being boiled, fried or roasted (not made with dishes). Below, I am going to describe how these are done:


Fried Plantain

This is what I ate a few days ago.

To make this, you need to heat some oil up in a deep fryer. While the oil is being heated (to the maximum temperature (or about 190C), peel and cut the plantain into whatever shape you want (I have tutorial photos of this, but I can't get to them now). Put the cut plantain pieces into a bowl, add about a pinch of salt to the bowl (or more, depending on the quantity of plantain used) and toss and turn the bowl around. I usually put a lid on it and shake the bowl up and down, left and right, turn it around a bit and all.

 

Made it myself!

Once the oil is heated fully, pour the plantain into the basket in the fryer, put the lid on the fryer and put the handle down so the plantains are submerged in the oil. Take the plantains out when they are about as brown as the ones I made in those pictures. Put them in a sieve-basket, on a cheese cloth or just shake the fryer basket a bit to get rid of most of the excess oil on the plantains and serve.

Be careful, the inner parts of the plantains will be really hot so you might want to leave them to cool for about a minute.








Boiled Plantain

When making "boiled" plantain, you need to have a pot with water boiling in it on the stove. While the water is heating up, you get out plantains and cut off their heads and tails (toss them in the trash). Leave the skin on the plantain and every few centimetres or every inch or so, you cut down on the plantain (or you don't even have to cut it, depending on how you want the plantain).
Place the plantain pieces in the pot of hot water, pouring some salt in after them and leave them in there (with the heat still on) until they are soft (but not WAY too soft). I have never cooked this, and the last time I ate it, I was a really little girl in Africa, but I'm guessing

about 15-20 minutes should do depending on how hot the water was when you tossed them in.

When the plantains are done, take them out of the pot and leave them out to cool for a bit. Make a slit in the skin of the plantain and peel it off then serve with a sauce of choice.



Roasted Plantain

 No jokes, you can find this being cooked on the streets of Nigeria (well....the pavements/sidewalks) by ladies  and that random spot where it is made is called, "Mama Put" (like "mama, put it in my plate!" unfortunately, it's served in newspapers and in the process of making it, fumes from vehicles and dust would've gotten on it, but that's not how I'm going to teach you to make it. We're going to make it household style.)

Cut of the head and tail of a plantain, peel the plantain and then toss it into an oven (about 200-250C) or pop it on a grill and let it cook till it looks like the pictures to the left. If the plantain is really ripe, let it get a bit darker. If you have a line of black (like the black parts on the plantain to the left of this), don't worry about it, but don't let the whole plantain go black!






Now, I'm going to get a pictorial for you guys to know how to peel a plantain and then I'll end this:

1-2. Cut of the head and tail; 3. Make a slit with the tip of a knife down the length of one side of the plantain; 4. Pull up the skin from the slit; 5. Peel off the entire skin; 6. Get ready to cut or pop into the oven or on the grill!

Thanks for reading!

Recipe: Jollof Rice

Jollof rice ("gel"-"loff") is an African food. It is popularly eaten in Nigeria. I don't think I've ever been to a Nigerian party and not seen Jollof Rice. In schools in Nigeria, you can find it on their menu!
I'm not a huge fan of this (I'm not a huge fan of anything), but people love this (including non-Africans) and I have a recipe for it (that is not the traditional recipe, if there is one). So, here it is:

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Ingredients
1-2 tbsp pure vegetable oil or canola oil

1 large onions, sliced

8 medium-sized frozen tomatoes

4 tbsp tomato purée

2-4 chilli peppers (or any hot pepper) chopped irregularly

Thyme leaves or basil(to taste)

1 tsp ginger

225g/8oz long-grain rice

Salt (to taste) (optional)

1-1.5 tsp sugar (optional)

Preparation method

Place the frozen tomatoes in a bowl of hot water to defrost.

Rinse the rice well to remove excess starch then cook it till it is almost done.

Pour out the water the tomatoes are in, make holes in the tomatoes (using the tip of a knife) and drain the liquid in them into the bowl.

Cut the tomatoes irregularly

Heat the oil in a large pan (saucepan/pot) and cook the onions over a gentle heat until translucent.

Stir in the tomatoes and let it fry for a few minutes.

Add the tomato puree and stir. Let what's in the saucepan fry for about a minute.

Add the liquid drained from the tomatoes, a little at a time, to what's in saucepan and stir. You should have something like a semi-thick sauce. 

Let the "sauce" cook for a few minutes stirring continuously.

Add the peppers and ginger and continue stirring. For about half a minute.

Add the salt and the sugar and stir for about a minute.

Turn off the heat

Add the rice to the contents of the sauce pan and stir till every grain is coated, you can add a little more oil and a little water to the saucepan and stir.

Turn the heat back on (high) for about a minute stirring continuously to make sure every grain is coated then reduce the heat to low.

Cover the saucepan and let the contents of it cook a bit long, or until the rice is fully done or closer to done.

Serve.

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In Nigeria, most of the time, Jollof rice is eaten with plantains on the side. I don't know where plantains can be found anywhere, but in England and African countries. In African countries, it can be found in any food-selling local marketplace and in England, in Indian grocery stores or supermarkets.

I will talk about making plantain in a different blog entry.

Thanks for reading!

If you try out this recipe, please send me a picture of your finished dish and a review of the dish.

