Sunday leftovers

To go with a salad made from the leftover grilled steak and vegetables from Saturday: warm potato salad made from sliced potatoes, bacon, garlic, cider vinegar, rapeseed oil, and plenty of dill.

Sunday lunch: problematic farinata

Last time I did farinata I found a problem in the BittmanWorld recipe. This time I avoided that problem by starting with 1:1 chickpea flour:water. The weights were 160g flour, 240g water. This ended up being texturally right, but now there's too much salt in the recipe... ah well. That's easy to fix.

Saturday: lots of stuff

After a while without a real cooking day, yesterday somehow turned into one.

Lunch was sauteed gnocchi with garlic and dried chilis

Dinner was from the grill: grill bread (from Let the Flames Begin. As an experiment I skipped the olive oil in the dough. Probably it's better to leave the olive oil in), grilled long green peppers and spring onions (grilled and then chopped and tossed with olive oil and a tiny bit of cider vinegar), and steak (salted, peppered, and grilled). We also had a big green salad.

Our favorite fruit stand at the market had strawberries, so we needed to eat some of those as well. To go with them I picked up some rhubarb; from there it was just a matter of decided what to do. I was tempted to do a pie, but decided in the end that it was too much work, plus pies are somehow stressful. Andrea suggested shortcakes, but we just had those and I was worried we didn't have enough flour. Another thought was to repeat the gotterspeise recipe from Le Menu that was so good last year, but that would have required another trip to the store for zwieback. Finally I went with a hybrid. I made a modified version of the rhubarb compote from the gotterspeise recipe (500g rhubarb, 100g sugar, juice of one and half limes) and a batch of vanilla sauce from Bittman (2c milk, 4 egg yolks, 1/2c sugar, 1 vanilla bean). To serve I layered sliced strawberries, rhubarb, and the creme anglaise in glasses. Really nice combination of flavors.

Along the way I also did a batch of chicken stock and prepared (though we didn't eat yet) a bunch of white asparagus, probably the last of the season.

Thursday dessert: strawberry shortcake

After Monday night's strawberries I had a powerful craving for strawberry shortcake. The strawberries were local (well, Swiss at least) and macerated with raw sugar (Jacutinga). For the biscuits I took the suggestion from Bittman and made a half recipe of his buttermilk/yogurt biscuits with a Tbs of sugar added. I used 1/2 fat quark instead of yogurt.

The results were very good.

I always forget how easy biscuits are, which is dumb: they provide a lot of reward for minimal effort.

Wednesday Curry

Very simple and good: Yellow (Thai) curry with potatoes, onions, and chicken breast accompanied by basmati rice and a quick pickle made from thinly sliced cuke, salt, and rhubarb-ginger jam(!).

Tuesday: Frikadellen and salads

To go along with the remaining salad from Monday I did a quick batch of frikadellen. For the mixture: mixed ground meat, minced bacon, minced shallot, egg, breadcrumbs, ground allspice, lemon zest, salt, and pepper.

Monday dessert: strawberries and quark

Very simple dessert: macerated strawberries served with lightly sweetened whipped quark (1/2 fat).

Monday's Salads

Yesterday was much too hot for real cooking, so I did a couple salads:

1. Diced beets (steamed, then cooled) tossed with chives, dill, mint, salt, white pepper, rapeseed oil, and sour cherry vinegar.
2. Wurstsalat : Cervelat, gruyere, yogurt, mayo, mustard, chives, minced shallot, salt, pepper, a dash of hot sauce, a dash of Maggi.

We ate these with lettuce and some good bread.

Sunday: Tortellini on herbed tomato sauce

After getting back into town and discovering high heat and humidity, the priorities were quick and minimal cooking. So I made the last of the frozen tortellini and served them on a room-temperature sauce made by combining tomato puree, olive oil, salt, minced shallot, and fresh herbs (basil, mint, parsley) in the food processor.

Too bad I forgot to get bread at the store, the sauce would have been quite nice for sopping up. :-)

With this we had a big green salad.

