To use the leftover mashed potatoes I did some quick croquettes: mix the potatoes with grated cheese and some black pepper, form them, roll them in bread crumbs, and then cook with olive oil. It would not have hurt to add an egg or two to add structural integrity for the pan cooking part, but these still tasted quite nice, particularly with the mustard sauce.
We also had pork chop, sauerkraut, and some cornbread. All quite randome, but good.
For the pork: Coat boneless pork loin chops with a marinade of both grainy and normal mustard and dry vermouth; let stand for a couple hours; cook in a 85C oven until the interior temp is 65C.
This was to help Andrea recover from her cold and use up the chicken breasts from the tagine bird.
This was the Bittman chicken-chickpea-vanilla tagine. I toasted the spices first to add some extra oomph.
Somewhat random curry: tofu, dried shrimp, green curry, onion, chili, lime leaf, lemon grass, lime juice, etc.
A simple soup: lentils, carrots, celery root, leeks, and beef broth and diced beef from Sunday.
Another round of no-knead bread. This time I added some coarsely ground rye flour: 150g rye, 300g bauernmehl, 350g water.
On Saturday we had grabbed some sauerkraut from the Alsatian farmer we like. That stuff is so good that there's no need to do much to it: cook some diced onion in a bit of rapeseed oil; add caraway seeds, crushed juniper berries, and a bay leaf; add white wine and rinsed sauerkraut and cook for 5-10 minutes; add a saucisson vaudoise (mmmm), cover and cook gently for 10-15 minutes; serve with grainy mustard and pickles.
Kind of a random evening:
Another batch of no knead bread from the base recipe. This time cooked in the romertopf instead of the enameled pot. Another great success. This stuff is really good.
A simple one for Friday night.
For the frikadellen: pork, minced red onion, salt, piment d'espelette.
For the pilaf: chopped onion, garlic, diced carrot, diced celery root, chicken bouillon, par boiled rice with wild rice.
As a vegetable side: chicory braised in a bit of olive oil
I read the Bittman article about Jim Lahey's no-knead bread back when it came out and the idea has been kicking around in the back of my head ever since, but I never got around to actually making it until this week. We have no problem finding good bread, but a bit of DIY is always fun and wow is that a simple way to get good bread. Will probably be making this recipe (and variations) a regular thing. I followed the ratios from the new edition of Bittman but made a smaller quantity (3/4 recipe: 450g flour to 340g water).
To go with the bread (heh), I did some tomato-leek soup with: tomato puree, leeks, chopped canned tomatoes, diced dried tomatoes, bay leaf, and oregano. Instead of pureeing the soup I left it nicely chunky. Good stuff.
As vegetable sides: a beet salad (steamed beets tossed with balsamico, olive oil, salt, and white pepper) and sweet and sour red cabbage (sliced red cabbage cooked until crisp tender then tossed in the pan with raisins, pine nuts, wine vinegar, and a bit of tomato paste. The whole thing inspired, somehow, by a spinach recipe from La Cucina de Mama.)
We had a load of chicory in the fridge and a gratin seemed like a good idea...
Start by halving the chicory and cooking it cut-side down in some olive oil for a few minutes. Add chopped onion and garlic and let cook until the alliums are caramelized and the chicory is about soft. Meanwhile make a bechamel sauce flavored with fresh thyme and a bit of cayenne. Transfer the chicory and alliums to a baking dish, add some diced ham, pour over the bechamel, top with grated gruyere and a light sprinkling of breadcrumbs, and bake for about 20 minutes, until the top is brown and bubbly.
... it didn't just seem like a good idea; it was fantastic.
We've had various discussions about ways to do asian food using the contents of the biokiste, particularly the winter biokiste, and never really come up with anything. Earlier in the week I saw a recipe for a beet-coconut milk soup that led to the following experiment.
Dice (1cm) a good sized beet and steam it until almost ready to eat. Meanwhile cut a chicken into saute pieces, remove the skin from those pieces, and brown them. Set the chicken aside and add some sliced leeks, lime leaves, garlic, lemongrass, and chili. Cook for a couple of minutes. Add coconut milk, lime juice, a bit of sugar, and fish sauce and bring to a simmer. Put the chicken pieces (minus the breasts) in a casserole, add the beets, pour over the sauce, cover, and bake at 175 for 20 minutes. Add the breast pieces and bake for another 15-20 minutes. Serve with rice.
This wasn't a great revelation, but it was quite good. The combination of the beets and the curry flavors did work together.
