Easy Homemade Tomato Sauce for Pizza

This only takes 5 mins to make :-)

Ingredients:

1. 3 cherry tomatoes

2. 3 TBS water 

3. 1 TBS olive oil 

4. 1 tsp wholewheat flour (for thickening)

5. Salt🧂& pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Cut tomatoes into quarters.

2. Heat a sauce pan with olive oil.

3. Add tomatoes and fry until smooth.

4. In a small bowl, mix wholewheat flour and water together.

5. Add into the pot and stir until it thickens, approx. 1 mins.

6. Cool down and you have your homemade delicious and nutritious tomato paste in your pizza now 🍕😃

Additional Info:

Morning has dawned, FECS 7-Eleven Convenience Store opens shop 😃

Today’s FECS’ kitchen production:

FECS Ready-to-Use Pizza Tomato Paste 🍅

It’s super easy and takes only 5 mins to make your own tomato paste 🍅 

Even though Denmark is no. 1 in food standards, don’t trust everything you buy from the Danish supermarket. Store-bought tomato paste  contain 100g of artificial additives for every 600g, that’s a whopping 17% of what you don’t know in the tomato paste (see can label in picture 9) 😅

Homemade tomato paste made with cherry tomatoes are so sweet and delicious, it tastes far superior to store-bought ones 😋 C loves the pizza made with these sauce 😃

The ingredients used in homemade tomato paste add vitamins and goodness from real tomatoes 🍅, the olive oil provides good monounsaturated fats for your family, and the wholewheat flour uses for thickening also adds protein and nutrients to your growing children. It’s 100% additives free 😃

Storage:

Store the remainder in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days or freeze it up for use for 6 months.

I like to re-use the glass jar containers from the supermarket groceries

1. Cut tomatoes into quarters.

2. Heat a sauce pan with olive oil.

3. Add tomatoes and fry until smooth.

4. In a small bowl, mix wholewheat flour and water together.

Mix well.

Add into the port.

Stir and mix well until it thickens.

Adjust with more water if needed to get the desired consistency.

Cool down and you have your homemade delicious and nutritious tomato paste in your pizza now :-)

Store the remainder in an airtight container in the fridge for 3-5 days or freeze it up for use for 6 months.

I like to re-use the glass jar containers from the supermarket groceries

Even though Denmark is no. 1 in food standards, don’t trust everything you buy from the Danish supermarket. Store-bought tomato paste  contain 100g of artificial additives for every 600g, that’s a whopping 17% of what you don’t know in the tomato paste (see can label in picture 9) 😅

Bake at 250 deg C for 5 - 10 mins, check mid way.

Sprinkle a bit of grated mozzarella cheese and parsley on top.

After school snack is done. Just need to microwave it for 30 seconds :-)

Healthy Creamy Strawberry Smoothie

Serves 1 - 2

Ingredients:

1. 3 large frozen strawberries (50g)
2. 3 dried dates, pitted (20g)

3. 50g (approx. 3 TBS or 1/4 cup) natural Greek yogurt (0.1% fat)

4. 50g (approx. 3 TBS or 1/4 cup) pre-cooked oatmeal porridge (cooked with whole milk and egg) *

5. 1 cup (250 ml) whole fresh milk 3.5% fat

6. Optional: 1 walnut (2g) (optional)

7. Optional: 1/4 tsp vanilla powder (optional)

8. Optional: 3 blueberries (5g) 

I have a dedicated post coming up soon on exactly how I batch-cook my Egg-Enriched Milk Oatmeal Porridge, so keep your eyes peeled for that recipe soon!

Instructions:

1. Layer the Liquids: Add the whole milk, Greek yogurt, and the pre-cooked egg porridge to the base of your high-speed blender.

2. Add the Sweetness & Crunch: Drop in the pitted dates, walnut, and vanilla powder.

3. Top with Fruit: Add the frozen strawberries and optional blueberries on top. (Putting frozen ingredients at the top helps the blender blades pull everything down smoothly).

4. Blend Until Silky: Blend on high for 45–60 seconds until the dates are completely pulverized and the smoothie is perfectly smooth and creamy.