Energy bars take 6 (production)

Take 5 worked quite well, but we both preferred the spicing from take 4. This is a "doubled" batch (so half the original recipe) that we took with us for a trip to Liguria. I made some changes based on ingredient availability:

200g soy flakes, ground to a coarse meal

50g flour

200g almond slivers

60g almonds, ground to coarse meal

100g each dried apricots and prunes, minced

30g each sesame and flax

200g sugar

110g honey

90g zuckerruben sirup

50g butter

4 tsp cocoa

3 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp nutmeg

salt

black pepper

Update: 25 May 2009: These held up really well on the trip and were definitely a success. The one refinement would be to spice them a bit more heavily, otherwise this recipe is a keeper.

Friday: Kohlrabi soup and hummus

This was quite random. The kohlrabi soup (with cinnamon!) recipe was from Le Menu, the hummus was my own.

The soup smells too strongly of cinnamon, but the flavor is still quite good.

Wednesday: pork bits in red-wine sauce

Quickie improv to use some pork from the freezer.

Cut some pork shoulder across the grain into bite-sized pieces. Brown the pieces well in olive oil then set aside. Add diced yellow carrot and sliced leek to the pan and cook until the carrots soften. Sprinkle over some flour and let cook another minute or so. Add red wine and let reduce by about half. Add the pork, dried porcinis, some veggie bouillon, bay leaf, rosemary, thyme, and black pepper and let simmer until the pork is tender.

We ate this over brown rice with a big salad on the side. 

Monday: pork chops with peppers

This was driven by a desire to have something with a sauce we could soak up with bread. Then I saw peppers on sale in the Coop. The rest was easy.

Cook some chopped garlic in olive oil until aromatic. Add some thinly sliced bell peppers (a mixture of red, orange, yellow, and green). Cook until the pepper starts to soften. Add a Tbs or so of flour and cook a couple minutes longer. Add white wine, some veggie bouillon, chopped thyme, rosemary, and sage. Cook a few minutes, then transfer to an olive-oiled baking dish. In the meantime, heat a bit more oil in a heavy pan and brown some seasoned, thick, bone-in pork chops well on both sides. Transfer to the dish with the peppers. Deglaze the pan with a bit more white wine, transfer to the dish, toss in the oven at 180C until the pork is done, 20-30 minutes. Serve topped with chives and with crusty bread on the side.

We also did a fennel salad with shaved fennel tossed with salt, wrung out, and then mixed with a dressing made from reduced OJ, olive oil, mustard, and black pepper.

Really nice food.

Sunday: Flounder meuniere, salzkartoffeln

I had a craving for fish this weekend and flounder filets were the only thing Coop had that looked halfway reasonable. I kept it very simple: season the fish with a bit of salt, season some semolina with cayenne, dredge the fish through the semolina, saute in a mixture of butter and olive oil. Serve topped with a bit of sauce made from butter and lemon juice and a sprinkling of parsley.

As a side, salt potatoes: cook some peeled potatoes in well salted water. Serve topped with chives, salt, lemon, and olive oil.

The fish itself was not terribly exciting, but the preparation wasn't half bad (if I do say so myself), and the potatoes were excellent.

Of course we had a big green salad to accompany.

Another quark timbale

We like it so much I keep making new versions.

This time: 250g quark (half fat), 1 jigger kirsch, 2 Tbsp brown sugar; well whipped; mixed with 2 leaves of gelatin; dispensed into ramekins; a blop of rhubarb-ginger jam dropped in the middle.

The whipping is good, the kirsch is good (but this quantity is a bit too much), and the rhubarb jam is excellent. 

Energy bars take 5

The last batch turned out really well, so this experiment was tuning and trying to increase the nutritional value a bit.

Quantities:

100g soy flakes, ground to a coarse meal

100g almond slivers

30g walnut pieces

50g each dried apricots and prunes, minced

15g each sesame and flax

85g sugar

115g honey

30g butter

2 tsp cocoa

2 tsp garam masala tea spice

salt

black pepper

First tastes seem pretty good.