Another pureed vegetable soup, this time with onion, garlic, carrot, potato, celery root, and lots of parsnips. I served it topped with a tarragon-garlic oil. The parsnip flavor came through really nicely and matched well with the tarragon.
Why haven't I always been making lots of soups?
Horseradish risotto was something I had and really enjoyed at St. Georg (though I was skeptical when I saw it on the menu). This was the first try at making it myself. I looked around for a bit and found a recipe that sounded reasonable in the Le Menu archive and started from there. It's simple: make a standard risotto (vegetables: onion, garlic, brunoise carrots; white wine; a bit of veggie bouillon; water) and, just before serving, stir in cream, grated horseradish to taste, and salt to taste.
A really simple one to use the sauerkraut from the biokiste: saute some onion, lardons, and diced carrot in rapeseed oil; add the sauerkraut (ours comes with cararaway, juniper berry, bay leaf, and coriander already added) and some white wine and cook a few minutes; add a couple bratwursts, cover and simmer until the sausage is almost done; add a couple pieces of cooked ham and some steamed potatoes and cook until these are warmed through.
The idea and meatball recipe came from Wiener, the contents from what was in the veggie box.
For the soup I used: carrot, parsnip, celery root, potato, napa cabbage (all diced to about the size of chickpeas); chickpeas; sliced leek; chopped onion; bay leaf; cloves; beef bouillon. The meatballs were: mixed beef and pork, soaked bread, parsley, garlic, marjoram, salt, black pepper.
The soup was great, but I wasn't particularly impressed with the meatballs: the garlic was harsh tasting and became dominant.
Driven by the contents of the biokiste and the nice looking ham we got on sale.
I coated the ham with a glaze made from apricot jam, chipotle sauce, and bourbon before baking it.
For the gratin we layered the thinly sliced potatoes and celery root with a sauce made from light cream, garlic, pepper, salt, and mild paprika. This we topped with gruyere and then baked.
Of course there was a green salad as well.
Another simple one: a ragu made from tomato sauce, ground beef, chopped leeks, garlic, red wine, basil, and parsley. We ate this over spaghetti topped with a grating of parmesan, some lemon zest, and basil chiffonade.
The idea of a slightly sour lentil soup came from a dish we at had the Restaurant St Georg and was further reinforced by memories of soups from Romania.
After getting back from vacation Andrea was craving rice; this went well with my desire for something Spanish. I did two dishes from La Cucina de Mama: baked rice and chicken with fino sherry. Aside from adding a bit of extra onion to the rice, I followed both recipes pretty much exactly and they both turned out well.
The fact that we went to this restaurant twice during our week in Ernen is probably all I need to say... definitely two smiley faces.
A somewhat random idea to use up some leftover bread and the last of the radicchio from the box.
Cut some stale bread into 2cm dice. Toss the cubes with stock (I had turkey stock), chopped radicchio, a can of tomatoes (chopped), a thinly sliced leek, fresh thyme, fresh parsley, salt, and pepper. Transfer to an olive-oiled baking dish, top with mozzarella cheese, cover with foil, and bake at 175 for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 30 minutes or until the top is nicely brown and bubbly.
To go with this quite nice dish I cooked diced acorn squash in butter (covered) until it was tender, then served that with white pepper and raclette spices. This was like a savory buttery dessert. :-)
This week's box had the first kale (grünkohl) of the year. woo hoo!
We had a couple heads of radicchio in the fridge that needed to be used. The obvious thing to do was risotto, but that wouldn't have made a big enough dent, so I used up a whole head by baking it with olive oil (method from Hazan).
To counter (or at least compliment) the bitterness of the raddicchio, I gently cooked some white beans in their own liquid along with a clove and a bay leaf. These I served with a drizzle of olive oil.
We also had some ebly (cooked plain) and a big green salad.
We had a smaller group this year so the preparations somehow seemed easier (which doesn't make much sense at all).
This year's spread:
A simple one in the midst of the preparations for this year's belated thanksgiving celebration: put sauerkraut (pre-spiced from the biokiste) in an oiled baking dish. Top with chicken leg quarters, season the chicken with salt, pepper, and raclette spices. Bake at 180C until the chicken is done.
Hard to get much simpler than that. :-)
Two recipes from this month's Le Menu that I followed without too much variation. Combined with a green salad this was a nice meal.
Another recipe from Wiener. I stuck to the recipe. For vegetables I used 200g celery root, 200g beet, and 100g carrot. One change to try next time: mix the sauce with the millet and vegetables first, then transfer to the gratin dish and top with the cheese.
