What to do with the celery roots in the fridge? What to do? Ah! got it!
We got the first eggplant of the year in the biokiste and I ran across a recipe in Le Menu that looked like a good way to use it: Krapfen with a quark-heavy dough filled with eggplant, tomatoes, cheese, and fresh herbs. I added leeks to the filling and used a hard cheese instead of goat cheese, but otherwise I didn't monkey too much with the recipe.
An idea from Le Menu to use up kohlrabi: Cook some small lentils in boiling water until they're ready to eat (~30 minutes), halfway through add some vegetable bouillon. Combine finely chopped lemon balm and chervil, chopped garlic, light cream, and salt and let simmer gently for a while. Peel some kohlrabi and slice 5-7mm thick. Saute these in butter until cooked through and lightly colored on both sides. Serve by layering the kohlrabi and lentils on a layer of the sauce; top with more herbs for color.
A quick one at the end of a warm day: a bed of dressed lettuce surrounded by diced cheese, olives, broad beans, strips of siedfleisch, thinly sliced speck pieces, grated carrots dressed with lemon vinaigrette, and steamed kohlrabi sticks. Served with good bread.
Another breakfast idea from Food52 that had to be tried: salt and pepper french toast.
A variety of salads to go along with the hot weather and use up leftovers from grilling.
Last night's grilling:
I found this intriguing pancake recipe a week or so ago (just the picture is enough to make me want to make it!). Yesterday I got around to trying it.
Another simple one:
[trying to get back into the rhythm of posting regularly]
For this one I did a collection of recipes from Let the Flames Begin. I haven't used that so much in the past, so it was a lot of fun to go through and pick out new recipes and ideas.
A couple friends came over to celebrate the summer-like weather. Here's what I did:
There's still basil in olive oil in the freezer from last summer; that's an easy one to use: pesto!
To go with it I did a beet salad by tossing steamed diced beets with olive oil, feta cheese, white pepper, and piment d'espelette.
We also had thick slices of smoked ham that I quickly pan fried.
The usual "let's use up tons of root vegetables" gratin:
thinly sliced celery root, potato, leek, bodenkohlrabi (at least that's what we think it is) and smoked ham with a sauce made from cream, milk, garlic, bay leaf, clove, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a bit of cayenne. Topped with gruyere and then baked 40 minutes covered and 20 minutes open.
good stuff.
On Saturday we picked some corn tortillas up in Zurich, so tacos were a high priority.
The filling: brown some seasoned beef stew meat then set it aside and pour out most of the fat. Add diced onion and mashed garlic, freshly ground cumin and coriander, and some ripped up dried guajillo chiles; cook a few minutes until the onion softens. Add about a Tbs each of ketchup and tomato paste and cook another couple minutes. Return the beef to the pan and add just enough water to about cover it. Cover the pot and simmer for a few hours, until the beef is falling apart. Add a small amount of ground cloves and cinnamon, more cumin, and some freshly ground black pepper and serve.
The baked rice: cook diced onion and garlic with whole cumin until the onion is soft. Add a cup of rice and cook a couple more minutes. Add 2cups water and chopped canned tomatoes along with a tsp of sweet paprika and some chicken bouillon. Bring to a boil, cover, and bake at 175 for 15 minutes then let stand for another 10-15 minutes before serving.
The sides:
Toss some dried white beans, onion, garlic, bay leaf, clove, chicken bouillon, sweet and hot paprikas, black pepper, diced smoked ham, and water in the pressure cooker. Bring to pressure and cook 15 minutes. Serve topped with good olive oil, chives, and parsley.
It's great to have the pressure cooker and be able to do pea soup on a weeknight.
This was the usual: combine peas, onion, diced carrot, bay leaf, chicken bouillon, diced bacon, and herbes de provence in the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure, and cook for 12 minutes. Open the pot, add some wienerli, and cook another couple minutes until the sausage is heated through.
Serve with good bread and a green salad.
Definitely a garbage soup.
Cook diced onion, leek, celery root, carrot (yellow and orange), potato, and steckrueben in some neutral oil with salt for 10-12 minutes, until the vegetable soften. Add cooked rice, ras al hanout, and sufficient water, bring to a simmer, cover, and let simmer until everything is cooked through. Puree and adjust seasonings.
Not the first time we've done this one:
Combine sauerkraut with small-diced bacon, medium diced smoked pork shoulder, and white wine and bake until it's ready.
