Food Love: Tempura Cauliflower

Basically anything tastes good if you coat it with bread crumbs and fry it in olive oil. This recipe of tempura cauliflower discs is no exeption. I've never fried cauliflower before, I think I've only used it in salads or made it in oven in some vegetable casseroles.

In the original recipe the cauliflower discs are deep fried but I fried them in a pan with slightly less oil and I used Asian Panko bread crumbs instead of batter. This is no diet food. See how those florets sizzle in oil?

The crispy discs really are delicious with soy sauce. When reading the recipe I thought that soy sauce is a bit boring option for a dip, but those flavors go great together. This is definitely one of my summer favorites, and easy to make!

Food Love: Nectarine Crumble

I was craving for oven apples the other day, but it reminds me of autumn and I decided to make a crumble with nectarines instead. I'm forced to cook all my foods on the grill while I'm at our summer cottage, and with this dessert it's a must. Grilling gives this some extra sweetness and flavor.

Combine sliced nectarines, muscovado sugar, cinnamon, rolled oats, butter, cashew nuts, honey and a bit of water in a casserole foil container.

Grill until caramelized. I served this with vanilla soy milk but some coconut milk would've been good too.

Food Love: Frozen yogurt pops

I was so happy last week when I was finally able to find a frozen yogurt pops mold from Lidl. Those molds are not easy to find, I've been looking for weeks and they've been either sold out everywhere or not yet in stock for summer.

Without much planning I mixed together what supplies I had in my kitchen, so my first ever frozen yogurt pop was a chocolate-strawberry one. I used natural yogurt, cacao powder, honey, strawberries and a bit of vanilla extract.

I don't use white sugar (ever) and for me the blend was fine. It's frozen yogurt so it's supposed to taste a bit tangy, right? My mom said those pops tasted "healthy", meaning she would've wanted some sugar with that. All I can say is if it tastes good after you've mixed all the ingredients in the bowl, it will taste good frozen too.

Another thing I've been trying to cut from my diet is dairy, but I didn't have any soy yogurt in fridge so this time I made these with natural yogurt. The problem with soy yogurts here in Finland is that they are usually sweetened, and like I said I try to eat as little sugar as possible. We don't have Whole Foods or other fancy stores here, so the selection is limited. But if I make a vegan version of these pops in the future, I'll let you know.

Next time I'll skip the vanilla extract, because I couldn't taste it at all. If you're not used to the slight bitterness of raw cacao powder, you might want to use sugared one. And if we had any fresh strawberries in Finland I would've used them, but now I was forced to use frozen berries. Still, these were super yummy!

Pin It and Do It #2: Asparagus with cheese and pine nuts

I just love asparagus. The best part of spring is that all the grocery stores are packed with piles of asparagus. Another great thing about asparagus is that it's really low on calories so I can eat crazy amounts of it! I restrained myself today though, as you can see from the pic below. That is a moderate portion.

This is also the second part for Pin It and Do It -challenge. The original recipe that inspired me is from Kalyn's Kitchen. I just went crazy with it and added more stuff than in the original recipe but trust me, all these flavors go great together!

My take on the recipe has asparagus, eggs, pine nuts, serrano ham (fried until crispy) and parmesan cheese flakes. Delicious!