As an accompaniment I dressed some sauerkraut (from the market, not from the biokiste) with leftover lemogrette from Sunday.
A simple one after a day of walking in the mountains: I did a chopped salad with spitzkohl, grated carrot, long green pepper, and minced onion dressed with lemogrette (lemon-juice vinaigrette) with ground coriander and garlic paste. For the fish: cut monkfish fillets into medallions, season them with salt, pepper, and piment d'espelette, pan roast the medallions, serve on top of the salad drizzled with bit of the lemogrette.
We enjoyed this with some good bread.
Baked beans and pork inspired by an old Bittman recipe in the NYT.
Aside from dramatically reducing amount of pork (500g instead of 3lbs), I didn't mess around with the recipe too much.
With vegetable soup as a starter and a big green salad, this was a meal. A very good meal. :-)
Another soup idea from Wiener, mixed vegetable soup: celery root, carrot, potato, leek, and onion. Everything diced, sweated for a bit in butter, and then cooked in chicken bouillon for about 20 minutes. At the end I coarsely pureed the soup since we prefer that texture. Finished with salt, and white and black pepper. Nice and heavy on the vegetables.
To fill out the meal we had leftovers of the ham and knödel (freshly made from leftover batter) from Wednesday. And the required green salad.
We got the first sauerkraut of the season in last week's biokiste. Yay sauerkraut!
The prime motivator here was to have rösti. The pork chop was an improv to fit this.
The rösti was the absolutely simple version: grated Agria potatoes (well wrung out, of course) cooked with some salt in clarified butter. Sooooo good.
The chopped salad: combine chopped spitzkohl (no idea what this cabbage variety is called in English) and radicchio with grated carrot and minced onion. Dress with a combination of ketchup, mayo, mustard, rapeseed oil, white balsamico, sugar, salt, and pepper. Let stand 10-15 minutes after dressing it.
The pork chops: season the chops with salt, black pepper, ground cumin, and piment d'esplette. Pan roast them in a cast iron skillet. Serve on top of the chopped salad.
After another week of travel I again wanted simplicity and vegetables, this improv fit the bill.
Peel a butternut squash and cut it into 1-2cm chunks, toss with some salt and olive oil and then bake at 190C until they are lightly caramelized and ready to eat.
Meanwhile cook diced onion, long green pepper, and yellow carrot together with chopped garlic and some piri piri chilis in olive oil until the carrot softens a bit. Add a can of tomatoes, a pinch of saffron and freshly ground fennel seed and allspice, and some black pepper. Simmer until the tomatoes break down and the carrots are softened, then pick out the chilis and coarsely puree with the stick blender.
To serve: Make a pile of brown rice, add a layer of grated alp cheese, add a layer of sauce, top with the squash.
For the soup: combine in the pressure cooker one cup picked-over and rinsed yellow split peas, 5 cups water, 2 chopped carrots (one yellow and one orange), 1 chopped onion, 2 crushed garlic cloves, half a chicken bouillon cube, and a good pinch of herbs de provence. Seal up, and cook for 12 minutes after it starts to hiss. Open the pressure cooker, puree the soup, add some sliced wienerli and another pinch of herbs de provence, and simmer for a few minutes before serving.
The napa and couscous gratin is a recipe from Wiener, and it's a really good one... no big surprise there.
After four days at a course, I was craving vegetables. That's an easy one to satisfy, particularly on Thursdays.
Heat some olive oil in a pan with a couple piri-piri peppers. Add a couple mostly crushed cloves of garlic, diced onion, and diced carrot and cook a couple minutes. Add some chopped cauliflower and salt and cook, stirring very occasionally so that cauliflower takes on some color, until the cauliflower is ready to eat. Stir in some whole wheat penne, adjust seasonings, and serve topped with grated cheese and chopped parsley.
Together with a big green salad, this was just what I was looking for.
When in doubt about what to do with the big head of escarole in the fridge... go for beans and greens.
The soup: pumpkin, carrots, onion, potato, ginger, butter, curry powder.
The veal: brown cubed veal well, set aside; cook minced onion, a couple halved garlic cloves, ginger cut into discs until aromatic; sprinkle over some flour and cook a couple minutes longer; add water and make sure to get the brown bits off the bottom of the pan; add back the veal along with half a vanilla bean and a couple sprigs of thyme; simmer until the veal is tender. Finish the sauce with a bit of tomato paste to add body.
The knödel I made from a recipe in Wiener, but I got the consistency of the dough badly wrong, so they fell apart while cooking. Very sad stuff; I'll have to try again soon.
