Miscellaneous weekend things

Saturday dinner: cold fried chicken with potato salad (potatoes, finely diced ham, thinly sliced cornichons, mustard, mayo, minced garlic, lemon juice, Maggi).
Sunday breakfast: drop biscuits (from Bittmann) with added rolled oats.
Sunday lunch : repeat Saturday dinner, add bread

Friday: fried chicken

I'm not completely sure what got me thinking about fried chicken, but it was too alluring to pass on making.

I used the basic recipe from Bittmann with a couple minor changes: I seasoned the flour with salt, pepper, hot and sweet spanish paprikas, ground cumin, and ground coriander; after tossing the chicken pieces in the flour, I let them sit on a rack for a few minutes and then tossed them in the flour a second time before frying them.

The results were very tasty and, for once, the process went smoothly enough that I didn't end up saying: "ok, I'm not doing this again." at the end of the cooking.

To go with the chicken we had potatoes -- steamed in the skin and then peeled, or not, at the table; served with a mayo/mustard/chive/balsamico dip -- and the required green salad.

Thursday: Beet Roesti with cured duck breast

A simple one: the standard beet roesti preparation served with thinly sliced cured duck breast and a big green salad.

For the cured duck breast I used Ruhlman's duck prosciutto technique. I had started this the weekend before last and let the duck hang until Wednesday (10 days).

We had one too many beets for the roesti so I did an improv with the last one: after cutting it into chunks and steaming it I tossed the pieces with salt, crumbled pecans, rape-seed oil, and a teeny bit of hot paprika (just enough to taste). This was really good.

Tuesday: Vegetable gratin

A nice solution to the large quantity of root vegetables in the fridge. The vegetable mixture: celery root, pfalzer, carrot, parsnip. The sauce: sour cream, milk, green garlic, chives parsley, a bit of veggie bouillon. The topping: Gruyere.

Sunday: pot roast and biscuits

A good one for a gray Sunday.

For the pot roast I browned a nice piece of beef (magere Siedfleisch, could have been any of a number of things), then tossed it in the slow cooker with: a can of stout, diced carrot, diced parsnip, sliced leek, chopped sun-dried tomatoes, thyme, parsley, fennel, salt, and black pepper. After 5-6 hours we had something nice in there.

For the biscuits I used the yogurt rolled biscuits recipe in Bittmann; good stuff.

Of course we had a green salad.

Saturday: Lamb with Ramson (Baerlauch) Vinaigrette

It's getting to be ramson season and we still have a bag in the freezer from last year; so I needed to use some up. This was an improve for that purpose.

Start by making a vinaigrette from ramson leaves, white balsamico, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Let that sit while doing the lamb.

Season a piece of lamb loin well with salt and pepper and then broil on a preheated grill pan a couple minutes per side. Let rest a couple minutes, then slice and serve on the vinaigrette.

We ate this with basmati rice topped with some of the vinaigrette and some chopped walnuts and some chard that I cooked in a bit of oil with a pinch of salt. Naturally there was also a green salad.

Very nice food.

Thursday: Purple chicken-vegetable soup

Since I was improvising as I went along, this soup ended up being a color that I don't normally associate with food.

Cut up a chicken and remove the breast meat. Throw everything else in a big pot with plenty of water, chopped carrot, onion, and garlic, diced potato, diced celery root, coarsely chopped red cabbage, a couple bay leaves, a couple cloves, some thyme, and some vegetable bouillon. Simmer until the thighs and legs are done, then fish them out, remove the meat, chop it, and toss back in the pot. Chop the breast meat into bite-sized pieces and stir into the pot. Fish out the bones and inedible bits. Take a bit of the broth, combine with some sweet corn (canned), and puree. Pour this in to enrich the broth (and create the very odd color).

Serve with bread and a green salad.

Nanorestaurant Review: Zur Saege (Flueh)

Two very big smiley faces.

• Food: fantastic; not overly fancy, just very high quality ingredients very well prepared
• Service: excellent. more relaxed than I expected from a one star, but that's good.
• Atmosphere: comfortably elegant

This meal deserves much more text than this. :-)

Tuesday: Red cabbage with apple

This was a side to go with the leftover risotto.

Saute some sliced red cabbage with a pinch of salt in olive oil. When the cabbage is a couple of minutes from being done (crisp-tender) add very thinly sliced apple rings (I cored the apple and sliced it with the ceramic slicer). Just before serving add a splash of balsamico and a bit of white pepper.

Monday: Risotto

The "hotel" we stayed in on Saturday night had porcini risotto on the menu; that sounded too good not to make it myself.

It's a simple one: Rehydrate some dried porcini. Cook some finely diced onion in olive oil for a couple minutes. Add rice and stir to coat with the oil. Cook another couple of minutes. Start adding the stock. About halfway through add the chopped porcinis and the strained soaking liquid. When the rice is done enrich it with some butter. Serve topped with a bit of parmesan.

To go with this I cooked some chopped escarole in olive oil with garlic and piri-piri chilis.

And, of course the green salad.

Friday: Chicken and vegetables

I had a craving for something Spanish-like (Spanishish?) and landed at this improv.

Brown a couple chicken leg quarters (cut in half) well in olive oil, set aside. Add chopped garlic, diced carrot, a bit of finely diced celery, and leeks and cook for a while until the leeks soften. Add diced celery root, bell peppers (green and red), and some hot pepper (dried, from last year's crop) and cook a few more minutes. Add paprikas (sweet and hot), a bay leaf, ground cumin, ground coriander, chicken bouillon, and orange juice and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 30-40 minutes, until the chicken is ready to eat.

Cut an old (but not dried out) baguette into 1-2cm dice. Saute in olive oil until nicely browned, set aside. Toast some almond slivers in the same pan until they are lightly browned, set aside.

Serve by putting some bread cubes on a plate, put the chicken beside the bread, top both with vegetables and sauce, then top with almonds and some fresh parsley.

There were some nice radish greens in Thursday's biokiste, so I sauteed those quickly and we ate them on the side.

Of course we had a green salad as well.

Tuesday: Pot au Feu

This one was relatively quick, but it built on ingredients made over a few days. The weekend before last I made a batch of rich chicken stock from roasted chicken bits. This was the basis of the stock. Monday night I simmered some pieces of beef (siedfleisch) along with a clove-spiked onion and a bay leaf in the chicken stock + some water for a few hours. The fished out pieces of beef cooled in a bit of stock overnight and the rest of the stock went in the fridge. A second straining through cheesecloth Tuesday evening gave the base for the soup. To the base I added celery root chopped into sticks, chopped savoy cabbage, sliced leek, the cleaned up pieces of meat, and salt. To serve I dished it into hot bowls on top of a layer of thinly sliced tender beef, some chopped chives, and some parsley.

We ate this wonderful stuff with bread.

Sunday: Rouladen Zweierlei

Games with rouladen: beef rouladen with a cabbage filling and cabbage rouladen with beef filling.

Start by coring a head of savoy cabbage and steaming it until the outside leaves are tender. Carefully remove whole leaves until they start to get too small. Reserve the rest.

For the beef rouladen: cook a mixture of carrot, celery, and onion, all finely diced, in olive oil until they are aromatic. Add some finely chopped savoy cabbage and toss a few times. Add grated lemon zest, black pepper, a pinch of salt, and some rich chicken stock. Let simmer until the stock has evaporated. Grate in a bit of nutmeg. Set aside to cool. Meanwhile pound out the beef. To assemble the rouladen: season each piece of beef, top with some of the cooled cabbage filling, roll it up, and tie carefully.

For the cabbage: Brown some ground beef with a pinch of salt in a bit of olive oil. Set the beef aside. Add some more olive oil and cook diced carrot, celery, and sliced leeks in the same pan until the leeks soften. Sprinkle over a Tbs of flour and cook another minute or so. Add a splash of aromatic white wine (I used gewurztraminer), marjoram, oregano, and some rich chicken stock and stir well. Add back the beef and simmer, stirring frequently, until the liquid is almost gone. Stir in some breadcrumbs to take up the last of the liquids and adjust seasonings. Let the filling cool a bit then fill the cabbage leaves and tie into neat packages.

For the sauce: diced carrot, celery, and onion in a bit of olive oil for a few minutes. Add some red wine and some oxtail soup (one package soup into 5dl water) and stir well. Let simmer gently.

Brown the beef rouladen nicely, set them in the sauce, cover, and let simmer for an hour. In the meantime gently brown the cabbage rouladen in the same pan and set aside. Deglaze the pan with red wine and add the liquid to the braise. After the hour is up, add the cabbage rouladen to the beef, cover again, and let simmer another 20-30 minutes.

Very, very nice food. We ate it with mashed potatoes and mashed celery root (next to each other, not mixed) and the requisite green salad. 

Saturday: Games with puff pastry

The start for this was a Greek sheeps-milk cheese I picked up on a whim at the market (of course I don't remember the name of the cheese). From there we landed at the idea of puff pastry filled with various tasty things. The result wasn't so much cooking as prepping and assembling.