5. Pour & Enjoy: Pour into a tall glass and enjoy immediately!

Nutritional Profile (Per Serving):

Calories: 345 kcal

Protein: 18.2 g

Carbohydrates: 41.9 g

Healthy Fats: 12.7 g

Why this combo works: The fast-acting natural sugars in the dates give you an instant morning wake-up, while the complex carbs from the oatmeal provide a slow release of energy. Thanks to the whole milk, Greek yogurt, and egg, you get a solid 18+ grams of high-quality protein to kickstart your day.

Additional Info:

The secret to a rich, creamy and tasty smoothie is actually the oat porridge, which you can make in advance and store in the fridge ready to be used; or portion it into cubes using a ice-cube tray and store them in the freezer. Cooked oats blend completely seamlessly, giving your smoothie a thick, velvet-like consistency similar to a premium milkshake.

In addition, adding oat porridge also helps your smoothie stay fresh longer by stabilizing the liquid, preventing your smoothie from separating and turning brown. Using cooked porridge is actually the absolute best method for keeping your smoothie stable! When oats are cooked, their starches undergo gelatinization—meaning they swell up, absorb water, and form a thick, gel-like network. This structure is highly effective at locking in moisture and preventing your smoothie from separating into ugly layers. adding 

Why Adding Oat Porridge Helps Your Smoothie Last

High Viscosity: Oats act as a natural thickener. They absorb liquid and create a heavy, dense body that stops the drink from becoming watery.

Suspension Control: A standard fruit smoothie is just tiny particles floating in water. Gravity quickly pulls these solids down and pushes the water up. The starches and soluble fiber in oats hold everything together in a stable suspension.

Less Oxidation: Because the thick mixture moves slowly and traps air bubbles less easily, it slows down the rapid separation and color changes you see in thin fruit juices.

Cooked porridge allows your smoothie to stay fresh and perfectly mixed for up to 2 days in the refrigerator.

Here is how you can optimize your cooked porridge smoothie for the best texture and maximum freshness:

Cooking & Prepping Tips:

Cool it completely: Never add hot porridge directly to your blender. It will steam your fruits and greens, which accelerates spoiling, degrades vitamins, and creates a lukewarm, unappealing texture.

Batch and freeze: Cook a large batch of plain porridge ahead of time. Freeze it in silicone ice cube trays. You can then drop these frozen porridge cubes straight into your blender for an instantly icy, thick smoothie.

Storage Best Practices:

Use an airtight glass jar: Fill your container all the way to the very top to leave zero headspace for air. Less air inside means drastically less oxidation.

Add a splash of citrus: A squeeze of lemon, lime, or orange juice provides Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). This acts as a natural antioxidant, keeping the colors bright and preventing your fruits from turning brown. 

References:

https://smoothiedigest.com/articles/prevent-smoothie-separation-browning

https://www.bobsredmill.com/articles/how-to-choose-the-best-oats-for-smoothies

Batch-cooked Egg-Enriched Milk Oatmeal Porridge

Add 50g (approx. 3 TBS or 1/4 cup) pre-cooked oatmeal porridge.

Soba - Japanese Buckwheat Noodles Enhanced with Egg (Round 1)

    

Round 1: Soba noodles

Ingredients:

1. 130g Salling organic buckwheat flour from Føtex Supermarket (65% of flour weight)

2. 70g Salling organic wheat flour 11% protein content (35% of flour weight)

3. 1 egg + distilled water to 85ml (42.5% of flour weight)

4. 1 litre of boiling water for cooking each 100g of noodles

Short Instructions:

Instructions:

1. Let the Philips Pasta Maker run and extrude directly using the udon disc as per machine instructions. No need to rest the dough in between.

2. Bring to rolling boil a pot of water. 

3. Cook for  2.5 - 3 mins, drain and serve as dry noodles or in soup. 

4. Drain and bath in cold tap water, rub away excess starch.

5. Drain away the cold water bath and serve :-)

Long Instructions:

1. Let the Philips Pasta Maker run and extrude directly using the udon disc as per machine instructions. No need to rest the dough in between.