After the less than 100% successful rösti on Tuesday, I needed to do one correctly. This was my standard potato version: grate the potatoes, wring them out well, cook in peanut oil until nicely crispy, season while cooking. Verrrrry nice.
As a protein course I cooked some nice little lambchops unadorned in the grill pan. We ate them with a vinaigrette made from balsamico, olive oil, rosemary, and garlic.
Of course we had a green salad as well.
For the chicken: rub chicken leg quarters with olive oil, season them well with salt, pepper, raclette spices, and piment d'esplette. Bake at 180C until the chicken is done and the skin is crispy.
The cabbage: Cook some sliced leek in olive oil, add thinly sliced savoy cabbage and salt. Wilt the cabbage for a few minutes, add white wine, caraway, and crushed juniper berries. Braise until the cabbage is tender.
The carrots: cut carrots into chunks, saute in butter until they shrivel a bit and take on some color, add cream and salt. Simmer until the cream is mostly absorbed. Season with white pepper and serve.
The cabbage would have been better with some stock instead of wine; savoy doesn't need the acidity.
First fondue of the year!
We picked the cheese mixture up at the local cheese shop and combined the cheese (330g) with 100ml white wine, one clove of garlic, 1/2Tbs potato starch, nutmeg, and 1 shot kirsch. We ate it with baguette, a green salad, and a pot of peppermint tea.
mmm, good stuff
Last night was simple: I did the first beet rösti of the year along with a small potato rösti (with bacon on the side). Other than learning that there's a not-so-nonstick-spot in the middle of my usual rösti pan, this turned out well.
Another adapted Wiener recipe: Wilt some cleaned and stemmed spinach in the microwave; drain and chop it. Meanwhile saute minced garlic in olive oil until it takes on a bit of color, add equal proportions of cream and milk and bring to a gentle simmer. Add some grated cheese (I used a reasonably sharp raw-milk alp cheese) and stir to integrate it. Add the spinach and heat through. Just before serving stir in chopped basil and parsley, grate in some nutmeg, and adjust salt. Serve over tagliatelle.
The cheese and cream here really bring out the flavor of the spinach and make for a very nice dish.
Two more dishes from Wiener: a salad with beets, apples, and walnuts and celery-root schnitzel with herb-yogurt sauce.
The salad, a version of Autumn in a bowl: steam some small beets, peel them, halve them, cut them into slices. Peel an apple with good acidity, quarter it, core it, cut into slices. Coarsely chop some walnuts. Combine the beets, apple, and walnuts with a dressing made from minced garlic, parsley, sharp mustard, crushed caraway, brown sugar, salt, black pepper, balsamico, lemon juice, and olive oil. Let everything marinate for a while.
The celery root: Make a sauce from yogurt, sour cream, chopped herbs (parsley, thyme, basil), salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Let stand. Peel a celery root and cook in boiling water until about tender. Slice into 1/2cm thick slices. Bread with flour-egg-breadcrumbs, then cook the slices in olive oil. Serve with the yogurt sauce. The trick here is to make sure the celery cooks long enough to get almost creamy.
We also had a big green salad.
A dish to make productive use of the piece of beef I used to make broth.
Cook some diced onion with chopped garlic in rape-seed oil over medium high heat until the onion starts to soften. Add diced potato and cook until the potatoes are about done. Add diced leftover beef and let it heat through. Serve with ketchup and chipotle hot sauce.
mmmmmm, comfort food.
There are a few recipes in Wiener for beef broth with various egg-based additions, and they all sound good. One has to start somewhere, so I did the version with crepes (Flädli here).
For the broth: 500g beef (siedfleisch), one leek, one carrot, one onion (with peel), half a celery root, a bit of cabbage, one bay leaf, a few peppercorns, 1.5l water. Bring to a gentle simmer and let cook, uncovered, 2 hours. Strain, let cool overnight, remove the fat layer, strain through cheesecloth, reheat and adjust salt.
For the crepes: 2 eggs, 250ml milk, 100g flour, 1/2 package chives (cut into 1/2 cm lengths), a big pinch of salt. Cook the crepes with clarified butter and then let them cool.
To serve: put some very finely diced (brunoise) carrot and pfaelzer in the bowls, heat the bowls, roll the crepes and slice them crosswise into threads (chiffonade), finally add the broth.
We ate this quite good soup with some roasted cauliflower and escarole with creme fraiche.
Inspired by a recipe in Wiener and the leftover lentils in the fridge.
