I am originally from Sweden, but have lived in Berlin for more than a year now and I absolutely love it! I attended a hospitality school in Sweden for three years, and have been working in kitchens since I was 15. Lately, I have been working in a brunch café, and in my free time, I volunteer at various cooking and food-related initiatives around Berlin. I was honoured to do some workshops and house dinners with GSBTB at their home base in Refugio. I’m really looking forward to doing more collaborative projects!

My quarantine time so far has been mostly spent cooking and baking, which has been great!  When the quarantine started, I decided to go spend time at my friend’s apartment, and am really enjoying my time there. To me, it was important to be around good friends, to feel safe in this extremely uncertain time. Since we’re both passionate about food, we’ve spent every day cooking and baking. 

Just like a musician goes about making music, during this quarantine period, I started writing down my recipes. I really enjoy challenging myself by making beautiful and tasty vegetarian and vegan food with very simple ingredients, but with particular focus on the method. Who said delicious food can’t be super cheap and easy? The structure of most of my recipes contains a method that you can adopt for other dishes by simply changing the spices or vegetables. I enjoy making suggestions in the end of my recipes, to get you started on getting creative with food!

Golden Roasted Cauliflower with Masala Fried Leaves and Creamy Coconut Rice

Delicious and healthy, on top of being vegan and gluten-free! Source: Private.

Roasted Cauliflower

Ingredients

1 head cauliflower (with leaves)

4 tablespoon oil

2 teaspoon paprika

2 teaspoon turmeric

Directions

Preheat the oven to 180 Celsius. Meanwhile, cut off the leafs of the cauliflower and put them aside. Cut the cauliflower into wedges or halves and place on an oven tray. Mix paprika powder and turmeric powder with the olive oil and drizzle it over the cauliflower.

To make the cauliflower texture more silky drizzle 2 to 3 spoons of water on them as well. Roast in oven for around 30 – 40 minutes. 

Creamy coconut rice

Ingredients

200 grams white rice (basmati, jasmine, etc.)

200 ml coconut milk or coconut cream (half of a standard tin)

Directions

While the cauliflower is in the oven, prepare the rice. Rinse it with water first, and boil it according to the instructions on the package.

To get the best results, the rice should be a bit al dente. When the rice is cooked, let it dry up a bit and put in half a can of coconut milk.

If the milk has separated in the can, use only the thick and solid part. Mix it very gently (preferably with a spatula) to keep the rice from turning into porridge. Put it back on medium-low heat to warm it before serving.

Masala fried leaves

Ingredients

3 tablespoons tikka masala (or if you prefer, you can also use garam masala powder)

1-2 tablespoons oil (for frying)

1 whole red paprika/bell pepper

a pinch of salt, pepper, and chilli powder

Directions

Shred the leaves (8-12 leaves) into small sections with a knife. Cut the bell pepper into squares.

Heat up a good amount of oil on medium heat. Add half of the masala and all the cauliflower leaves. Fry for 10 minutes, and add the bell peppers and the rest of the spices (if needed). Fry for 5 more minutes.

Add salt, pepper and chilli to taste.

Want to make this dish pop? You can add any of these things:

Parsley, cilantro and mint (dried or fresh) 

Roasted pumpkin seeds

Mint yoghurt 

Hummus

Stay tuned for more cooking adventures to come, in the next series of Quarantine Kitchen!