Another batch of rhubarb-ginger jam

The last batch was quite successful, so we picked up some more rhubarb at the market on Saturday. This morning I converted that into jam. The quantities were 1100g rhubarb, 800g gelierzucker, 60g minced ginger, and the juice and zest from one lemon.

Saturday: asparagus and farinata

There have been a couple Bittman things about savory flatbreads, or farinata. These have been kicking around in the back brain for a bit but couldn't be realized until we had some chickpea flour in the house. This finally happened yesterday.

I started simple: chickpea flour, water, salt, olive oil. Unfortunately I started from the recipe in BittmanWorld, which contains a typo: it calls for 1 3/4 cup water for the 1 cup chickpea flour. This can't possibly be right, it needs to be closer to 1:1, perhaps even more flour than water. Luckily the error was clear before I started cooking so I was able to recover with more flour. Next time I'll weigh stuff out and get better proportions. NOTE: in the farinata link above the proportions are 1:1. The problem is in BittmanWorld.

The other component on the plate was asparagus, cooked like last week and then wrapped with a bit of cooked ham and served with salt and butter. Very nice.

Nanorestaurant Review: Charon (Basel)

Charon is supposed to have excellent food, so we decided to give it a try last night. We spent about two minutes in the restaurant before deciding that it was too smoky to be able to enjoy a meal.

Too bad.

Wednesday Chinese

Last night I did a weekday version of twice-cooked pork. Instead of going all out and using pork belly (which is very good) I used a piece of a roast. After boiling for 10-12 minutes I let this cool a bit, thinly sliced it, and then did the rest according to the Dunlop recipe (though we still don't have any sweet bean paste). The result was quite good.

As a side I stir fried some broccoli with chopped garlic and then added a splash each of black vinegar and xiao xing wine and a small spoon of hoisin.

Excellent food.

Tuesday: rhubarb-ginger jam

Basic recipe from Le Menu, but I used fresh ginger instead of candied.

Cut 500g rhubarb into pieces. Combine with 375g sugar, 40g finely chopped ginger, and the juice and zest of half a lemon, place over medium heat and let simmer until the rhubarb disintegrates, 15-20 minutes. Pour into clean jars and close them.

The results are really, really tasty but could use a bit of help on the pectin front. Maybe use some gelierzucker next time to get a more jammy texture.

Monday: kohlrabi gratin

Straightforward gratin to use up a bunch of kohlrabi sitting in the fridge. The idea for the kohlrabi/cinnamon combination is from Le Menu, the rest is basically improv.

Brown some ground meat with a bit of salt. Add sliced leeks and let cook until the leeks soften. Add some flour and cook another couple minutes. Add red wine and reduce by half. Add some beef bouillon, cinnamon, nutmeg, sweet paprika, hot paprika, black pepper, and lemon zest. Let simmer for a bit. Layer the meat with thinly sliced kohlrabi in a gratin dish, finishing with meat. Sprinkle with a bit more cinnamon and nutmeg and let bake, covered, at 180C for 30 minutes. Top with Gruyere and bake, covered, another 10 minutes until the top is brown and bubbly.

This turned out quite nicely.

Tuesday dessert: Quark-cherry-rhubarb timbales

Not overly different from the last timbale dessert. This time I skipped the cherry juice in the quark and topped the whole thing with a bit of rhubarb-ginger jam. This way was even better than the pure-cherry version. One might even be able to leave the cherries out.

Energy bars take 4

After careful analysis and much thought while eating some Cliff Bars we brought with us from our last visit to the US, I had an inspiration for improving my attempts at energy bars, which were to this point acceptable, but not really appealing. The idea is to start from a panforte recipe and use sugar/honey that's been taken to the firm ball stage.

I started from the ratios I used last time I made panforte, but changed the mixture fairly dramatically, used the higher sugar temperature from my first panforte, and did a quarter recipe since we'd have to eat the experiment no matter how it turned out.

