Pickled cucumber and red onions

1 cucumber
1 red onion
1 Scotch Bonnet (make a small batch without this for the kids!)
100 ml water
100 ml vinegar (white)
A few grains of Chinese sugar (this is like a sweetener be careful it is very sweet and needs to be added grain by grain to be able to control the sweetness You may substitute with 2 tablespoons of sugar)
1 tsp whole dried allspice berries
5 cloves
pinch of salt
pinch of black pepper
optional pinch of ajinomoto *

Cut cucumber lengthwise de-seed and cut in slices about 1,5 inch thick, cut red onion in rings, cut pepper in half de-seed. Put water and vinegar in a bowl and add sugar, dried allspice berries, cloves, adjinomoto, salt, black pepper stir well and add cucumber and red onion. Make day before so all the flavors have infused.

I keep empty pickle jars and wash them well with hot water and vinegar and use this to store. This can be kept for quite some time just make sure that you only use a CLEAN PLASTIC spoon or fork to take them out of the jar or it will "curdle"!

*Ajinomoto is a Japanese brand name for MSG, monosodium glutamate, a flavor enhancer. Ac'cent is the primary U.S. brand name, and the Chinese version is called ve-tsin. Please be careful using this too much can cause heart failure if you are cooking for elderly or children under the age of 5 who have never had this in their diet DO NOT USE!!

Lazy red kidney beans stew

Okay this is one of my favorite lazy day recipes it is made with canned red kidney beans but pls feel free to pre-boil dry beans and use those!

1 large can red kidney beans drained and rinsed
1 onion
2 bay leaves
2 cloves of garlic minced
2 tomatoes deseeded and chopped
1 pack of vegan "ground meat" about 180 to 200 grams (I use the kind made with mushrooms but the one made of soy will do just fine)
2 tablespoons of ketchup
black pepper (1/2 teaspoon)
1tb spoon of brown sugar (or to taste)
1 tb spoon of aromat (or to taste)
1 Scotch Bonnet
2 tablespoons of evoo
Warm water
Add oil to the pot and heat, fry onions and garlic, add "minced meat" and fry for 4 minutes,add drained beans and bayleaves and fry for 3 more minutes, add tomatoes, brown sugar, black pepper, ketchup, stir well and add warm water just enough to cover, season with aromat, put on low heat and add WHOLE 1 Scotch Bonnet, let simmer for 15 minutes.

Serve with rice, fried plantain and pickled cucumbers

If your family consists of large eaters make twice the amount! This is just right for my family of 4 (12 and 3 y.o.)

Homemade vegan pasta/pizza saus

• 3 tablespoons of evoo
• 2 zucchini's (in cubes)
• 1 onion chopped
• 5 cloves of garlic (crushed)
• 4 cans of tomato cubes
• 10 tablespoons of dried mixed Italian herbs (you can choose to buy fresh herbs I don't because the wilt before I can finish them)
• 1 tablespoons of brown sugar (you can add a bit more to taste)
• Aromat to taste (1,5 tablespoon)

This sauce I use as a basis for homemade pizza's or as pastasaus. this is enough for serving a family of 4 twice so half of it can go in the freezer.
Heat 2 tablespoons of evoo, add onions until "glassy" add garlic, dried Italian herbs and 1 tablespoon of evoo. On medium heat keep stirring until your kitchen smells like the herbs, add zucchini stir, lower heat put lid on and leave to simmer until zucchini is a little softer (not too soft!) add tomato cubes stir and add brown sugar and aromat to taste. Let simmer for about 10 minutes to allow all the flavors to infuse. Use staff mixer or blender to make into a smooth sauce or leave as is if your family likes chunks.
This is in no way a traditional italian recipe it is more like "pasta a la Chayil" :-D this recipe is to familytaste I try to use as little salt and sugar as possible so possibly you will need to add more to your family taste.
I don't know if aromat is available in America but I am sure there are simalar mixes available maybe from Goya?

Siroop=stroop=syrup?

Today I taught my eldest son how to make syrup. Syrup or stroop as surinamese call it or siroop as the dutch call it is a thick sugarsyrup with essences and citric acid. It is used as a "lemonade" diluted with water and given to children as a drink (okay so it might be a kid drink but I love it and so do all the other grownups I know )

I have searched several american sites for a bottled syrup to show a pic but I could not find any! Is this true don't american's make homemade syrup? There are so many benefits for making your own syrup: it's cheap, it's tasty, you know exactly what flavors go in so you can minimize the artificial flavors, you can make sugarfree syrop for diabetics and it's quick too!

