Doc V's Healthy Kitchen

Remember : fabulous, delicious, colorful, fusion, healthy, preferably vegetarian = docV style.

I love organizing dinners which includes : decide the menu, make a shopping list after checking the storage, plan the preparation in order to be completely ‘ready’ before the guests arrive and to enjoy the evening with them around the table. Once we are 6p or more, I love to prepare different dishes to share.

As aperitif we had some home-made grissini with 2 dips, followed by 5 different dishes, based on the Christmas editions of delicious.nl and one Ottolenghi.

The recipes of the beetroot puree ( middle one) and the pasta dish ( left below) are for today.

For the beetroot, wash +/- 3/4 kilo of beetroot. Remove stems and skin ( use gloves). Halve the bigger ones. Put them in an oven dish with 4 peeled garlic cloves, 3 bay leaves and 200 ml of water. Cover with aluminium foil. Bake in the oven for 1- 1 1/2 h until soft.

At the same time, halve a good tasting small sized pumpkin. Remove the seeds. Put them in an oiled dish with the skin upwards. Bake in the oven at the same time as the beetroot for probably 50-60 minutes until tender.

Once the beetroot is tender, cool down. Chop roughly. Put the beetroot and the garlic in a blender. Add 250 grams of soft goat cheese, 50 grams of ready made drained sushi ginger and 2 teaspoons of an indonesian herbal muxture ( contains kaffir, coconut, garlic, ginger, serah, tamarind, turmeric, cinnamon, cumin, coriander seeds, chili, lemon, spring onion and clove) = Soto from the brand Euroma. Blend. Taste, add pepper and salt. Store in the fridge.

For the paste recipe, boil 300 grams of larger sized pasta shells or similar in salted water until almost al dente. Drain. Rinse with cold water. Set aside.

Clean 1 bunch of 350 grams of fresh kale ( remove all the stems). Parboil in salted water for 3-5 minutes. Drain thoroughly and chop. Mix the kale with 200grams of ricotta, 2 table spoons of drained and chopped semi-dried cherry tomatoes, the zeste of 1 untreated lemon, nutmeg, and 20 grams of grated parmesan. Taste, add pepper and salt.

Scrape the pumpkin meat out of the skin. I use 600 grams for the sauce. Store the rest in the freezer for a later occasion. Chop 1 white onion and 4 garlic cloves. Fry in 1 table spoon of olive oil. Add 1 large table spoon of dried thyme. Add 200 ml of dry white wine. Allow to simmer for at least 15 minutes. Add the pumpkin. Stir. Add water to obtain a smooth sauce. Season with pepper and salt.

Spread the sauce in an oiled oven dish. Fill each pasta shell with the kale/cheese mixture. Spread in the sauce with the opening upwards. Finish with a semi-dried cherry tomato in each shell and some extra parmesan. Cover with aluminium foil. Bake in the oven at 200° for 30-40 minutes. Uncover the last 5-10 minutes.

Spread the beetroot on a larger plate. Finish with the rest of the drained sushi ginger. Serve at room temperature or reheat shortly. Spread some vegetal chips on the beetroot puree.

I promise to post the other dishes in a following blogpost.