Quantities:

• 100g dried fruit (apricots and prunes), chopped fine
• 150g nuts (slivered almonds, chopped pecans)
• 80g whole-grain flakes (oats, millet, spelt, etc.)
• 15g flax seeds
• 15g sesame seeds
• 85g sugar
• 115g honey
• 30g butter
• 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp cocoa
• 1/2 tsp ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• good pinch salt
• good grind black pepper

Mix the dry ingredients (except sugar) together well. Combine the sugar, honey, and butter and cook to the firm-ball stage (118C). Combine the sugar mixture with the dry ingredients, spread on parchment, and bake at 160C for about 15 minutes.

First tasting results are quite positive. We'll give it a bit more to see it holds up. :-)

Saturday: Asparagus, Pork tenderloin with vegetable vinaigrette

This time with the local asparagus (from Neudorf), I made a conscious effort to do a simple preparation along traditional lines so that I could try to understand the appeal. So I peeled the stalks very well, removed the bottom 4cm, and then cooked them in water with salt, sugar, and butter. Of course I didn't stand the stalks up in the pot, which is undoubtedly a major foul. Once the asparagus was tender, I removed it to a plate covered with a folded napkin and served it with a dish of melted butter and the pork with vinaigrette. I think I get it now... this was nice stuff; it's not going to replace green asparagus in my affections, but I at least can appreciate the white variety more.

The pork was a bit of an improv. Having a vinaigrette around the asparagus seemed like a good idea, but I wanted a vegetable heavy version. This is what came of that plus the sudden desire to do some brunoise (i.e. kitchen knife play). Cut a carrot, some red pepper, a shallot, and a few sun-dried tomatoes into brunoise. Mix with minced parsley, minced baerlauch, salt, pepper, white balsamico, and rape seed oil. Let stand for an hour or so at room temperature before serving. The pork: season a piece of tenderloin well with salt and pepper and then cook it over medium-high heat with a bit of olive oil. When nicely browned and finished, set aside to rest for a few minutes. Slice 1cm thick and serve on the vinaigrette, topped with chives.

Along with the green salad, this was a very happy-making meal.

Friday: Lentil revisions and potato pancakes

First a note: with last night's meal we had some of the lentils and beets leftover from Thursday as a room-temperature salad. To serve them this way I moved closer to the original recipe and made a mustard vinaigrette (grainy mustard, sour-cherry vinegar, olive oil) for the lentils. This added a nice note to the whole flavor combination.

The other component of the meal was a recipe from this month's Le Menu for Kartoffeltätschli (potato pancakes) served on a vegetable-quark sauce. 

For the sauce: cook a minced shallot in butter for a couple minutes, add leek rings and julienned carrot and cook for another few minutes. Add some spinach leaves and a bit of veggie bouillon and let simmer until the spinach is ready. Stir in rahmquark and adjust seasonings.

For the pancakes: combine 700g grated cooked potato with an egg, 50g cheese, 50g flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Drop into a pan with hot clarified butter, flatten out a bit, and let cook until both sides are nicely browned.  Serve on top of the sauce, sprinkled with chives.

Along with a green salad, this was good stuff.

Thursday: Lentils with beets and spinach

Inspired by a recipe that Bittman pointed to, along with the memory that lentils and beets go together quite well.

Peel a couple beets and cut them into large dice. Toss with some olive oil, rosemary, thyme, salt, and white pepper in a baking dish, cover, and bake at 190C until the beets are tender, about an hour.

Meanwhile, start some chopped green garlic, finely diced carrot, and sliced leeks in a pan with olive oil. After a while add green lentils, herbs de provence, bay leaf, white wine, green garlic stems, and some chicken bouillon. Simmer, covered, until the lentils are tender. Mix in some ripped up spinach leaves, cover, and simmer another few minutes. Adjust seasonings.

Serve the lentils topped with some beets, drizzled with olive oil, and sprinkled with some chives.

Good stuff.

With this we had the obligatory green salad.