Nothing remotely fancy here: I heated up the leftover lentils, added some finely diced salami, and served the resulting mixture over pasta. Nice stuff.
As a side I did an escarole recipe from AFK: cook pieces of escarole in salted water until they're tender, drain well, combine with salt, butter, and creme fraiche and then serve.
A good argument for cookbooks: I'm not sure if I ever would have come to the idea of combining lentils with pasta.
Almost let Zwielbelkuchen season slip by without make one... but not quite.
Yesterday was an active one in the kitchen.
Pumpkin soup: sweat some onion, carrot, and garlic for a bit in butter. Add diced pumpkin, salt, and water to cover. Simmer until the pumpkin is done then puree. Add nutmeg and white pepper and taste for salt. Serve topped with chives and a bit of raclette spice.
Lentils: Cook a sliced leek in olive oil with some diced carrot until the leek lightly caramelizes. Add green lentils, a bay leaf, some herbs de provence, a bouquet garni with parsley, thyme, and rosemary, a splash of white wine, and water to cover. Cover and simmer until the lentils are tender. Serve topped with olive oil.
Slow-baked pork roast with a sage-apple sauce: Brown a nice pork loin roast well on all sides in clarified butter in the cast iron skillet. Wipe out the excess fat, season the roast well, add some good apple juice and a couple of sage leaves to the skillet, and let reduce for a couple of minutes. Insert a thermometer, transfer the skillet to an 80C oven, and cook until the internal temp is 65C. Leave the pork roast on a plate in the oven. Add more juice to the pan drippings (after fishing out the sage leaves) and reduce by about half, mount the sauce with butter, and adjust salt. Slice the pork and serve topped with the sauce.
A clear choice for using the big head of escarole from last week's biokiste.
I started by making some soisson beans in the pressure cooker: the washed beans went in with chopped onion and garlic, a couple bay leaves, and sufficient water. These cooked for 30 minutes, then I opened the pressure cooker and added some chicken bouillon.
For the greens: cook chopped onion, garlic, and diced carrot in olive oil until the carrots start to soften. Tear escarole into pieces and add to the pan. Cook until the escarole is ready to eat. Top with beans, some of the bean liquid, piment d'esplette, and some roasted almonds.
To go with this I did a quick spanish-influenced chicken dish: Brown a couple of chicken thighs and legs well, season, and set aside. Add slivered garlic and some chopped onion to the pan, cook until the onion browns a bit. Deglaze the pan with sherry; let the sherry boil for a minute, then add back the chicken, cover, and let simmer until the chicken is ready to eat.
Of course we also had a big green salad.
We still have some pumpkin tortellini in the freezer so when I didn't feel like doing much in the way of cooking and the cupboard was bare, we were still set. :-)
To serve with the tortellini I did a quick tomato sauce by sweating some onions and garlic in olive oil for a bit, adding canned tomatoes and simmering for 10 minutes. After pureeing with the stick blender this was ready to serve.
To go with it we had a big green salad.
Simple weeknight dish: sweat some chopped onion and garlic together in some neutral oil; add diced long green pepper and cook for a couple minutes; add spinach (torn into pieces), a good pinch of salt, and some fresh thyme. Cook until the spinach is ready to eat. Stir in some good cottage cheese.
Serve with crepes and sliced ham. oh, and a big green salad.
ah, the winter vegetables are coming...
Slice a couple of raw bratwurst 1cm thick; brown the pieces on both sides. Add sliced leek and diced carrot to the pan and cook a couple of minutes. Add thinly (but not very thinly) sliced red cabbage, a diced apple, caraway seeds, some salt, fresh thyme, and a grind of pepper. Cover and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cabbage is ready to eat. Quite simple, quite good.
We ate this with the usual green salad.
For this I started from a Bittman recipe for black beans with orange.
First I simmered some cubed (4-5cm) pork shoulder and bacon with cloves, bay leaves, and peppercorns until the pork was just about tender. I fished out the meat and set it aside. The liquid, along with orange zest, some fresh cloves, and bay leaf, became the cooking liquid for the pre-soaked black beans. To finish I browned the pork a bit, cooked onion, garlic, carrot, and long-green pepper in neutral oil, added beans, OJ, and some of the bean liquid.
We ate this with parboiled rice and a big green salad.
mmm, pork and beans. :-)
This was our second visit and once again it gets two very big smiley faces.
The only minor disappointment was that game didn't play a bigger role on the menu (only there in the amuse bouche), but what was on the menu was so good that we weren't too sad. :-)
A random idea spurred by the limes in the fridge and a bag of coconut in the pantry.
