Cherries in 5 different kinds of Alcohol with Sago Risotto

I never had a cherry compote like this kind. At first I laughed about the amount of bottles I had to carry to the kitchen, later the whole apartment smelled like a distillery. I exchanged the Amaretto for a hazelnut liqueur. I hate Amaretto because it reminds me of marzipan.

This cherry compote I will make definitely again as long as it is cherry season here. It goes great with ice cream.

Making a risotto with sago pearls was new to me too. The recipe is one of Eckart Witzigmann´s.
I changed it a little to my preferences. The recipe called for fresh coconut to break open and get some shavings out. I did not get any and used dried coconut flakes.

recipe for the compote:
300 g good quality cherries
250 ml red wine
200 ml Port wine
150 ml Creme de Cassis
20 ml cherry schnaps
10 ml Amaretto
1/2 cinnamon stick
1/2 vanilla bean
10 g vanilla pudding powder
Juice of a lemon
Juice of an orange
10 g honey

Pit the cherries and cook the pits with red wine and Port for 2 min. Get the pits out.
Add the creme de Cassis liqueur and cinnamon and vanilla and cook down to 500 ml.
Add the kirsch and Amaretto.
In a bowl mix the juice of lemon and orange with the Pudding powder and stir it into the hot sauce, let it get back to a boil and cook for 1 min, add the cherries and get the pot off the heat.
Cool it down to room temperature. Take out the cinnamon and vanilla sticks.

recipe for the Risotto for 4:

160 g sago pearls
pinch of fresh grated nutmeg
pinch of salt
a bit grated ginger
60 g white sugar
400 g coconut milk
50 ml whole milk
coconut flakes

In a pot with a lot of boiling water blanche the sago for 2 min, drain.
Clean the pot.
Grate nutmeg and ginger into the pot and add salt and the sago.
Pout 1/3 of the coconut milk in and loosen the sago, cook on low heat and slowly add more coconut milk and if needed a bit of milk. Stir often.
It takes About 15-20 min until the sago has the Right consistency, like risotto.
Pour into 4 bowls and let it cool down.

Serve with coconut shavings and some cherries on top, the rest on the side.

Ox Heart Tomato filled

This is a recipe from Süddeutsche Zeitung, written by 2 star Michelin Chef Christian Jürgens.

My friend made it last week and gave me the recipe last Friday. I went Tuesday to my favourite grocery centre and they had all kinds of tomatoes. But no Ox Heart ones. On my way home I stopped at my local large supermarket and looked for these tomatoes. No chance. I asked one of the staff and he told me, that they wont get any this week. I wondered why.
In the afternoon I watched a commerical from LIDL. They promoted "Tomato Week" with all kinds of tomatoes for lower prices. Yesterday I went to LIDL and bought Ox Heart tomatoes. They were cheap! Since every LIDL has them in the moment, all other grocery chaines got none.

The tomatoes need a bit of tuning before you actually prepare them to eat. Last night I cut off the top and used a Parisian spoon to hollow them out. I kept the flesh for the next day.
With olive oil, lemon juice and black pepper I made a marinade and filled them with it.   

Recipe for 2:
2 ox heart tomatoes
12 cm cucumber
1 small red onion
1 clove of garlic
25 g pine nuts
1 chiabatta roll
8 raw prawns
Basil
Olive oil
White balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Herbes de Provence

Get it of the marinate.
Chop the tomato flesh, peel and cut the red onion into strips, get the seeds out if the cucumber and cut them into 5mm chunks. Cut half of the basil.
In a pan toast the pine nuts.

Mix 3 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar with honey, salt and pepper and make the salad.
In the pan with a little oil start the seasoned prawns until they are nearly done, take them out of the pan.
Get in more oil and the chopped garlic and fry rhe bread cubes. Add some herbes de Provence. When the bread is done, adf the prawns agsin to finish.

Stuff the tomatoes with the salad and top with bread and prawns and a little more basil.

Karaage Salad

Japanese deep fried chicken -Karaage. Why not eat it a little healthy as topping over a couple of vegetables.

I am a huge fan of the YouTubers TABIEATS, two Japanese guys.
The mother of one us lives in Hawaii,  cooks her fast and easy recipes with her son, when she visits Tokyo.

I have done several of her recipes now and they are really good and easy to prepare. I saw the new YT video in the morning and went grocery shopping for the main ingredients: chicken, broccoli and cucumber.
The rest is found at home.