DIY: Vegetable Stock

I never cook with a different stock. You know the reason.

Okay! so, I use vegetable stock to make various dishes like spicy rice, sauces, et cetera. How do I make my vegetable stock?

Basically, I throw vegetables I find around into a pot with water and boil them for about an hour. My stable vegetables for this are onions, ginger and tomatoes. The last time I made vegetable stock, I noticed I had run out of a lot of vegetables so I went in search in the fridge, freezer, pantry till I finally found some stuff. I threw in two tomatoes, about a whole medium-sized onion, sweet corn (found it in the freezer and it didn't look like anyone wanted it), frozen peas, ginger, I think I added a bit of a green bell pepper too, thyme, Italian Seasoning (herbs), salt, bay leaves and two red, "hot" peppers. Like I said above, I boiled them for about an hour then I poured the contents of the pot into a sieve and stored the liquid (stock) in a bowl. I actually used all the stock when I was cooking then, but if I don't use it all, I save it in a bowl and put it into the freezer.

You can easily make vegetable stock by storing random things from vegetables in a bowl. For example, if you get a liquid out of a tomato (say it was frozen and you defrosted it), you can put it in the bowl and use the tomatoes for what you brought them out for. If you don't use all of a carrot or you have a bit of the carrot left on the....I'll call it stub.....you can toss it in the bowl, if you have spinach you use all, but a little bit of an onion, toss the rest in the bowl, if you open a tin of sweetcorn or a bag of peas and you don't use it all, you can toss the rest into the bowl or just pour a bit into the bowl and keep the bowl in the freezer. When you're ready to make some stock, pour the contents of your bowl into a pot, add water to it and boil them for about an hour! Simple!

Even with the above, I believe the perfect vegetable stock should be made with onions, tomatoes, ginger, carrots, mushrooms, cabbage and some herbs (and maybe a bit of a green vegetable too).

As usual, just toss 'em in a pot, pour in some water, turn on the heat, put a lid on the pot, let the water boil with the vegetables for about an hour.

Stocks are best used fresh, but if you don't use it all, remember, store it in a clean bowl in the freezer.

*When defrosting your stock, pour a bit of water over it in the pot your defrosting it in so it doesn't evaporate, or leave sticky burns at the bottom of your pot as it melts.

Introduction

Hello,

My name is Samantha, I am a natural hair blogger and founder of ♥ ❤ ❥ ❣ ❦ ❧SammyWithTheBigHair♥ ❤ ❥❣ ❦ ❧, a teen activist, an outreach specialist for TeenActivist.Org, Singer/Song-writer.... and now, a food blogger.

I was initially going to just wait and start a food channel on YouTube, but like, now, at 00:41, an idea popped into my head, why not just start a food blog? So, that's what I'm doing.

I cannot guarantee how often I'll upload things on here, but I will upload something every now and then and you can send me recipes to review so I can have something to upload if I don't upload in a while.

Okay! So, I'm not really an eater, but I cook from time to time. I don't eat many foods (I sorta have an eating disorder called SED. Here's something I wrote on how it is for me, because you won't find exactly how the SED is for me online). I won't bother putting up a list of the things I don't eat on here because that'll be extensive (by the way, I'm only allergic to one thing).

My cooking is mainly Asian, European and African inspired. I usually embrace my two cultures when cooking (English and Nigerian). Sometimes, I cook something rather European and spice it up with some hot pepper to make it kinda African (by the way, I don't find peppers or chillies hot for some reason), other times, I cook something European and add an Asian twist to it and maybe do the pepper thing to make it a bit African. Sometimes, I just make something African in a unique way.

I read cookbooks, but I don't follow the book. I tweak things a lot aaaaaand, basically, I just flip through cookbooks and look at ingredients to find some ingredient I don't mind cooking with. Once I find the ingredient, I start thinking up things to cook and then I make them.

Another thing, I'm vegetarian. I say I've been vegetarian for 6 years, but the thing is, I started off as a vegetarian then a pollo-pescetarian then a pollotarian (not eating the flesh, though) then fully a vegetarian again. Some people call that pollovegetarian, but as long as meat it was part of a living, breathing, heart pumping, blood flowing, moving creature, I don't consider it a vegetarian diet. The thing is, I fight for animal rights (cruelty), yeah, but that's not my reason for being vegetarian. I actually just hate the taste of meats. That's it. By the way, I'm lacto-ovo-vegetarian.

I'm Christian, I believe that Jesus really lived, He really died on the cross for my sins and that He really rose again on the third day. Jesus is my Redeemer, Saviour and Friend. I am a non-denominational Christian, but I go to Pentecostal churches. I'm non-denominational by choice because I don't want to base my faith on what a sect or denomination tells me to. I want to read the Bible and find the truth for myself.

Okay! So, there are going to be few recipes with meats, but there will be some up. The ones uploaded will usually be with seafood, by the way. I don't taste food while I'm cooking if it contains meats. I just hope the food turns out good and it does (thank God!). I don't touch raw meats, by the way, that's why. I made crunchy spiced calamari fillets two days ago and I used prongs to hold the calamari fillets during every process till the calamari was done being cooked. I don't go to the butchers/meats sections in supermarkets because I can't watch raw meat being cut and the smell of blood....gaah...I can't stand blood.

Anyways, so that's it!
Remember, send me recipes, reviews, whatever!

~Samantha