2. Dust with corn starch as it will be elastic and a bit sticky.

3. Roll into a loose large nest to portion it and store in an airtight container. 

4. To cook the soba, bring to boil a generous pot of water. For soba, it is best to cook immediately for best tasty result. So don't make soba in large portions to store, even though you can store it of course.

5. Gently add in the soba, and don’t stir it. Otherwise it will beak as soba is made with buckwheat flour.

6. After 30 seconds or so, gently stir it to separate any strand sticking together. 

7. Cover and bring to boil again. Let it boil for a total of 2.5 to 3 mins from the moment you dropped in the soba.

8. Stirring as you go along after it starts boiling again. Get ready a glass of water on the side. If it cooks like the water is boiling over, add some water to bring down the temperature.

9. Test for doneness at 2.5 mins. Pick up a strand of noodles with a pair of chopsticks, dip it in a glass of water so it won’t burn your lips before you taste it. 

10. Once done, drain and wash it under a pot of cold tap water. 

11. Rub gently under the water to remove any excess starch.

12. Serve immediately. If you need to wait a little before serving, coat it with some oil so that it doesn’t stick together after some time.

13. If you wish to re-warm it after the cold bath, dip a portion into the warm udon water that you use to cook the udon with.

Additional Information:

Make this today. Snappy and springy, quite perfect. J like noodles soup, and he happily ate soba as noodles in noodle soup :-) 

Do not add salt for soba. When cooking the noodles, also do not add salt. It will make the soba noodles mushy.

This is based on Philip's soba recipe and it was very successful :-)

Ingredients: Salling organic buckwheat flour, Organic wheat flour 11% protein and distilled water (boiled cooled water):

Salling organic buckwheat flour from Føtex Supermarket

This is the organic wheat flour I use from Føtex Supermarket.

Eggs

In a large bowl, add 130g of organic buckwheat flour

Add 70g of Salling organic wheat flour 11% protein.

Mix well.

Add all the dry ingredients into the Philips VIVA pasta maker's chamber.

Add 1 egg.

Add distilled water to 85ml.

Mix well.

Start the mixing and slowly pour in the water and run the machine automatically.

The pasta maker will mix once and extrude. Do not rest the dough.

After one cycle of mixing, the dough looked like the above. You don't need to pause and open the lid. You can let the machine extrude the soba directly. The above picture is just to show you.

Here comes the soba noodles :-)

After a while, it will fray, but it won't affect the taste or look after they are cooked.

Simply toss the frayed ones, wipe the water vapours off the walls of the lid and the inner-side of the lid, if your machine is getting warm and producing water vapour.

they will come out smooth after that :-)

They will come out better and smoother.

Lightly roll them into a big loose nest.

To prevent the udon noodles from sticking together, coat it with a little corn starch or potato starch.

It is best to cook soba noodles immediately after making them. Bring to a rolling boil a pot of water (1 litre for every 100g of noodles), gently add in the soba noodles. Quickly cover the pot so that it will come to boil again faster.

After about 30 seconds, gently stir to prevent them from sticking together.

Stir as you go along after it starts boiling again.

Let it boil for a total of 2.5 to 3 mins from the moment you dropped in the soba. Test for doneness after 2.5 minutes. Pick up a strand of noodles with a pair of chopsticks, dip it in a glass of water so it won’t burn your lips before you taste it. 

Watch that it doesn't boil over. Get ready a glass of cold water ready on the side. If it looks like the water is boiling over, add some water to bring down the temperature and let it come to boil again. 

Once done, drain with a sieve and 

Drop it gently into a bowl of cold tap water. 

The shock from the cold water will make the udon noodles firm up and it will taste even chewier. 

Gently rub with your hands under the water to remove any excess starch.

 Wash and rinse and replace with a few rounds of cold tap water until the water becomes clear.

Drain off the cold tap water.

If you wish to re-warm the soba noodles after the cold bath, dip a portion into the warm pot of water that you used to cook the soba for 10 seconds or so.

Drain and serve it immediately with a teaspoon of chili soy sauce and a teaspoon of garlic oil or sesame oil.

Mix well.

Garnish with some chopped spring onions and enjoy :-)