Chicken and Mushrooms in Soy-Vinegar Sauce

A lot of my friends are on a diet these days and they won’t even taste from the food that I make even if I say that I just used one Tbsp of oil! So if you’re on a diet (seems that it’s the season!), you can easily make this recipe a diet-friendly one,  just grill the chicken strips in the oven instead of cooking them with butter and oil. But really, the way I’ve prepared this isn’t very fattening, give a try and let me know what your taste buds think

Ingredients (for 2):

- 1 Tbsp butter and 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 275g boneless chicken breasts, cut into strips
- 2 Tbsp flour
- 250g fresh white mushrooms, sliced
- 2 garlic cloves, minced
-  1/2 cup water
- 2 Tbsp vinegar
- 2 Tbsp low salt soy sauce

Method:

1. Salt and pepper the chicken strips and then lightly dredge in flour.

2. In a wide pan, heat the butter and oil and then cook the chicken until slightly golden. Save aside.

3. In the same pan, put the minced garlic and mushrooms and cover the pan until the mushrooms let out their water and lovely aroma.

4. Pour the water and vinegar onto the mushroom mix, salt and pepper and bring to boil. Leave the mixture boiling on medium heat until the liquid evaporates to half.

5. Add in the chicken strips and give it a good stir, around 5 minutes.

6. Finally, add the soy sauce and keep everything cooking for an additional 2 minutes.

Serve hot with white rice on the side or green peas.

Tags: cooking

Motivational Quote

Tags: personal

Best of 2011

What an eventful year! It started out alright. My mom visited me at the beginning of the year and we had a good two weeks together. Then, my health took a dip and I had a rough few months. But it seems that traveling was in the cards for me because I visited several new cities this year and spent vacations with my family, with R. and with my mom. Another good thing that happened this year was that I managed to lose the extra few kilos that I had put on the past two years. Not all news is good as this year I wasn’t able to see my best friend whom I normally meet up with once a year. However, the year ended on a good note and … I went for LASIK and that changed my whole outlook on life (pun intended)!

Here are a few photos highlighting the beautiful memories of 2011:

weekend mornings by the sea

family summer vacation in Spain

the BEAUTIFUL San Sebastian (Spain)

fun with R.

drinking a lot of tea in Istanbul with mom

the Bosphorus

BERLIN!

Paris with Mounir & Aida

friends

Tags: personal, photography, travel

Good Morning 2012!

I don’t know what to expect from you 2012, but I sincerely hope that you are gentler than your sister 2011.

For my part, I am going to follow my dreams and live a little. I will not let insecurity haunt me or anxiety pin me down. I am going to live and chase my future like a beautiful free-flying kite.

Happy 2012 everyone. Take it easy and don’t forget to live life the way you want to.

Tags: personal

The Crime of Love

Tags: personal, travel

Iced Coffee With Ice Cream

It might not be the right weather for this drink in most parts of the world, but I’m sure there is a place right now where the weather permits to enjoy this iced coffee drink!

Ingredients (for one mug):

- 2 scoops of coffee-flavored ice cream (or vanilla ice cream if it’s easier to find)
- 1/2 cup cold milk
- 1/2 cup strong coffee, two times stronger what you’d usually brew
- 5 ice cubes
- Sugar to taste (I don’t usually add sugar to my coffee so I didn’t use sugar in this recipe)

Method:

Put all ingredients together in a blender and blend until smooth and homogeneous. ENJOY COLD!

Can anything be simpler and more delicious?!

Tags: drinks

Susuru (Japanese for slurping)

If you are in Berlin and want to have Asian food, Japanese in particular, there is only one place to head to: SUSURU.

Susuru only serves noodle soups and appetizers, but that won’t matter to you because you wouldn’t want to have anything else anyway!

We started with shrimp dumplings that were very light and perfectly steamed. Then I had the chicken curry udon soup and R. had a shrimp udon soup, both were delicious and the portions were generous. (And yes we slurped!) For dessert we tried the green tea ice cream and the chocolate spring rolls with vanilla ice cream, and needless to say they were both very special.

A small and funny detail about the restaurant: there are kitchen aprons hanging on little hooks on the sides of the tables to protect your clothes while you slurp!

So again if you’re in Berlin and in the mood for Japanese food, try Susuru. Here’s the address:

SUSURU
Rosa-Luxemburg Strasse 17
10178 Berlin

Tags: travel

Not Just Any Lemon Cake!

I love lemon cakes and lemon tarts and although I’ve made lemon cupcakes before,  I haven’t made a cake that ends with a sweet lemon syrup being poured over it! The perfect balance between sweet and citric. I found this recipe in Elle magazine November issue, it was provided by Daniele Gerkens for whom I couldn’t find a website, blog or link. But here’s the recipe (I changed a little in the original recipe) for this SUPER JUICY lemon cake.

Ingredients:

- 15og butter, melted
- 175g sugar
- 4 eggs
- 250g flour
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- Zest of 3 lemons

- Juice of 3 lemons
- 150g of icing sugar or caster sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 375F/180C.

1. In a bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar well. Add the butter. Whisk again.

2. Add the 3 dry ingredients gradually and mix the batter until it is silky smooth.

3. Add the zest of the lemons.

4. Pour the batter in your cake mold (I used a loaf pan) and pop in the oven for 45 minutes.

5. While the cake is baking, make the syrup by mixing the icing sugar with the lemon juice.

6. When the cake has properly baked, take it out of the oven, poke it with a skewer several times in several spots and while it is still hot pour the lemon syrup all over.

7. Let the cake cool before you take it out of the baking pan and serving.

Tags: dessert