The components I put out for fillings were:

1. the diced cheese
2. air-dried ham, cut into julienne
3. walnut pieces
4. almond slivers
5. chives
6. spinach (thawed, drained, and chopped)
7. finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes

I rolled out squares, or rectangles, or circles, or ovals of puff pastry and Andrea filled them with various combinations of the above. These went in the oven at 175C until nicely puffed and light browned. We ate them with a sprinkle of salt and (with some) a drizzle of olive oil.

Playful and enjoyable.

Friday : Sauerkraut

It's starting to warm up, so we need to get all the winter dishes out of our systems.

This was a pretty quick one: saute some leeks in a bit of oil; when they start to soften add diced bacon and cook another few minutes; add rinsed and drained sauerkraut and some gewurztraminer, cover and simmer for a couple minutes. Top with a couple smoked sausages, cover again, and simmer for another 20 minutes. Serve with bread, cornichons, and grainy mustard. The sauerkraut from the biokiste comes pre-seasoned with juniper, coriander, and caraway, so no additional herbs were required.

 

Another cornbread variant

I've done a cornbread post before; this is the current variant of the recipe. It's derived from the Big Flavors cornbread recipe (half portion):

Greg's Cornbread

1.5c unbleached flour
1.5c fine polenta
(optional) 1/2c corn kernels, either fresh, frozen (but thawed first), or canned (drained first).
1/2c sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbs baking powder
2 eggs
1.5c milk
1 Tbs neutral oil (I use peanut)
65g melted butter

Preheat oven to 175C. Butter a 20cm square glass dish.
Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and mix well.
Beat the eggs, then mix in the milk and oil.
Pour the eggs over the dry ingredients, pour in the melted butter. Mix thoroughly, but not too long.
Pour the batter into the baking dish and bake for 45-50 minutes, until the top is nicely golden brown and a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Tuesday: Black Beans

There was leftover cornbread; making a pot of beans just came naturally.

This was the quick during-the-week variant:
Toss into the pressure cooker: rinsed black beans, chopped garlic, chopped onion, diced carrot, finely chopped celery, diced bacon, some tomato puree, ground cumin, ground coriander, chipotle chilis, a bay leaf, and some water. Seal, bring to a boil, and cook for 35 minutes. Open the pressure cooker and add some chicken bouillon, adjust seasonings, and serve.

Great stuff.

Monday: Beans and greens

A simple one driven by the couple of heads of escarole (or escarole-looking) greens we had from the biokiste: Cook some minced garlic, diced carrot and onion, and some finely chopped celery in olive oil along with cumin seeds, piri piri chilis, a pinch of salt, and some freshly ground coriander until the carrots soften. Add chopped escarole and a goodly quantity of sweet paprika, cook for a couple of minutes, then reduce the heat, cover the pan and simmer for another 5-10 minutes, until the greens are almost tender. Add canned beans (I used borlotti beans), some tomato paste, and some sherry vinegar and let simmer, uncovered, for another few minutes. Serve drizzled with olive oil and topped with chives.

To go with the beans and greens I did a pan of cornbread. And, of course, we had a green salad.

Friday: Polenta with tomato sauce

To use the leftover polenta from Thursday night and make sure there is something in the house when we get back from our trip this weekend, I did a pot of tomato sauce.

Brown 300g mixed ground meat with salt then set aside. Add some olive oil, a diced carrot, half a diced celery stalk, a diced onion, a minced garlic clove, and a good pinch of salt. Cook until the carrots soften a bit. Add 500g pureed tomatoes and the leaves from a few sprigs of thyme and stir the meat back in. Simmer covered for 20-30 minutes then add 30g butter and adjust seasonings. Just before serving add 30ml heavy cream (I added this just because it was in the fridge and needed to be used up... it's definitely not needed). Serve over polenta.

Thursday: Polenta with greens and salami

After reading Heat, I more or less had to make a batch of polenta.

For the polenta itself I used 200g medium-coarse polenta and 1l of chicken stock. Towards the end I stirred in butter and parmesan cheese.

For a topping I used the greens from the radishes we had just gotten in the biokiste and a dried salami that had been hanging in the kitchen for a bit: cook some chopped onions and garlic in a bit of olive oil with the finely diced salami and a couple piri piri chilis. When the onions have softened, add some washed radish greens and a pinch of salt. Cook until the greens are ready to go, then serve on top of the polenta.

We ate this with the usual green salad and some pan-browned brussel sprouts.

Wednesday: Pasta gratin

We needed to use up the filling and sauce from Monday's tortellini making, a simple pasta gratin was the way to do this.

I layered tomato sauce, elbow macaroni, and cheese (thinned with cream) in an oiled gratin dish and finished it with a layer of elbows that I tossed with olive oil, parmesan, and salt. This baked until nicely bubbly and brown.

Served with the required green salad, and some slow-browned brussel sprouts this was nice stuff. Not as good as the tortellini, but still quite good.

Monday : Tortellini

It's been more than two years since the last time I made pasta, and since something turned out oddly that time the whole process was a pain in the ass. This left me with a silly "pasta making? no!" attitude. After reading Heat I really needed to make pasta, so I was able to get past that yesterday.

Since Andrea and I both had the day off work (Basler Fasnacht), and the weather was crap we could devote some substantial time to the process, so we decided to make tortellini. This was a purely Hazan-driven show: I used her recipes for pasta (which worked without problems), the tortellini filling, and the tomato sauce.

The filling: well-drained ricotta cheese, parsley, egg yolk, salt, nutmeg.
I rolled out the pasta and cut it and Andrea took care of forming the tortellini. We ended up with about 90 of them, so there are a couple more meals in the freezer. mmm.

The sauce: tomato sauce with heavy cream : tomatoes, celery, carrot, onion, butter, and salt. Long simmered and then put through the food mill. Heavy cream just before serving.

After boiling the tortellini, I served them on a bed of the sauce.

To go along with this really, really excellent food, I caramelized some small brussel sprouts that we picked up at the market on Saturday (cut sprouts in half, cook cut-side down with a bit of salt over medium heat in olive oil that has been flavored with garlic and chili).

Of course we also had a green salad.

Saturday: Savory bread pudding

There was a stale half baguette that needed to be eaten before it turned into a rock.

Cut the stale bread into chunks. Soak it in a water-milk mixture for 30 minutes, then gently squeeze out the bread pieces. Saute some chopped smoked ham with finely chopped onion and minced garlic until the onion is soft. Mix gently into the bread along with some marjoram, salt, black pepper, and a bit of nutmeg. Transfer the bread mixture to an olive-oiled baking dish and pour over a sauce of beaten egg, milk, and vegetable bouillon (the powder). Top with grated gruyere and some raclette spices then bake at 180C until the cheese is brown and bubbly and the egg looks cooked.

We ate this with a big green salad.

Wednesday Indian

This was an easy one: Chicken Biryani (recipe from BittmanWorld) and cucumber raita (grated cucumber, yogurt, salt, pepper, and a mixture of black mustard and cumin seeds that I toasted before adding).

I removed the skin from the chicken pieces before adding them to the pot, and used leeks instead of onions (that's what we had), but otherwise pretty much followed the biryani recipe. The results were very good, but I think a bit less liquid is called for next time.

Monday : Pasta with spinach-ricotta-ham sauce

A simple one for the first night back in Basel.

The pasta sauce is from Hazan; my one deviation (and it's a big one) was to use cottage cheese instead of ricotta since there was no ricotta to be found in the Coop when we went shopping. The resulting sauce was still excellent.

We ate the sauce over fusilli bucati and were quite happy with our fate in life.

of course there was also a green salad.

Friday : Beef stew

Boeuf Bourguinon has somehow become one of my go-to recipes for groups. This time it was a big family birthday party.

The recipe gets adapted to local conditions, of course: Brown the cubed beef well and set aside. Pour off the fat and deglaze with a bit of wine (a French pinot noir produced by R. Mondavi(!)). Render some bacon cut into strips. Add this to the beef and pour off the fat. Cook some thinly sliced leeks with a bit of carrot until the leek softens. Sprinkle over some flour and let cook another couple minutes. Add back the meats, some more wine, fresh thyme sprigs, dried rosemary, and a good grind of black pepper. Let simmer a couple hours until the beef is tender.

Meanwhile cut some shallots in half, brown them well in olive oil and set aside. Cut some mushrooms into chunks, brown them well in bacon fat and set aside.

Just before serving stir in the shallots and mushrooms.

We ate this with mashed potatoes, green beans, and a big green salad.

As a dessert contribution I also did a batch of blueberry cobbler from Bittman. 

Lentil (plus) soup

This was an easy one for a quiet evening.

In my parents' pantry was a bag of "soup mix" consisting of mixed grains and pulses (lentils, split peas, barley, pasta). I converted this into a thick soup by cooking some onion, carrot, celery, and turnip in olive oil until the onions were soft then adding the grains, water, bay leaf, and some dried rosemary. This simmered until the grains were finished and then we ate it drizzled with a bit more olive oil.