Serve with steamed potatoes, grainy mustard, cornichons, and a big green salad.
The burgers were totally basic: beef, salt, minced onion, black pepper.
The rice was derived from the baked rice recipe in La Cocina de Mama; my variation this time was to use ras al hanout.
To go with this we had a salad made from steamed diced beets tossed with sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, and white pepper.
A bit of a random one driven by the boskoop apples in the house along with leftover fondue.
Make the apple sauce: core the apples and slice them (could also peel them, but it's pretty easy to pick the peels out later if you don't mind a "rustic" dish) then toss them in a pot with a bit of butter, cover, and cook over low heat until it turns to apple sauce.
For the pork: season some pork steaks well, sear on both sides in the cast iron, then let rest a few minutes. Serve topped with the reheated fondue cheese.
Together with a big salad, this made for a nice meal.
It's been a while since we did a fondue...
Once again I did a standard recipe (no need to vary when we do this so rarely): cheese mixture from the place around the corner, garlic, corn starch, white wine, kirsch, black pepper, and nutmeg.
mmmm.
Been bad about posting lately and I'm never going to catch up, so just some highlights from the past month so I can get started posting again
I had a craving for biscuits and a stew seemed like a good accompaniment.
For the biscuits I used the usual recipe from Bittman.
For the stew I used pork shoulder, smoked bacon, some turkey (remainders from the pot pie makings), leek, yellow carrots, parsnips, fennel, white wine, tomato paste, fennel seed, yellow mustard seed, and some beef bouillon.
To go with the rest of the goodness I did a chopped salad with spitzkohl and granny smith apples.
A recipe from Alles Klar that needed to be made: beef filet in red curry with lemon-basmati rice. I pretty much followed the recipe aside from the cooking in jars part... I cooked everything normally. :-)
To accompany I made a salad of chopped napa cabbage, fresh mint, lime juice, fish sauce, and sesame oil.
Really nice food; moving the sour elements from the curry to the rice is an interesting shift.
A simple pot pie:
Brown some diced turkey breast in neutral oil, set aside. Saute sliced leek, chopped onion, diced carrot, celery, potato, and parsnip, and minced garlic in the same pan. After a few minutes add white wine, some chicken bouillon, pepper, rosemary, sage, a bit of oregano, mustard, carrot juice (leftover from last week), and some water. Bring to a simmer and then add corn starch to thicken. Add back the turkey and adjust seasonings. Transfer to serving-size oven-safe containers (I used our french onion soup bowls), top with puff pastry, and bake at 175C until the puff pastry is ready, about 30 minutes.
Together with a big green salad, this made for a really nice winter meal.
There were a bunch of small potatoes from the biokiste that needed to be used...
Cut some new potatoes in half lengthwise and put them in a single layer in a hot pan with some olive oil. Cook ~5 minutes. Add a good quantity of sherry, salt, cumin, chopped garlic, chopped red onion, cover, and let simmer until the potatoes are done. Serve topped with parsley and chives.
For the pork: season pork loin chops well and pan-fry them. Drizzle with sherry vinegar and olive oil and top with parsley and chives before serving.
Serve with a big green salad.
I'm not really sure where this idea to use up the beef that didn't end up in the hotpot came from, but I'm definitely glad it came.
Make a vinaigrette from sherry vinegar, olive oil, salt, ras al hanout, black pepper, a bit of mashed garlic, and a pinch of of brown sugar.
For the beef: cut some steak into 2-4mm slices, sear the slices in a very hot pan, toss them with some vinaigrette and set aside.
For the beets: peel and slice them (1cm thick) and steam until tender.
Layer the sliced beets with, strips of beef, sliced goat cheese (we used a soft cheese with a rind for this), and vinaigrette.
As an accompaniment I made some basmati rice and served it topped with ras al hanout and chopped pistachios. That was a magical combination.
Great food.
When I was growing up we always used to do black-eyed peas on New Years day. I don't always succeed, but I do try to keep doing this.
This year's version was really simple: into the pressure cooker went black-eyed peas, diced onion, diced bacon, chicken bouillon, bay leaf, clove, thyme. After 15 minutes at pressure I served the soup with thinly sliced red onions that I killed with red-wine vinegar, salt, and a bit of brown sugar.
This seemed like a good one for New Years Eve. As with last time, I stuck reasonably close to the stock recipe in Land of Plenty. This time I strained the stock before putting it on the table - definitely a nice refinement.
