Cook - The Cooking Challenge Part 1

So it all started last Sunday when my boyfriend had to do his 'homework' for that online cooking class he signed up for. We decided to cook at home for 7 days in a row. You might think "That's no challenge, I do that every day of the month"! Yes, but when you're living in Shanghai, it's quite unusual. 
We thought about lots of recipes, went to the supermarket and the "Avocado Lady" for looooots of groceries. The "Avocado Lady" is this Chinese lady who is known among all the foreigners in Shanghai. She has a small shop on the street (Wulumuqi Lu, Wuyuan Lu) with a lot of 'foreign' stuff (= food that is hard to find in here or very expensive) for a very good price. So we got a lot of fresh things there.

Here is what we cooked last week:

Our starter for Sunday was eggplant with buttermilk sauce and as a main we had chili beef lettuce wraps. We didn't follow the recipes a 100%. We did not have buttermilk, so we made it ourselves by combining milk and white vinegar. Also, we forgot to add the pomegranate, oops! For the beef wraps, we just made it a little bit easier by making a salad. 
It was good! The buttermilk was new for me, so the taste was a little strange at first but I liked it. And the chili beef was really good, definitely going to make that one again!

Sunday's starter before I put it in the oven (no buttermilk)

The chili beef lettuce salad

On Monday we started with a tomato/vegetable soup we made some weeks ago and as a light main I found a recipe in the Belgian magazine Flair: pita bread with beef, cherry tomatoes and spinach. We added pesto (homemade with the help of Jamie Oliver) and feta cheese. I would say that this was my absolute favourite of the week! And it's very easy! Slice and fry the beef and put everything inside the pita bread! No need to cook the tomatoes and the spinach! My boyfriend found a good solution for warming up the pita bread, 'cause it doesn't always work in our oven. So what he does is he puts on our gas cooker (no pan or anything on top) and he just moves the bread carefully over the flame, it might look dangerous but it makes the bread warm and crispy: amazing! 

My absolute favourite!

Tuesday we had to think of something quick because I had my exercise class at 8pm. We decided to do a quick pasta with the bolognese sauce we freezed in a couple of weeks earlier. We added some extra spinach 'cause there was still left from the day before! Another delicious meal!

Quick and easy pasta bolognese

The rest of the recipes I will share with you next week. Stay tuned!