Schnitzel and Roesti

The Rösti was a request from my mother, the schnitzel just seemed to fit.

Nothing unusual here : I used pounded-out pork chops for the schnitzel, seasoned them with salt, pepper, and cayenne and then did the standard flour-egg-fresh breadcrumb breading. To make the logistics work I did the Rösti first then tossed them in a low oven while doing the schnitzel. The 95% cooked schnitzel then went in the oven so I could crisp the Rösti in the pan just before serving. This ended up working really well: we had crisp potatoes and tender schnitzel.

As a vegetable side I flash-fried some mixed winter greens with olive oil, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

Tuesday: Jook

The cold continues on, so more comfort food was required: I did jook with vegetables (shitake and peas) following the BittmanWorld recipe.

mmmm, jook.

Sunday Roast

[Playing catchup on a bunch of posts that got postponed due to travelling]

This was a simple roast for a long sunday afternoon:
Brown a pork shoulder roast well in olive oil, set it aside and season. Cut some carrots, beets, and onions into chunks and toss in a Römertopf. Sprinkle with freshly ground fennel. Top the vegetables with the roast and sprinkle it with more fennel. Top this with thinly sliced oranges (half-blood) then cover it and toss in a low oven and bake for a couple of hours.

Saturday Lentils

Comfort food to help melt away my cold: lentils cooked with garlic, onion, carrot, diced celery root, bacon, smoked ham, bay leaf, white wine, lemon zest, and bay leaf. Served drizzled with olive oil.

Friday Simplicity

This one started fairly complex and then got gradually simpler as I thought about it. After moving from a pork steak in some kind of sauce, I went to wienerschnitzel. From there I landed at simplicity itself: pork loin chops pounded out, seared in the grill pan, seasoned, drizzled with good olive oil, and sprinkled with parmesan. To go with this we had steamed potatoes (Pellkartoffeln), also served with salt, olive oil, and parmesan. For variety and color, I sauteed chopped red cabbage until just soft then made it sweet sour with some red wine vinegar and Lütticher Delikatesse (a sweet spread made from pears, apples, and dates).

This was fantastic stuff and certainly a good use of the rule of five (seven ingredients total on the plate; each dish had three).

Wednesday's soup

A big pot of vegetable soup for the winter night: savoy cabbage, red carrots, steckrübe, onion, garlic, oatmeal, chicken stock, white wine, bay leaf, clove, orange zest.

Tuesday: Sauerkraut-pasta pfanne

More cuisine de Kühlschrank: Saute some onions and garlic with a couple chilis in oil until soft. Add sauerkraut, white wine, tomato sauce, caraway seeds, diced ham, and some water and cook a few minutes until everything is simmering. Add some cooked elbow macaroni, mix well, and let heat through. Serve with chives.

Monday Guacamole

To go along with watching the rebroadcast of the Super Bowl, I did a batch of guacamole last night: avocado, garlic, lime, cilantro, chipotle. It's stupid to buy avocados that have been flown halfway across the world and don't really taste like avocados, but it was still somehow a nice treat.

Monday: steak and gratin

Friday night I started marinating some steak using the recipe from last week's Minimalist column. Since another cut (saftplätzli) was on sale I used a cut other than ribeye, but otherwise I pretty much stuck to the recipe. Last night I pulled the steaks out of the marinade, dried them with paper towels, and then seared them in a lightly oiled skillet. As they came out of the skillet I seasoned them with salt and pepper, let them rest a minute, then served them. 

This is a really nice preparation. I'm not convinced that using Amarone is necessary (I don't think the difference from a reasonable Cote du Rhone would be noticeable), but that's a detail.

To go with the steaks I did a gratin using another mysterious root vegetable from the biokiste. We had one of these last year too and I didn't do any research to figure out what it was. This year, after some poking around, I'm reasonably convinced that it's a Steckrübe (a kohlrabi relative). Whatever it is, it makes a good gratin but one needs to be careful with the liquid content : the Steckrübe releases water while cooking instead of absorbing it.

Sunday Sauerkraut

We got back from the mountains fairly late and wanted something quick and warm. Using the sauerkraut we had from the market was a natural thing.

Dice an onion small and cook for a few minutes in rapeseed oil with some finely diced bacon until the onion is soft. Add smoked pork shoulder, 1cm dice, and cook another couple minutes. Add rinsed and drained sauerkraut, a good splash of white wine, a bay leaf, a few crushed juniper berries, and some caraway seeds, mix well, cover and simmer 10-15 minutes. Serve with mustard.

Thursday Fondue

Andrea's parents were visiting last night, so we did a fondue. Quantities this time: 650g cheese (600g would have been fine), 300ml white wine, 1tsp corn starch, one jigger kirschwasser.

mmm, fondue.

Wednesday: winter minestrone soup, gnocchi gratin, endive salad

Three dishes that ended up working well together.

The winter minestrone soup was a simple one from Le Menu: cook a finely chopped onion with a minced clove of garlic and a pinch of salt in some butter until the onion softens and the garlic has smoothened out. Add a carrot cut into matchsticks and some savoy cabbage cut into bite size pieces and cook another couple of minutes. Add chicken stock, bring to a simmer, and cook for 5-10 minutes. Add salt if needed, then add some pasta and simmer until the pasta is done. Two minutes before serving, add some kidney beans.

The gratin was inspired by another Le Menu recipe (for Kugeli Gratin), but was heavily adapted: Cut a whole chicken breast into bite-size pieces. Brown these well on one side in some peanut oil and then set aside. Pour some olive oil in a gratin dish and then add 500g of gnocchi in a single layer. Add the chicken and some finely diced smoked bacon. Combine some tomato sauce with a bit of water, some vegetable boullion, a bit of hot paprika, and some black pepper and pour over the gratin. Top with grated sharp cheese and bake at 210C for 15-20 minutes, or until it looks done.

Our salad was from CPV: cress, belgian endive, and apple with a vinaigrette from mustard, lemon juice, white balsamico, and olive oil.

Good food!

Sunday Spanish

A couple recipes from La Cucina de Mama: veal stewed with porcini mushrooms and nuts and then baked rice. To go with them I did radicchio cooked with carrots, garlic, hot pepper, red wine vinegar, and a pinch of sugar.

Really, really good food.

Ah, yes, green salad.

Nanrestaurant Review: Kratfwerk (Grenzach-Wyhlen)

We tried this on Saturday night with a couple friends. One smiley face.

• Food: Good, but neither great nor particularly inspiring
• Atmosphere: Very nice combination of relaxed and white table cloth
• Service: Friendly and good

Thursday: Tuna casserole

This was Andrea's contribution to the pool of "let's do something easy" ideas.

I did my standard preparation: mix tuna with minced onion, garlic, mustard, and mayo; stir that into some mostly-cooked elbow macaroni along with some milk (and a bit of frischkase, because it was there), pour into an oiled dish and then top with grated cheese (gruyere). I did an extra layer of grated cheese mixed with raclette spice and bread crumbs to ensure crunch. This got baked until it was done.

We ate this with a green salad

Tuesday: Schnibbelbohnen

Schnibbelbohnen are green beans that have been thinly sliced lengthwise and then fermented like sauerkraut. I hadn't cooked with them before, but they seemed straightforward enough.

Cook a diced onion in rapeseed oil until it softens. Add rinsed and drained Schnibbelbohnen, a splash of water, top with a saucisson vaudoise, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Serve with the sliced sausage.

To accompany this we had rice and some zucchini cooked with olive oil, garlic, and thyme.

Very nice food, definitely inspiring enough to try a "real" Schnibbelbohnen recipe.

Sunday: Chicken with root vegetables and port

My original idea was to use up the port butter leftover from last weekend by doing chicken cooked with port butter. As I went along though, the idea evolved based on the contents of the fridge. So I guess this is cuisine de kühlschrank.

Cut a small chicken into serving pieces, skin them, and brown them in clarified butter. Set the chicken pieces aside, pour out the clarified butter and cook a minced onion, a diced parsnip, and a diced carrot in the same pan with a bit of port butter and a pinch of salt until the onion is cooked. Sprinkle over some flour, and stir for a couple minutes. Reduce the heat and add some port wine and water. Add back the chicken thighs and legs along with a couple sprigs of thyme, cover, and simmer 15 minutes. Add the breast pieces and simmer another 15 minutes. Add additional port butter and adjust seasonings.

We ate this with oven-roasted potatoes and a green salad.

Friday : Roasted squash soup, frikadelle

We had a butternut squash in the fridge that was screaming to be used. So I did roasted squash soup: peel the squash and cut it into chunks. Roast them at 180C with a bit of neutral oil until they are soft and lightly browned. Combine the squash with a diced onion, a couple minced garlic cloves, and some chicken stock. Simmer until the onion is cooked, then puree. Adjust seasonings and serve with curry oil (neutral oil, freshly crushed black mustard seeds, curry powder).

