I tried to recreate a nice Gado-gado I’ve had from a take away place. Gado-gado is an Indonesian dish of a vegetable salad served with a peanut sauce dressing. I’ve made it into a one bowl dish with steamed rice underneath. Not a lot of cooking is involved in my version.

At the bottom I have steamed rice, then a layer of green cabbage which has been lightly braised in chicken stock and soy sauce. I kept a little bit of a bite in the green cabbage. Then topped with slices of cucumber, tomato and bean sprouts. On top a ready made peanut sauce. Yes I’m lazy, I don’t make my own peanut sauce. This one had a nice flavor, but I should have watered it down a bit more.

To make it completely vegetarian, substitute the chicken stock with vegetable stock. To add a bit of crunch and texture, I ate this with some (bought) prawn crackers.

Related: indonesian, vegetables

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My friend P. and I made this pasta salad when I had to work in the Hague. We felt like making a pesto pasta salad. We got the good stuff, often ready made pesto’s contain ingredients that absolutely don’t belong in there like potato, cashew nuts and sometimes even spinach.

Cook the pasta and in the meantime cut up your vegetables. I cut the aubergine and courgette in in long slices and then into bite size pieces. In a pan with a little bit of oil I grilled the aubergine slices until nicely browned. The courgette was grilled until it still had a bit of bite. Cut the grilled peppers into bite size pieces. For extra ease we bought the grilled peppers in a jar.

Drain pasta and rinse with a bit of cold water. Mix with pesto, grilled vegetables, tomatoes, feta, smoked chicken and pine nuts and you’re done. Super easy and yummy taste . Make sure you make lots so you have some left for lunch the next day. If you don’t like smoked chicken, you could always leave it out or use regular panfried chicken.

Related: easy, Pasta, salad

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This recipe serves 2 people.
For the marinade I used Gomadare a Japanese sesame based dressing/marinade. Mix the marinade with the soy. Cut thin slices of the lean beef, stir into the mix and leave to marinade. I had marinated the beef for a couple of hours, but a shorter period of time should be fine. In the meantime steam your rice.

Before you’re ready to serve. Clean the lettuce and cut the big outer leaved into strips, I kept the small inner leaves whole. My carrot was ready bought, but you could cut the carrots into thin strips yourself. Cut the cucumber into thin strips as well as the spring onion.

Salad dressing: mix a small squirt of wasabi paste, I used about 3/4 of an inch with a little bit of water to loosen the paste. Then add about a 1.5 tbs of mayonaise. I used Kewpie mayonaise, but “regular” mayo should be fine.

Time to plate up. Put a bit of steamed rice into a bowl. Top with julienne carrot and cucumber to taste. Drizzle with a small amount of wasabi/mayo dressing. Top with the salad and onion and drizzle with a bit more of the dressing. In the meantime heat up a frying pan with a thin layer of vegetable oil on a high heat. Throw in the marinated beef and seperate the beef a bit with a spatula. Don’t move the beef around too much at this stage so it has a bit of time to catch and brown. Then start stirring the beef so it’s browned on all sides. The whole proces shouldn’t take more than 2 to 3 minutes so the beef stays nice and tender. Towards the end throw in some sesame seeds and put the beef on top of the salad. For extra sesame flavor I drizzled a tiny bit of extra Gomadare on top of the beef.

Absolutely lovely and very fast dish. You could prepare everything in advance except for cooking the beef. You could reheat the rice in a microwave, top the rice and then stir fry the beef. Which is exactly what I did for the BF, because he was home very late from work.

Related: beef, Rice, salad

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A left-over recipe. I had some spare bacon strips in the fridge and decided on a potato salad. Boiled the potatoes in chicken stock, let it cool and cut in bite size chunks. Add 1 small chopped onion, pan fried bacon strips, chopped parsley and add the dressing 2 tbs of mayo to 1 tbs of yoghurt to a ts of mustard, season to taste. Since my stomach is hurting lately I didn’t add any boil eggs or spring onion. I love em, but it gives me severe tummy aches at times. The potatoes boiled in chicken stock and mayo/yoghurt dressing is inspired by kayotic kitchen.
Sometimes I add chopped pickled gherkin into my potato salad and when I want to make it really nasty some chopped “knackworstjes” instead of the bacon. Extra nommy nasty is eating the potato salad with a bit of maggi (yay MSG) or some curry sauce (not the Indian kind).

One of my standard supplies is chicken stock powder in a tin which I get from a local Asian supermarket <3. Comes in very handy for recipes like this one or for sir fries, stews and bulghur salads.

Related: potato, Salads

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This chicken dish is one of the easiest and my most favourite chicken dish. I halved the chicken on the back and flattened it. To reduce cooking time and for flavour penetration I slashed the meaty parts of the chicken. Season the chicken with pepper, salt, garlic powder and thyme to taste (I ran out of fresh garlic forgive me). Then drizzle with lemon, cut what’s left of the lemon into pieces and lay on the chicken for extra lemon flavour. Leave this to marinate for as long as you got. I usually let it marinate for a couple of hours.

Skin the onions and cut into quarters. Put this on the bottom of your roasting tray. Place the chicken onto the onion, drizzle with olive oil and let it roast at about 190/200C. I have a gasoven so it takes a bit more time for the chicken to brown, I had it in the oven for about 2 hours while the chicken was still nice and moist. I could probably have upped the temperature and have it ready in maybe 1.5 hour.

Don’t cook the chicken in the marinade because the juices that come off the chicken will be way too sour.

My bf made the bulgur salad. Prepare the bulgur: usually pouring 1 cup bulgur wheat to 1.5 cup of boiling water (heat off). Cover for 15min. While the bulgur is getting ready, pan fry slices of eggplant, cut up the pepper into not too small bitesize pieces and chop the parsley.
Then comes the hard part. Mix the bulgur with feta, pepper, olives, eggplant, parsley, semi sundried tomatoes, artichoke and sprinkle with lemon juice to taste.

We had this yesterday and after I finished my plate I dipped some bread into the chicken juices. *drool* Don’t forget to do this or you’ll miss one of the best parts. To give some extra flavour to your bulgur you can also replace the water with some chicken stock.

Related: bulgur, Chicken, eggplant, feta, Salads

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