Season some sliced (1cm) pork; squeeze over lime juice and let stand 15 minutes. Mix grated coconut with some hot paprika; "bread" the pork using the flour->egg->coconut technique; ;et stand on a rack for 10 minutes or so then saute at medium heat (don't burn the coconut).
I also served steamed potato wedges with herb-quark (parsley, chervil, salt, pepper, quark) and green beans sauteed in butter. Good stuff, very good stuff.
Oh, and the green salad.
To complement the soup I did another take on pasta with vegetables: cook finely diced onion and carrot with some chopped garlic in a bit of butter for a few minutes; add some chopped broccoli (including stems); cover and cook for about 10 minutes; add light cream, strips of air-dried ham, rosemary, and oregano; cook another 5 minutes or so, until the broccoli is ready to eat. Serve over buttered spaghetti.
Together with a nussli salad, this was a very nice meal.
A simple one to help get through the veggies: Combine cauliflower, carrot, kohlrabi, and onion (all cut into pieces) in a pot. Add enough water to cover, some chicken bouillon, and herbs de provence. Cover and simmer until the vegetables are just soft enough to mash with a potato masher. Mash them, then puree with a stick blender. Add milk, heat gently, serve with curry powder on the side.
Well, something like bi bim bap at least...
Marinate some sliced beef (1/2 cm slices) with ginger, soy sauce, and garlic. Kill some thinly sliced red onion with salt, mirin, and white wine vinegar. Do a quick pickle from julienned carrot and kohrabi with salt, mirin, and white wine vinegar. Cook some spinach in a pan, drain it, chop it very coarsely, then put back in the pan, toss with soy sauce and some sesame oil and keep warm. Make a pot of short-grain rice. In a separate pot put a thin layer of oil (peanut+sesame), put over medium-high heat, pack in the cooked rice, and let cook covered for 10 minutes to form a crust. For the last five minutes add an egg (in a ring-mold so that it doesn't contaminate Andrea's portion!) to the top. Meanwhile cook the beef in a grill pan. Serve the rice topped with sliced kimchi, the onions and pickles, beef, and spinach. Drizzle with sesame oil and some soy sauce.
This could have had a better crust on the rice, but it was still very very good.
Very much a cuisine de kuhlschrank dish: slice some bratwurst and brown the slices nicely, set aside; add a bit of neutral oil to the pan and cook diced onion, thickly sliced leek, and diced long green pepper until the pepper is soft and then set the veggies aside; add a bit more oil to the pan and then brown some spaetzle; add the sausage, vegetables, some steamed broccoli, and some sliced oven-dried tomatoes; heat through and then serve.
I should have done something with the broccoli other than just steaming it, but this was otherwise pretty good.
We also had a big green salad.
At the market this week I picked up a truffle salami from Piemont that is amazingly good. This dish was an improv to use some of that.
Start by cooking some small diced carrot and long green peppers in olive oil. When the peppers are starting to soften add diced salami, thick slices of oven-dried tomatoes, and some of the leeks cooked with the tomatoes. Stir gently together and leave on the heat long enough for the tomatoes and salami to warm through. Serve on top of whole wheat penne.
As sides we had spinach cooked with diced smoked pork loin and spaghetti squash steamed, "spaghettied", and tossed with butter.
Oh, and a green salad.
What a meal.
It's been too long since I did anything South Indian...
Last night I did two dishes from Dakshin: Pepper Sambar and Green Bean Poriyal. Aside from the green beans, this didn't do so much to work through the masses of vegetables in the fridge, but it was awfully good. :-)
A couple of additional things from yesterday:
A recipe from this month's Le Menu that just sounded fantastic.
The pudding:
Combine 5dl apple juice with 1Tbs corn starch, 80g sugar, one egg, and one egg yolk. Bring to just under the boil then remove from the heat. Stir in 6 sheets softened gelatine and the juice of half a lemon. Strain into another bowl. Let cool for a bit, stirring occasionally, and then put in the fridge until it starts to set up. Whip 2dl of cream and gently stir that in along with a egg white that's been whipped to peaks. Strain into a serving bowl and put in the fridge to set up.
The apples:
Caramelize 100g of sugar; dissolve this in 1dl apple juice; cook thickly-sliced apples in this until they are serving-soft; reduce the liquid to a syrup.
Serve the pudding topped with apples and drizzled with the caramel syrup.