As other components I did frikadelle (mixed ground meat, minced shallot, salt, and pepper) and some sauerkraut. 

Wednesday: Glazed chickpeas, red cabbage

A pretty straightforward weekday meal: Lightly brown a couple cloves of thinly sliced garlic in olive oil. Add a diced onion and a good pinch of salt and cook a couple of minutes. Add a couple cups of drained chickpeas, a couple tsp of sweet paprika, a tsp of cumin seeds, a good grind of pepper, and a cup or so of chicken stock. Cook over medium high heat until the stock has mostly evaporated. Add some diced dried ham and cook another minute or so until the ham has heated through. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, topped with chives.

For the cabbage: cook chopped red cabbage in rapeseed oil with a pinch of salt until it is about cooked. Add a Tbs of jam (I used mixed berry), a Tbs or two of cider vinegar, and a grind of white pepper and let cook another minute or so. Adjust for salt, sweet, and sour and then serve.

There was also the requisite green salad. 

Tuesday: Celery-root soup, Kaseschnitte

On our way down from the mountains this weekend we stopped at a kaserei and picked up a wedge of quite nice cheese. After waffling for a bit, I decided to do a Kaseschnitte with it. Not having done this before, I used a recipe from the Le Menu archive.

It's simple: lightly brown some baguette slices in a bit of clarified butter. Put them in a single layer in a baking dish and sprinkle a bit with some white wine. Mix 200g cheese with one egg, a splash of cream, 50ml (or so) of white wine, and a good grind of black pepper. If desired, add a bit of freshly ground nutmeg. Top the bread slices with the cheese mix. Broil until everything is warmed through and the cheese is nice and bubbly brown.

To go along with the Kaseschnitte, I also did a celery-root soup from Le Menu: toast 50g of oatmeal for a minute or so in butter. Add a diced celery root. Cook another couple minutes. Add 1l water and a bit of veggie bouillon. Cover and simmer until the celery is soft, then puree. Adjust seasonings and then serve with a of cream and some chives.

Aside: both these dishes are not only very good, they are mostly rule-of-five compliant (without me needing to play games with definitions).

Of course there was a green salad with this.

Sunday: Chicken tagine with vanilla and chickpeas

I've made this Bittman recipe a couple of times and it's always been good. This time I didn't brown the chicken first and I did the tagine in the slow cooker: On Saturday I cooked the beans (most of the way at least), then I tossed then with all the other ingredients in the slow cooker and let it go overnight. Yesterday morning I shut the heat off and let the tagine stand all day (it never hurts a stew to wait). 

When we got back from our hike last night I just had to reheat the stew and we could eat the wonderful food.

Saturday Lunch : sauteed chicken breast with ham and parmesan

Following a link from Bitten, I ended up watching the video of Bittman with Jamie Oliver. The dish looked quite nice and we had a couple chicken breasts in the house anyway from stock making, so I gave it a try.

Take a chicken breast, season it on the "wet" side with salt and pepper. Top with some fresh thyme leaves, a good sprinkling of parmesan, and then thinly sliced dried ham (parma or something similar). Pound it out to be thin and even and then cook it, starting ham-side down, in some olive oil over medium-high heat. Season the other side, flip after a couple minutes, cook the other side for a couple of minutes, then serve with bread, drizzled with olive oil.

Quick, simple, and quite good.

Saturday: Slow-cooked pork chop with port butter

This is one from the Niedergaren cookbook, originally for pork medallions, but adapted since chops were on sale.

Mix together 1Tbs grainy mustard, 1Tbs neutral oil, 2Tbs ruby port, and some salt and pepper. Marinate a couple pork chops in this for a few hours. Preheat the oven, with a plate in it, to 80C. 

While the chops are marinating, make the port butter: reduce 5cl ruby port and pinch of sugar to a syrup. Cool briefly and then whip into 50g room temperature butter along with a pinch of salt. Roll up in plastic wrap and put in the fridge to set it up.

Remove the chops from the marinade, brush off extra marinade and brown well on both sides over high heat. Insert a thermometer in one chop and then place them in the oven. Cook until the interior temperature is 63C. Serve with the port butter.

We ate this with a mixture of carrots and parsnips that I cut into chunks and steamed and then drizzled with a vinaigrette (olive oil, sour-cherry vinegar, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper).

As a starch side we had rice pilaf (onion, carrot, parsnip, rice+wildrice) left over from Friday (made to go with the leftover ground meat).

Of course there was also a green salad.

This was nice food, but I have to admit that I don't think the Niedergaren method (at least not the way I did it) is ideal for bone-in pork chops.

This is what happens

I should know better than to play games with myself. This morning I formalized my "rule of five" simplified cooking idea. This evening I'm trying to wiggle around it.

For tonight's meal I slowly cooked garlic, carrots, celery, and onion with ground meat (pork and beef) and a big pinch of salt until the meat was no longer pink. To this I added black pepper, sliced dried chipotles and some ground pasilla chili. After stirring well I mixed in some creme fraiche and a bit of water. This cooked, covered over low heat, for an hour before we ate it.

As a side I steamed some potatoes, drained them, and crushed them lightly with some coarse salt and butter.

Great food, but clearly violating the five-ingredient rule, right? There are 8 ingredients above. But! (here's where the games start) The carrots, celery, onion combination is mirepoix. So really I only used garlic, mirepoix, ground meat, chipotle, pasilla, and creme fraiche. Only 6 ingredients! I was thinking of doing it as the "rule of six" anyway! Really! 

Anyway, there were other things I almost added (cumin, coriander, mexican oregano, paprika, bouillon, soy sauce, etc.) but I skipped because of the game, so there was at least some simplification.

Of course we had a green salad.

Leaving stuff out : the rule of five

Inspired by the simplicity of fettucine alfredo, and remembering the amazing tomato-butter pasta sauce, I'm going to try a new game: for as long as my enthusiasm lasts, I'm going to focus on making dishes that include five or fewer ingredients. I'll leave salt, pepper, cooking fat (i.e. olive oil or butter to cook in do not count, butter to mount a sauce or olive oil drizzled over at the end do), and water (but not stock) out of the count.

Tuesday: Fettucine Alfredo

A recent Splendid Table recipe got me thinking about/craving fettucine alfredo. Last night I did Hazan's version (more or less the same, but with a bit less butter and the inclusion of nutmeg) to satisfy that craving. What great food.

To go with the pasta I did beets with vinaigrette (cut peeled beets into chunks, steam them until cooked, toss with a vinaigrette made from garlic, rosemary, olive oil, white balsamico, serve topped with fleur de sel) and broccoli sauteed with garlic and chili.

Of course we also had a big green salad.

Sunday Dessert: Coconut-mango sorbet

A dessert improv driven by the mango we picked up yesterday and the leftover coconut milk from the rendang.

My original plan was to just do mango slices with coconut creme, but that didn't seem right since we wouldn't have sticky rice with it. Instead I took half the mango and pureed it very well with the 200ml of thick coconut milk, a pinch of salt, most of the juice of a lime, and 4cl of rum. This went into the freezer. The remaining mango half I sliced, drizzled with the remaining lime, and put in the fridge. I stirred the sorbet mixture every 20 minutes until my patience ran out (it was more of a mousse texture than sorbet) and then served it garnished with mango slices and sprinkled with brown sugar.

Very nice stuff. 

Sunday: Asian

Since we didn't get a biokiste last week, we don't have a big pile of veggies to work through, so Andrea requested we do some Asian.

One dish was beef rendang, following the recipe from BittmanWorld. The results were good, but not as good as I was hoping for. Part of the problem was that the cut of beef I used (mager Siedfleisch) didn't attain the "shreddy" texture I was hoping for after 2+ hours of cooking. The final result also wasn't as dry as I was expecting, but that was probably user error. Ah well.

The vegetable dish was going to be a stir fry, but the Asian market had a pretty thin selection of appealing fresh vegetables, pretty much only the okra looked reasonable, so I ended up doing a dish playing with textures:

Rinse and drain some canned straw mushrooms, cut them in half, and then cook them, cut-side down, over medium-high heat with a bit of peanut oil until they have shrunken some and the flat sides are browned. Set the mushrooms aside.

Slice okra into pieces 1cm long, toss them with salt and corn starch, and then cook in peanut oil over medium-high heat for a few minutes. Add some minced garlic and ginger, a spoonful of chili-bean sauce, a splash each of black vinegar and xiao xing wine, a bit of water, the mushrooms, and some quartered water chestnuts. Toss well and heat until the mushrooms and chestnuts are warmed through.

My goal - three very different textures - was achieved, and the flavor combination was a good one. I ought to do more with okra.

We ate both the above with jasmine rice. 

Old drink recipes part 2

Translated from a German book on drinks from 1974: Punsch, Bowlen, Grogs.

Krambambuli

Break up a 500g sugar cone (or 500g of sugar cubes). Combine 1 Tbs each of raisins, chopped seeded dates, candied fruit, and chopped dried fruit in a sieve and top with the sugar. Pour over 2dl of warm high-proof rum and ignite. Let the melted sugar drip into a pot. Pour over 1l of freshly brewed, strong black tea, 2l of white wine, and the juice of two lemons and two oranges. Bring just about to a simmer and serve.