Monday: spicy braised chicken

I was in the mood for something with a bit of bite to it:

Skin some chicken thighs and drumsticks. Brown them well in olive oil, set aside. Add chopped onion and finely chopped garlic to the oil and cook until the onion softens. Add cumin seeds and cook another couple minutes, meanwhile grind in some coriander. Add back the chicken, some crushed tomato, some chicken bouillon, hot paprika, and a couple chipotles. Let simmer until the chicken is falling off the bone. Serve over rice with lime.

To go with this I did a chopped salad from kidney beans, sweet corn, diced feta, and chopped chicory with a "vinaigrette" made from rapeseed oil, lime juice, black pepper, salt, and green garlic. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

really nice food. 

Monday's improv

No idea what to call this improv.

Start some diced carrots and sliced leeks in a bit of rapeseed oil over medium heat. Add  ground meat (mixed) and a good pinch of salt and cook a few minutes. Add a bit of hot paprika, some veal essence, and a squeeze of tomato paste. Cook another few minutes. Add a sprinkle of oregano and simmer until the liquid is a glaze. Serve over mashed potatoes and top with toasted almond slivers.

very, very nice.

We don't have any greens left, so we ate this with a grated carrot salad.

Sunday vegetables

After Saturday's cream sauce excesses, we were in the mood for vegetables. Fortunately that was no problem at all.

Dish one was asparagus sauteed with shallots. We had found some not-bad looking green asparagus at the Coop on Saturday and this is always the go-to recipe. The results were not too bad: the asparagus wasn't great but it was better than expected.

Dish two was "big pile of vegetables with mixed grains". For this I steamed (in batches) chunks of yellow carrots, kohlrabi, leek matchsticks, and belgian endive leaves. In a pan I gently heated a bunch of chopped garlic and ginger with a couple piri piri chillis in olive oil and tossed in the veggies after this had some time for the flavors to  meld. We ate the veggies with some mixed-grain "risotto". Good stuff.

Saturday dessert: quark-cherry timbales

Inspired by a jar of sour cherries found in the back of the pantry.

Whip 250g quark (halb-fett) with a splash of armagnac, some dark sugar, and some of the liquid from the cherries. Whip in two leaves of gelatin (softened in cold water for 5 minutes and then melted in the microwave).

Line the bottoms of four small ramekins with cherries, top with the quark. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge for a few hours.

Place the ramekins in hot water for a couple minutes to loosen them and then invert onto plates.

Saturday: Poulet Gaston Gerard

A recipe from AFK that's been flagged for a while as a "must make".

Outline of the preparation: marinate a cut up chicken with dijon mustard, salt, sweet paprika, and some butter. Brown it. Deglaze with white wine. Braise the chicken in the wine until done. Put the chicken in a gratin dish. Heat the sauce gently and add cream (halb-rahm). Add additional dijon mustard and some beurre manié. Pour over the chicken. Top with grated gruyere. Toss in a hot oven for 10 minutes to brown the cheese. Serve.

This is probably the type of dishes that the nouvelle cuisine was reacting to, and I wouldn't want to eat it every day, but it was damn fine.

We ate the chicken with mashed potatoes, sauteed spinach, and a big green salad.

Friday simplicity: Spaghetti with tomato-cream sauce.

Somehow didn't feel like making a big production. Luckily there was some cream leftover from Thursday and some crushed tomatoes from Sunday, from there it was easy.

The sauce: gently cook some chopped green garlic in butter. Add crushed tomatoes, salt, and a pinch of sugar. Simmer for 20 minutes. Add some cream and simmer another couple minutes. Serve over spaghetti.

With this we had a big green salad.

Thursday: pork geschnetzeltes with chard and orange-cream sauce

The idea with this one was to have the geschnetzeltes and chard served with an orange-flavored foam. It didn't work out that way, but the results were still very nice.

For the sauce: toast some cumin seeds in a dry pan. Add orange juice and some big pieces of orange zest and reduce to a syrup. Pick out the zest and let the syrup cool a bit. Whip some heavy cream to stiff peaks and then stir in the orange syrup. Watch the lovely peaks vanish when the warm acidic liquid is added. Ah well, it's still a flavorful sauce.