Note:
I didn't leave the pudding base in the fridge long enough, so the egg whites and cream separated out and we ended up with a layered pudding; still very tasty but not as attractive. Or maybe it was supposed to be this way since it's supposed to be allowed to set up in individual serving bowls? The non-lightened base was quite good, it's worth thinking about trying a more standard pudding without the "lighteners" though.
Friday afternoon I made a pot of chicken stock, this put it to good use.
Bring the stock to a simmer with some brown rice, a couple stripped corn cobs (idea from Ruhlman), and herbs de Provence. After an hour or so take out the cobs and add sliced leeks, some greens (batavia with the leaves cut into pieces), and the corn (this wasn't the most tender corn, so it needed a while in the pot). After 30 minutes or so add grated kohlrabi and carrot. Let cook another 10 or so minutes, add a splash of white wine, then serve.
Together with some good bread and a green salad, this made for a nice dinner.
This was planned for dinner, but Andrea pointed out that it would mean quite an early dinner since it's getting dark so soon. So burgers on the grill for lunch!
I did my usual minimalist burgers: beef and salt, but this time I melted a bit of cheddar over the burgers at the end. To go with them I grilled a long green pepper and some red onion and toasted the buns on the grill. We ate these with salad and pickles (including garden pickles).
Inspired by the corn in the biokiste along with memories of an appetizer we had at Zur Säge.
Soak some dried morels in chicken stock. Halve or quarter the softened mushrooms. Combine the (strained) soaking liquid with some more chicken stock and reduce it strongly.
Cut the kernels from a cob of corn and cook them for a few minutes in butter, until they are about ready to eat. Reserve. Add a bit more butter to the pan and cook some thinly sliced leek and very finely diced carrot until the leek softens. Sprinkle over a bit of flour and cook another minute or so. Stir in some white wine and let it reduce substantially. Stir in the corn, morels, and reduced stock along with a bit of light cream (halbrahm). Let this simmer very gently over low heat.
In a separate pan brown some chicken breast (cut into bite-size chunks) in clarified butter. Season well during the browning. As the chicken finishes transfer it to the corn-morel mixture. Deglaze the browning pan with some more white wine, reduce that to a very small amount, and add to the main pan. Taste for salt and add a bit more cream if needed. Serve with good bread.
This turned out really nicely.
As a vegetable side: cook spinach with a bit of olive oil, remove from the pan and chop. Add diced long green pepper to the pan and cook until it softens a bit. Add back the spinach and taste for salt.
We also had a green salad (the first nussli of the year).
Inspired by this week's "Weeknight Kitchen", but adapted to help use up the ton of vegetables we have in the fridge.
Dice (2-3cm) and roast some pumpkin (not clear the type, we got a piece in the biokiste) with some olive oil at 200C until it softens. Meanwhile brown some diced smoked pork loin quickly in some olive oil and set aside. In the same pan cook diced onion, carrot, green pepper, and chopped garlic with some piri piris and salt until the vegetables start to soften. Add some batavia (lettuce) that's been ripped into pieces along with a couple sprigs of thyme, a sprig of oregano, and a splash of white wine and cook until the lettuce is ready to eat. Add the pork and pumpkin along with some orecchiete (not too much, the point is the vegetables!). Serve topped with fresh parsley and grated parmesan.
Good stuff and very helpful with the using up the veggies thing. :-)
Ah comfort food: saute garlic in olive oil until it starts to brown, add diced onion and cook until it softens. Add soisson beans, cloves, sweet paprika, bay leaf, a pinch each of cinnamon and ginger, and chicken bouillon. Simmer a while. Add a couple Jura bergwursts (from Coop) and simmer. A couple minutes before serving add a couple slices of smoked pork loin. Serve over brown rice with parsley and hot sauce.
We also did a green salad.
Happy that it's once again pear season, the pasta with ground beef and pears recipe seemed like a good way to celebrate. I've made this twice before now and each time left out the optional curry paste component. This time I tried adding a teaspoon of green curry paste to the mix for the last couple minutes of cooking before adding the liquid. It works quite nicely.
When flipping through La Cucina de Mama I found an interesting recipe for chicken braised in a mixture of white wine and white grape juice. Two hours later I found white grape juice available as a seasonal specialty at the Coop. The message couldn't have been clearer.
Cut a small chicken into serving pieces (third the breasts and halve the thighs). Saute in olive oil until nicely browned. Add a slivered onion and cook until the onion softens. Add 100ml white grape juice and 150ml white wine along with a couple Tbs chopped cilantro and a big pinch of salt. Cover and simmer for 45 minutes. Serve topped with more chopped 'tro.