Recipe for 2:
500 g broccoli
1/2 cucumber
4 Spring onion whites
1 Chicken breast
4 tbsp corn starch
Oil for frying

Marinade:
3 tbsp shoyu
2 Tbsp sake
1 Tsp ginger juice
1 Grated garlic clove

Dressing:
4 tbsp canola oil
1 Tsp dark sesame oil
1 Tsp ginger juice
1 Tsp sugar
3 Tbsp rice vinegar


Marinate the chicken first. Cut it into thin strips, it cooks faster this way. Store it in the fridge while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cook the broccoli florets and cool them in ice water so that they keep the bright green colour. Drain.
Cut the white part of the spring onions open lengthwise and take the core out. Lay the onion flat and cut into very thin strips. Put inice water until you need them. That way they will loose the strong onion taste and get crunchy.
Take the seeds out of the cucumber abd cut into small strips.

Place the corn starch on a plate and coat the chicken strips well.
Heat up the oil in a pan to 180 C and in 2 or 3 batches fry the chicken golden brown. Place on kitchen paper to drain.

Make the dressing and assemble the salad, top it with chicken and pour the dressing over.

Dumplings with Strawberry filling

I am a huge fan of dumplings. I even started this blog to talk about the diversity of dumplings.
In summer I love the Austrian method of filling dumplings with fruits, starting with Marillenknödel or Apricot dumplings. Later in season fillings with damson plums.

We are here high in strawberry season.  Today is St. John's Day, the proverb says: asparagus is dead and the cherries are red.
That is the best time of the year to cook with fruits.

I never packed strawberries in a potato dough. But why not. The idea for this recipe came from the brochure of the Hengelein producer of potato dough and other potato products. My Dad loved their different versions of potato dumpling dough. Easy to roll dumplings, and nearly always perfect outcome.

Recipe:
500 g silky potato dough for dumplings
150 g strawberries
30 g butter
40 g bread crumbs
Pinch of cinnamon
125 g raspberries
150 g blueberries
1 tsp lemon juice
Sugar and salt
Vanilla custard
Some mint leaves

Cook a vanilla custard and put clingfilm on top and set it in the fridge to cool.
Wash 50 g strawberries, the raspberries and blueberries an chuck them in a blender. Add some lemon juice and a bit of sugar. Give it a good mix and pour it in a fine sieve to get the skin and pits out. Set in the fridge to cool.

Use a big pot and fill it with lots of water, add 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt. Let it get to a simmer.
Clean the few strawberries and quarter them.

Divide the dumpling dough in 12 parts. Press the dough flat in your palm and add 2 pieces strawberries and close the dough around. Roll it.

Cook them with a slight simmer for 12 min.

Make some roasted breadcrumbs with a pinch of cinnamon.

Crêpes with Gorgonzola Radicchio filling

I call the thin pancakes Crêpes like everyone else. But it is an Italian dish, you can call the pancakes Crespelle. The idea for this I found on Pinterest.

Leftover Gorgonzola from the dessert midweek needed an other purpose. A small chunk still sits in the fridge now, that will end up on pasta soon.

The crêpes needed a filling. Why not fill it with salad. I bought a small head of radicchio today and chopped it up. To give it a bit more flavour and texture, I added a chopped springonion.

recipe for the filling:
300 g Radicchio
35 mkl milk
1 spring onion
10 g butter
75 g Gorgonzola
30 g Parmesan cheese
pepper

Chop onion and radicchio and start the butter in a pan and add the onion, after 2 min the radicchio.
It will take a while for the salad to wilt down and get brown. Crank up the heat to get some of the water evaporated.
Add the milk and the Gorgonzola and let it melt, then the Parmesan cheese and season to taste.

Ready to bake 3 crépes:
75 g flour
1 large free range egg
1 pinch of salt#
150 ml milk
30 g butter

Make the batter and let it rest 20 min.
Brush the crepe pan or any other you have with a little butter. Let it get to temperature.
add 1/3 of the batter in the middle of the pan and swirl it around.
Wait until you see bubbles forming on top. Turn the crepe over. Bake all 3 and keep them covered and warm on a plate in the oven on low heat until the filling is ready.

Puff Pastry with savoury and sweet topping

I made 3 jars of red onion jam last week. Eating them with cheeses is one option, using them in a dessert is an other.

I saw Sarah Graham, South African food blogger and cookbook auther make this dish. It was the perfect last course for my Pintxos lunch.

It is pretty easy and just takes 10- 12 min in the oven.

