Smoked Trout Spread with Pumpernickel bread and Daikon / Radish

First one of the appetizers I made for my father's birthday and it was off to a pretty good start. I apologise before hand that the pictures of these are not going to be the greatest, since I was kind of surrounded by a ravenous family, so couldn't really take the food away for a photo shoot. :P
This is fairly healthy as party appetizers go and will probably be tasty to anyone with a love of a good schmear. I used a combination of soft goat cheese and sour cream as the base for this spread, since basically I forgot to buy cream cheese, but the choice is completely up to you. I think both ways would work equally well. For me the best way to eat this was first the pumpernickel, then a slice of the daikon (a big white winter radish) and then the spread, but if you're not a fan of pumpernickel or want it even healthier, you can use just a slice of daikon. Kids probably would like this on some crackers though. The recipe for this comes from one of my favourite newly discovered food blogs foodwishes, link below.

Appetizer/Snack - 1 big bowl (about 14oz/350g) - 1000cal - 15min

(58g fat; 89g carbs and 77g protein)

Carbless Sin - Mini Aubergine / Eggplant Pizza with Chorizo and Parmezan

Sometimes being too lazy to go to the store results in something wonderful like this. I started with a wrinkly eggplant/aubergine I'd forgotten about and this happened. *so happy*
These are mini eggplant/aubergine pizza's with a 'raw' tomato sauce, some leftover chorizo and a bit of parmezan, which had hardened which made it very hard to grate, so I just put little cubes on them, and it was wonderful, you guys. Maybe it was because I was a bit desperate to put together without going to the store, but honestly it was. I have since these made another version of these (actually following a recipe) at home with my family, but that one had a sauce that was more work, and without the chorizo, but with mozzarella. But the original leftover version of them was better imo (in my opinion)! Chorizo really made this magical. The leftover rucola was a nice touch, if I may say so myself. And I'm definitely making this super-easy raw tomato sauce again for other things. Let's get on with the recipe of these awesome 'leftovers' eggplant pizza. First version of the recipe will be the extended one, with reasoning behind everything. And then there's a short one at the bottom which you can use while cooking.

Lunch/Snack/Appetizer - 1 eggplant ~ 12 pizza - 650cal - 30min (without salting)

(45g fat; 44g carbs and 22g protein)

Butternut Pumpkin Soup with Sour Cream and Roasted Seeds

The Butternut is back, bitches! Sorry, just enthusiastic. This time in the form of a comforting soup. It was a bit of an experiment since I read somewhere that for a lot of pumpkin kinds you can leave the skin on as long as you make sure it's soft enough by cooking/roasting/...! This seemed like a game changer, since removing the peel of a pumpkin is just so much work, especially if you don't have a decent big knife like I do at Uni... :( Plus it would means wasting less, so I'm all for it. I'm also roasting the seeds to add to my soup as a crunch at the end, so I literally used the whole pumpkin! I wanted to make it more an oriental tasting soup, but didn't have any ginger and I'm already adding coconut milk to my dinner. But I'm thinking an excellent version of this soup would be with ginger, maybe some lemon grass, definitely a bunch of coriander and coconut milk. I did end up adding a bit of (light) sour cream to cut through that comforting, slightly sweet pumpkin flavour. Since I wanted some more colour and thought it would go well I added some (frozen) parsley and of course my toasted pumpkin seeds.

I decided to back to the two tier recipe format. I thought it unnecessary with 'easy' recipes, but honestly I like having the room to give you all the tips & tricks that I can which makes the recipe a little chaotic so it really does seem handy to have a shorthand version of it. Plus I have no doubt that most have little interest in my ramblings and are just looking for some recipe inspiration. If anyone has suggestions on how to make the recipes more readable/useable, be sure to let me know. Do you prefer them with photos at various steps? Plus I made a nice picture for you guys this time even! So I might do a little plating section again. Consider this my wintry valentine soup. Look at me, being all topical. This is another recipe of my own design so I might update this if/when I perfect/improve this.

Soup - 6 or more servings -  120cal/serving (800cal/whole pot) - 30min + 40min cooking

 (4.7g fat, 1.2g saturated; 19.3g carbs and 3.2g protein)

Savouring Simplicity - Salad with cucumber and smoked salmon with a dill-yoghurt dressing

Yay, another day, another attempt at being healthy. I'm going home today so pretty sure it's going to become a lot harder pretty soon. Not only is my mother an amazing cook, and my father is a big wine nut, but just having delicious fresh bread around is going to be temptation enough...
But for now I've got one more easy, simple, healthy recipe to share.

