GERMANY'S CUCUMBER

After the declarations about the Spanish cucumbers by our German fellows, I would like to cook for them. To thank them. To honour them... the cucumbers, of course.

This is a very easy and cheap (and healthy) recipe that I'll cook in my dad's memoriam. He loved it.

Take a cucumber.

Wash it thouroughly (as it should always be done. Everybody must know that vegetables nedd to be washed very well as they grow in the countryside, not in a supermarket...).

Peel it. If you don't, taste will be bitter.

Cut it, add a pinch of salt and...

Enjoy!

ASPARAGUS AND HAM ROLLS

After the donuts, I feel too blame and I need to save my soul... and my body.

So I decided to be a good boy (by now) and I am going to cook asparagus and ham roll.

Ingredients we'll need:

- 600grs green asparagus
- 6 ham slices (250 grs. aprox.)

- 1 olive oil tablespoon

I am thinking on a light dessert and I will have a skimmed yoghourt.

Let's get busy!!!

As the asparagus have too much bran, you have to cut them so not to cook the hard part of them. So, see the photo below to know how to cut the asparagus.

Wash and steam them for about 7 minutes since the water boils. in the case you have not the possibility to cook them by steaming, you can boil them instead although almost all the taste and vital properties of the asparagus will remain in the water.

Drain the asparagus. Place a ham slice as seen in the photograph to roll 6-7 asparagus per slice.

Insert a stick to avoid the roll open.

Pre-heat an olive oil tablespoon in a pan at a moderate temperature. Cook the rolls for a couple of minutes and turn them by using the sticks.

Do not use salt in this recipe as the ham is salted enough..

Enjoy it!!!

BAKED DONUTS

Yesterday, I was telling myself: “Let’s cook some donuts and we’ll eat them tomorrow morning”.

And I did it (donuts cooked and eaten, so the diet I was on, it’s broken… again although, cooked in the oven, these donuts carry less calories than fried).

Well, let’s go with this recipe.

When cooking donuts (or I might say any dough) time is a really important factor. No hurries. We must give the dough time to act in order to get light and tender donuts.

Regarding the cost of this recipe, I must say they are really cheap and if you take a look on the average prices given in my weblog lacocinadepeto.blogspot.com, you will understand what I am saying …

If you have children at home or you want to have a good breakfast on Sunday, this recipe can be made on Saturday evening.

For those who do not care about calories (I envy you!!!) I recommend them to cook theis donut dough by frying it as they will save time and the donuts will taste even better.

The ingredients we need are the following:

(in my blog lacocinadepeto.blogspot.com I include average ingredient prices for Spain. I am not typing prices here as I understand they could be much different wherever you may live in).

650 grs wheat flour (I have used hard white, used for baking bread, although you might use the one for baking cakes)

20 grs yeast (fresh, if possible)

1 egg

200 grs sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

250 ml (a breakfast cup) skimmed milk (for my “diet purposes” I have used skimmed milk but if you use semi or non-skimmed milk the taste of the dough will be even better).

75 ml Olive oil / 75 grs margarine or butter

OK, Let’s get busy!!!!

Pour 600 grs of flour inside a big bowl (the rest, 50 grs, will be used for spreading over the surface on which we are going to work with the dough) and add the yeast mixing it very well.

Make a volcano-shape hole in the middle of the flour and pour the milk (at mild temperature). Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon until it becomes a thick dough. Some flour will not be able to mix into the dough so, now, add the egg and the half of the amount of olive oil/margarine/butter and mix again.

When the dough gets compact, spread the flour over your working surface and knead the dough for 5 minutes.

Make a big ball with the dough:

Pour some olive oil into the bowl you used before and place the ball of dough inside. Spread the rest of olive oil onto the ball and cover the bowl with a clean cloth. Place the bowl in a mild-warm place (20ºC-68ºF) during an hour (or until the dough double its size).

(In the previous photograph you can see a little hole in the top of the dough. I usually do this with my finger to know if the dough has grown correctly. If the hole disappears, you must wait some more time.)

Knead again to remove the air inside the dough and let the dough rest for other 20 minutes.

Then, take some dough to make balls the size of the palm of your hand and make a hole with your forefinger to make the donut shape (this is the funniest part of the recipe, apart from eating the donut, of course!!!)

Spread some flour on a baking tray (for the donuts not to stick on it) and place the donuts onto it.

 Paint the donuts with some milk (this is to make the donuts softer).

Pre-heat the oven (160ºC-320ºF) - do not turn the grill on- place the tray at a middle height for the base of the donuts not to get burn.

Bake for 20 minutes.

Boil half a glass of water with 4 tablespoons of sugar and when the donuts are out of the oven pour it onto them.
If you cannot eat them all, you can refrigerate them for a couple of days.

GRILLED GILTHEAD FISH

this blog is intended to show you how to cook in a cheap and easy manner.

I said easy because, I am really not the person who can change the electric plug on the wall, though, I cook food with no difficulties at all.

Today I am starting this blog. If only one of you can fulfill his/her interest in cooking with petothecook.blogspot.com, I will consider this blog as a success.

I apologize in advance for all the errors which I will (surely)commit while writing in this blog and also for bad cooking feelings (such as "my mother cooks this in a very different way" or "my grandma cooks this very much better"...)

Ah, and I do not want to start with my recipes without thanking my wife (Maridó) to encourage me to create this blog and my mum who has taught me all I know about cooking (without her, my cooking feeling would have been like the lion one).

To start with, today we are cooking (grilled gilthead fish). Easy and cheap.

The ingredients we need are the following:

(in my blog lacocinadepeto.blogspot.com I include average ingredient prices for Spain. I am not typing prices here as I understand they could be much different wherever you may live in).

- 2 Gilthead fishes (aprox.300-400 grs.) Ask at the fish shop to remove guts and scales.

- 4-5 garlic cloves

- 1 big onion or 2 small onions (150-200 grs)

- 1 lemon

- Olive oil (3-4 tablespoons) (I know olive oil in some countries is extremely expensive compared to Mediterranean countries. Thus, you can use butter or other type of vegetable oil provided that it has no strong flavour)

- The cheapest white wine you can find (a quarter pint). If too expensive or too difficult to get it, use same quantity of beer.

- Salt 

Ok, then, let's get busy!!!!!

Pre-heat your oven 220ºC - 428ºF (10-15 minutes depending on the oven). 

Pour an olive oil tablespoon into your pyrex tray (if you don't have pyrex it's okay, I use it as it is easier to clean).

Slice the onion and put it uniformly throughout the pyrex tray. Add salt and pour over another olive oil tablespoon.

Place the pyrex with the onion into the oven for 15 minutes (or until the onion gets slightly brown).

In the meanwhile, cut the lemon in two. Slice one half and make a lemon juice with the other.

Mash the garlic cloves, a pinch of salt, 2 olive oil tablespoons and the half-lemon juice.

Make three incisions on the fish (as shown below) and insert three slices of lemon.

Spread the mashed garlics, lemon and salt inside and outside the fish.

Use the rest of lemon to decorate the fish and put it in the pyrex covering the grilled onions. Place it into the oven for 20 to 30 minutes (depending on the size of the fishes). At the middle of such time (aprox. 10 minutes) add the wine mixed with a quarter pint of water.

And that's it!!!

Serve as you wish, decorated in a dish or directly in the pyrex (please do not burn yourself) and enjoy with whoever you like.