Guacamole? Only with tacos? Not necessarly.

Usually guacamole is served with tacos or chips. But why not serve it as a part of a meal?
Below you will find a recipe for the guacamole - up to you how to serve it ;)
I had it today in tomatoes (emptied of course ;> ), some rice and grilled chicken.


Ingredients:
2 ripe avocados
1/2 red onion, minced (can be white if you don't have red onion)
1-2 serrano chiles, stems and seeds removed, minced (or 1/2 of fresh paprika)
2 tablespoons cilantro leaves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon of fresh lime or lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
A dash of freshly grated black pepper

Cut avocados in half, remove seed and with a spoon remove the interior of avocados. Put it in a bowl. Chop rest of ingredients and add to avocado and mix everything. Add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. It's ready to be served! With tacos or not ;))

NB: Depending on the texture you want to obtain, you can either chop the avocado with a fork to get bigger pieces or put everything (or avocado only) in a mixer to make it smooth.
I prefer it not mixed so when you eat it you get a little piece of avocado, a crunchy piece of paprika... But that's my choice ;))

Bon appetit!

Fondant au chocolat (or Chocolate Fudge?)

On the photo: Fondant au chocolat served with creamy ginger sauce, decorated with green lemon peel


FONDANT AU CHOCOLAT

Ingredients (for 10-16 fondant - depending on the size of your muffin cups):
250 gr of dark chocolate (70% of cacao)
175 gr of butter
125 gr of icing sugar
75 gr of flour
5 eggs

Time:
Preparation: 10min
Cooking: 7-8min at 200C

Recipe:
Turn on the oven at 200C.

Prepare the muffin cups - spread a little bit of butter on the inside of the cups. Not much. And a little bit of flour in case you estimate you might have problems to get the fondant out.
I used only a bit of butter on my silicon cups and it was enough.

Put flour, icing sugar and eggs in a bowl. Stir it and then use a mixer or a blender to get a smooth mixture.

Chop the chocolate, cut the butter into smaller pieces and put both in a pan. On medium fire, make it melt. Stir until you get a smooth liquid chocolate.

Slowly add the chocolate to the mixture in the bowl. Stir until you get a unified substance.

With a help of a spoon, fill the cups.

Put the cups in the pre-heated oven and cook the fondant for 7-8min.

The fondant on the left is perfect. The one on the right was way overcooked.



SERVING IDEA: CREAMY GINGER SAUCE

Ingredients:
100 ml of liquid cream
100 ml of coconut milk
10 gr of ginger
orange peel from 1/2 of orange
2 spoons of sugar

Recipe:
Poor the cream and the coconut milk in a pan. Heat it until it boils.

Add ginger, orange peel and sugar. Heat it for few more minutes.

Take it out of the heat so it cools down. Filter and.. it's ready to be served.

Bon appetit :)

Chocolate spoons

It's a reeeaaaallly simple one :) and so delicious!

Here goes the original recipe:

For 8 people
Preparation: 15 min
Difficulty: Easy (of course!)

Ingredients:
100g of dark chocolate
10cl of light liquid cream


Recipe:
Heat the cream in a saucepan until it simmers.
Meanwhile, chop the chocolate with a knife.
Pour the hot cream over the chocolate so it melts and stir it so it gets all smooth (if necessary, reheat a few seconds in the microwave for easy filling of spoons).
Fill the spoons with chocolate and chill at least 1 hour.
Serve with hot coffee.

My observations: the recipe was supposed to be for 8 spoons, meaning 8 people. I got 14 spoons out of this recipe and it was just OK for 4 people :)
Oh, the spoons - I used plastic spoons adapted for appetizers etc. That was perfect. As well, think of preparing the coffee in a glass/mug in which you could easily put the spoon it. The hot coffee makes the chocolate to soften and nicer for tasting :)

Welcome to The Art of Simple Cooking!

The idea of creating this blog appeared today. I was hosting two friends in my place and we had a cooking 'atelier' during which we decided to test some new recipes. And I thought it would be nice to share the experience.. good ones and.. bad ones maybe as well ;) We had both types today...
All entries will be illustrated by photos taken by me - no 'copy-paste' from any website!

Anyway - the objective of this blog is to give you some ideas to do some home cooking within reasonable time and will taste gooood (even delicious!).

Hope you will enjoy it! All comments, improvement ideas & questions are welcome!