One of the other sessions I held at BarCamp Berkshire last weekend was “Intro to Cooking”. This quickly turned more into a “share your cool recipes and kitchen tips”, and I learnt some great things! One of the recipes I talked about was Spaghetti Tequila which I made last week after experimenting with some ingredients.

Ingredients

• 2-3 avocados
• 400 gr cherry tomatoes
• 300 gr chicken or turkey
• 150 ml creme fraiche
• 1-2 shots of tequila
• garlic
• 1 tea spoon coriander
• 1 table spoon lemon juice
• cayenne pepper
• 200-250 gr pasta (spaghetti, penne, whatever you want)

Instructions

1. Cook the pasta as you normally would.
2. Cut the avocados in squares (if you don’t know how to peel and de-pit an avocado, google it), the cherry tomatoes in halves, and the chicken/turkey in biteable bits.
3. Mix the avocado with the lime juice, coriander and cayenne pepper. Add as much cayenne pepper as you’re comfortable with. If you don’t want it spicy at all, leave the cayenne out.
4. Melt butter in a pan. Add the garlic; once it’s browned, add the chicken.
5. Once the chicken is done (== no pinkish, raw bits), throw in the cherry tomatos and avocado mixture.
6. After a minute or so, once the pan is sizzling again, add the tequila. If you’re not quite sure how much tequila you want, slowly add this in bits, until it tastes as you want.
7. Let it simmer for about 2 minutes, then add the creme fraiche. Let it then simmer for about 3 minutes.
8. Add the pasta and… TADA: Spaghetti Tequila!

As some of my Twitter followers may have noticed yesterday I wanted to do something crcreative with butternut squash. I got a lot of replies back suggesting curries, but I settled on something (in my eyes) simpler: gnocchi.

I didn’t make the gnocchi itself from scratch, but everything else (= the sauce) I pretty much did. Here’s how it turned out:

For those of you who might want to recreate this dish, here’s the recipe:

– Gnocchi
– 300 gr Butternut Squash
– 300 gr Mushrooms
– 3 strips of Parma Ham
– 200 ml Creme Fraiche
– Garlic, Thyme and Pepper

First I put the butternut squash for half an hour in the oven (in a buttered oven dish). The gnocchi you just have to prepare as it says on the package (2-3 minutes in boiling water). Then it’s basically just throwing the mushrooms, parma ham and butternut squash together in a pan. After a couple of minutes, add the creme fraiche, the spices and some water, and Tada! That’s it!

Easy, right?