Ingredients:
Puff PastryP
red onion jam
Peaches
Thyme
Gorgonzola
Balsamic vinegar

Stack everything except the balsamic vinegar

Put it in the oven at 220 C.

Pintxos - home cooked

Since my trip to the Basque Region in Spain and France I was Looking forward to prepare some of the tasty Pintxos at home. My friends were here today and we had a feast.

We prepared 5 pintxos and made a dip to eat with it. It is a lot of Mis en Place to do. One of us had to peel, chop and prepare all the ingredients. A lot of work, but the final preparation did not take that long.
Preparing each pintxo for the photo shoot took a bit more time.

We started with a simple one. Just a little tomato salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a toasted slice of pepper baguette topped with Serano ham and a fried quail egg.

With all pintxos we served a Gazpacho Dip.
recipe:
1 red bell pepper
1/2 yellow bell pepper
1/2 red Chili
1/3 cucumber
1/3 cantaloupe melon
3 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
3 slices Italian wheat bread without crust

Chuck it all into a blender and that´s it.

Next pintxo was with pan roasted fresh Chorizo on a bed of tomato salad and toasted bread.

300 g of white and brown button mushrooms were the topping for our next pieces of bread. Cutting them into tiny cubes was taking some time and a huge pile went into the pan to roast. After 10 min in a little olive oil there was just enough left for 4 pieces of baguette.
To make the bread more fancy, a slice of Serano ham was skewered and half a boiled quail egg was added.

Fish was a main ingredient in Basque cuisine. Pintxos with some kind seafood .
I bought a piece of cod
Rubbed with smoked paprika and some of my own pepper mix, the 3 pieces went in some olive oil.  It did not take long to finish them.
Roasted bread with a little goat cream cheese and some leafs of Japanese spinach.

The last pintxo was with warm goat cheese roll on caramelized onions and topped with sauteed yellow bell peppers.

Tuna in Tomato Sauce with Linguine

I was clearing out some leftovers from my fridge. Half a can of pizza tomatoes and half a jar of great tuna was sitting around. Usually tuna is not cooked in tomato sauce. I prefare it in some kind of light creamy sauce.

But a tomato sauce made from scratch with basic ingredients and the final adding of the tuna gave a wonderful sauce for my pasta.

Take a bit of time when you prepare the tomato sauce. Let it reduce about one third. That is a way to intensify the flavour. Then add the tuna and the fresh herbs.

Recipe:
250 ml pizza tomatoes
3 Spring onions
2 Cloves of garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp piment d' espelette
50 ml red wine
30 ml balsamic vinegar

Fresh herbs
Tuna
Pecorino,  if you like

Lunch Invitation

The day my stitches were pulled I was invited at my friends house for lunch to get the first taste of meat from their new smoker oven. Spareribs were on the menu for the day.

I was not sure how this smoker worked because it is a steel box that works with electricity. The smoker is indoors and just a fine smell of roasting meat was in the air. The temperature gauge was at 107 C and the meat stayed in for nearly 4 Hours.

As an Amuse Bouche with the rhubarb flavoured Prosecco came 3 different prepared quail eggs. Smoked and pickled.

The starter were oven baked thin White Asparagus with some Bacon and breadcrumbs topping. The main dish was next and the smell of smoked meat quadrupled the moment the door of the smoker opened.

Finger licking good it was!
As side dishes a pasta salad and some tzaziki came with it.

The dessert today was a small pastry filled with strawberry jam and ricotta. A strawberry compote on the side.

Chicken Wings with Coriander and Lime

I watch a lot of cooking shows in the moment and start to cook with both hands again.

I came across a dish from Adrian Richardson, an Australian Chef. He made chicken wings in his huge Pizza oven and they looked tasty. But I did not write any ingredients down. What I still remembered was a huge bunch of Fresh of coriander and some limes and chili.

It took a while until I bought free range chicken wings. They should be marinating for a while. I took some of my home made spice mix for chicken and mixed it with some olive oil.

My twist was a good heaped tablespoon of Hoi Sin Sauce.
The chopped coriander was mixed with lime juice, salt and pepper and Piment d´Espelette.
One red chili without the seeds went in the oven proof dish too.

recipe for 3:
12 organic chicken wings
1 heaped tbsp hoi sin Sauce
1 1/2 limes
1 large bunch coriander
1 red Chili
olive oil
salt and pepper
Piment d´Espelette

Bake it at 180 C fan for 40 min.