Bubble Waffles

I am working from home. Just this week shops opened again. But only limited access. I am still on the social distancing track and only go out for the bare necessities.

That means time to look at offers on the Internet.

I needed to shop some face masks. It is the law from this Monday to cover mouth and nose when riding public transport or go shopping. I can't sew and I needed to buy some masks. Other things are offered during the search. Kitchen gadget popped up.

One of the gadgets was a waffle iron. For the trendy HongKong bubble waffles.

Recipe for 3 waffles:
125 g flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
60 g soft butter
35 g sugar
2 eggs
110 ml milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Sift the dry ingredients together in a bowl.
In a second one beat softened butter with sugar to a cream, add eggs one after the other, beating in between. Add vanilla extract.
Now in with the dry ingredients. Beat together.
Now loosen it with the milk.
Let the batter rest for 20 min.

Grease the waffle iron when heated and put just enough batter in to fill up the bubble holes. First time I overfilled and the batter run out. What a mess.
After 3 min turn the waffle iron on the other side and bake 2 min more.

Spaghetti Carbonara

The Italian classic. Well but still my way.

After work I was hungry. Before cooking I watched Chef Stefan Marquard @ home ungeschminkt und ungeschnitten.

Over the last couple of weeks in lockdown he cooked from his kitchen at home and his son filmed the videos for YT. Very easy adeptable recipes with good quality ingredients. My kind of cooking.

He has a special style that is unique his own. Hairy Biker style. He is a Chef with a background as a butcher. He knows his meat!

He cooks all kinds of pasta in very little water, just a slice of fresh ginger and some salt added. Today I cooked 250 g of spaghetti in 500 ml of water. Because I needed water for the carbonara later. But you can cook 500 g of spaghetti or any other pasta in 250 ml of water. Bring to a boil, put the pasta in completely. It takes a short time for spaghetti to get in. Then close the lid and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Cook until al dente.
AMAZING

Recipe for 2:
250 g spaghetti
2 slices of ginger
2 egg yolks
1 egg
120 g bacon or Guanciale
40 g pecorino
Olive oil
Parsley

The bacon goes in the pan in a bit of olive oil. Just on medium high heat. It should not get crispy.
Beat the egg with the egg yolk with some pepper and grate most of the pecorino in.
When the pasta us done, use some of the cooking water to loosen the egg cheese mix. Stir very well, otherwise you will fet scrambled eggs.
Take the spaghetti with tongs from the pot into the pan with some starchy water.
Get the pan off the heat and pour the mix on top. Toss it well and get it back on the stirring constantly.
Serve with some parsley and more cheese on top.

Pineapple fried Rice - Parrot

I am watching Mikey Chen on YT on "Strictly Dumpling" or on "Mikey Chen" for a long time now. Travelling the world and eating great food, that is all about his videos.
Now stuck in Seattle in his apartment, he restarted his cooking videos. There are some older ones. I have made a couple of his recipes already.

The newest one- which was a reload - was fried rice with pineapple. That was served in the hollowed out fruit and a kind of pineapple "head" like a parrot was attached to it.

Carrots, bell pepper, spring onion, garlic, eggs and tinned meat was in the cupboards. A cup of rice was cooked last night. The only thing to buy was a fresh pineapple. That went into my grocery shopping cart yesterday morning.

I love the combination of savoury and sweet stuff. Pineapple on a pizza is something I eat sometimes. Not my favourite kind, but in the right mood a good choice.

As in all Asian dishes, the mis en place work is the most. Cooking the dish later is quick work.

recipe for 2:
1 large pineapple = 1 1/2 cups of fruit
2 cups of cooked cold rice (1 rice cooker cup raw rice)
2 eggs
200 g Tulip pork meat from a can or SPAM
1 spring onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp brown sugar
1 carrot
1 red bell pepper
1 tsp chicken stock powder
pepper
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 tsp darl soy sauce
2 tsp Chinese cooking wine
1 tsp oyster sauce
rapeseed oil
2 red peppercorns
2 toothpicks

Use a pineapple corer or a knife and a grapefruit set. Take 4 cm off the top and put it aside.
Get the flesh out of the pineapple and enjoy the juice.
Chop 1 1/2 cups of flesh.

Chop the spring onion and keep white and green parts separat. Chop the garlic.
Take 4 cm off the top of the carrot and save that for later. Cut the carrot into fine cubes.
Peel the red bell pepper with a speed peeler, take out the core and cut it into fine cubes too.

Get the meat out of the can and use only halve of it. Cut into 1,5 cm cubes. Toss in the brown sugar.
Beat the eggs and season with a little salt and pepper.