Things we had on the table to toss in the hot pot: thinly sliced beef, smoked bacon, strips of chicken breast, spring onions, sliced mushroom, broccoli, carrots.
For dipping sauce(s): soy sauce, sesame oil, black vinegar, garlic.
I also did a salad of very thinly sliced red cabbage, lime juice, sesame oil, fish sauce, salt, and a bit of sugar.
Really good eating.
The veal breast that I used to make stock on Wednesday couldn't just be tossed out, so I used it to make a quick hash.
Dice some potatoes and cook them over medium-high heat in some peanut oil until they start to get a bit crispy. Add sliced leek, diced red onion, garlic, ground cumin, ground coriander, and both sweet and hot paprika, reduce the heat, cover, and cook until the onion is soft. Meanwhile lightly brown some diced cooked veal breast in peanut oil, then add some madeira and let reduce by half. Add some veal stock, cover, and simmer 5-10 minutes. Pour the veal + liquid over the potatoes, mix well, and serve topped with chopped parsley.
[well, comparatively big at least...]
I started the day by making a big pot of veal stock for later use and then, for dinner, moved on to two recipes from Alles Klar, neither served in glass, but that's just eye candy. :-)
The orange-fennel-avocado salad:
Slice a small red onion very thinly. Filet a couple of oranges. "Kill" the onions in the juice collected from orange prep along with a bit of white balsamico if needed (this is a deviation from the recipe; I prefer onions that have been tamed a bit in my salads). Very thinly slice some fennel. Dice a ripe avocado. Rip some Thai basil leaves into pieces. Juice and zest another orange (I used lemon zest since we didn't find an untreated orange). Make a vinaigrette from orange juice, some white balsamico, walnut oil (recipe calls for pistachio oil), and the zest. Layer together individual salads from the fennel, oranges, thai basil, avocado, and onion, seasoning and dressing the salad as you build it. Top with a bit more dressing and some chopped pistachios and serve.
For the braised veal with cous cous:
Slice a 500g piece of veal shoulder into 1-1.5cm thick slices (recipe calls for veal cheeks, but I didn't even bother looking for those without having ordered them in advance). Brown well on both sides and set aside. In the same pan cook a mixture of leek, carrot, and celery root (all cut into thick matchsticks) with some minced garlic for 5-10 minutes. Add a Tbs of tomato paste, a bay leaf, a cinnamon stick (broken in half), and a good Tbs of ras al hanout and cook another couple of minutes. Add 100ml of madiera and 125ml of white wine and let bubble a minute or so. Add 200-300ml of veal stock and let bubble another couple of minutes. Put the veal in a coverable casserole, pour over the vegetables and sauce, cover, and bake at 160C for about 1.5 hours. 10 minutes before serving prepare the cous cous: bring 180ml of carrot juice to a boil, remove from the heat, add 100g cous cous, mix well, cover, and let stand 10 minutes. Add salt, pepper, and olive oil and mix well. Serve the veal+vegetables+sauce over the cous cous.
Both of these dishes were really, really good.
Some notes:
One smiley face; we'd consider going back for drinks and apps, but not a meal.
A good one for a cold day!
For the meatballs:
Coarsely grind 350g pork shoulder with 80g smoked bacon, add 2tsp salt (note, this is too much, see below) and a couple good grinds of pepper, mix well, and let everything sit in the fridge for a couple hours before forming small meatballs.
These were originally intended to be done as a sausage and in bigger pieces, but they are way too salty for that, so I did small meatballs and cooked them a bit longer in the unsalted soup to calm things down a bit.
For the soup:
Cook a mixture of green and yellow lentils in water together with a couple bay leaves and a clove or two. After about an hour add some biotta (mixed vegetable juices) and some more green lentils. Saute some small diced carrot (yellow and orange), with finely diced onion and minced garlic in olive oil and add to the soup together with the meatballs. Cook for another hour or so.
Serve the soup topped with fresh horseradish grated on the microplane and mixed with sour cream. Have good bread available and the obligatory green salad.
Grate a yellow carrot, an orange carrot, a small bulb of fennel, and a medium-sized onion on the box grater. Cook 1.5 cups of risotto rice in 2 cups salted water for a few minutes. Stir in the grated vegetables along with a good amount of sweet paprika. Cover and bake at 175C for 30 minutes. Remove the cover, top with grated cheese (I used a mixture of mountain cheeses), and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the cheese is brown and bubbly.