The chard: cut the stem into bite-sized pieces and cook for a while with a pinch of salt and some neutral oil. Add the chopped leaves, cover and cook until everything is tender.

The pork: cook the geschnetzeltes over high heat with salt and butter.

I served the pork and chard separately alongside fettucine and then topped it with the sauce.

Definitely good stuff... now I just have to figure out to stabilize a foam.

Wednesday: Tuna on a bed of spinach with baerlauch vinaigrette

Aside from the tuna, this was very much cuisine de kuhlschrank.

The spinach: cook with a pinch of salt in a bit of oil until it's ready.

The tuna: season both sides of a good-sized steak well with salt and a mixture of white and black pepper. Cook over high heat until almost cooked through, let rest.

The vinaigrette: combined baerlauch, cider vinegar, rapeseed oil, salt, and black pepper. Blend to emulsify.

The rice pilaf: diced yellow carrot, sliced leek, green garlic, parboiled/wild rice mix

The side: braised belgian endive

The salad: green

The verdict: very nice

Monday: slow-cooked leg of lamb with baerlauch

An invention driven by the season and the large bag of Baerlauch we gathered on Sunday.

I started with a boneless leg of lamb. This I cut "on a roll" into a more or less uniform strip that was about 1.5 cm thick. I seasoned one side of this well with salt and pepper, then topped it with a layer of coarsely chopped Baerlauch. After rolling the roast back up and tying it, I let it rest for a couple hours before browning it well on all sides and then tossing into a low (90C) oven. I stopped the cooking after about 3 hours when the interior temp hit 70C, sliced it, and served. In theory I should have waited for 80C (at least according to the Niedergaren book), but at the rate the temperature was going up that would have taken another hour, and there was no way we were waiting that long. :-)

To go with this very nice creation we had bratkartoffeln, "braised" belgian endive, and a big green salad.

Sunday: quick pasta

After getting back a few days of hiking, the priority last night was that things be relatively easy. Luckily we had some tortellini in the freezer.

I made a sauce by slowly cooking minced onion and green garlic in olive oil with salt, then adding crushed tomatoes and a bit of sugar. This simmer for half an hour or so and then was ready to serve with the tortellini.

very, very good.

Of course we had a big green salad with this.

Thursday: Grill season is upon us

To inaugurate the 2009 grill season in a grand manner, we picked up a very nice looking aged cote du boeuf (looks like a t-bone to me) at the butcher. I let this sit out on a rack for a couple hours, then seasoned it with salt and pepper and threw it on a medium-hot grill. Pulled it off when it hit medium rare and then served with lemon slices.

I also made a hobo pack in the coals: potatoes, green garlic, leeks, rosemary, thyme, bay leaf, salt and pepper.

The steak was fantastic. The hobo pack was good but could have used a bit more time on the coals: it didn't have the browned bits that one wants from the these things.

Of course there was a big green salad with this as well.

Cocktail experiments

From Andrea's mixing:

Cocktail 1: 4cl vodka surrogate, 2cl lemon juice, 2cl curacao, ice cubes, top off with bubbly water

Cocktail 2: 4cl vodka surrogate, 2cl lemon juice, 15ml orange-mint syrup, ice cubes, top off with bubbly water

Both are nice, simple, sit-in-the-sun cocktails

for future reference "vodka surrogate" = some strange Dutch beverage given to us by friends.

Tuesday: Sauteed vegetables

Hmm, lots of root vegetables in the fridge, along with some bacon and a bit of leftover ham, what to do, what to do?

Sauteed vegetables! Sliced leek, diced celery root, diced parsnip, yellow carrots cut into chunks, lardons, and some diced ham. A bit of lemon zest, some white wine, and some veal stock.

Good stuff.

Sunday : Joe's special

Last week's biokiste included the first spinach of the season. I had to convert it into Joe's special. So that's what we had for dinner. Based on the contents of the fridge, I used leeks instead of onion, so it was fancier; but not super fancy. :-)

To go with it I made a cole slaw from thinly sliced cabbage and grated carrots.

Verrrry nice food.

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.