This is the recipe for syrup made with white sugar and pineapple and cola flavor

Ingredients:

• 1 pk of white sugar (1 kilo)
• 2 glasses of water (500 ml half a liter)
• food aroma essence* (2 teaspoons in total so one of each if using different flavors)
• citric acid (1 teaspoon)

Put the sugar and water in a pot and stir. Put the pot on a medium heat and stir every 2 min. When sugar starts to boil (large bubbles not just the lil ones on the side) turn heat off and place pot somewhere to cool off) The fluid will turn into a clear syrup like this: see the sugar crystals on the side of the pot? That's what happens to the syrup when it gets cold, the cytric acid and food aroma prevent this from happening when cooled off)

Once cooled off (not totally cold but lukewarm if you leave it to cool off completely the sugar will start to form crystals on top of the syrop) add the citric acid and stir well, add 2 teaspoons of the food aroma essence and stir well. Pour syrup in a large CLEAN AND DRY bottle. You can use the syrup to make a drink 1 prt to 4 prts of cold water. Or you can make snow cones. Keep in mind that this syrup is made for home-use and not for commercial purposes when diluted the drink will be very lightly coloured but the taste is just right.
* I usually use this kind of aroma essence but I found this brand in the chinese store yesterday and I gave it a try and it worked just fine! Any aroma essence will do just make sure you use a fruit flavor and not something like vanilla or almond, in the Netherlands they are usually sold in chinese or surinamese stores but I am sure you can buy them anywhere in the States.

Enjoy!

ETA: pic of the syrup cooling off in my kitchen window-sill

Moksie Alesie

I promised my online friend "Reflection" that I would share some vegetable recipes with her. I don't want to overflow her comments with long recipes so I decided to make a recipe corner on the blog.

Moksie alesie (mixed rice) little history this dish is originally a slave dish. Slaves where given left-overs from the main kitchen. By mixing all of these left-overs delicious dishes were created, we (Surinamese) to this day still enjoy our ancestors their recipes. Now don’t be fooled the meals are just as tasty as they are inexpensive and always healthy!

Ingredients (please adapt to left overs in your own fridge! I have made this dish vegan, vegetarian, with all kinds of meat left-overs for my uncles as long as you make sure that a phalanx of fluid is covering the rice feel free to experiment with beans I have used red kidney beans (not a favourite) and butterbeans (extremely yummie!) Lots of people add dried shrimps but we don’t eat shellfish but if you like and have some in the fridge just add some!

• 100 gr of left over fish/red meat or chicken cut in small pieces or pulled apart to shred
• 1 small smoked fish (deboned and skinned)
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 1 scottisch bonet pepper
• 250 grams of oxheart cabbage (sliced in thin long pieces I slice cabbage in half first then remove the “heart” and cut in length strip with a breadknife works for me lol)
• 500 grams of rice (washed and drained)
• 125 gram black eye peas (preboiled and soffened I preboil a kilo at a time and then devide in ziplocs and freeze)
• 1 veggie cube could be replaced by beef or chicken cube
• 2 large tomatoes
• 250 ml of coconut milk
• 2 tb spoons of tomatoepaste
• Black peper and salt to taste
• Oil

preparation
Add oil to the pot (about 4 tbspoons) fry the onions until glassy then add the garlic, add small cut tomatoes and the stock cube. Simmer for about 5 minutes (add bit of water if needed)

Add smoked fish, left-over meat/fish, tomatopaste, black eye peas taste and add black pepper and salt to taste (this should taste quite strong!)

Add rice and coconutmilk add water until rice is covered with a phalanx of fluid, stir and let come to a boil put lid on and put the pot on the lowest possible gas. Leave to simmer (do not remove lid) for 30 minutes.

Then place cabbage and pepper on top and let simmer again for 15 more minutes. Remove pepper and stir cabbage carefully in the rice using a vork put pepper back and leave covered off heat for 5 more min.

Serve with pickled cucumbers or pickles sliced, the pepper cut in pieces or other hot peppersauce (for grown-ups only I give my kids a teaspoon of ketchup as "hotsauce"), and fried ripe plantain (recipe below).

Ingredients:

• 1 ripe plantain
• oil

preparation
1. Peel plantain by making 2 incisions on opposite sides of the plantain skin and then peel.
2. Slice the plantains into 2 in the middle (width not length - like breaking a banana in 2).
3. Cut up both pieces of plantains into 1/4 inch slices longways.
4. Heat skillet filled with just enough oil to cover the 1/4 inch slices.
5. Fry plantain slices until golden brown on each side.
6. Each slice needs about 45 seconds to a minute to cook.
7. Be careful not to burn.
8. Place cooked plantain in a dish layered with napkins so as to drain/soak up the oil.

Serves 4

Njang switi! (enjoy your meal! in sranang tongo the native language of Surinam)

The dish will have an "orangy" color due to the tomatoes and tomato paste and will have a creamy taste thanks to the coconutmilk.