For the beets: Peel and dice (1-1.5 cm) a couple good-sized beets. Steam them until they're tender. While still warm toss with freshly-squeezed orange juice, rapeseed oil, salt, a bit of garlic (mashed to a paste), and freshly ground fennel seed. Let stand 5-10 minutes before serving.
The baked rice was good, but the beets were the real star.
This is one I've done before. The only difference this time is that I used piment d'espelette instead of raclette spices.
We had some merguez leftover from the weekend and combining it with potatoes seemed like a natural:
Peel some potatoes and slice them about 1/2cm thick. Toss them in a pan with some oil and a pinch of salt and cook them, covered, over medium high heat for 10-15 minutes, stirring only a few times. The potatoes should have some color and be heading towards cooked. Add some thickly sliced onion and cook another 5-10 minutes, again stirring only a few times. Finally add sliced merguez and some sweet paprika and let the sausage heat through.
For the beans: Cook soaked blackeyed peas together with diced bacon, onion, garlic, bay leaves, cloves, and black pepper until they start to get tender. Add chicken bouillon and finish the cooking.
For the rice (method from Bittman): cook rice (we were out of basmati, so I used japanese short-grain instead) in a lot of boiling salted water for 5 minutes; pour into a strainer. Melt some butter in a pan and add a layer of rice. Top with diced merguez and thinly sliced onion, then with the rest of the rice. Add a splash of water and then cover with a towel-covered lid. Let cook over medium-high heat for ~5 minutes, then reduce the heat to low and let cook for another 40 minutes. This would have been better with basmati (of course), but it was still mighty good.
As a side: cook a diced onion in olive oil for a couple minutes, add chopped savoy cabbage, diced dried tomatoes, and a good pinch of salt. Cover and let cook until it's ready to eat.
This seemed like a nice way to use up some of the savoy cabbage we had in the fridge.
Cook diced onion and yellow carrot in some rapeseed oil for a few minutes. Add diced bacon and chopped cabbage and cook for another 4-5 minutes. Set aside in a covered dish. Brown some sliced sausage (I used a smoked sausage) in the same pan and add to the dish with the vegetables. Add a bit more oil to the pan and cook some spätzli over medium-high heat until they take on some color and get a bit crispy. Add the vegetables and sausage back along with a splash of cream, mix well and cook for another couple minutes then serve.
As a side I did basic steamed beets: diced, steamed, tossed with salt, white pepper, olive oil, cider vinegar.
A quick one:
Cook a diced onion and some chopped garlic in olive oil for a few minutes. Add roasted peppers (these were ones from the biokiste that I processed and froze a couple months ago) that have been cut into strips, fresh thyme and rosemary, salt, and a good grind of black pepper. Let cook another few minutes. Add pasta (we used whole-wheat cellentani), a bit of cream, and some grated cheese (mixture of swiss hard cheeses) and mix well. Serve sprinkled with some raclette spices and black pepper.
Something of an improv:
Bone a couple chicken leg quarters and dice the meat (1cm dice). Brown well in olive oil. Add chopped garlic and diced onion and cook until the onion starts to soften. Add cumin seeds and diced butternut squash and cook until the cumin is aromatic. Deglaze with sherry and let that mostly evaporate. Add some tomato paste, a bit of ketchup, chicken bouillon, and some black pepper, bring to a simmer, and let cook until the chicken and squash are ready to eat, about 20 minutes. Serve topped with toasted almond slivers.
We ate this very nice dish with rice (parboiled + wild) and a big green salad.
We did an early Christmas dinner with some friends last night and it somehow seemed appropriate to bring eggnog with us. Since this is a traditional thing, I used a recipe from my grandmother's copy of the Joy of Cooking:
This week's biokiste included Grünkohl (pretty much collard greens). We generally don't get much of this, so a traditional prep is a good place to start:
Heat smashed garlic cloves in rapeseed oil until they take on some color. Add finely chopped Grünkohl, diced potato, and a good pinch of salt and cook for 5-10 minutes, until the color of the greens deepens. Add a bit of chicken bouillon, top with a smoked sausage (saucisson neuchateloise), cover and let simmer 20-30 minutes, until the greens are ready to eat.
Serve with mustard, maggi, and a big green salad.
