Lens and Lentils

Porridge. For when you're ill.

2010-03-13T09:00:00.002+01:00

Porridge is the perfect breakfast or snack when you're ill. It's warm, but you don't have to stand long in front of your stove if you feel a little weak. It's nourishing, but light and soothing if your stomach is acting up. And it's an absolute no-brainer to make, which comes in handy if you feel like your head is exploding.

PORRIDGE
for 1

1/4 cup (1 part) rolled oats
3/4 cups (3 parts) milk
1-3 tablespoons sugar or honey
cinnamon
knob of butter

blackberries (optional)

Grab your smallest pot and fill in the oats and the milk. Just remember the volumetric relation 1:3 and you'll always have a porridge with the perfect consistency.

Bring to a light boil and let the oats cook for several minutes, until it all thickens. Add sugar and cinnamon according to your taste.

Stir in and melt the butter for extra creaminess and garnish with some blackberries.

Pork tenderloin with onions and red wine. Heaven.

2010-03-06T09:00:00.002+01:00

A couple of years ago, there was a cooking show on TV, called "Schmeckt nicht, gibt's nicht" - which translates to something like "no yummy, no way". Host was a guy named Tim Mälzer and I liked the 20-minute show because he actually managed to have his meals ready in 20 minutes, mostly without saying the dreaded sentence "and here we have it prepared in advance"... It gave you a kind of down-to-earth feel when a TV cook actually starts to peel an onion in front of the camera, instead of being surrounded by an endless number of thick-rimmed glass bowls, one for each cut and measured ingredient. What a waste!

Sadly, because the show was canceled some time ago, all the recipes were taken off the TV channel's website - not even the wayback-machine could bring them back. I was really happy when I found a printout of this recipe when I browsed through my binder! I hope I remember to print out more recipes from the Internet, they vanish so quietly...

PORK TENDERLOIN WITH ONIONS AND RED WINE
Adapted from Tim Mälzer

300 g / 10 oz / 1/2 pound red or white onions
3 garlic gloves
4 tablespoons olive oil
500 g / 1 pound pork tenderloin
salt and pepper
125 ml / 1/2 cup red wine
80 ml / 1/3 cup port
1 tablespoon honey
2 bay leaves
fresh rosemary

Peel the onions and cut them into 1,5 cm / 1/2 inch thick slices. It seems a bit crazy, but no this is not too thick! Be careful with them so that they stay intact.

Peel and mince the garlic and measure the wines. Oh, and preheat your oven to 200°C / 400°F.

Cut the pork tenderloin into 5 cm / 2 inch thick slices and flatten them a bit. Gently.

Heat up your largest and ovenproof skillet - or even a roasting pan if you're doubling the recipe - on high, then add the oil and then quickly sear the meat on both sides. And don't worry if the meat is not done, we'll get to that later...

Get the meat out of the pan and let the onion slices get some color on both sides. Let the garlic get the tiniest bit of color.

Then add the honey and let it bubble up and caramelize for half a minute or so. Sounds strange, but honey and garlic together smell divine!

Now deglaze with port and red wine, put the tenderloin slices back into the pan (wiggle them in so that they touch the bottom of the pan) and add the spices - salt, pepper, bay leaves and rosemary. Cover with some foil or parchment paper and put it in the oven for 15 minutes.

Serve with your favorite kind of carbs, mine favorite being oven-roasted potatoes.

And now to something completely different. On IKEA hacker.

2010-03-02T10:59:00.001+01:00

This is a short intermission. Sorry for being off-topic, but maybe you're like me and have more than just one hobby:
Today, you can see on IKEA hacker, what I did to my zebra bench and how I use it as coffee table. Here's the direct link to the post:

Bench and coffee table in one

Roast Chicken. Leaping frogs and butterflies.

2010-02-27T09:00:00.044+01:00

ROAST CHICKEN
(adapted from Alton Brown, on youtube: part 1 and part 2)

1 chicken (mine was around 2 kg)
1 1/2 teaspoons black peppercorns
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon coarse sea salt
1 lemon, just the zest
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
fresh parsley, chopped
6 carrots
1 leek
1/2 celeriac
2 cups red wine (white wine also works!)
lemon juice
salt

This is a chicken I bought at my supermarket. And I realized that the whole chicken is much cheaper than buying just parts of it. Another big advantage: my husband and I never argue, because he prefers the breast meat and I the legs.

You can roast the chicken whole, but I for my part can never remember if you should put up first the breast or the back side. And on the bottom side, the skin will always be soggy instead of crunchy. Apart from the trouble cutting up a whole, piping hot chicken. In my case, that ends often in disaster - much to the joy of Henry and Nala.

Before you start anything at all, preheat your oven/broiler to the highest setting.

When I saw Alton Brown's Good Eats episode on spatchcocking/butterflying a chicken, I thought "genius": all the skin is facing up and I don't have to go through all my chicken recipes to find out if the breast or back side should go up first. And a bit later, I discovered the "leaping frog" method of cutting up a chicken on the internet.. I find it even better: you just cut it up, not cutting things away (like the backbone). Head over to Gourmet for detailed pictures, but no worries, this is really easy.

Place the chicken on the cutting board with the legs facing you and upwards.
Cut the skin in the crease between the drumsticks and the body. Try not to cut the meat, just the skin and connective tissue - let gravity help you!
Flatten the drumsticks, so that they lie flat on your cutting board. OK if you hear the joint pop, but don't worry if you don't.
Take your sharpest knife or kitchen shears and cut the ribcage in half, parallel to the backbone. No need to be too exact.
Flip the bird open like a book, lay it on the board with the skin side up and press down on the breast and backbone with the heel of your hand. Done!

My cutting boards are all way too small, I know.

Next stop: the spice mix. Put whole pepper corns in your mortar and crunch them up a bit. Add the peeled and chopped garlic and coarse salt and make a paste.

If you don't happen to have pestle and mortar at home, crush the pepper corns on a cutting board with a meat hammer or something else that's heavy and has a flat bottom. Search your house and be creative: marble slabs, corn cans, mason jars work just fine. Or just fill your pepper mill with 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper and grind it all on the coarsest setting. Puree or press the garlic and mix with the pepper in a bowl.

Grab a lemon (and read the label before buying it - be sure that it's not been chemically treated so that you can eat the peel). Run it over the zester to get just the yellow part of the peel, not the white stuff - it's bitter.

No zester at home? Any other fine grater will do. Or a vegetable peeler and then chopping the strips up very finely. But let me tell you - buy a microplane zester. It works wonderfully on citrus peel and parmesan and it is incredibly sharp. Don't ask how many fingernails I ruined.

Mix the lemon peel with the garlic/pepper paste and thin it with olive oil. Chop a small handful of parsley and mix it with the rest.

Mr. Brown says to use a teaspoon, but I made a little piping bag. Just fill the paste into the corner of a regular freezer bag, twist it closed and - in the last moment - cut away the tip of the corner.

Wiggle your index finger between the meat and the chicken skin to loosen it. Be gentle and try not to tear the skin. You don't need to get it all loose, just the breasts and the drumsticks are fine. Pipe in around 1 teaspoon of the spice mix and massage the skin so that you spread the spices under the skin. Don't worry if you have some of the paste left.

Why under the skin? Basically, skin is there to keep the good things in and the bad things out. But I guess you want the meat to get a taste of the spices and that would not happen if you put the spices on the outside of the skin. And of course in the hot oven, all those delicate spices would burn and leave you with a taste of charcoal.

Cut the vegetables into finger-long pieces and cover the bottom of an ovenproof pan or roasting pan. I used my favorite, a cast iron Le Creuset pan. But work with anything you have - even a disposable aluminum pan works fine.

Use whatever vegetables you happen to have, even if they're not at their best anymore and as long as they don't tend to get mushy when cooked. Potatoes and whole onions would also work fine. In Germany, you often find "soup vegetables", that is celeriac, carrots, leeks and parsley bound together. The perfect combination for this.

Lay the chicken on top of the vegetables and massage some olive oil onto the skin. You want a crispy skin, right? Put it into the oven for 20-30 minutes - you want a crispy brown skin and an internal temperature of both breast and drumstick of 165°F / 74°C.

While you're at it, wash some small potatoes, brush them with olive oil and sprinkle with coarse salt. Pop them into the oven on a roast underneath the chicken. They should be ready just the same time as the chicken.

The meat was done, but for my taste, the skin could have been darker. Seems my oven does not get really hot anymore. Anyway, when the chicken is done, get it out of the oven and let it rest on a plate, cover with foil or another plate.

Crank up the heat of your largest stovetop and pour in the wine, let it cook and reduce a bit. While it cooks, scrape the bottom and sides of the pan to dissolve all that brown, crunchy stuff. This is what makes the difference between a good sauce and a really, really good sauce. Stir the vegetables so that the brown parts are submerged in the sauce. After 10 minutes, you can fish out all the vegetables if you don't like them - in fact, I liked the wine-soaked carrots very much.

Give it a taste and season with lemon juice, salt and the leftover pepper-lemon-paste. Tastes good? OK, you're done!

Now all you need to do is carve the chicken breasts, cut away the drumsticks and serve with potatoes and the sauce. Steal the skin from your husband's plate and enjoy with a glass of wine.

Dates and bacon. Only better with parmesan.

2010-02-20T09:00:00.054+01:00

In foodie questionnaires, one question that almost always pops up is: "sweet or savory?" Seems that I belong to the rather small group that answers: "both! at the same time!" I have always been a fan of sweet/salty combinations, like cheese and membrillo, toast Hawaii or arroz a la cubana (fried rice, eggs and bananas). As Flo finds those combinations ranging between barley edible to downright revolting, I sometimes make myself something he really doesn't like - when he's not there. For example, dates rolled in bacon, then fried until crispy. This is a classic combination, just like prunes rolled in bacon. Then I read somewhere about filling them with Parmesan. And let me tell you, this takes this party classic to a whole new level.

Side note for you fructose malabsorption guys: dates contain sorbitol, which deactivates the very few fructose transporters you have. For me, 4 dates are just the limit.

DATES AND BACON
for 1 (multiply as needed)

4 large dates
2 thick slices of bacon, halved
2 thick slices of Parmesan cheese
4 toothpicks

Slice the dates open on lengthwise with a knife and get out the pit.

Cut the Parmesan into sticks and replace the pit with cheese. Squeeze the date shut.

Wrap the bacon around the filled date and secure it with a toothpick.

Heat up a little pan and gently fry the dates until the bacon is brown and crispy.
Get back to the couch and watch your favorite TV show while nibbling away...

Fondue sauces. A rainbow of colors and tastes.

2010-02-14T09:00:00.000+01:00

Fondue is our standard meal for special occasions. We have it almost every Christmas and New Year's and some other times of the year, too. I like it because it's festive, you get to eat beef tenderloin and for the fact that you can prepare everything in advance. So on the great day, you only have to heat the broth, set the table and everyone is cooking for himself and having fun. Not to mention the romance, coziness and warmth an open fire brings into your house.

And in fact, we prefer the "fondue chinoise" variant, that means cooking thin slices of meat in a broth. As opposed to "fondue bourginonne", which means cooking the meat in hot oil. That is, of course, tasty like everything that has been fried. But your house will also smell for days as it has been fried. And I'm really not the one to count calories, but food cooked in oil and served with mayo-based sauces simply is too fatty for my taste.

For FONDUE, you'll need beef tenderloin - and I like to cut it into 5mm-thick slices - a good wine, crispy french bread and lots of different sauces. And of course a rechaud, that means some kind of tripod with an alcohol burner, so you will have a cooking station in the middle of your table. Heat your favorite kind of broth on your stovetop and when it starts simmering, set it on the burner. Everyone around the table picks up one of those large forks and places it with a piece of meat into the broth for as long as he wants. Then you dip it into your favorite sauce an eat it. I like it when every bite you take tastes different.

Here's a collection of my favorite sauces:

SAUCE CUMBERLAND

1 orange, juice and zest
3/4 cup port
3/4 cup redcurrant jelly
pepper
1 tablespoon mustard powder

For this sauce, you'll need an untreated or organic orange, as it is about the peel. Peel the orange with a vegetable peeler and try not to get too much of the white stuff. It's bitter.
Then cut the orange peel into thin strips.

You also want the juice of the orange, it should be around a 3/4 cup. Mix the juice with the peel and let it cook together for a couple of minutes until the peels have softened a bit.

Mix the orange juice with the port. This alone smells incredibly.

Put the jelly into a pot and heat it up to make it more liquid. And yes you can use the pot you used to cook the orange juice without cleaning as it's going to end up mixed together anyway. Mix the jelly with the orange-port mixture and then season with a healthy dose of pepper and mustard powder. Let it cool completely before serving.

ORANGE SAUCE

1 orange, juice and zest
3/4 cup port
1 cup mayonnaise (best homemade)

Just as with the Cumberland sauce, peel and juice an orange, then cook it for some minutes. Mix with the port and let the juice simmer for several minutes more until it has reduces significantly and looks like syrup. Let that syrup cool and mix it with the mayo.

SALSA GOLF / RUSSIAN DRESSING / COCKTAIL SAUCE

1 cup mayonnaise (best homemade)
1 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon Cognac

This is one of my all-time-favorites. Just the same amount of mayo and ketchup and a bit of Cognac.

Mix it together and you have a sauce that goes with almost everything.

BANANA CURRY DIP

1 large and ripe banana
1/4 cup yogurt
1/2 cup mayonnaise (best homemade)
1 tablespoon honey
1 teaspoon curry powder
salt and pepper

Peel the banana and mash it. You can either leave some chunks or use a stick blender to make a smooth paste.

Mix the banana puree with yoghurt and mayo, and then season with honey and curry powder.

Give it a taste and see if it needs some salt and pepper. I like a lot of pepper.

AIOLI

1 cup mayonnaise (best homemade)
crushed garlic (amount depends on how much you like garlic, I use 1/2 a bulb)
freshly ground pepper

Peel the garlic and crush it. I like to use my garlic press but you can also use pestle and mortar. Mix with the mayo and season with a good bit of salt an pepper.

This is divine. Nothing better than Aioli on meat or just on some bread. Or grilled vegetables.

Here you see all the sauces mentioned above. To help you identify them, from top to bottom:
aioli
banana dip
salsa golf
orange sauce and
Cumberland.

And of course, I eat the tenderloin cooked medium rare, not raw.

Mushroom Sauce. Perfect with Semmelknödel.

2010-02-06T09:00:00.013+01:00

Last week on the Semmelknödel post, I promised you a recipe for mushroom sauce. This is a classic combination in Bavaria and in most cases, the only vegetarian option in traditional restaurants. I'm really not a vegetarian, but I sometimes wonder about the "meatless" menus in restaurants - accompanied by gravy, lard or even bacon. Personally, I think humans are omnivores (just ask a biologist about our teeth sets), but I deeply respect the choices people make. You never know what's really behind it. For example, when I was a teenager, there was a year when just the sight and smell of meat made me feel sick. And it even happens nowadays that I prefer a meatless meal. Just like on other days, I crave a steak. Medium rare.

Note for you fructose malabsorption guys out there: those white mushrooms contain mannite/mannitol and if you can't handle sorbitol you can't handle that one either. Apparently, I can't. Lesson learned.

MUSHROOM SAUCE
for 2

250 g / 1/2 pound / 2 cups sliced mushrooms (I used champignons de Paris)
1 small onion
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 l / 3 cups liquid (half milk, half your favorite broth)
salt and pepper
lemon juice

Wash the mushrooms and peel them. At least, I like to peel them. And yes, you can wash mushrooms with water, they will not soak up all the water. That's an old myth.

Slice the mushrooms and measure generous 2 cups - and freeze the rest. Mushrooms freeze wonderfully. I like to grab a handful of frozen mushrooms for pasta sauces or risotto.

And you'll need and onion, finely chopped.

Heat up a pan on high, then let the butter melt and after that, throw in the mushrooms. If possible, just in one layer. They will draw quite a bit of water - whether you washed them or not. Just keep on cooking until the water evaporates.

That looks about right - the water is gone and the mushrooms are staring to get brown edges. Add the onions and cook them until they are golden and soft.

Now, we're basically making a Béchamel sauce. Just dump in the flour, stir and let it cook in the butter.

This is the point when you can start to add the liquid: there are no lumps of flour left and the butter-flour mixture has a very pale golden color. Reduce the heat to medium-low and add about half a cup of milk and stir quickly - this will thicken up in a couple of seconds. Keep adding small amounts of liquid and stirring until you have a nice thick sauce.

As for the kind of liquid to use: I like half milk, half beef broth. But I would use vegetable broth when I cook for vegetarians. And you could also cook the mushroom skins in water to get a mushroom broth. And if you like an especially creamy sauce, use all milk and add some powdered broth. For a lactose/dairy free version, just leave out the milk entirely. The sauce will not be as creamy and velvety, but delicious nevertheless.

This looks great, now give it a taste and add salt, pepper - and most importantly - lemon juice. No, the milk will not curdle, but this kind of sauce NEEDS some kind of acid or it will taste creamy and flat.

By the way, it's also a myth that reheated mushroom sauce is poisonous. At least, if you follow some simple rules: cool it down quickly (eg by putting the pot into an ice water bath) and keep it covered in the fridge overnight. Eat it the next day or throw it away.

Serve with Semmelknödel, egg noodles and/or your favorite kind of Schnitzel.

Semmelknödel. Bavarian bread dumplings.

2010-01-30T09:00:00.003+01:00

When I was 12 years old, my family moved to Bavaria. Before that I only knew Semmelknödel as a side for special occasions, eg the roast turkey on Christmas. But it was the pre-packaged stuff that came in individual plastic bubbles and that only tasted good when you spooned a LOT of gravy on top. But in Bavaria, those bread dumplings are served with almost any kind of roast that comes with a dark sauce. Most commonly: roast pork with dark stout sauce. And the vegetarian version: with mushroom sauce - more on that next week. Other great combinations are pot roast and goulash (that's my favorite combination). After a while, my mom got to know some people better and one lady showed her how simple those bread dumplings are.

This is the best part: When you have leftover dumplings, cut them into thin slices and fry them in butter until they are brown and crusty on both sides. Serve either with herb butter, sour cream or - according to my husband - ketchup. That's why I never half the recipe although we're only 2 eaters.

SEMMELKNÖDEL / BAVARIAN BREAD DUMPLINGS
Side for 4 persons

10 day-old rolls or 1 pound stale white bread/soft pretzels, finely sliced
1 small onion, finely diced
1 tablespoon butter
250-500 ml / 1-2 cups hot milk
3 eggs
salt and pepper
fresh parsley

In Bavaria, you can buy packages of so-called "Knödelbrot", ie finely sliced and a bit dry rolls, with the recipe printed on the foil. In my opinion, that somehow contradicts the spirit of using leftovers, so I collect white bread, cut it into 3 mm thick slices and freeze them in a big ziploc-bag. Everything goes in there: French baguette, regular rolls, those toast ends that nobody likes, pretzels with the salt scraped off.

When you're ready to make the dumplings, pour them into the biggest bowl you have.

While the bread slices thaw, very finely chop an onion and let it sauté with the butter for a couple minutes. You want them soft, but not brown.You can use a pan on the stovetop or zap them in the microwave. Just fill the onions into a glass bowl, put the butter on top and close with a lid or a little plate. Let it run for 2-3 minutes and be careful not to burn your fingers.

Also, bring the milk to nearly a boil.

Now is the time to bring it all together. Crack the eggs open, put the onions on top and season with parsley, salt and pepper. Then slowly drizzle the hot milk onto the bread, making sure that every bread bit gets its share of milk. Leave it alone for at least 20 minutes.

How do you know how much milk to take? That depends totally on how dry the bread is. If it is still flexible, 1 cup may be enough, but if the bread slices snap and break, you'll need much more milk to soften them.

Here's the fun part: Mash it all down with your hands. I wouldn't know what you should do if you don't like to get your hands dirty, but you will have a hard time rolling the dumplings later on. So, don't think about it and plunge right in.

Mash the bread until you have a somewhat homogeneous mass, but there's no need to overwork. It's absolutely OK if there are some big dry chunks left.

To roll the dumplings, first wet your hands, then scoop out a handful of the mass. Press it together to squeeze out a bit of air and then roll it into a ball, making sure that the surface has no holes. Holes are bad. Holes let the water in, making them all soggy.
Wash and moisten your hands after every dumpling, or your fingers will be terribly sticky and looking fuzzy.You should get around 8 dumplings out of this amount of bread.

Fill your biggest pot 3/4 full with water and an heavy pinch of salt and bring it to a boil. Then turn down the heat to medium. Carefully place the dumplings into the water, examining every one and re-rolling it. Let them simmer for 20 minutes with the lid half on. Fish them out with a slotted spoon and place them in a warmed serving dish.

Serve with your favorite stew or sauce. Or let them cool and fry them with some knobs of butter. Either way: simple and delicious.

Sauerbraten. With the brine, you're halfway there.

2010-01-23T09:00:00.010+01:00

Sauerbraten is a very traditional German roast, the sweet and sour brother of the pot roast. And to make it, just put the meat into the brine for a couple of days (check and turn over every day) and then follow the directions for pot roast, but instead of the wine and onions, use the brine. And when making the sauce, add a handful of raisins and almond slivers. And then you'll have a very nice dish that goes very nicely with potato dumplings or spaetzle.

Of course you can also use this brine for any other kind of meat, especially venison and other game would work pretty fine.

BRINE FOR SAUERBRATEN

375 ml / 1,5 cups red wine
375 ml / 1,5 cups red wine vinegar
375 ml / 1,5 cups water
1 teaspoon salt
8 peppercorns
3 bay leaves
4 cloves
8 juniper berries
2 onions, cut into rings
2 carrots, cut into thin slices
1/4 celery root, cut into matchsticks

Put all together into a large pot and let it simmer for 10 minutes. Let the brine cool off and pour over your meat, which can stay in there covered for 2-5 days in your fridge.

Beef and Guinness Stew Pie. Sort of.

2010-01-16T09:00:00.006+01:00

My dad went for a business trip to Zwickau - that's in the Eastern part of Germany. And he brought back several bottles of "Mauritius" beer. And it was very tasty stuff. Dark, slightly sweet, not too bitter. As I stayed with my parents over new year's, we drank quite a bit and suddenly I was remembering the taste of Guinness in the Irish Pub in Auckland, New Zealand. And my husband's tales of the pub in Hamilton, where he had a dish called "Beef in Guinness", a very dark, rich stew with fork-tender meat, served with garlic bread and - of course - a pint of Guinness. And so we made "Beef and Guinness" the next day, but with Mauritius. While we were cooking, my mom remebered having eaten pot pies on a trip to UK - and so we covered the stew with flaky pastry. The perfect winter food - and with the perfect timing, as it just stared to snow...

BEEF AND GUINNESS STEW PIES
adapted from Epicurious and Food Network

2 cups carrots, cut into 1-inch chunks
3 parsnips, cut into 1-inch chunks
2 large onions, coarsely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 kg / 2 pounds stewing beef, cut into 1-inch chunks
3 tablespoons oil
2 tablespoons flour
salt and pepper
cayenne pepper
2-3 tablespoons tomato paste
1 1/2 cups / 375 ml Guinness (or other dark stout)
fresh thyme
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 cup mushrooms (I used sliced champignons)

1 package flaky pastry (from the freezer, thawed)
1 egg, beaten
fresh parsley

Peel the carrots and the parsnips and cut them into nice big chunks - in this case, slices 1 inch thick. And also cut the beef into 1-inch pieces. No need to be too exact here.

Also, cut the garlic and onions quite coarsely, I like the garlic in slices. Leave the thyme as it is. And save the parsley for later.

This is a neat little trick: Pour the oil on the raw meat and toss until all the pieces are covered. And then add the flour, salt, pepper and cayenne pepper and toss again. When you now fry the meat, it will get a nice brown crust, but without flour lumps or too much flour so that it would feel breaded.

Heat up a large pot on medium-high until it is really hot, and only then pour in some oil. Fry the meat in batches until all sides are brown, then get it out and keep on a hot plate.

Throw in onions, garlic, carrots and parsnips and fry them in the hot oil until they have softened a bit. Add the tomato paste and also let it fry for some moments.

Letting the tomato paste fry makes for a caramelized flavor and gets rid of some of the sour edge.

The meat may now return to the pot. Mix it well with all the vegetables and add the thyme. Also, put in the mushrooms.

And now comes in the beer. Just pour it in until the meat and vegetables are just barely covered. Season with salt and let it cook covered until the meat is tender. That should take about 2 hours - or 1/2 hour when you're using a pressure cooker.
Add more liquid if too much is evaporating.

Remove the thyme and give it another taste - more salt, maybe a splash of Worcestershire Sauce? If you're really hungry, you can eat it just like that, just make sure you have some bread to steep up the sauce. It's delicious.
Maybe even some garlic bread straight from the oven...

But if you want to make little pot pies, fill some 1-cup ovenproof dishes 3/4 full. Then cover with the thawed flaky pastry. Trim the edges with a knife and crimp the dough on the edges.

Then brush it very lightly with a beaten egg and bake it for 25 minutes at 200°C / 400°F until the crust is dark golden.

Now grab a spoon and dig right in.
Literally.

And of course you have some bottles of stout left. Right?

Chorizo and Potatoes. Minimalistic in every way.

2010-01-10T12:21:00.001+01:00

When I visited Spain some time ago, we went into a tapas bar. At first, I thought: "Do I really want to eat here?" It was really dark, from the ceiling were hanging dozens of whole hams, the interior was shabby and the floor was covered with used toothpicks. But at a closer look, all the people inside were having a good time, the whole 10 meters of the bar top were laden with snacks of all kinds and it all smelled incredibly good. So we ordered some sherry and took from the bar what we liked. We had planned to eat dinner afterward, but we came out of the bar feeling slightly tipsy and incredibly full.

One of the classic tapas is chorizo and potatoes cooked together and you won't believe how easy this is. It tastes complex, the sauce looks like it has been cooked for hours and it warms your soul. But all you need is found in all kitchens, even that of a student that has just moved in. As for cooking skills: if you can hold a knife and know how to turn up the heat on your stovetop, you're good to go.

CHORIZO AND POTATOES

1/2 - 1 chorizo or salsiccia sausage, hot if possible
450 g / 1 pound potatoes
1 large onion
garlic (optional)
olive oil
salt and pepper

This is basically all you need: chorizo, potatoes and an onion. Garlic is optional and you should be able to find some kind of oil or fat in your kitchen. And I really do hope there's salt and pepper around. Oh, and you'll also need water. I don't know why, but nobody mentions water in the ingredient list in cooking but always in baking.

As for the hardware, you'll only need a knife, a spoon to stir and a pot or pan. OK, maybe a cutting board, but that's it. Even the most rudimentary equipped kitchen will have all this.

Cut everything into nice, big chunks. No need to be exact here, just cut it the way you like.

I like my potatoes in 1 cm cubes, no matter if I fry or cook them. Again, cut them any way you like, but they should be somehow bite-sized.

If you peel them is up to your tools and skills, your taste - and your laziness...

Heat up your pan or pot on medium, then add the oil and the chorizo. Let the sausage fry until you see a dark crust forming on them.

Add the onions and the garlic and also cook them in the oil until they are soft and the edges start to get brown.

Add the potatoes and let it cook on medium-low for about 25 minutes, until the potatoes are done and most of the water has evaporated.

Fill into your favorite bowl or plate, or eat it just right out of the pot. No garnishing.

Tastes best with a glass of red wine and some green olives. Think of your visit to Spain ages ago.

Lasagna. Brings back childhood memories.

2010-01-02T19:10:00.001+01:00

My mom learned to cook with an Italian family. So in my childhood, many of the everyday dishes were Italian - like pasta, gnocchi or risotto. Lasagna being - as it is rather labor intensive - a treat for special occasions. Plus, 25 years ago in Germany, there simply weren't any lasagna sheets to buy in the supermarkets. So my mom also made the pasta sheets from scratch.

And this is what the perfect lasagna looks like - at least in my opinion: 5 to 6 layers of pasta, thick beef sugo, a savoury Béchamel sauce and a thick, cheesy crust. No 1000 layers of dough, no ham slices and no pools of aurora sauce. But maybe that's just me...

LASAGNA

SUGO
1 large onion
2-3 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons olive oil
500 g / 1 pound ground beef
a sprig of rosemary
2 bay leaves
dried chili flakes
1 tube / 200 g / 7 oz tomato paste
250 ml / 1 cup red wine
salt and pepper
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup green olives, sliced
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

BECHAMEL
50 g / 1/2 stick butter
50 g / 1,75 oz flour
750 ml / 3 cups milk
nutmeg
salt and pepper
dash of lemon juice

LASAGNA
lasagna pasta, fresh if possible
200 g / 7 oz cheese, grated (I took Gouda)

Roughly chop up the onion and the garlic. I like thick garlic slices, so you will have some short bursts of roasted garlic flavor in your dish. And people who don't like garlic can easily sort them out.

Heat up a large pan (non-stick if you have) on high, then pour in the olive oil and put in the ground beef and let it brown and cook through. Add the onions, the garlic and the spices and fry that a little bit more so that the onions also will get some color.

Add the tomato paste, let that also fry for a little bit (so that some sugars in it caramelize) and then pour on the red wine and enough water to cover. Stir until all the tomato paste and the brown bits on the bottom of the pan have dissolved. Add the rest of the condiments and the olives and let that continue to cook on low while you make the Béchamel sauce. Give it a taste once in a while.

And before assembling the lasagna, fish out the bay leaves and the rosemary sprig. They taste terrible in a lasagna. Trust me, I tried...

For the Béchamel sauce, melt the butter in a smaller pot on medium heat. Put in all the flour at once and stir with a whisk until you cannot see any more dry flour. Continue stirring and frying until the flour and butter have taken a light golden color. That takes about 2 minutes.

Now add about 1/2 cup of milk and stir until the mixture becomes quite thick (it will feel like soft play dough), then add a little more milk and continue stirring. Always add a little more milk until you feel the sauce thickening. Use up all the milk and if you find it too thick you can still add some water. Season with salt, pepper, fresh nutmeg and a dash of lemon juice and let it cook for some more minutes.

This is a very basic Béchamel sauce, but you can make it more elaborate by first frying some shallots in the butter before adding the flour. Or by using half cream and half stock to build the sauce. Just remember to take the same amount of butter and flour, cooking that unitl it gets golden and then adding a cold liquid.

That's another basic rule for using flour / starch to thicken liquids: Always have one cold and the other hot or you will end up having lumps and a starchy flavor. Vice versa, this also is true for thickening a hot sauce with a slurry - which always has to be cold.

Oh, and please do me the favor and ALWAYS add some lemon juice or vinegar to your Béchamel sauces. Yes, that will make the sauce a lot thinner, but the taste without the lemony zing is just flat.

Now, to assemble the lasagna: First of all, preheat your oven to 180°C / 350°F. Then take you favorite casserole - glass, ceramics or metal doesn't matter. This is a rather small casserole, about 20 by 15 cm.

Most important step of all: Put a rather thick layer of Béchamel sauce on the bottom of the casserole. This saves you buttering the dish and prevents the bottom pasta sheet from becoming a leathery and uncuttable layer.

Then, lay on one sheet of lasagna pasta - these were store-bought fresh ones. You can also use the pre-cooked hard ones, but then you should add some more water to both sauces before building the lasagna as they will need more cooking liquid.

Then spread on a big spoonful of the sugo and some dollops of Béchamel sauce. Then again pasta, sugo and Béchamel until you have used up the sugo or you have reached the top of your baking dish. Make sure you have some Béchamel left.

The last and top layer will be a pasta sheet topped with the (generous) rest of your Béchamel and lots of cheese.

As much as I love Parmesan - do not use it here or at least not as the sole cheese. It was aged for so long, it is rather dry and will burn very quickly. Also, I'm a fan of a thick, gooey cheese crust, so I stay with Gouda.

At this point, you could freeze the lasagna and then bake it some other time.

Put the lasagna it the oven and bake it for about 30-45 minutes - depending on how crusty you like your cheese. And let it stand for some minutes.

Cut out some rectangular pieces and have a glass of red wine with it.

Ham Steak. Diner classic goes uptown.

2009-12-27T09:00:00.001+01:00

My mother-in-law is a big Elvis fan and some years ago, she bought an Elvis cookbook. With all the stuff the king was allegedly fond of. Like Banana cream pudding, fried peanut butter sandwiches and German bratwurst. The book also says the was a fan of diner food and listed a recipe for ham steak with red eye gravy. When we first cooked it, it tasted horrible. Coffee too thin, too bitter, too salty. Terrible.

After some time, I came across another recipe for red eye gravy, this time with the addition of red currant jelly. Which absolutely made sense to me as I always drink my coffee very sweet (undrinkable, my husband would say). And out of nowhere came the inspiration to use Crème de Cassis (French black currant liqueur) and grenadine syrup instead.

Though nobody believes this is a good combination, all the guests that I made it for were totally impressed. Since then, this has become our meal for special occasions.

HAM STEAK WITH COFFEE-CASSIS SAUCE
for 4-6 people

4-6 large potatoes
vegetable oil, lard or duck fat for frying
salt

4-6 cooked ham slices, 1 cm thick
1 cup / 250 ml strong coffee
1/2 cup / 125 ml Crème de Cassis (French black currant liqueur)
1/2 cup / 125 ml grenadine syrup
tiny pinch of salt
cranberry sauce for serving

First, peel and cut the potatoes into 1 cm / playing dice sized cubes. Heat up your largest pan with some vegetable oil or lard and put the potato cubes into the pan, if possible in one layer. Generously salt, because potatoes need lots of salt. Very slowly fry them and turning them often until they are golden brown and delicious on all sides.

In France, I learned and tasted that the best fried potatoes are made in duck or goose fat. Fried on very low heat for over an hour. The potatoes will get a very delicate golden crust and the center is melting in your mouth. Absolutely delicious.

Cut away all the fat on the ham slices, cut the fat into little pieces and gently fry to render the fat. Fish out all the bits (don't throw them away!) and fry the ham slices in the ham fat. Again until they are golden brown and delicious. Keep the fried slices warm and fry the next batch.

Oh, and please don't use a non-stick pan for frying the ham - it's impossible to build a pan sauce in a non-stick pan.

Next stop: coffee. I only have this espresso can, so I made 3/4 cup of espresso and thinned it with 1/4 cup water. As with almost everything in cooking: If you don't like to drink it, don't cook with it.

See the brown bits on the bottom of the pan? That's the good stuff. Get out the last batch of ham slices and keep them warm with the rest. Now, pour in the coffee and cook and scrape the bottom until you have loosened all the bits.

Remember the little bits I told you not to throw away? Put them into the hot coffee and let them cook out for a bit. Why? Because they have plenty of the good brown stuff on them that will give your sauce even more taste. Add the currant liqueur and the grenadine syrup. Add a tiny pinch of salt - not too much because coffee with salt tastes really funky. Fish out the bacon bits with a slotted spoon.

If the sauce seems to thin, you can also thicken it with a slurry made of 1 tablespoon corn starch and some tablespoons of water. Let that cook for a minute.

Serve the ham with sauce and fried potatoes alongside with a good helping of cranberry sauce. Relax and enjoy!

Risotto alla Milanese. Spiced up a bit.

2009-12-20T09:15:00.001+01:00

Basically, there is red risotto and white risotto. The red variety mostly contains tomatoes and bold flavors, whereas the white one goes better with more subtle flavors like mushrooms, asparagus and such. But as you might suspect, I like going for the intense flavors, so I took a classic recipe for Risotto alla Milanese and spiced it up a bit with chilies and peas.

This was on a evening shortly after my foot got operated on, so going shopping for groceries was out of the question. So risotto is once again a nice way of getting a nice meal out of the rests in your fridge and freezer.

RISOTTO ALLA MILANESE
for 3 (or 2 hungry ones)

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 jalapeños
3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 large onion, chopped
1 bay leaf
1 cup rice
1 cup / 250 ml white wine
2 cups / 500 ml stock (beef, chicken or vegetable, whatever you prefer)
a pinch of saffron
1 cup frozen peas
50 g / 2 tablespoons butter
1 cup grated Parmesan
salt and pepper

Get all your ingredients ready, slice up the chilis, the onion and the garlic.

Heat up a wide pot on low, pour in the olive oil and let the chilies, garlic and onion get some color. If you have onions, that is. I did not have any on that evening, but it tastes definitively better with onions.

Get in the rice and stir it in the oil until everything is covered.

Then get in the wine and the stock. In my opinion, there is no need for that tedious method of endless stirring and adding the liquid bit by bit. Just get it all in and stir every couple of minutes. This should take about 20 minutes, maybe more.

Throw in the saffron to give the risotto a good taste and a nice yellow color.

To get in a little more color, add a cup of frozen peas.

When the rice is cooked done, that is no more hard bits, but not mushy either, throw in a slice of butter. Then stir until all the butter is melted. You will see how creamy it gets just by adding the butter.

This is the key ingredient - Parmesan. This will give you a rich, creamy texture and some real complex flavors. I love Parmesan.

OK, in with the cheese and again, stir until everything is melted. Now, give it a taste if the risotto still needs some salt, add some fresh pepper and you're good to go!

Serve with some more Parmesan and maybe a little bit of pesto (thinned with olive oil) drizzled on.

Pecan Pie. Fructose free and delicious.

2009-12-12T09:00:00.001+01:00

Around Halloween, I was surprised of all the Pecan Pie recipes popping up in all the food blogs. I really love pecans - they were unknown in my childhood in Germany, and even nowadays they're not available in every supermarket. But most of the recipes also called for corn syrup which rules out for tow reasons - also basically not available in Germany and also potentially containing too much fructose. So I searched around the internet and found that there are recipes for pecan pie with maple syrup. Now that was right up my alley, as there is basically no fructose in it and the taste is just marvelous. And this pie is really tasty, a crunchy buttery crust, maple syrup and pecans that taste like the candied ones from the fair.

PECAN PIE

DOUGH (for 2 open 9-inch pies)
250 g / 8 oz / 2 sticks butter
350 g / 12,5 oz flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
8-12 tablespoons vodka (or any other spirit with 40% alcohol)

FILLING
200 g / 2 cups pecans
250 ml / 1 cup maple syrup
200 g / 1 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
75 g / 5 tablespoons butter
3 large eggs

When making pie dough, there is one key rule to remember: CHILL. That includes the ingredients and yourself. First of all, where's the fun if you throw a fit over a non-crusty, non-flaky pie shell? And secondly, this shouldn't happen if you keep the ingredients and the dough on the cool side. And you want a flaky, buttery crust and that only will happen when the butter does not melt in any way (before getting into the oven, of course).

So cut the butter into nice 1/2-inch cubes (I always say about the size of a regular playing dice) and stick them in the freezer for 30 minutes.

Measure the flour, salt and sugar into your largest bowl and give them a couple of quick stirs with a whisk. That way, everything gets mixed well and you don't have to sift it. I like those little workarounds. While the butter is still in the freezer, why not freeze the flour, too? This may seem a little wacky at first, but once you think about it, it makes sense.

OK, everything chilled? Then take a pastry blender and cut the butter into the flour until it looks coarse and crumbly. Some people say until it looks like coarse cornmeal, but I've no idea what that looks like. Anyway, you shouldn't have any big lumps of butter left, but pea-sized is absolutely OK.

As there are no "chemical" leavening agents like baking powder or yeast in this dough, it's more about physics. When the butter flakes melt in the oven, they keep layers of dough apart from each other - hence the flaky texture. In a more extreme way, flaky pastry works the same way. So the only leavening agent here is steam that comes from the water/alcohol in the dough and in the butter (ca. 20% water in butter). While the oven and the dough get hotter, the steam expands the "butter pockets" until the starch in the dough part sets.

No comes the genius part: adding the vodka. Or cachaça, as I didn't have enough vodka. I thought it would be OK as this Brazilian spirit doesn't have much of a distinctive taste either. Drizzle in a tablespoon at a time, then mix the dough with a spatula (hands are too warm, remember?). Repeat until you see a dough forming, then very quickly knead it with your fingertips a few times to incorporate the last crumbs in the bowl.

What's this thing about the vodka? Well, you need some kind of liquid to bring the dough together. Water is fine, but if you start kneading the dough, gluten will form out of wheat proteins and the water. And that will result in a tough and chewy dough. Think of a loaf of bread - there you want all the gluten you can get for a chewy, stable structure.

Alcohol on the other hand, moistens the starch but does not react with the wheat proteins to build gluten and so you have a very tender, flaky and crunchy pie shell. And my suspicion is that the lower boiling point of alcohol helps as well.

Then half it, pack each dough ball tightly into plastic wrap and - of course - chill for an hour. As this batch is enough for 2 pies, you can also go ahead and directly freeze the second half for another time.

By the way, if you're a raw dough eater like me - this one tastes terrible.

I like making double batches - that means going through the trouble once but having twice the fun eating it.

For rolling out the dough, you'll need lots - and I mean lots - of flour. I like to roll out on a silicone mat, that makes transferring the dough to the pie pan a lot easier. If you don't have a plastic mat, sacrifice a 1-quart ZipLoc bag and cut it open. I guess regular plastic wrap will be too thin and tear.

See that miniature rolling pin? I have it since I was 6 - it was in a gift set from my uncle, containing other utensil miniatures. The rest of the set was lost in time and several moves, but the rolling pin somehow survived. It works amazingly well and I don't have really the room for a big one in my kitchen.

OK, roll out the dough until it is a bit bigger than your pie pan. I like those Tefal silicone pans as they have metal incorporated in the rim and are not so terribly wobbly compared to other products.

Now carefully slide your hand under the mat, hold the pie pan with the other hand against and flip it over (do this over the sink because of all the loose flour flying around).

Trim the edges, crimp it any way you like, repair with some patches. Then - surprise! - freeze it for another 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 180°C / 350°F.

Lay a big piece of baking paper on the dough and put in some kind of heat-resistant weight. I used rice, but you can also use beans, special pie weights or some (cleaned) nuts and bolts from the hardware store. Bake 180°C / 350°F, 10-12 min. with weights, then take the paper with the weight out and bake for another 15-18 min.

While the crust bakes, mix together brown sugar, maple syrup, the eggs and the melted butter. You'll need three eggs, I just forgot to shoot a photo with the third egg in.

If you want to, you can roast the pecans in a pan or in the oven while the crust is baking. Either chop them or leave them whole, mix with the syrup. Fill this mixture into the pie crust and bake at 160°C / 325°F for 1 hour. Let it cool and enjoy!

Chocolate Banana Sheet Cake. My husband's favorite.

2009-12-06T08:00:00.004+01:00

This is my husband's traditional birthday cake. His mother got the recipe out of a magazine a long time ago and since then he HAS to have this cake - otherwise it's not a proper birthday.

CHOCOLATE BANANA SHEET CAKE

DOUGH
6 large eggs
6 tablespoons water
300 g / 10.5 oz sugar
120 g / 4.2 oz flour
80 g / 2.8 oz starch
50 g / 1.8 oz cocoa powder

VANILLA CREAM
1 package vanilla pudding powder
1 package vanilla sugar or 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 l / 2 cups milk
150 g / 5.3 oz butter
3 tablespoons sugar

TOPPING
1 cup strawberry jam
4 tablespoons dark rum
5-7 bananas
200 g / 7 oz dark chocolate

Before you do anything else, preheat your oven to 200°C / 400°F and prepare your baking sheet. I like to use the "deep pan" and some parchment paper that I make stick to the pan with a little bit of butter. Those dark globs are butter.

Weigh out the flour, the starch and the cocoa powder. Then sift it.

If you don't like sifting (or your sift is in the dishwasher), either mix it with a wire whisk or give it a couple of spins in the food processor. You just don't want any lumps in your delicate dough.

Separate the 6 eggs. Kinda pretty, isn't it? Set the yolks aside, we'll need them later.

Add the water to the egg whites and beat it on medium (with the whisk attachment of course) until it is white and fluffy, then gradually add the sugar and go on beating until you have stiff peaks and some of the sugar is dissolved. It's a bit like making a meringue.

See? Stiff peaks. That's what you want.

Legend says that beaten egg whites are just right when the foam can support a whole egg. I'd rather not try this out, but you get the point.

Anyway, slowly stir the yolks into the meringue batter.

Fold in the sifted flour mixture, this must be done very gently. It's best to do this by hand. And I like adding the flour in 2 to 3 installments.

Once you have a smooth batter, pour it onto your baking sheet and smooth it out.

Then bake it for ca. 20 min. until it feels like a dry sponge.

Turn it over on a cooling rack and get the paper off while the cake is still hot. That side looks much better than the top, right?

That day, I decided to make just half a cake and freeze the rest of the chocolate sponge. Just wrap it in plastic wrap, then in aluminum foil and label it.

I'm just showing you this so you won't get confused when I write things that don't 100 percent correspond to the pictures.

Making the vanilla cream is just like cooking pudding, with the difference that you melt the butter with the milk. So basically follow the instructions of your pudding package plus the butter.

This is my half sheet cake and I put it back onto the baking sheet with parchment paper. Then drizzle on the rum so that the cake gets a little bit moist. And tasty. You can't beat rum in baking.

Stir the strawberry jam until it is spreadable, maybe get some big chunks of strawberry out and cover the whole cake with the jam.
Cut the bananas into 5 mm thick slices and lay them in a single layer on top of the strawberry jam.

Now spread the vanilla cream on top of the bananas and LET. IT. COOL. And it takes quite a while to cool down. I'm always too impatient and try to cover the cake with chocolate too early and all I get is a big mess of pudding and chocolate.

Melt the chocolate over steam or in the microwave and pour it onto the vanilla cream. I guess I was too impatient there as well - something went wrong and the chocolate got white streaks.

Anyway, this cake is terribly tasty and even better the next day.

Pot roast. With carrots and red wine.

2009-11-29T09:00:00.004+01:00

Last weekend I wrote about spaetzle, and how well they go with Sunday roasts. Well, this is a very classic pot roast, though I like to give it my twist and added some mushrooms. And of course, I like to be generous with the red wine, something my frugal grandma would never have done.

And if you're not a fan of spaetzle (or just have eaten enough), then serve the roast with baked potatoes, pasta or - just as in this case - potato dumplings.

POT ROAST

2 kg / 4 pounds beef for braising
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion
3 garlic gloves
1 Anaheim chili
4 large carrots
250 g / 8.8 oz mushrooms
1/2 bottle red wine
3 bay leaves
salt and pepper
8 thin bacon slices

First of all, the meat. Find a heavy pot like a dutch oven that is large enough for your piece of meat and where the knobs will survive several hours in the oven. My knob on the lid did not the last time and I had to invent some Rube Goldberg contraption with a potato ricer disk, some string, a cork and a bamboo skewer. Call me MacGyver.

OK, back to the roast. Heat up your pot on medium high, then pour in the oil and finally put in the chunk of meat. Let it brown on all sides. If it has a nice color all around, get it out on a plate and set it aside. Yeah, it will get cold, but who cares. It's not cooked through anyway.

Next stop, vegetables. Half the chili lengthwise and get out all the seeds.
Coarsly dice the onions and the garlic.
Peel the carrots and cut them into 2 cm / 1 inch chunks.
Peel the mushrooms.

I know, there's much discussion about peeling vegetables such as carrots and mushrooms, but I don't like to eat the skins. I know, I'm picky. Instead, I freeze the skins and when I have enough, I cook a vegetable broth.

Heat up the pot again, then throw in the carrots and mushrooms. When they have a nice color, add the onions and the garlic and cook it until the edges of the onion start to get brown.

Now comes in the red wine! And the spices! If you like, you can also add 3 cloves and 3 juniper berries for a more "winterly" or "chistmasy" taste.

Place the meat on top of the sauce and kind of wiggle it right in. Then lay the bacon slices on top of the meat, it doesn't matter if the ends hang into the sauce. Put on the lid with your cork and string handle, then put it all into the oven for 2-3 hours at 150°C / 300°F.

When the time in the oven is over, get out the meat, the carrots and the mushrooms and put them on a heated plate. Also get out the bay leaves, cloves and juniper berries if you have put some in and throw them away.
Grab your immersion blender and mix the onions into the sauce, binding it that way. Give the sauce a taste and add some more salt, red wine and perhaps a little bit of cream.

When you're done with finishing the sauce, cut the meat into finger-thick slices. And when you read somewhere "against the grain": this means looking where the fibers in your meat go and cutting it in a 90° angle to the fiber. Because short fiber means tender meat.

Serve it all on a plate and with the rest of the bottle of red.
After eating, fall asleep on the couch.

Please update your bookmarks

2009-11-27T13:46:00.003+01:00

Hello,

Please update your bookmarks to this blog to
www.lensandlentils.com

I have decided to use my own domain from now on, but fear not:
You will be automatically redirected from blogger to the new web address.

Cheers,
Mel P.

Mozzarella salad. Close, but not caprese.

2009-11-24T08:00:00.021+01:00

Do you also hate tomatoes in winter? As much as I love a fruity tomato salad on a hot summer day, tomatoes around here are terrible after September. They will be bland, sour and almost "green" tasting. I think it's awful.

Instead, I used some jalapeños I planted in spring which are now getting a very nice red color. The plants were growing quite nicely on my balcony until it got too cold. Now they live inside and every couple of days I get to pick a red chili. They're not really hot, just a tiny little bit spicy, just the right amount to go very well with mozzarella. You'll have the classic color combination of a caprese salad, but definitively a very different taste!

This is an entry for "Mozzarella Revolution", a German blog event from the site buntcooking, where every use of mozzarella is OK, unless if it's caprese... You know me, I don't like following rules.

MOZZARELLA SALAD

1 mozzarella cheese
3-4 jalapeño peppers or other mild chilies
3-4 leaves basil
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

Slice the mozzarella, the chilies and the basil leaves, put it all into a bowl. Then add salt and pepper.

Generously pour olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top, then enjoy with garlic bread and a glass of wine.
And snicker at people who buy tasteless greenhouse tomatoes in November.

Pizza. How to make it from scratch.

2009-11-21T13:30:00.014+01:00

Most curiously, I hear so many people are afraid of yeast dough. They don't dare even try it out - I mean, what is so bad if you really should end up ruining 2 cups of flour and a packet of yeast that are worth 50 cents together? In my opinion, building a dough with the creaming method, eg for cupcakes, starting with butter, then eggs, requires much more attention to timing, sequence and accuracy than a simple yeast dough. And with the dry yeast you can by nowadays there's no fussing about with slurries, sugary water and what not.
It's so easy even a kid can do it - throw all the ingredients together and start mixing, then leave it alone for an hour. Maybe that's why this is one of the first things my mom taught me in baking.

By the way, my mom would use 500 g / 4 cups flour, resulting in a thicker pizza, more American style than Italian.

PIZZA DOUGH
makes 1 baking sheet

300 g / 2 1/2 cups flour
1 package dry yeast
1 teaspoon salt
4-5- tablespoons olive oil plus more for brushing
125 ml / 1/2 cup water, should be as warm as your body temperature

Mix all those ingredients together (either by hand or with a mixer with dough hook) until the dough forms a ball and doesn't stick to the bowl anymore. If it doesn't come together, add some more tablespoons of water.
Knead it for 5 minutes more, then cover the bowl and let the dough rise in a warm place until it is doubled in volume. This should take about 30-60 minutes.
If you have more time on hand, cover the bowl and put the dough for 24 hours in your refrigerator.You will have a much smoother and tastier dough this way.

Knead it quickly with your hands, form a ball, then press the dough ball into a disk. Put baking paper on you cookie sheet, lay the disk on it and start pressing it flat with your knuckles. This works best with oiled fingers. Get it as thin as you can and like. Now liberally brush the dough with olive oil and punch in some holes with a fork every couple of inches.

And then you can start spreading your favorite sauce and putting on all the toppings you like - in this case it was tomato sauce, Italian Salami, Parmesan cheese, olives - I like my pizza on the simple side. Bake for 15-30 minutes at 220°C/430°F, depending on you how thick the dough was rolled out and how crunchy you like your pizza.

As finishing touch, sprinkle with some olive oil and fresh herbs. Cut into pieces and enjoy with a nice glass of red wine and a movie.

Spaetzle. The secret to the fluffy pasta.

2009-11-17T16:40:00.004+01:00

My grandma was from Southern Germany and was always very strict on traditions. Every - I mean every - Sunday there would be a huge roast on the table, alongside with a little salad, lots of gravy and spaetzle. As my family lived some hundred kilometers away, those Sunday feasts were quite a rare thing that I looked forward to. In total contrast to my dad who grew up having a roast on Sundays and having to eat the rests throughout the following week.

But I was a fan of those spaetzle which my grandma made every time from scratch and with the most time-consuming method possible. This was by smearing a thin layer of dough on a cutting board and then kind of scraping the dough off with a large knife so that long strips are formed and fell directly into the boiling water. Every Swabian "hausfrau" is proud to make spaetzle that way and everybody daring to use other, less tedious methods would not be accepted as a good housewife.

Sometimes I still get the craving for a Sunday roast and spaetzle, but if I'm making spaetzle for more than one person, I leave the traditional scraping method behind and go for the pressing method. Either through a colander by scraping with a large silicone spatula or a press - think potato ricer but with bigger holes.

Oh, and if you're not a fan of Sunday roasts and gravy (read: vegetarian), stack them into a large bowl with Emmental cheese and roasted onions and heat it up until the cheese melts. Serve with some fresh salad and you have really nourishing soul food.

SPAETZLE
for 2 as a main course, for 4 as side dish

300 g / 2 1/2 cups / 10.5 oz flour
3 eggs
250 ml / 1 cup water (or milk and water mixed)
salt and pepper
nutmeg, freshly ground
butter
fried onions

Weigh out the flour and make a little well. You don't have to be 100 percent exact here, but I'm a little manic that way. That's why my other electronic scale has increments of 0.1 grams. For measuring out really small quantities like baking powder and such.

In this case, it's not really important to weigh out the flour. In fact, my grandma just scooped out some handfuls depending the amount and size of the eggs.

Measure out 1 cup of milk and water mixed - no special ratio needed. Personally, I like 50/50, but if you're lactose intolerant, skip the milk and use only water.

+++ EDIT +++
According to my aunt and uncle, you should only use water - if you use any. My aunt uses only eggs and flour, adding just enough water to give the dough the right consistency.

Now add the eggs, milk/water mixture as well as the spices (salt, pepper, nutmeg) to the flour and start stirring with a large wooden spoon. I know, it will be lumpy at first. But don't be tempted to reach for the hand mixer. You need to beat it by hand, otherwise they will be hard and rubbery if you overbeat the dough with a machine.

So the first secret is - elbow grease...

Beat the heck out of it until it looks mostly smooth, sticks to the bowl and flows like thick lava from your spoon.

Now comes the tricky part where it is impossible to make pictures without getting dough on your camera. This is sticky stuff.

Bring a pot with salt water to boil and have a colander, your largest rubber spatula, a slotted spoon and a bowl with ice water ready.
Set the colander on top of the pot. Before you start anything else, check that the colander sits a couple of inches above the water. Now ladle in a big spoonful of dough and press it through the holes with the rubber spatula. Remove the colander from the pot and fish out all the swimming pasta strands and put them into the ice water. Check their size. If you think you want them longer and thinner, add some more water, if you want them small and stubbly add some more flour. Repeat pressing batches of dough through the colander until you have used it all up.

It's important to get them out as soon as they float to the top, or else you will get rather hard and chewy pasta. You might have guessed it - that's the second secret.

Or, if you happen to have a potato ricer with interchangeable hole plates, then take the one with the biggest holes.

Melt some butter in a casserole and gently cover all the pasta with butter, while reheating it. You can also place the hole thing into the oven and reheat it gently in there. Just be sure to put in enough butter, or all will be sticking together.

Now top it off with fried onions and more butter. Serve with your favorite pot roast or gulasch.

By the way, on the photo above you see the leftovers I layered in there with cheese and heated it up the next day in my company's microwave. That was a satisfying lunch!

Ganache. When chocolate simply isn't enough.

2009-11-06T12:00:00.006+01:00

My husband is a chocoholic. Dessert is not dessert if it's without chocolate. His chocolate consumption is only topped by his Nutella consumption: a small (400 g) jar lasts a week. But mostly it's more like 4 days. So one evening, I saw him rumbling and rustling through the kitchen and the pantry. Like a tiger in a cage - going back and forth and looking again at the same places for chocolate or something similar. Luckily, he doesn't touch my chocolate stack - I only like the darker varieties, which he despises. Though he seemed desperate, he refused to eat the 60% chocolate (quite a low percentage for my taste).

Finally, I had mercy with him and made a ganache. With the 60% chocolate. And he ate the entire bowl. Just like that. Gone in a couple of minutes. This stuff is magic.

In the case you don't have chocolate-hungry monster in your house, you can do all sort of wonderful things with ganache: truffles (just roll the hardened ganache into balls and dip in melted chocolate), fillings and toppings for all kinds of cakes and muffins. And of course use it as filling for macarons.

And you can even use white chocolate instead of dark and add all kinds of fruit purees or spices. For example instant coffee, rum, lime/lemon juice, your favorite jam or just cinnamon. I know it sounds a bit lame, but the possibilities are endless!

CHOCOLATE GANACHE

100 g / 3.5 oz chocolate (I used a regular 60% chocolate - no special baking stuff)
100 g / 3.5 oz heavy cream (minimum 30% fat)
1 tablespoon cognac (optional)

Chop the chocolate and put it into a bowl. No need to go super-fine, but the chunks should all be roughly the same size. No big chunks, please!

Bring the cream to a boil. Simple as that.

Pour the boiling cream over the chocolate.Then let it sit of exactly one whole minute. Using a timer.

And now start to stir. If it looks like this, you're not ready with stirring.

If it looks like this, THEN you're ready stirring. Look at that silky texture! Now add the cognac and stir a little more until you see no more streaks of alcohol.

Then chill it and hope nobody touches it until you are ready to use it... It will get the texture peanut butter (imagine adding that to your ganache!) if you use the 1:1 approach of cream:chocolate. Of course the ganache will be softer if you add more cream and other liquid ingredients and harder/denser if you take more chocolate.

Cheese Fondue. Gooey and delicious.

2009-10-25T11:54:00.009+01:00

People who have visited me might know that I own more than 60 cookbooks. Yes, I collect them, yes, they are sorted by color, and what surprises most people: I read them. Really. From beginning to end. OK, not every single recipe, but I do open every page, look at every picture, read every recipe name and skim over the ingredient list and - once in a while - I read the entire recipe. If it sounds interesting, it gets a little pencil cross as a reminder. When I have the time (and the ingredients) I try a new recipe - and either the little cross will be erased (for example in the case of the cranberry brisket fiasco) or it gets a circle around it as sign of approval.

And if it was really good, I tend to make it over and over again. And at a certain point, I won't need the recipe anymore as I understand the ratios. As in the case with the cheese fondue: half the amount of wine as you want cheese - by weight (a pint's a pound, and a cup is half a pint). And regarding the cheese, that really depends on what you like and how much you can eat of it... My fondue cookbook says 100-150 g / 3.5-5 oz cheese per person, but in my family it's more like 200 g / 7 oz per person. We really like our cheese.

CHEESE FONDUE
for 2 really hungry ones

1 loaf of your favorite bread
500 g / 1 pound hard cheese, eg Emmental and Gruyère (50/50)
250 ml / 1 cup white wine, eg Riesling
1 tablespoon corn starch
2 tablespoons kirsch (min. 40% alcohol)
1-2 garlic cloves
dash of nutmeg (freshly ground)
salt and pepper

This is a recipe where you really have to set up everything before you begin to cook: lay the table first, set up the rechaud, fill the burner and have your matches ready.

Then, grate the cheese - and here's a good rule for using the right cheeses in your fondue: if it is too soft to grate (for example a young Gouda), better not make it the main ingredient of your fondue or it will taste boring. And don't be afraid of throwing in the rest of Roquefort, Stilton or Parmesan that you might find in your fridge. I know, this will make half Switzerland cringe in horror, but one of the best fondues I had was made entirely of cheese rests I found in my fridge.

Next, measure your wine and mix the starch and kirsch to form a little slurry.

Then, cut the garlic clove in half and with the cut side, rub over the entire inside of your pot. Make sure every bit is covered in garlic juice. Personally, I don't think this is about taste, but about the oils covering the surface of the pot so that the cheese won't stick so much.

And regarding the pot: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS IN A METAL POT. It sticks. It tastes awful. It gets too hot and burns. The cleaning is a mess. And worst of all: the scratching noise of metal forks on the metal pot. Makes my teeth hurt worse than scratching with your fingernails on a black board.
Better use an earthenware pot (mine has a special black bottom so that I can use it like a regular pot on my stovetop) or an enamel pot.

Last preparation step: cut up enough bread into bite-size chunks (1-inch cubes). I like a heartier bread with a thick crust and try to cut it so that every bit has crust on it. A French baguette would also be nice or a nut or rye bread.

So, everything ready and prepared? Have a look around and check. Everything there? Then let's cook.

Pour in the white wine into your pot, add the rest of the garlic (I like to crush it) as well as some nutmeg, salt and pepper. Start the heat on low, slowly turn up higher and wait until the wine boils.

As for the white wine: only use a wine you also like to drink. And in this case, aim for the more acidic varieties, like Riesling or Pinot Grigio. Stay away from Chardonnay. I've tried it and it tastes very strange.

This is the point where you will not be able to walk away, even for a few seconds.
When the wine boils, turn the heat down to medium-low, grab a handful of cheese and sprinkle it in. And always stir in the form of a number 8 or just back and forth through the middle. Never in circles or you'll end up with a big cheese blob floating in a milky wine solution - not very appetizing. Did I mention this is about getting an emulsion? You'll need fats and water getting the same temperature and to get them together you need to agitate/stir constantly.

When the first batch of cheese is melted, get the next handful of cheese, sprinkle it in and never stop stirring. Continue until you have used up all the cheese.

Now stir in the kirsch slurry, heat it up for another minute until the cheese mixture thickens up a bit. This step is entirely optional, but I think it tastes good and makes a nicer consistency.

Bring the pot to your table (you see, my earthenware pot is straight from the seventies), light the burner and start to eat. Once in a while, check the heat and that the bottom doesn't burn too much.

Dip in a piece of bread, let it cool for some seconds and put it directly into your mouth. Or sprinkle it with a bit of paprika powder. And yes, at the right you can see chili sauce - my husband likes everything on the hotter side (this will make all the Swiss cringe in horror even more).

You remembered to serve the white wine and a shot glass with kirsch, right?

This is for advanced fondue eaters: Before you dip the bread into the cheese, let it soak up a little bit of kirsch. Just for kicks.

When all the cheese is gone, you will see a dark brown circle at the bottom of the pot. Don't throw this out, this is the BEST part. Tradition says that the person who eats the crust has to do the dishes.
You might think this is a real chore getting all that gooey cheese out. It would be, if you started scrubbing right away. But if you fill the pot with cold water to the brim and let it soak over night, you can simply rinse out the cheese.

Aurora. Pasta for the undecided.

2009-10-18T15:18:00.012+02:00

Pasta Aurora. Just the name sounds smooth and velvety. I call it pasta for the undecided, as my husband and I often argue, if we should have pasta with a tomato-based sauce or rather a cream-based sauce like carbonara or al limone. So most times if we can't convince each other, we settle for a compromise: cream and tomato in equal parts.

It's easy, it's delicious and consists of things I always have at home. This is just a very basic recipe - you can change it and go as minimalistic (just tomato paste, cream, salt and pepper) or as exorbitantly creative as you like. This time, I went for onions, garlic and red wine - just because I had those things within reach and find them delicious...

PASTA AURORA for 2

250 g of your favorite pasta
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/2 cup / 125 ml red wine - optional
1 cup / 200 g tomato paste
1 cup / 200 g cream
salt and pepper
fresh basil
Parmesan cheese for serving

Those are your two main players: cream and tomato paste. You'll need approximately equal parts, but please adjust the ratio to your taste! If you generally like your sauce on the creamy side (like I do), just add as much more cream as you like and you have in your fridge.

Here's a tip for keeping tomato paste: I prefer to buy it in big cans but I don't like keeping open cans in the fridge - even if they say it's OK if they are coated on the inside. Anyway, I fill the rest of the tomato paste into a jar and top it off with oil - better vegetable than olive oil as the latter will crystallize in the low temperatures of your refrigerator.

Heat up a fairly big pan - regular or nonstick is up to you - on medium heat and put in some olive oil. Dice the onion and the garlic and let them get translucent and very slightly browned.

While you're at it, bring enough salted water to boil and cook your pasta - test if they're al dente and drain them.

This step is entirely optional - I simply had an open bottle of red, so I just thought: why not? It would be equally tasty with white wine or perhaps a little bit of vermouth.
Just pour the liquid on top of the onions and let it cook on medium until it's almost gone.

See, most of the wine is gone and the rest looks like syrup (chefs call that a reduction). Go ahead and add the tomato paste. Stir it into the onion paste.

Time to add the cream. Don't be shy. I will be delicious.

Stir slowly until you have a uniform sauce with approximately this bright orange color. Add the seasoning you like - salt and pepper are a must of course. But perhaps some Italian herbs or a little bit of sugar and balsamic vinegar would be nice.

Drain the pasta and mix it together with your sauce. Serve on your favorite plate with heaps of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and some basil.

Gulasch. Because autumn is arriving fast.

2009-09-28T15:40:00.015+02:00

Do you also have an obsession of going to supermarkets in foreign countries? Personally, I think it's exiting to see what's similar, what's different and to find things I've never seen before.
When I was on vacation in France in September, I found fresh "Piments d'Espelette", or Espelette pepper. Espelette is a small town in Basque Country, near the Spanish border and famous for the houses covered with festoons of drying peppers. When the peppers are fresh, they are bright red and look like regular Hungarian peppers, but are definitively hotter. When they dry, they get darker until they look almost black. They are not extremely hot, but definitely too hot to be eaten as such.

Somehow in my mind, the visual similarity to the Hungarian bell peppers made me think of Gulasch, the perfect dish for cold autumn evenings. And it's true what they say, Gulasch tastes much better on the next day!

GULASCH / GOULASH

750 g / 1,5 pounds beef
500 g / 1 pound onions
1 small garlic bulb, peeled
4 piments d'Espelette or bell peppers
3 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons paprika powder
6-8 tablespoons tomato paste
750 ml / 3 cups / 1 bottle red wine
250 ml / 1 cup water
1-2 teaspoons salt

You won't need much knife skills here, everything is cut into chunks. Cut the meat into dice - I like them in the 2.5 cm / 1 in range.
Peel the garlic and leave the cloves as they are. Maybe you could half one or two if you have very big ones.
Also, peel the onions, then dice them very coarsely. I only had rather small onions, so I halved them and cut the halves into quarters.

Now it's the time to get out your latex gloves - especially if you are wearing contact lenses. Imagine rubbing all the capsaicin into your eyes while trying to get out the lens. No fun! By the way, capsaicin in hydrophobic, so use something fatty to make the burn less painful - like heavy or sour cream, cheese or olive oil.

Depending how hot the peppers are, remove the seeds completely or just some of them, then cut the flesh into nice little strips.

Get out your favorite large and heavy pot - mine is a blue Dutch oven I bought in France. They are called "cocotte" around there and "mini-cocottes" absolutely in this year. You see them anywhere, even at gas stations.

Heat the put up while it's empty on medium-high heat, test if a drop of water "dances" around, then put in the oil. Let the oil get hot too, you'll see ripples and just a tiny wisp of smoke, then put in a third of the beef cubes at max. Leave them alone and don't try to turn them until you find that the sizzling noises sound a bit differently. Then try to turn the meat gently, if it still sticks, leave it alone for another minute or so. Maybe it just needs to get a little bit browner, then it won't stick to the bottom any more.
When the meat has a nice brown color, put in the next few meat chunks and go on as above. Then repeat with the rest of the meat.

I like to brown the meat in 3 to 4 installments, because putting all the meat in the pot at once makes the temperature of pot and oil drop very quickly - and that results in the meat cooking and losing too much juice, and not frying.

If you have a pot that is big enough, you can simply add the onions and the garlic and let them brown with the meat. But in this case, my meat bits were getting in the way, so I put them out and then the onions in. Let it all get a nice touch of color.

See how the onions release a little bit of water and dissolve the brown bits from the bottom of the pan? This is why I always fry the meat first, and then the onions. I've tried it the other way round and ended up with onion coals and the meat not browned at all.

OK, get the meat back into the pot and and add the peppers, too. Then the paprika powder and the tomato paste and let it all get a tiny little bit of color.

Open the bottle of red and put it all in. No, this is no waste. You don't have to by a Grand Cru for that, just something dry and red and heavy, like a Chianti, Shiraz or Rioja.
And don't forget the salt...

Now, all you need is time. Cover and let it simmer (on low) for several hours, until the meat is soft. In fact, it should be so soft that you can separate the meat with a fork. Add a little bit of water if the meat is not covered any more.

See, no knife needed! And the onions and garlic are all cooked down to a thick and aromatic sauce.
Serve the Gulasch with potatoes, pasta or whatever else you like. And of course you remembered to buy a second bottle of that red? Then pour yourself a nice glass to go with it.