 

Honey Glühwein

Combine one bottle of red wine with 2dl water, 150g honey (preferably orange blossom honey), and  1 cinnamon stick. Heat to just below boiling, fish out the cinnamon stick, and serve in warmed glasses garnished with lemon slices.

Bischof

Stick three unsprayed oranges with two cloves each and then heat in a covered pan with a bit of water (so they don't stick) until the oranges are brown and brittle. Remove the cloves, cut the oranges into eighths, sprinkle them with 4 Tbs of sugar (to taste), pour over 3 bottles of red wine, and heat to just below boiling.

 

Old drink recipes part 1

Translated from a German book on punches from 1961: 70 Bowlen für Kenner.

Cucumber Punch 1

Peel a small fresh cucumber and cut it lengthwise almost to the stem lengthwise into six strips. Put the cucumber into a high jar and pour in a large glass each of white port and brandy, a small glass of curacao, two cloves, and a bit of cinnamon and then fill the rest of the way with warm water. To serve: combine two bottles light red wine with two bottles light white and a glass of sparkling wine. Add cucumber extract to taste and thin with mineral water if desired.

Cucumber Punch 2

Pour three bottles of red wine into a bowl, add a peeled cucumber, and chill until the cucumber is soaked through with wine. Press out the cucumber and pour the liquid back in through a sieve. To serve add two small glasses of Maraschino.

Ginger Punch

Combine two bottles of light white wine, a half bottle of port, the juice of two lemons, and ginger juice to taste. Cool in ice. Add a bottle of sparkling wine before serving.

Cold Duck

Put sugar cubes between lemon slices and let the pull out some juice. Add the sugar cubes (without the lemon) to a punch bowl and add white wine, a bottle of sparkling wine, and a glass of burgundy.

Saturday: Apple-ham Pfannkuchen

A random inspiration I had on the train ride back from Wallis. The base pfannkuchen recipe is from Andrea's father.

Beat 4 eggs together with 4dl milk and a good pinch of salt. Add sufficient flour to get a batter with the right texture (I should have weighed this, but I didn't). Let batter rest 10 minutes. Melt some butter over medium heat in a non-stick pan then ladle in a thin layer of batter. Let this firm up a bit then sprinkle with finely diced ham. Top the ham with a layer of thinly sliced apples. Ladle over more batter. Cover and let cook until the bottom is browned and the top is pretty much dry. Remove to a plate. Melt some more butter in the pan and add back the pancake (flipped, of course). Let cook a while longer, until the bottom is browned. 

Serve with creme fraiche.

There are all kinds of ways this could be improved (bacon instead of ham, caramelizing the apples a bit first, refining the batter consistency, etc.), but it was still quite nice.

We ate this with a big green salad.

New Years Catchup

Cooking in our holiday flat in Finnu (Wallis):

Saturday (27 Dec) Dinner: Black beans with ham
Into the pressure cooker: diced ham, sliced leek, chopped garlic, dried black beans, veggie bouillon, hot and sweet paprikas, cumin, coriander, black pepper, bay leaves, sufficient water.

Cook until done (30-45 minutes maybe when one gets it right with the pressure cooker).
Serve with brown rice.

Monday (29 Dec) Dinner: Choucroute
Cook a couple sliced leeks in a bit of olive oil until they soften. Rinse and drain 1kg raw sauerkraut. Mix into the leeks along with 10 lightly crushed juniper berries, 3 bay leaves, a grind of coriander, a good grind of black pepper, 250ml of Gewurztraminer. Nestle in some salted bacon, cut into pieces. Top with a smoked "Schufeli". Bake at 175 for 1.5 hours. Remove the Schufeli and set aside to keep warm. Bake another hour. Meanwhile boil some raclette potatoes in their skins, then peel them. Add more liquid to the sauerkraut if needed. Top with the schufeli, the potatoes, and four wienerli. Cover and bake another 30 minutes so that everything is warmed through. Put the meat and potatoes in a serving dish. Stir another good splash of gewurztraminer into the sauerkraut. 

Serve with cornichons and mustard.

Wednesday (31 Dec) Fondue
Celebrated the New Year with a nice fondue. With it we had a green salad.

Thursday (1 Jan) Raclette
No black-eyed peas and greens; instead we did a raclette. On the table: potatoes, cheese, ham, mushrooms, zucchini, bell peppers. We also had a green salad and a quick pickle I did by salting thinly sliced radish (the big black-skinned type) then adding a bit of thinly sliced bell pepper and zucchini for color and tossing the whole thing with olive oil.

Friday (2 Jan) Ueberbackene Reste, a.k.a. Garbage Gratin
The priority on our last night in the flat was to eat everything we didn't want to have to carry back with us or throw away; a perfect time for a garbage gratin.

The ingredients were: thinly sliced potatoes, Pfaelzer, and leeks; sliced wienerli; diced ham; a sauce made from milk heated for a while with minced garlic, bay leaf, nutmeg, salt, and pepper. After baking, covered, for 30 minutes at 175C, I topped it with grated fondue cheese and then put it back in the oven, uncovered, until the cheese was bubbly and browned.

Christmas Catchup Part 2

Cooking at Andrea's family's house.  (Cooking under challenging conditions)

Tuesday (23 Dec): Beef "Bourginon" (The main thing is that the meat be tender and there be a sauce)

Brown 800g salted beef stew meat well. Brown 100g lardons. Cook 2 big carrots, 125g minced shallots until they start to soften. Deglaze with 750ml of red wine (I used beaujolais). Add back the meats along with 2 bay leaves, 4 cloves, sufficient chicken bouillon, and a good grind of black pepper. Simmer until the beef is about tender. Brown 200g mushrooms (cut into pieces) in butter and add to the stew. Simmer until the beef is tender. Adjust seasonings, thicken a bit if desired, and serve with pasta.

Next time: when cooking for this audience thicken the sauce a bit more.

Thursday (25 Dec) Lunch: Radicchio hash (Using up leftovers Part 1)

Brown some ground meat well, set aside. Brown some finely chopped bacon well. Add diced onion and minced garlic and cook until the onion softens. Add the ground meat, and some radicchio (from the biokiste, brought with us from Basel) that's been cut into strips. Season with salt, black pepper, and some ground chili. Cook until the radicchio is about soft, then add diced cooked potato. Continue to cook until the potato is heated through. Adjust seasonings and serve.

Thursday (25 Dec) Dinner: Baked poultry legs (Cooking for the masses, but trying to at least have it be somewhat interesting)

For the duck legs: Cook over medium-high heat skin-side down in a pan until the skin browns nicely and some of the fat renders. Season the flesh side, flip, and brown the flesh side. Season both sides with salt, pepper, and crushed fennel and place flesh-side down on orange slices in a baking sheet.

For the chicken legs: season with salt, pepper, and crushed fennel and place in the baking sheet.

Bake both at 180C until the skins are crisp and the juices run clear. Serve with the defatted pan juices and lemon slices.

Next time: cook the two types of poultry in different pans since they have different cooking times.

Friday (26 Dec) Lunch: "Tortilla" (Using up leftovers Part 2)

Cook sliced cooked potato, thinly sliced onion, and bacon lardons in a pan with a bit of oil utnil the potatoes are lightly browned. Season with salt, pepper, and ground red chili. Reduce heat and pour over four beaten eggs. Top with thinly sliced cheese (aged gouda) and cover the pan. Cook until the top is no longer liquid and then serve.

Christmas Catchup Part 1

Cooking with Andreas and Ludger

Saturday: Pasta with a sauce from ground beef, carrots, onion, garlic, veggie bouillon, minced lemon zest, rosemary, canned tomatoes, olive oil.

Sunday: Lentils with carrots, leeks, celery, bacon, vermouth, veggie bouillon, bay leaf, and thyme sprigs. Grilled tuna, steaks, and turkey skewers with sate sauce.

Thursday: Brussel sprouts with bacon and garlic

To go along with the remains of the pasta with cheese sauce from Wednesday : Lightly brown some smoked bacon lardons in olive oil with some chopped garlic and a couple piri piri peppers. Add halved brussels sprouts that have been cut in half, parboiled, and shocked. Cook until the sprouts lightly caramelize, adjust seasoning, and serve.

Wednesday: Pasta with onion-cheese sauce

This was a relatively quick one.

Cook a thinly sliced onion over medium-high heat in some olive oil until it caramelizes. Sprinkle over some flour and cook, stirring constantly, a minute or so. Add milk, reduce the heat, and cook (stirring!) until the milk is about to simmer. Stir in some creme fraiche for good measure. Stir in grated cheese (I used gruyere and winzer) in batches. Add a good grind of black pepper and a sprinkle of hot paprika, adjust seasoning, and serve over hot pasta (I used whole wheat pipe rigata) sprinkled with julienned bundnerfleisch.

With this, which was really good, we had the required big green salad.

Monday: Savoy cabbage side

Last night we needed a side to go along with the leftover meatloaf. I did two: as a starch I made some Ebli. 

As a vegetable I followed a recipe from AFK for savoy cabbage: boil the leaves until just short of tender; shock them; chop them into a 1cm chiffonade; toss in a pan with some butter until warmed through and tender; stir in some creme fraiche; serve with fleur du sel.

Nice, nice stuff.

Sunday : Garbure

This was a meal to try out our new crock pot/slow cooker. I followed the garbure recipe from AFK, but adapted the process for the slow cooker. 

The results were good, but not as good as I would have hoped for. The presence of cabbage and beans in a dish made me think of beans and greens, and this wasn't nearly as good as beans and greens. Ah well, next time maybe I'll try the recipe from Wolfert. (yeah, right, if I have three or four days advance notice)

Saturday: Meatloaf and a Rösti Zweierlei

Meatloaf and beet Rösti have each been floating around towards the top of my ToCook list for a couple of weeks. Last night I checked both boxes. 

For the meatloaf: combine 330g mixed beef and pork; 125g veal brät; 30g (or so) finely diced bacon; one small carrot, half a stalk of celery, and a small onion, all diced very small; 1 stalk rosemary, finely chopped; breadcrumbs; salt, black pepper, and some marjoram. Form into a loaf and place in a baking pan (it should be firm enough to stand free). Brush with a glaze made from tomato paste, red wine, and black pepper. Bake at 175C until done. Brush with the glaze every 30 min.

For the Rösti: Make a half portion of potatoes for a standard rösti and a half portion of beets+rosemary for a beet rösti. Melt the butter and clarified butter in a pan and then form half a rösti on each side from the beets and the potatoes. Cook as normal.

This was nice, and very photogenic, food. The zweierlei thing with the rösti was an amusing conceit, but it would probably be better to do two separate things and serve them next to each other -- the potatoes and beets really have separate optimum cooking times.

Of course we also had a big green salad.

Friday: Spaghetti with peppers, leeks, and ham; braised radicchio

More "Cuisine de la boite bio" ;-)

Saute some sliced peppers and leeks with diced ham in olive oil until they get all melty. Add a bit of pasta cooking water and adjust seasonings. Serve over spaghetti with a drizzle of olive oil and copious grated parmesan.

As a side: caramelize the sides of quartered radicchio in olive oil. Reduce heat, season, and cook until it softens. Glaze by cooking for the last 5 minutes with some reduced balsamico. Grind over some black pepper and serve.

We eat well in this house. :-)

Thursday: Baked sauerkraut

A simple one, driven by the bag of sauerkraut from the biokiste from two weeks ago (good thing sauerkraut doesn't really go bad!).

Toss sauerkraut (already mixed with caraway and juniper berries) with a thinly sliced onion, chopped garlic, and some diced ham. Transfer to an oiled gratin dish; top with caraway seeds and black pepper; add a bit of stock; bake at 175 for an hour.

Tuesday: Lamb and beet stew, root vegetable gratin

Yesterday I left work a bit early and ended up having something like a big cooking afternoon. The goal was to use up a bunch of root vegetables from the biokiste: beets, celery root, parsnips (or parsley root... it's hard to tell sometimes), and carrots. The celery root suggested a gratin, but I couldn't see the beets working there. The first thought with beets has to be to make a rösti, but that somehow didn't appeal (unusually). But that got me thinking about beets and rosemary; and then I thought of a stew (borscht!); and that led to lamb stew. I don't think I've had lamb and beets before, but they each go well with rosemary so I went with the "friend of a friend is also a friend" principle and tried a lamb and beet stew.

For the stew: Lightly caramelize a couple of 1cm diced beets in a bit of clarified butter, set aside. In a separate pan brown 500g seasoned lamb stew meat in batches in olive oil.  Remove the lamb from the pan and add two chopped onions, three minced garlic cloves, a diced carrot, a finely chopped half stalk of celery, and a good pinch of salt. Cook till nicely aromatic. Deglaze with some red wine (syrah please). Add the lamb and beets, a couple bay leaves, the leaves from a couple sprigs of rosemary, a good grind of black pepper, another cup of red wine and enough water to just about cover the lamb. Bring to a simmer and let cook, partially covered, until the lamb is tender. Thicken before serving with a bit of potato starch and adjust seasonings. Serve sprinkled with some minced fresh rosemary.

The gratin: slice (with the ceramic slicer) one celery root, one large yellow carrot, one large orange carrot, two thick parsnips. Layer into a buttered gratin dish: celery, yellow carrot, parsnip, orange carrot, celery. In a small pot, heat together 2dl cream with 2dl milk and a generous shake of veggie bouillon. Pour over the gratin, grind over some black pepper, top with foil, and bake for 30min at 180C. Remove the foil, top with grated gruyere, and bake for another 30 minutes.

 

Both dishes were really, really good.

Sunday Dessert: Baked mango with rum and brown sugar

I picked up a couple mangos on sale at the Coop on Saturday, then yesterday morning I discovered Avec Eric and came across his recipe for mango caramelized with rum. It was a sign! I used the normal oven since we don't really have a toaster oven, but I think that was ok. :-)

Sunday: pumpkin souffle, ham with apricot-chestnut sauce

While making the soup for Thanksgiving I realized that the pumpkin (potimarron, knirps, hokkaido) was so good that I ought to do more with it before the season is over. The first thing that popped to mind was some kind of savory custard; the details weren't clear, but the basics seemed solid. These preparations were all derailed when, while looking around for recipes to get base proportions for the custard, I came across a pumpkin soufflé recipe in Le Menu. That was something that absolutely needed to be made. I did a few modifications based on what was in the fridge.

Cook 600g diced pumpkin gently with some butter and a splash of white wine until it is tender. Run through a food mill and let cool some. Brown some finely diced ham, toss in a minced shallot and let soften. Mix into the pumpkin mass. Grate in 50g hard cheese (I used Bundner Bergkäse), add a good pinch of herbs de provence, some white pepper, and salt. Adjust seasonings. Stir in 5 egg yolks and 3 Tbs flour. Beat the 5 egg whites with a pinch of salt and tsp of baking powder until they hold soft peaks. Fold into the pumpkin mass. Transfer to a buttered baking dish and bake at 180C for 40-50 minutes. The soufflé didn't get massive lift, but it still turned out airy and very good.

To go with the soufflé and help use up the ham, I did pan-seared ham steaks topped with a sauce made from apricot jam, whiskey, stock (should have used water), strips of dried apricot, and roasted chestnuts (broken into pieces). Good stuff.

Of course we had a green salad with this.

Saturday: Kale, and a fennel gratin

This week's biokiste had the first kale of the season. yay! Kale!

I did the simple thing: chop the kale small, cook it with some rapeseed oil over high heat with a couple crushed cloves of garlic until the kale darkens. Add some diced ham, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and a splash of stock. Cover and simmer until it's ready.

To go along with the kale I did a baked fennel dish: shave a couple fennel bulbs on the ceramic slicer and toss in a gratin dish with a couple shaved yellow carrots, crushed fennel seed, orange zest, and olive oil. Add a bit of stock, cover with foil, and bake 20 minutes at 170C. Uncover and bake another 10 minutes.

With these two very good dishes we had some a big green salad.

Thursday: Wirsingpfanne

Another garbage (a.k.a. "let's use up stuff in the fridge") creation.

Start some diced onion, chopped garlic, and a small amount of minced bacon in olive oil. Add wirsing cut into chiffonade and cook until it starts to soften. Add white wine, turkey stock, leftover tomato salsa (with lovage and piquillos), cover and simmer until the wirsing is ready. Add some garbanzo beans and let them heat through. Adjust seasonings and serve over toasted rounds of stale baguette.

With this, which was great, we had the requisite green salad.

Tuesday: Risotto with Radicchio

I needed something to break up the "Thanksgiving" leftovers. We're starting to get the various winter cabbages in quantity in the biokiste now, so we had some radicchio on hand. From there to risotto was a small step.

I didn't do anything fancy, just butter, onion, garlic, a bit of diced bacon, radicchio, carnaroli rice, white wine, and chicken stock. I finished it with some parmesan and grated a bit of belper knolle over before serving.

Very nice!

Cooking for Thanksgiving : Part 2

The second day of cooking saw:

1. A pecan and apple tart following a recipe from Florence Fabricant.
2. Stuffing
3. Mashed potatoes
4. Roasted sweet potatoes; normally I do these mashed as well, but it seemed better to have them roasted this year
5. The turkey
6. Gravy
7. and, of course, a green salad
   

Our guests also brought desserts, so we ended up with a dessert spread of epic proportions.

Cooking for Thanksgiving : Part 1

The Swiss still aren't advanced enough to have Thanksgiving Thursday off, so we're doing it on Sunday instead. Here's the status of preparations so far (otherwise I'll definitely forget something in the forecast chaos tomorrow):

Apero stuff:

1. two types of prepared olives: greek olives with harissa and mixed olives with fresh herbs
2. pickled zucchini (from the store, I cheat)
3. mushrooms with garlic, bacon, sherry, rosemary, and thyme
4. one salsa with garlic and piri piri peppers cooked until golden in olive oil, then emulsified with crushed tomatoes, salt, sweet paprika, a pinch of sugar, and sherry vinegar.
5. one salsa with garlic pasted with salt, piquillo peppers, apple juice, parsley, liebstoeckel (lovage), olive oil, salt, hot paprika, sweet paprika, and crushed tomatoes.
6. two kinds of self-roasted almonds: salt, cumin, hot paprika; salt and raclette spices
7. salted peanuts tossed in a pan with honey and a bit of cayenne (this is a new one that seems quite promising)
8. an homage (of sorts) to my grandmother: pimientos and cheese made with diced Tilsiter cheese, chopped piquillos, mayo, a dash of tabasco, and a splash of cider vinegar.
   

Main course stuff:

1. The bread for the stuffing (Ruchbrot) is diced and air drying. The stock (chicken stock, celery, onion, dried porcini, sage, liebstoeckel (lovage), parsley, bay leaf) is made and in the fridge
2. The pumpkin soup: potimarron, chicken stock, leek, carrots, cardamom, ground ginger, white pepper. It's made and waiting. Maybe this will get some cream tomorrow, maybe not.
3. Oven roasted green beans, following the Cooks Illustrated technique.

Final preparations to come tomorrow...

Thursday: Beans and greens

We're getting escarole in the biokiste again, so it's time for beans and greens to come back onto the menu; not something that makes either of us particularly sad. :-)

Thursday was escarole, white beans, and sausage (saucisson neuchateloise, diced). With the usual additional bits: leeks, garlic, tomato paste, white wine, carrots.

mmm, beans and greens.

Of course just the escarole as a main dish wasn't sufficient greens, so we had a green salad with it.

Tuesday: Bread gratin

I'm not quite sure what it was, but something fixed the idea of doing a bread gratin in my mind. Since we didn't have any leftover bread laying around, I had to go out and buy some; now we have bread leftover from making a leftover bread dish.

The dish: cook some sliced leek in olive oil with a bit of diced turnip, sliced peppers, finely chopped celery, and some finely chopped smoked bacon. Add tomato paste, chicken stock, black pepper, and sweet paprika. Adjust seasonings (a bit salty is correct) and pour over bread cubes. Mix well, then transfer to an olive-oiled gratin dish and toss in a 175C oven. Meanwhile, saute some diced chicken (I had breast pieces leftover from making stock, so that's what I used) over high heat. Top the gratin with the cooked chicken and some grated cheese (I used Emmenthaler) and put back in the oven until the cheese is bubbly.

To accompany this I cut a couple of small hard squashes (from the biokiste) in half, cleaned them out, and then baked them. We ate them with a bit of butter and some raclette spices. Great stuff.

Of course we had a green salad.

Sunday: Chinakohlpfanne

Another "let's use up a bunch of vegetables" dinner.

For the main dish: brown 300g of mixed ground meat and set aside. Cook two sliced leeks in rapeseed oil until they soften. Add back the meat and a Tbs or so of flour. Stir in the flour and cook for another couple of minutes. Add 2dl or so of chicken stock, a pinch of lemon zest, some marjoram, black pepper, hot paprika, and some salt and bring to a simmer. Add a head of napa cabbage that has been chopped into 2cm pieces, a couple of diced (5mm) carrots, mix well and let simmer uncovered until the napa is fully cooked. Adjust seasonings and serve.

As a side we had steamed potatoes.  And a big green salad.

Saturday: pumpkin-leek soup, slow cooked chicken breasts on spinach

These were a couple of dishes driven by the contents of the fridge.

For the soup start a bit of chopped garlic, diced carrot, and sliced leek in rapeseed oil and cook this until the leeks soften. Add chicken stock, diced pumpkin (again, not clear what type), freshly crushed fennel seed, and herbs de provence and let it simmer until the pumpkin is cooked. Puree with the stick blender, adjust seasonings, and serve.

For the greens: cook some finely chopped garlic and onion in olive oil until the onions take on a bit of color. Add a good amount of marsala and let it reduce down almost to nothing. Add spinach, paprika (both sweet and hot varieties), ground cumin, and salt and let cook until the spinach has shrunk and most of the liquid is gone. Add almond slivers and set aside.

For the chicken: season a whole skin-on chicken breast. Sear this skin-side down in a heavy pan. Take a pre-heated plate from the pre-heated (90C) oven and spread the spinach in an even layer. Top with the chicken breast (skin-side up, of course), insert the thermometer in the thickest part of the breast, and put back in the oven. Cook until the internal temperature is 70C, about an hour. Serve on pre-warmed plates.

This was all really nice food, but I'm not convinced that the slow-cooking actually brought anything to the table this time. I think we'd have been fine with standard oven temperatures and paying careful attention.

Of course we also had a green salad.

Nanorestaurant Review ReRevisited : Goldenes Fass (Basel)

Well, we'd been there twice before and really liked it, so going back after the new opening was a must. Sadly the new management seems to have ruined the place.

The room is still nice (though smoking is now allowed... what the hell?), and the service was fine, but the food has taken a giant step in the wrong direction. Dishes were still nominally creative, but the ingredient quality is down and the preparation is no longer nearly as careful.

It's sad when a good restaurant vanishes... two unhappy faces.

Thursday: Sauteed fish topped with cherries

Driven by the presence of some dried cherries in the fridge (originally preserved cherries, these somehow managed to dry out completely without going bad) a couple pieces of hoki in the freezer, and a ton of lettuce that needed to be used.

Cook the lettuce with thinly sliced onion, chopped garlic, and butter until it's tender. Set aside.

Make the cherry sauce by putting the cherry mass in a pot with some butter and a bit of chicken stock, heat gently.

For the fish: coat each side with semolina that's been seasoned with salt and cayenne. Saute in clarified butter.

Serve the fish topped with cherries next to the lettuce.

Of course we had a green salad with this.

Monday: Brussel sprouts with turnip, carrot, bacon, and chestnuts

Another recipe idea  from Using the Plot, I adapted it "a bit" by using turnips (which we had in the fridge) instead of parsnips (which we would have had to buy and which I'm a bit ambivalent about anyway).

Basic idea: brown some lardons in a big pan; add diced turnip and let it caramelize a bit and soften some; add carrot cut into matchsticks, and some minced garlic and cook another minute or so; add crumbled roasted chestnuts, some butter, and halved brussel sprouts (blanched and shocked first); grind in some pepper, adjust seasonings, and let it warm through before serving.

To go with this we had some thin pork chops that I did in the grill pan. These were mostly superfluous, as I think we would have both been perfectly happy eating a full plate of the sprouts.

Of course we had a green salad.

Sunday: Choucroute

When we went to the market on Saturday, our usual sauerkraut source had the first batch we've seen this season (they said they had it last week, but we didn't see the telltale yellow tub). Happy days!

The first sauerkraut essentially requires that we do a choucroute. With just the two of us eating, the degree of extravagance that we can achieve has to be limited, but I was still able to put together something quite acceptable with salted bacon, smoked pork shoulder, and wienerli. Following the suggestion of the recipe in AFK, I added a diced apple to the cabbage as it was cooking. This was quite a nice touch as the sweetness of the apple played well with the general sour-saltiness of the dish.

Ah! Happy food!

of course there was also a green salad.

Saturday: Spinach-ricotta Gnocchi

This was basically a recipe from Using the Plot by Paul Merrett, which I have from the library. The original recipe is for dumplings, but Paul suggests an alternative use as gnocchi. Since there is a ton of spinach in the fridge and these sounded appealing, I gave them a try.

I did more or less a half recipe (only more or less since I didn't halve the egg yolk), so 125g ricotta, 250g spinach (blanched, shocked, and chopped into 2cm pieces), 65g flour, one egg yolk, parmesan. Preparation: beat the egg and ricotta together in a double boiler until they are warm and it's looking like the egg is ready to set. Stir in the grated parmesan. Stir in the flour. Stir in the spinach. Form dumplings with floured hands. Cook in boiling salted water.

I ate the dumplings with olive oil in which I had gently warmed a crushed clove of garlic and a piri piri chilli.

The flavor of these was good, but they were pretty raggedy looking. I think next time the spinach needs to be chopped more finely and mixed into the ricotta mixture before the flour. A bit of nutmeg also wouldn't hurt things.

Thursday: risotto with savoy cabbage and veal

The idea for this came from a Kaltenbach recipe for Bundner risotto with wirsing. I deviated from this immediately because I substituted for the sausage with some veal stew meat we had in the fridge that needed to be used. Tja, not at all the same.

Start by browning 300g of veal in clarified butter. After deglazing the pan with white wine, add back the veal pieces along with a bit of beef bouillon, cover the pan, and let it simmer until the veal is tender. 

Meanwhile chop half a head of savoy cabbage into 2cm pieces and cook them in beef bouillon for 5 minutes. Drain the cabbage pieces and reserve the liquid.

In another pan, cook a minced onion in a Tbs or so of butter until it's glassy. Add a cup and a half of risotto rice, stir well, and toast for a couple of minutes. Add the cabbage and 3-4 cups of bouillon + the braising liquid from the veal (if it's not tender yet, pour out the liquid that's there and replace it with some bouillon), bring to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring frequently, until the rice is al dente. Add more bouillon as necessary.

Serve topped with some intensely flavored hard cheese, I used Belper knolle.

To go with this delight I quick-pickled some turnips (toss with salt, press for a while, drain, rinse, and ring out; mix with sour-cherry vinegar and rapeseed oil).

And, of course, we had a big salad.

Wednesday : soy braised chicken

This was inspired by an older Bittman recipe for soy-braised pork (or chicken). I browned a couple chicken leg quarters nicely; added some thickly-sliced ginger and chopped garlic; cooked a couple of minutes; added soy sauce, mirin, and a bit of sugar; partially covered; and then let the chicken cook until it was done. No reduction of the liquid was necessary to get a nice sauce, but that's theoretically possible.

To go with this, I cooked some fairly tough lettuce with a bit of peanut oil until tender and then flavored it with a splash each of soy and ponzu sauce. This I served topped with a bit of sesame oil. 

To go along with it all we had Japanese sweet rice.

lovely, lovely food.

Saturday: Potato-leek soup, pasta with sauce bolognese

We had friends over for dinner, so this was a bit "fancier" than normal.

We started with a potato-leek soup (to use up leeks from the biokiste), followed that with pappardelle with sauce bolognese (the Jamie Oliver recipe), and then had a quick pear tarte (pie crust topped with sliced pears, sprinkled with brown sugar, served with creme fraiche).

All very nice food indeed.

Of course there was a big green salad.

Friday: Chicken on a bed of cornbread stuffing

I'd been looking forward all week to using the leftover cornbread to make stuffing. Last night's dinner was an excuse to eat stuffing.

For the stuffing: cook a diced onion and some diced quince in butter until the onion softens. Add some vegetable bouillon and a tsp or so of white balsamico. Cover and let simmer a couple of minutes. Crumble in some cornbread, add a grind of pepper, mix well and gently heat until it's warm through. Add a splash of Maggi and adjust seasonings.

For the dish: form the stuffing into a pile in a baking dish. Top with a spatchcocked mistkratzerli (small chicken, game hen, poussin, whatever), season the chicken well with salt and pepper, toss in a 175 degree oven until the chicken is done, 20-30 minutes.

As a side I cooked some spinach with diced bacon, garlic, and olive oil. This I livened up with a splash of red wine vinegar before serving.

Very nice food.

yes, green salad

Thursday: Sauteed vegetables

Thursday's goal was using up loads of veggies and the last of the smoked pork from Tuesday. Sauteed vegetables was a good way of accomplishing both.

In the mix were: leeks, potatoes, carrots, squash, and spinach. In addition to the diced smoked pork, I added lemon zest, a splash of dry vermouth, a bit of marjoram and a bit of savory.

We ate the vegetables with parboiled rice/wildrice mix.

Very nice stuff.

Of course there was also a green salad.

Tuesday: Bread gratin

The idea started with looking for a way to use up some stale bread leftover from this weekend. Other parameters that came into the decision making were the presence of some sage in the fridge and the apples sitting on the counter in the kitchen. From there it was just a matter of figuring out which type of smoked pork I was going to use, a decision that was made easy by the sale on smoked "rippli" at Coop this week.

Scramble a couple eggs with an equal volume (or maybe a bit more) of milk. Add some chopped sage, salt, black pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg. Stir in some cubed (stale) bread and mix well. Add diced onion, diced apple, and diced smoked pork and transfer to a gratin dish. Grate on some more nutmeg, cover, and bake at 175C for about 30 minutes. Remove the foil, top with grated gruyere, and bake another 20 minutes or so, until the cheese is brown and bubbly. Serve hot.

Great stuff.

We ate this with a big green salad and some cauliflower I cooked in olive oil with chopped peppers.

Sunday: Chili and cornbread

Last night I did a pot of chili and a pan of cornbread. As usual, this made for a couple very happy people in our house.

[Administrivia aside for my amusement: this is post 1111]

Saturday: Fishsticks

I'm not quite sure where the idea came from, but I ended up with a powerful craving for fishsticks yesterday, so that's what I made for dinner.

There was nothing complicated here: hoki fillets cut into sticks, seasoned, and then dredged through flour, egg, and fresh breadcrumbs before being shallow fried in peanut oil. I served these with a sauce from mayo, ketchup, finely diced cornichons, minced chives, and tabasco.

As a vegetable side I seasoned some diced squash (again, an unknown variety from the biokiste) with salt and white pepper, baked it with a bit of peanut oil, and then served it topped with toasted walnuts.

We also had steamed potato wedges topped with crumbled cheese (Belper Knolle) and a big green salad.

Friday's Big Salad

Last night we did a big dinner salad. The components were:

• merguez
• lardons of smoked bacon
• sweet corn mixed with chilis, sweet paprika, black pepper, white balsamico, and rapeseed oil
• flageolets mixed with minced onion, white balsamico, and rapeseed oil
• shaved radish (long white radishes)
• shaved fennel (tossed with salt and allowed to pickle for an hour, then rinsed, squeezed out, and mixed with white balsamico and rapeseed oil)
• nussli dressed with a warm vinaigrette of bacon fat, rapeseed oil, and cheap balsamico 
• croutons made a slice of zopf

To go with this we had a bit of rösti (from a bag).

Of course we didn't need to have a green salad. :-)

Thursday: pork with cider vinegar and almonds

Last night's main dish came from this week's Splendid Table recipe. Instead of using chicken breasts I substituted pork steaks, and I used vegetable stock instead of chicken stock. I'm sure the stock thing made a difference, but the dish was still quite good.

I now kind of have a craving for a meat dish made with a reduced cider sauce with a bit of cider vinegar added for balance.

To go with the pork we had oven-roasted potatoes and a big green salad.

Wednesday Hummus

I've been craving hummus for a while now and needing to use up the last of the bread dough provided a good excuse to fill that craving. I didn't do anything fancy, just hummus (chickpeas, garlic, tahini, lemon, olive oil, cumin, black pepper, and salt) and flat bread.

mmmmm, hummus.

of course we had a green salad too.

Tuesday: Spaghetti with Squash

This was an improv inspired by the pieces of pumpkin-like squash in last week's biokiste.

Cook some minced garlic, minced ginger, and finely chopped onion gently in olive oil and butter until it's nicely aromatic and the onion has softened. Add some diced (1cm) squash, a pinch of salt, and a good few grinds of white pepper and continue to cook gently until the squash is about done. Add a bit of cayenne and some raclette spice and adjust seasonings. Serve over spaghetti topped with chives.

To go with this we had fennel braised in olive oil and beef bouillon and a big green salad.

Monday Miscellany

We had leftover yeast dough that I used for the crust of Saturday's Zwiebelkuchen, so last night I put some of that to work by making a couple flatbreads. After the flat breads were finished, I did four different toppings (each on half a flatbread): tomatoes, dried ham, a hard alp cheese, goat cheese with coriander (from Neuchatel). These I tossed back in the broiler for a couple of minutes.

As sides I did some spinach cooked with bacon and garlic and pan-browned cauliflower. Of course we also had a big green salad.

Saturday Zwiebelkuchen

It's Fall again, which means time for local Suser, which means time for Zwiebelkuchen.

Since we live next to Alsace and I have this great new French cookbook, I started out from the AFK recipe for flammekuchen. Since that recipe only used 200g of onion and called for making sure that the onions take on any color, some modification was required. Then there was no recipe for the crust (supposed to get white bread dough from a bakery), so I needed a crust recipe. For whatever reason I didn't use a standard white bread recipe, but pulled something out of Le Menu. Then I read an quantity wrong and added much too much water, then we ran out of normal white flour. Hilarity ensued. To make a long story short I made up the difference with semolina. Which was satisfactory but nothing like correct.

Topping quantities: 400g onion cooked with some butter until they take on a bit of color, 125g frischkase, 125g creme fraiche, black pepper, salt, nutmeg, herbs de provence, marjoram. Spread this on the crust, sprinkle with cayenne, top with 150g smoked bacon cut into lardons, then bake at 200C until it's done.

It was a nice meal, even if the crust bore no resemblance to what it should have.

Friday's Thai

I was traveling all week, so there was no cooking.
Last night, to celebrate my return and help fight a headcold, I did Thai food: Tom Kha Tofu (heh), green papaya salad, and lettuce cooked with ginger and green curry paste. With that we had jasmine rice.

The soup was just my usual Tom Kha Gai recipe made with tofu instead of chicken.