For the rösti the usual prep: raw potatoes grated and then wrung out to get them as dry as possible, cooked in clarified butter. mmmmm
For the fish: cut a cod fillet into serving-size pieces. Season with salt and piment d'espelette, then place in a hot oiled pan. Top with a breadcrumbs that have been mixed with olive oil, salt, and piment d'espelette. Place tomato halves, cut-side down, next to the fish pieces. After a few minutes of cooking, flip the tomato pieces so the cut side is up, season them, transfer the pan to a 150C oven until the fish is cooked through. Serve with lemon.
We had a small head of radicchio in the box and this seemed like the obvious way to use it.
Cook diced carrot and onion in olive oil until the carrots soften a bit. Add rice and cook until it smells toasty. Add white wine and let it mostly reduce off. Add chopped radicchio and do the stirring thing with beef broth. Just before serving add some grated parmesan.
Serve with leftover brisket from the pot au feu.
Really a two day prep:
Make a beef broth from a piece of brisket, some bones, carrot, onion, celery root, bay leaf, cloves, some fennel seed, and black pepper. Set the brisket aside and strain the broth. Let the brisket cool in the broth then skim the fat.
Set the brisket aside and add to the broth: sliced horseradish, carrot chunks, diced celery root, potato pieces, pieces of savoy cabbage, and salt. Try to add things such that they'll all be cooked at the same time. Just before serving thickly slice the brisket and add to the broth to heat through. Serve with freshly grated horseradish mixed with sour cream, black pepper, and maggi.
For the beans: rinse black beans and toss in the pressure cooker with diced smoked bacon, diced onion, garlic, ground coriander, ground cumin, a bay leaf, and whatever else looks good. Add water, seal, bring to a boil, cook at pressure for 15 minutes. Let cool off heat.
For the rice: cook diced onion and garlic in olive oil. Add ground cumin and coriander, rice, and some tomato paste and cook a few more minutes. Add water and chicken bouillon, cover, and let cook until done. Raising the heat at the end to get a bit of crust on the bottom isn't bad.
For the way-out-of-season salsa: coarsely chop a tomato and combine with garlic paste, minced onion, minced cayenne (dried), salt, sweet paprika, white balsamico, and a small amount of normal balsamico. Let stand at least 30 minutes.
Make burritos with beans, rice, salsa, canned corn, and sour cream.
To go with this I did a cabbage salad by tossing shredded savoy cabbage with salt, ground coriander, white balsamico, and a bit of rapeseed oil and letting it marinate for a good while.
First fondue of the season. Woo hoo! :-)
Standard preparation: cheese from the place on Spalenberg, garlic, white wine, kirsch. Peppermint tea as a drink and big green salad as a side.
After the big cookie making we ended up with some egg yolks that needed to be used up. Combined with the usual desire at this time of year to make soup, this lead to a soup with an enriched base:
Cook some diced carrots, onions, and garlic in a bit of neutral oil until the carrots start to soften. Add savoy cabbage that's been cut into strips and mix well. Add good chicken stock, a clove, a bay leaf, and some fresh thyme and bring to a simmer. 10 minutes before serving stir in some chicken breast that's been cut into strips. 5 minutes before serving combine egg yolks with some light cream and whisk in some of the stock. Add to the rest of the soup and reduce the heat. Just before serving grate in some fresh nutmeg.
Serve with good bread and a pepper grinder on the side.
Nice, nice stuff
A random Sunday idea for the boneless smoked ham we picked up on Saturday.
Bring some apple juice to a boil, add a few chipotles. When the chipotles are soft, fish them out, puree them, then add the puree back to the apple juice. Continue reducing until you have a glaze. Add some fresh lemon juice.
In the meantime: cut up potato, leek, celery root, and carrot and toss with some salt, sweet paprika, cumin, coriander, black pepper, and peanut oil. Add some chicken stock and bake at 175C for 10-15 minutes. Place the ham on the bed of vegetables, brush with the glaze, and put back in the oven. Bake another 20-30 minutes, glazing every five.
Serve slices of ham drizzled with a bit of the extra glaze.
Yesterday, together with the first snow here in Basel, we made a batch of Christmas cookies so that we're prepared for the season. We did Zimtsterne (Kaltenbach), Totenbeinli (Le Menu), Gewurz Sables (Le Menu), and Schokomakronen (Andrea's mother). Recipes are below
We ended up with quite a spread:
Should last a few days at least. :-)
Schokomakronen
100g hazelnuts, toasted in a heavy pan, peeled, and coarsely chopped
100g almond slivers
2 egg whites
75g sugar
200g dark chocolate (we used 60%)
Whip the egg whites to soft peaks, add the sugar, and whip to stiff peaks.
Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, mix in the nuts, and let cool a bit.
Fold the egg whites into the chocolate.
Drop spoon fulls onto baking parchment and then bake at 150c until they're done (10-15 minutes?).
Zimtsterne
2 egg whites, beat to stiff peaks with a pinch of salt
250g sugar
1 Tbs cinnamon
250g ground almonds (I used 200g ground almonds, 30g flour)
1 Tbs lemon juice
1 tsp minced lemon zest
Add the sugar and cinnamon to the beaten egg whites and stir for a few minutes (supposed to be 10...). Set aside 5Tbs to use as a topping (I forgot to do this).
Add the other ingredients to the egg whites and mix to form a even dough. Let this rest 15 minutes.
Roll the dough out to the thickness of a pencil on a surface covered with sugar.
Cut out star shaped cookies and place them on parchment-covered baking sheets.
Let rest 30 minutes.
Top with the reserved egg whites (if you remembered to reserve any).
Bake at 200C for 6-8 minutes. They're better when chewy, so don't bake too long.
Gewurz Sables
125g butter, softened
50g raw sugar
1tsp vanilla sugar
a pinch salt
2-3 Tbs water
200g flour
1 Tbs cinnamon
1 Tbs cardamom (1-2 tsp would have been better)
1 Tbs ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp nutmeg
Beat the butter until it forms peaks.
Add the sugars, salt, and water and beat a bit more
Sift in the flour and spices and work into a smooth dough.
Form a 3cm roll, wrap in plastic wrap, and let rest in the fridge for an hour.
Cut 5mm thick slices and put on a parchment-covered baking sheet.
Bake at 200C for 20-12 minutes.
Totenbeinli
200g walnuts
100g butter, softened
175g sugar
a pinch of salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
250g flour
Toast the walnuts in a heavy pan until they're aromatic. Let cool and then chop coarsely.
Beat the butter until it forms peaks.
Beat in the sugar, salt, cinnamon, and eggs and beat until it lightens.
Sift in the flour and mix to form a smooth dough.
Add the chopped nuts, then wrap in plastic and let rest in the fridge for an hour.
Roll out to 1cm on a floured work surface.
Cut into 7-8cm strips and transfer to a parchment-lined baking sheet and let rest 30 minutes in the fridge.
Brush with egg yolk, then bake at 180C for 10min. Let cool a couple of minutes, then cut into sticks and bake another 12-15 minutes, until golden brown.
We got the first sauerkraut of the season last week and in this month's Le Menu there's a recipe for a sauerkraut gratin. That's a coincidence that's too big to ignore. :-)
Toss rinsed sauerkraut with some leek (cut into thin strips), a bit of diced bacon, and caraway (I didn't actually use caraway since the 'kraut from the biokiste is already seasoned) and pack into a gratin dish. Top with strips of bacon, raclette cheese, and leek rings. Bake at 200C for 15-20 minutes, top with some diced bread and bake another 5-10 minutes until the bread is brown and toasty.
I did this with a pretty aromatic raclette cheese which complemented the sauerkraut very nicely.
Of course we also had a green salad.
Once the new biokiste arrived we really needed to clear out some stuff from the old ones. Thus, sauteed vegetables: turnip, carrot, leek, onion, garlic, pumpkin, bacon, thyme, rosemary, black pepper. Served with some raclette spice.
We also had roasted cauliflower and a fennel-orange salad.
Adapted from a recipe from this month's Le Menu.
Driven by the mushrooms I found on sale...
Cook some quartered mushrooms in butter over high heat until they take on some color. Add sliced leek and cook a bit longer until the leek softens. Add chicken bouillon, water, a bay leaf, and a couple cloves, and let simmer 15-20 minutes. Puree, add additional butter to taste, and serve sprinkled with a bit of raclette spice.
Together with bread and big salad this made for a nice meal.
When there's a big head of escarole in the biokiste, it's almost too easy to decide what to do. :-)
Though it looked really nice last time when I combined the potato and beet rösti in one pan, this time I did them separately so that things were properly cooked.
Two good ones for a lazy, cool, Saturday.
An improv:
A random idea:
There was still more roasted pumpkin to use, risotto seemed like a plan.
Before leaving for Berlin I cut the piece of pumpkin we had from the biokiste into chunks and then roasted those with a bit of olive oil and salt before tossing them in the fridge. Now it's time to use them.
It's getting to be soup season! yay!
A relatively simple one since the kitchen of the vacation house was rustic.
Things I made for my "pre-birthday" celebration in the Schwarzwald this weekend:
Inspired by our visit to Stucki, I picked up a copy of one of Tanja Grandits' cookbooks that contains recipes that mostly have a chance of being doable in a home kitchen. Last night I tried a first recipe from there: watercress panna cotta topped with a chantarelle-haselnut tatar. The recipe is good and not overly much trouble to make, but next time I do something like this I will definitely replace the cream with plain milk: otherwise it's just too heavy for my tastes.
Two very smiley faces and a big "wow".
This is a recipe from Big Flavors that I've made before (though it doesn't seem like it was really so long ago). Deviations from the recipe this time: I used just leg quarters instead of the whole chicken and instead of doing a 2Tbs paprika and 1Tbs cayenne I did 3Tbs hot paprika.
We had a couple of nice bunches of lemon balm from the biokiste and not much idea what to do with them. My first idea was to make a panna cotta infused with the lemon balm instead of vanilla. I think this probably would have worked, but then I decided that Bittman's buttermilk panna cotta recipe sounded really good too; so I tried buttermilk panna cotta with lemon balm.
The sweet and sour pork recipe from Land of Plenty is becoming a favorite. To go with it this time I made stir-fried corn and green peppers. This is also from Land of Plenty, and was quite good, but there's nothing about it that really jumps out and makes you say "chinese".
Cook chopped garlic, diced hard salami (I used venison salami), fennel, kohlrabi, and carrots in olive oil until the carrots soften a bit. Add rinsed barley and some vegetable bouillon, bring to a simmer, and let cook until the barley is ready to eat.
There was topping leftover from Saturday's Zwiebelkuchen that needed to be eaten. This is what I came up with:
Ah the joy of beans and greens! :-)
It's the time of year when at least one zwiebelkuchen needs to be made to go with the Federweisser that's available.
Not chosen for the alliteration, but I'm not complaining about it either. :-)
Wrapping up a savory pear trifecta: another recipe from Le Menu.
Season a couple of 3cm thick pork loin steaks well, sear on both sides, and then transfer to a 80C oven. Brown some diced bacon in a bit of clarified butter; add minced onion and cook until soft; add 2dl apple juice and 2dl beef bouillon and reduce by half; add 1.8dl of temperature-stable light cream (saucen halbrahm), a small amount of birnendicksaft, and 2 pears that have been cored and thickly sliced and bring to a simmer. Serve with the pork steaks.
We ate this with cauliflower and spaetzle and were very, very pleased; this is great stuff.
Oh yes, and a big green salad.
We've done this one before, but it turned out more satisfactorily last time. I guess the pears weren't quite right because this just didn't do it for us.
Pear season is starting, so it's time to start the savory dishes with pears. This year's first entry is an old favorite from Le Menu. After last time's success with it, I added curry paste (this time red curry) again and we were both really happy with the results.
This week we got what was probably the last two corn of the year in the biokiste. Not quite sure where the idea came from but this seemed like a good way to use it:
The idea started with a couple of wedges of iceberg lettuce. These led me to the idea of making mayonnaise, which led to fish. The potatoes were obvious from there.
I've done this idea multiple times: ground pork mixed with minced lemongrass, thai chili, keffir lime leaf, and fish sauce and then formed into patties and pan fried. To accompany this time I made a lime-caramel sauce (gastrique).
The joys of simplicity: a good rösti, green beans cooked with savory until quite soft and then mixed with sour cream, and a big green salad.
There hasn't been enough grilling this summer, so I took advantage of the fantastic weather yesterday to at least partially lower the deficit. The food ideas were from the Gourmet Today cookbook, which I conveniently have via the Kindle store (what great technology to have).
A quick one after getting back from a hike:
Driven by some half-priced veal stew meat I found at the Coop:
Plenty of green beans in the biokiste and everyone knows how well beans of any kind go with smoked pork:
There was a lot of basil in the biokiste this week, so I did a batch of pesto rosso: basil, dried tomatoes, garlic, toasted pine nuts, parmesan, olive oil.
A standard night at the grill: sausages, a steak, and grilled vegetable salad (peppers, onion, zucchini, corn, basil, olive oil, balsamico).
From the Splendid Table mailing:
Another one of those "using vegetables up" ideas:
