One Of My Ways To De-stress: Experimental Cooking

Photo credit [link]

Yes, experimental cooking. It’s cooking something you have never cooked before. So for this time, I made blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna.

It all began 2 days ago, I have these 2 frozen bags of finely chopped spinach and I don’t know what to do with them. (Initially, I bought them to make baked penne for my friend’s bachelorette surprise party)

I tried to make a spinach pasta sauce out of it. I first melted some butter in a pan, then added flour, mixed them and poured milk and mixed them again. Then I added in the spinach.

(From what I’ve Googled, most of the people recommend to squeeze-dry the spinach after thawing).

Then I seasoned it with salt – pepper  was out of stock :p

It didn’t taste that good. But I didn’t throw it. I kept it in the fridge. So yesterday, after eating sushi at Sushi Planet with Shasha and Dila, I went to the supermarket to buy some cheese (mozzarella) but then I saw the blue cheese and thought of making blue cheese and spinach rigatoni. Then at the pasta section, at first I took the rigatoni box, but then changed my mind and took lasagna instead. Talk about indecisive!

Blue cheese in Poland

And of course I bought the pepper. Most. Important. Seasoning!

When I got back home, I Googled sooo many recipes because I couldn’t find the exact recipe to cook “blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna” so I kind of combined a few recipes to make this lasagna.

This is how I made the lasagna sauce.

1. Melt butter in a pan
2. Add milk
3. Add the blue cheese (crumbled or diced)
4. Add salt and pepper
5. Mix
6. Add the spinach ‘paste’ (the one I’ve prepared the day before, and the one that didn’t taste good)
7. Add mozzarella
8. Add prawn
9. Cook and mix well
10. Done

For first timers, this is kind of helpful. You can see how the thickness of the sauce should be:

 

To make the lasagna, I simply used the no-precooking-required-lasagna and I just layered the sauce, shredded mozzarella and the pasta alternately and baked it at 220°C for 20 minutes. And voila!

Blue cheese-spinach-prawn lasagna

Did all these helped to de-stress myself? It did. Partially. ‘Cause I still have the hangover of feeling depressed. Let’s get some SSRI, SNRI, TCA or MAOI y’all!

I thought being 23 is fun. Probably it’s just how I handle myself. And how I look at things. *Sigh* Gotta change my perspective from now on. My perspective on just…everything.

p/s: SSRI, SNRI, TCA and MAOI are groups of antidepressant drugs. I just had my second semester pharmacology oral exam, by the way (which covered drugs for cardiovascular system and central nervous system, thus the antidepressant drugs). And I passed it alhamdulillah.

Rainbow Fudge

 

Spring Cleanse Your Body

 

 

From Facebook;

If you really want to cleanse then DRINK, DRINK, DRINK. Here are 8 home made vitamin water recipes to help you keep the water flowing!

As a rule, you should try to avoid as much as possible industrial food and beverages

 

1) The classical : lemon/cucumber:

Mix in a pitcher: 10 cups of water + 1 cucumber and a lemon, thinly sliced + 1/4 cup fresh finely chopped basil leaf + 1/3 of finely chopped fresh mint leaves. Leave in the refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

2) The granite : Strawberry/Lime or Raspberry/Lime

Mix in a pitcher : 10 cups of water + 6 strawberries / 0r Raspberries and one thinly sliced lime + 12 finely chopped fresh mint leaves. Leave in the refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

3) The digestive : Fennel/citrus

First: infuse 1 to 3 grams of dried and crushed fennel in 150 ml of boiling water for 5-10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Mix in a pitcher: 10 cups of water + lemon juice (put the leftover lemon in the mix) + a small thinly sliced orange + 12 fresh chopped mint leaves + the infusion of fennel seeds. Leave in refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

4) The antiOX : Blackberry/Sage

Note that a part from the berries, sage leafs is the herb that has the highest antioxidant content.

Mix in a pitcher : 10 cups of water + 1 cup of blackberries that have been very slightly crushed + 3-4 sage leaves. Leave in refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

5) WATERmelon : watermelon/Rosemary

Mix in a pitcher : 10 cups of water + 1 cup of watermelon cut into cubes + 2 rosemary stems. Leave in refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

6) The exotic : Pineapple/Mint

Mix in a pitcher : 10 cups of water + 1 cup of pineapple cut into cubes + 12 fresh mint leaves finely chopped. Leave in the refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

7) The traditional : Apple/cinnamon

Mix in a pitcher : 10 cups of water + 1 cup of apple cut into cubes + 2 cinnamon sticks + 2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Leave in the refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

8.) The zingibir : Ginger/tea

In advance: heat 1 teaspoon of ginger in two cups of tea, let it cool down.

 

Mix in a pitcher: 10 cups of water with two cups of the ginger tea + 4-5 pieces of fresh ginger cut into cubes. Leave in the refrigerator overnight before serving.

 

Instagramming Stranger’s Food!

 

Podlaski Pancake

After I had my dinner, I felt like I still want to eat something. Something tasty, something…fried. So I ran all the ingredients available through my head and I figured, I shall make some pancakes.

1. First I add in a cup of flour, 1 and a half cup of water, some salt and sugar and an egg into a mixing bowl. Then I add in some cream which I have to finish before it goes bad because I’ve opened & used some of it like 2 days ago.
2. I mixed all the ingredients and then heated up a small frying pan.
3. I don’t want to use a huge amount of oil so I used the kitchen roll, crumpled it, pour some olive oil on it and dabbed the oil on the pan. (Haha, bad description, I know)
4. Then I poured the mixture on the pan. While the mixture is still in liquid-ish form, I sprinkled some grated Podlaski cheese on top of it.
5. I flipped the pancake, waited till its brown, and it was ready to be eaten.

You can see some flat chunks of cheese there

After I finished eating, I remembered that I have Haagen Dazs’ Strawberry Cheesecake ice cream! I should have eaten it together with the pancake! What a bummer.

Second place. The first goes to Macadamia Nut Brittle

p/s: Click on this link for a better pancake recipe.