gâteau au gingembre frais (fresh ginger cake)

I grew up with having mom-made fresh ginger tea whenever I caught a cold. Yeah, I didn't like ginger tea at all back then (and none of ginger related dish either), but look at me now, I made myself a cup of fresh ginger tea when I had a sore throat last week (Does this mean I am officially "old"?). Well, anyway, the ginger I found here was really big - almost as big as my hand - and I used only half of it for ginger tea. So, I riffled through my cooking book to see whether I can make something nice with the other half, et voilà, gâteau au gingembre frais!

Ingredients (6-8 servings):

• 250g of butter (cut it into little cubes)
• 110g of cassonade sugar
• 230g of sugarcane syrup (dark)
• 12cm of fresh ginger
• 150g of all-purpose flour
• 150g of self-rising flour
• 1/2 tsp of baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 180ml of crème fraîche épaisse (I don't know how I put this in English. This cream tastes more like sour cream, not whipping cream)

**

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.

grate (or mince) ginger (but me, I simply made ginger julienne)

whisk eggs lightly

butter a round cake pan (22cm diameter)

In a small saucepan, put butter, cassonade sugar, sugarcane syrup,

and ginger. Then melt the mixture with low heat, stirring regularly.

Now, the butter/ginger/sugar sauce is ready.

Sift both kinds of flour and baking powder altogether,

and pour the butter/ginger/sugar sauce then mix well.

Add whisked eggs and crème fraîche épaisse as well.

Pour the batter into the buttered cake pan and bake about 50 mins.

Then, 10 minute-long rest.

So, the fresh ginger cake is ready!

**

We can also make 'crème dorée au gingembre'.

Prepare 150ml of crème fraîche épaisse,

add 1Tsp of sugarcane syrup (dark) and 1tsp of ginger powder.

Whisk them "hard". (yeah, without electric mixer, it's such a hard work)

Mmmmmmm, this is really good!!! :D

Snap Pea Salad

We had a super heavy dinner last night (fyi, big size milanesa with pico de gallo sauce, plus arroz rojo as a side dish ... you see?), so I was really up for eating something healthy and light today. But my fridge didn't provide me many options; I found a little bit of snap peas, tomatoes, and a bag of salad. These snap peas have been there almost a week, so I decided to prepare something definitely contains snap peas. I simply googled "Snap Pea Salad" et voilà, I found a great recipe! (If you want to see the original recipe, click here)

Ingredients (1 serving):

• Salad
• Snap peas
• 1 Tomato (yeah, I know you see two in the picture, but I used just one)
• Some pine nuts (or Almonds)

For dressing:

• Wine vinegar 25ml
• Olive oil 50ml
• 1 tsp of Dijon mustard
• 1/2 tsp of brown sugar

Put snap peas in the boiling water for 2 minutes (make sure they're still crisp),

and wash them in the cold water.

Mix them with salad.

Add slices of tomato and sprinkle some pine nuts.

That's it! (this is one of the easiest salads I've ever made)

(the ugliest) mozzarella sticks (in the world)

I saw a tupperware with leftover mozzarella in the far behind of my fridge and decided to make mozzarella sticks for my lunch. Well, trust me, I've never tried to make them at home and haven't seen any restaurant (or fast food store, whatever) that serves mozzarella sticks in France (yet), so it has been more than 4 years since I had them last time. Yeah, 4 years without mozzarella sticks... I can't believe it.

So, I googled "mozzarella sticks" - there're more than 332,000 search results (and I don't think all of them are recipes for mozzarella sticks, haha) - and randomly picked one recipe (which turned out to be the lamest one. It didn't tell me I should make the breadcrumbs around mozzarella sticks be thick enough or it will taste better if I add some garlic powder or parsley to the bread crumbs!)

You need:

• Mozzarella cheese
• 1 egg
• bread crumbs
• all-purpose flour

cut mozzarella cheese into sticks

and roll them lightly on flour

(make sure that all six sides are well-covered with flour)

dip them into the lightly whisked egg

and rolle them on the bread crumbs

(once again, make sure that all six sides are nicely-covered)

The thing I didn't know here was that you should do 'egg/breadcrumbs' process twice, to make the breadcrumbs around mozzarella sticks are thick enough.... yeah, so, you can imagine why my mozzarella sticks became the ugliest ones in the world. :(

See? do the 'egg/breadcrumbs' process twice.

I'm sure I'll make prettier mozzarella sticks next time.

But, anyway, they tasted good. Just as good as the ones I had back home.

pâtes au beurre et à la sauge

I think this is the simplest pasta recipe I know - you even don't need any special ingredient and there's no trick to learn before you start; however, it really does taste good! (as long as you don't dislike sage)

Ingredients (1 serving) :

• pasta (spaghetti or linguine. ravioli would be also good)
• 1 Tbsp of butter
• 2 or 3 sauge ('sage' in English) leaves (finely chopped) : I used dried chopped sage instead
• bouillon for pasta (if not, olive oil and salt, for cooking pasta)
• grated parmesan cheese

I use 100g of pasta for one serving.

while your pasta is being ready...

prepare one Tbsp of butter,

once the pasta is ready, before you drain, keep a little bit of pasta water for later,

In a casserole, put butter,

and sage,

then cook them for 2 minutes (medium heat)

until you can smell the delicious scent of butter and sage.

Put the pasta into the butter/sage sauce, stir them quickly,

and add some pasta water to thin the sauce.

That's it!