We ate this with leftover rice and beans from Wednesday and some baguette.
As a vegetable side I made a salad using Schnibbelbohnen: rinse the beans and then boil them until tender. Drain and rinse with cold water. Combine with diced cooked potato and a dressing made from minced onion, white balsamico, rapeseed oil, prepared mustard, and cream (halbrahm). Salt to taste.
Excellent, excellent food.
Driven by the fact that I found some nice-looking bell peppers on sale at Coop.
I used the "Italian Garden Pickles" recipe from Quick Pickles, using a bit less sugar than it called for; thyme, rosemary, oregano, and tarragon as the fresh herbs; bell pepper, onion, and cucumber as the vegetables.
Now it's time to wait.
[Update: 28 Sept: verrrry nice]
Not exactly sure where the idea came from, but I somehow ended up in the mood for beans and rice. Luckily we had some dried cannellini beans in the house.
Cook soaked white beans in the minimum amount of water possible (just to cover) with smoked bacon (cut into lardons), onion, bay leaf, rosemary, parsley, and a clove until the beans are tender. Add salt to taste.
For the rice I used the baked rice recipe from La Cucina de Mama.
Together with a green salad this was some very good food. The clove in the beans is a really nice touch.
Inspiration from a cooking show I caught a bit of while we were in Romania.
On their last visit, Andrea's parents brought us a can of beef (long story). Using it to make a hash seemed to be the obvious thing.
Dice some potatoes small (5mm or so) and cook them for 5 or so minutes with the minimal amount of oil to keep them from sticking. Add diced onion and minced garlic and cook until the onions are soft. Add diced canned beef and a diced long green pepper. Just before serving add a bit of the "broth" from the beef to moisten things.
We ate this, which was actually quite nice, with a green salad.
Ok, I can't help myself... It was quite a relief to be able to prepare something like this that's a bit odd and memory-associated for Andrea without making a complete hash out of it. :-)
A simple one to use more tortillas: marinate some geschnetzelted pork with garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, salt, black pepper, and a bit of cayenne for a couple hours. Saute in olive oil and finish with a bit of dry vermouth. Serve with tortillas, a sauce made with sour cream and vermouth (cuisine de kuhlschrank strikes again), and rice.
Found some decent-looking plantains at the Coop, so we did a batch of fried plantains with the requisite chipotle salsa. To go along with this I did some quesadillas (cheese, tomato, onion, served with sour cream and the salsa).
Simple and good.
A recipe from this month's Le Menu.
A simple one for a Friday evening: the last of the gazpacho, pasta with pesto, bread, and a big green salad.
Another quick one due to the heat: oven-roasted potatoes, frikadellen (beef, pork, lemon zest, salt, pepper, sweet paprika), and a green salad.
Andrea's parents were visiting, but I'm not sure what that had to do with my choice of dishes. :-)
Another day where it was too hot to really cook.
It was a bit hot to do any real cooking, so even though I've been out of the kitchen for a while, it was salads (caprese and a big green salad) and corn on the cob for dinner.
One smiley face; we were disappointed.
At some point in the last couple of weeks I developed a craving for the Bittman recipe for chicken stir fried with ketchup (from 2004, I should dig the link out). Sunday I satisfied that craving.
The weather was cool and gray and we had to pass on the mountains, so comfort food was in order.
Cook black eyed peas with garlic, onion, and bay leaf. When they're about done add a saucisson vaudoise and some salt. Simmer until the beans and sausage are done, then serve.
As a vegetable side I cooked diced chard stem with some orange zest, olive oil, and a goodly amount of beef stock. I cooked it uncovered so the stock could reduce.
We also had brown rice and a big green salad.
Really good food for a cool evening.
Lunch actually involved some cooking:
Thinly slice a couple potatoes (on the ceramic slicer), layer into a pan with some melted butter. Season well and cook one side until it's crisp, then flip and cook the other side until it's close to crisp. Pour over some scrambled eggs, cover, and let cook until the eggs are set.
Served with chipotle tabasco, this was a great lunch.
An assortment of salads for a hot day:
Cuisine de Kuhlschrank indeed:
There were green beans, there were sausages (Landjägers), this is what happened.
Cook some minced garlic in a bit of olive oil with diced onion and thinly sliced sausage. After a few minutes add cumin seeds and almonds. After another five or so minutes add some steamed green beans and salt. Cook until the beans take on a bit of color.
We ate this very nice dish with some bratkartoffeln and a big green salad.
A bit of grilling on a nice, but hot Saturday evening:
