Italian meatballs

I am not sure how I can actually call this recipe, I took the idea from Nigella, but I put my own twist with some extra vegetables. In my garden is now everything growing, in the beginning of the week I could pick a small courgette, small red pepper and a nice aubergine. So I thought, I should do something where I can put all the ingredients in once and then I found this idea. I made enough for 6 people, actually in that case we can eat 2 times, safe time for other days.

So what do you need for 6 people:

• 500 gr chipolata sausages
• 3 or 4 garlic cloves
• 5 spring onions
• 1 small aubergine
• 1 small red pepper
• 1 small courgette
• 3 pot chopped tomatoes
• 4 laurier leafs
• 70 ml white wine
• Dried oregano
• Fresh parsley

To start you need to take out the skin of the sausages and with the meat make small balls of the size of a  cherry tomato, more or less. 

Then cut all the vegetables, the spring onions in small rings the rest in small dices. In a big pan and in olive oil bake the red pepper, aubergine and courgette for about 10 minutes. Take them out of the pan, put a side in a plate. Now bake the meatballs until they are golden, the last minute add the garlic. After that add the spring onions and the oregano, about 1 table spoon. Stir well and then add the wine and the tomatoes with half glass water. When starts cooking add the already baked vegetables, some pepper and maybe more oregano if you like. Let it cook slowly for about 30 minutes, until the sauce is a bit thicker.

Serve with rice or pasta or couscous, whatever you prefer, finalize with chopped parsley. Perfect with some bread and a fresh salad, and of course a good red wine.

Penne with pancetta and tomatoes

When you have a busy day, but still you want to eat good and is of course nice and sunny outside, there is nothing better than a salad or like this a simple pasta. For this pasta I use my own tomatoes, they are now getting beautiful red in my garden, so I have a lot of them and this is the best way to eat them, after a salad of course.

What you need for 3 people, my daughter eats now almost like a grown up ...

• 1 chili pepper
• 100 gr. good quality pancetta (very thin)
• 1 chopped onion
• 600 gr tomatoes
• 275 gr penne
• Parmesan cheese 

Cut the chili pepper in small rings, if don't like very spice then make sure you clean the seeds. Chop the tomatoes in dices.

In a pan heat some olive oil, then bake the pancetta with the chili and the onions, until all is nice golden. Add the tomatoes, some pepper, salt and one table spoon sugar, let it cook slowly for about 30 minutes, stir every now and then.

Cook the pasta following the instructions on the package. Serve with the sauce, grated parmesan and a bit of dried or fresh basil. Perfect for the summer days!

Plum Cake

Summer holiday has passed, this year we went to the beautiful Ireland. We drove around starting from south-east to south-west, going a bit up until Doolin ending in Dublin. It was the first time for us, we have been many times in England and Scotland, but never before in Ireland. We had good food, people are very friendly, the coast line is amazingly beautiful, sometimes even breath taken. But all good comes to an end and until the next we are back in Haarlem.

Anyway in those 2 weeks I hardly make special cooking and of course I didn't bake. I bought a book "Paul Hollywood's bread" with a lot of good bread recipes, now I just have to find the time again bake bread, maybe this weekend.

When I did the grocery shopping on Friday I saw that plums are now in season, they look great and they taste at their best, so I decided to buy some extra and make a plum cake.

The ingredients you need for a big cake, I think my baking tray is 35x24x5:

• About 12 plums cut in half
• 375 gr. caster sugar
• 300 gr. butter
• 3 eggs
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 250 ml buttermilk
• 1 a 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 425 gr. self-raising flour

To start grease the baking tray and cover the bottom with baking paper. Using a mixer, that is the easiest way, mix the sugar and the butter until very light and creamy. After that add the eggs, one at the time, keep mixing, then stir the vanilla extract and the lemon zest. Using a wooden spoon stir slowly and carefully the buttermilk and the flour.

Once is all well mix, don't do this to long, scoop the batter into the baking tray, make the top smooth. Then divide the plums with the cut side up. As you can see from my picture, I push my plums a bit down, that made that when the cake was baking the plums were covered. So my advice is, if you want to have a cake where you see the plums, just put the fruit on top and don't press them.

Bake in a 160 degrees oven for about 55 minutes, until golden brown. Serve with some icing sugar, it is absolutely delicious.