Sorry for the not so pretty picture again, but this one is for on the go. All the goodies I've mixed together at the bottom and put all the lettuce on top (slightly shifted them aside so you can see) so the crisp lettuce doesn't get soggy when I'm ready to eat it. This salad is perfect to take to work/school/uni, all you need to bring is a fork to mix everything and eat it all up. Since this does contain salmon I would recommend keeping it refrigerated until you leave, and if possible again at work/school. But if your smoked salmon is fresh it should be fine to eat even if it's been out of the fridge for the whole morning. Trust me if it's not safe to eat any more, you'll smell it! :P
It's super-healthy (only 100 cal!) so go ahead and double everything if you find/think this doesn't fill you up for lunch. Or if you want, eat some bread with it. As I said I'm going home today, so will probably eat my fill later, so just taking this with me to eat on the way home.

Lunch - 1 person - 100 cal - 15 minutes 

Cappuccino of Jerusalem artichoke and chestnuts soup with a goat cheese foam

A relatively easy, but fancy little soup of Jerusalem artichoke and chestnuts with a goat cheese foam, with a little espelette pepper sprinkled on. You'll be sure to impress everyone with this star soup! It's a perfect appetizer to make for an intimate dinner party or a large group of people: it's sophisticated, unique, yet comforting and easy to make! It does use some (semi-)unusual ingredients so you might have to make sure you find everything at your supermarket.
The only downside is that for best results you do need something to make your milk and goat cheese mixture foamy (like in a real cappuccino). I used an espuma/siphon bottle. But not to worry! I've read you can reach the same results by just blending it with a(n) (immersion/stick) blender. And if you don't have that, you can always just mix in the milk mixture, without foaming it first, though I wouldn't call it a cappuccino then. ;)
I made this soup as one of many appetizers for my mother's birthday (among which the mozzarella appetizer I posted earlier) and my whole family was a big fan! It would probably look really well served in clear glasses as well, so you can see the different layers. But I wanted to accentuate the cappuccino angle.
As previously I'll put up a short and long version of the recipe, but it really is quite easy, so there won't be that much difference between them I think.

6-8 small portions - 40 minutes

Salad with melon chunks, feta crumbles, bacon bits and a honey vinaigrette

This is one of my favourite super easy salads to make. It's delicious, filling and so satisfying. It's not THE healthiest salad out there, but since it's so filling, no need to eat any kind of bread with it, though you can if you want. I've gotten quite a few complements from people (served as a starter) and make it all the time when I'm staying at my sister's for lunch. I've made many versions and variations of this recipe, which I will elaborate in the extended version of the recipe. Like last time I'll do a short and a long version of the recipe. Whenever I make a new recipe I tend to read it through at least once completely before I make my shopping list and do the actual shopping. Even while just reading through it and writing down the ingredients, I'm thinking on what kind of variations I want to do to better suit my tastes, or in the case I can't find one of the ingredients. And before I get down to cooking, I generally write down a shorter version of the recipe to use while cooking. So that's basically my reasoning behind this two levels of recipe in case you were wondering. :) Anyway, let's get to it. This recipe is also great for those who generally don't like salads, or kids, because it contains so many fruits! It's basically a hearty fruit salad! It can be made ahead if you want to take it with you for lunch, and it stays delicious. If you're using a lettuce that gets 'soggy' easy, keep it separate from the rest and just mix it in before eating. Besides the melon, I think you have a lot of freedom in what kind of fruit you want to put in. I'll put all the ones I use in the extended recipe. In the short recipe I put my standard choices.

4 portions - 30 minutes

Starter with mozzarella, prosciutto ham, olives and sundried tomatoes with a bell pepper sauce

While this starter stars the classic flavour combinations it is truly a very good version of it. It not only makes a pretty picture, it is also a perfect not too heavy starter or large appetizer for any dinner where you want to show off, but are not a 100% confident in your cooking skills. It does require some effort to put together, but you can easily make all elements way ahead and then quickly plate before serving.

Since this is the first recipe I'm posting I'll quickly go over how I had this kind of thing in mind. I'll first give a quick overview of the ingredients and instructions, which you can use while cooking. And after those I'll give a very detailed version of the recipe that you might want to give a read over before you go shopping and start cooking. At the very end I'll put a quick explanation on how I plated this dish, but feel free to use your imagination in the presentation! In the extended version I'll give you more reasoning behind the ingredient choices and hints/common mistakes about the cooking itself. I'll also put alternatives there if you don't have any of the equipment mentioned in the short instructions. I'll try to be as exact as possible with quantities and cooking time, but there may be variations in this depending on how much you want to serve and how experienced/confident you are.

6 portions - 45 minutes prep + 10 minutes plating