Dinner: Dressings and sauces

peanut-butter sauce
Chili paste
Sour-sweet curry
Tzatziki
Mushroom – (water) cress sauce
Houmous
Dressing # 1

peanut-butter sauce

peanut-butter, water, lemon, soya sauce, black pepper Optional ingredients : chilli pepper, pineapple juice, grated coconut

Dissolve some spoonfuls of peanut-butter in heating water, while constantly stirring (necessary to stir the lumps to pieces and to prevent it from the easy burning).
Add water or peanut butter to the right thickness.
Add lemon, soya sauce and papper top the taste.

To make a hot sauce, you can add some chilli pepper (sauce).
To make some sweeter sauce you can add pineapple juice and/or grated coconut.

Serves well with rice dishes.

Chili paste

Is a good alternative if you want to have a hot pasta sauce, or chilli con/sin carne, but still want some "softer-stomached" people to eat too. Just make some extremely hot paste and serve it separately, only for those who like it VERY HOT !!

3-5 onions, 5-8 carrots, some garlic, a few handfuls of sunflower seeds, 50-80 gr cayenne pepper or chilli pepper or fresh peppers, nutmeg, salt, oil (tomato puree)

Cut and fry the onions in some oil, add some of the coarsely chopped garlic.
Then add the sliced carrots and just enough water to cover them and some salt and boil them.
When the carrots are done, you can pour some of the water in a separate bown if you've got too much water.
Crush the onions-carrots mixture through a meat mincer (SV köttkvarn, SF lihamylly), together with the peppers, the sunflower seeds some nutmeg and the rest of the garlic.
You can add some extra oil and/or some of the boiling water to make it to a very smooth, thick paste.
These amounts of pepper look very high indeed, but this paste is only meant to make some other sauce spicy.
It is in no case meant to be eaten just like this !!! It is also very dangerous to taste it (it might burn your throat and/or stomach). When this paste is ready, put it far away and cover it with a "danger"-sign.

Sour-sweet curry

onions, carrots, raisins, salt, soya sauce, vinegar, honey, corn flour, curry powder, ginger, paprika powder, garlic, pickled gherkin (SV inläggningsgurka, SF suolakurkku)

broccoli, peas, beans, lentils, apricots, pineapple chunks, mango chunks, zucchini (courgette, SF kesäkurpitsa), koriander Fry the cut onions.

Add some salt, paprika powder, curry powder, ginger and garlic.
Add the carrots (and the possible other vegetables you can think of) and fill up with water.
When the carrots are halfway done, add the raisins (and optionally the pineapple chunks and mango or other dried fruit), the pickled gherkin.
Bring to taste with honey, some salt, some spices and soya sauce.
Dissolve some corn flour into water and add to the boiling stew to make a bit thicker.

Tzatziki

cucumber, pickled gherkin (SV inläggningsgurka, SF suolakurkku), yoghurt, garlic, black pepper, (herbal) salt, vinegar, (parsley).
For 100 people you will need 15-20 cucumbers, ± 4-5 l of pickled gherkin and 7-10 l of yoghurt

Cut the cucumber in cubes or thin slices.
Cut the gherkins in thin slices. Mix the cucumber, the gherkin and the yoghurt.
Add crushed or finely cut garlic, black pepper, (herbal salt), the liquid of the gherkins and some good herb-vinegar or even some balsamico.
Leave to stand for a while. The garlic taste will get stronger and mix better with the rest.

Mushroom – (water) cress sauce

3 onions, ± 400 gr mushrooms, ± 250 gr (water) cress, ± 1/2 kg soft curd cheese (SV kvarg, SF maitorahka), black pepper, soya souce
Measures for 15 portions

Cut the onion in small pieces and fry. Add the small cut mushrooms to fry. When the mushrooms are ready, add the cress and stir with the rest for 1/2 – 1 minute. Mix, in a cold container, this mixture with the curd cheese, and mash or make a puree of it. Bring to taste with black pepper and soya sauce.

Houmous

chick peas, garlic, oil, soya sauce, onion, stock powder (SV buljong, SF kasvisliemi), lemon or vinegar, sesame seeds seeds
For 100 people you easily need 5 kg of chick peas and about 10 – 15 thick onions.

black pepper, paprika powder, basil, koriander, tahini

Soak the chick peas overnight. Boil them with fresh water, some salt and the stock powder, and the onion (cut to pieces). Boiled onion gives the houmous a softer, slightly sweeter taste.
When the chick peas are soft, you let the water leak out, and put them through a meat mincer (SV köttkvarn, SF lihamylly) with the garlic (no use cutting it to pieces before) and the sesame seeds. The paste should be smoothened by kneading it while adding oil.
Bring to taste with the lemon or a good vinegar and soya sauce. You could add a good deal of paprika powder, some black pepper, basil and koriander.
If you add tahini, this makes the houmous slightly more bitter.

Dressing # 1

garlic, (fresh) basil, olive oil, soya sauce

Cut loads of garlic (even 7 – 10 complete balls of garlic per litre olive oil).
Mix olive oil and soya sauce (± 1 litre of olive oil per 1/3 litre of soya sauce).
Mix the garlic in and a really good deal of basil. Fresh basil is really much better for this than dried basil.
Leave standing for an hour at least.

This serves very well with bread ; a few drops of this dressing on a slice of tasty bread feels like a complete meal.

This dressing needs stirring regularly while being served, because otherwise the (very salty) soya sauce remains in the bottom.