Now that the prep time is done, start a large frying pan with a little oil.
Toss in the eggs and use a spatula to stir them well until they just come together. Get the egg out of the pan.
Now in with the sugary meat. It should take on some color, that will take some time. Take cared, that all cubes hit the bottom on the pan. When they are browned, get them out of the pan.

In with a little more oil. Now in with white of onion and garlic. After 2 min, in with carrot and pepper cubes. That will take a couple of minutes.
Next following the pineapple.
Let that cook through. Add the cold rice and break it apart.in the pan.
Season with chicken stock powder and the Chinese sauces.

Last are the meat and the eggs. Stir them in well and let them reheat. Sprinkle the onion greens on top.
Now you are ready to serve. Let the fun start.

Fill some of the fried rice into the pineapple.
Take a knife and cut the lid of the pineapple into a cone shape.
Cut the end off the carrot and halve it diagonal. Shape one piece into a beak.
Use a bit of toothpick and stick the carrot to the cone.
With a knife make to holes and put red peppercorns as eyes in.
Stick the head to the body of the pineapple and make some pictures.

Shakshuka

When you work from home, this is an easy dish to prepare for lunch. Not much prep time and then its cooking on its own. Only when you set the eggs in, keep watch that they do not cook through.

When you watch reports for kitchens in Israel, Shakshuka is a staple there. Eaten for breakfast or lunch. Just put the pan on the table with some bread. People can tuck in. No plates not much to clean.

A box of tomatoes is cleaned and chopped in no time. Get the seeds out of a red pepper and peel some onion and garlic. Get all this in a pan an let it cook until mushy.
Cumin is a good spice to season it. Do not forget a good amount of salt and pepper and a little sugar to balance out the tomatoes.

Make 3 wells in the pan and crack 3 eggs in. Close the lid and 3 or 4 min later you are ready to eat.

I only added a bit of creamy feta, that was left over.

ingredients for 1:
250 g cherry tomatoes
1 red long pepper
1 spring onion
1 clove of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp water
salt and pepper and sugar
paprika powder
chili
parsley
3 eggs
feta

Corned Beef Hash with Potatoes and Beet Root - Labskaus

Labskaus is something people bring together with Hamburg. It is a traditional dish there.

Originally it was food served on sail ships. Food that lasted long and did not spoil. You can find variations of this dish all over the North and Scandinavia.

It is not very often served. Because not many people trust the cook. When a blender is used, the dish resembles something that served in nursing homes when people can´t swallow food easily. Or it just looks like cat food.

That is the reason I only used a potato masher and chopped most of the ingredients with a knife.

Made with salted beef that was cooked and then pushed through a meat grinder. But the ones you will get in Hamburg are made with canned corned beef. This is sold in this special cans with the tiny key to run around the bottom of the can to open it.

The other ingredients are pretty simple: potatoes, gherkins, onion, beet root and fried egg.

DO NOT forget the very special thing that this dish is served with: rolled filled pickled herring

recipe for 3:
400 g potatoes
350 g corned beef can
300 g beet root pre cooked
200 g gherkins
150 ml gherkins water
1 small onion
1 tsp rapeseed oil
pepper
3 rolled filled pickled herrings
3 fried eggs

Peel the potatoes and boil them until done, drain and use a potato masher to press them.
Peel and cut the onion very fine.
Open the can of corned beef and chop it.

Finely chop up 250 g beet root and 175 g gherkins with a knife. Save the beet juice for later.

In a larger pan fry off the onions and add the corned beef. It should not fry, so in with the gherkin juice and beet juice and cook the meat. Add the chopped veggies and stir well. The color will change to pink. Season with pepper.
Now use a masher and add the mashed up potatoes and mash some more.
In a second pan fry off the eggs.
Open the jar of herring and cut slices from the whole beet root and serve a gherkin to the side too.
Add the

Asparagus and Freekeh with Cream Cheese

Risotto with asparagus is so everyday.

Some other kind of grain would be nice to be the base of a dish like that. I checked all the different grains that are in jars, tupperware or metal tins. To find the right one is like a game of Memory cards, you play as a kid.

When I buy grains here, they are either in paper bags or flimsy plastic ones. Some come in cardboard boxes. You take a bit out, then rest spills everywhere.  To avoid loosing most of them, I grab some kind of container. A month later the fun starts!

The grains you will find in this household are 12 to 15 different kinds of rice, oats, barley, quinoa, couscous, boulgour, fregola, freekeh, semolina douro, semolina, polenta and buckwheat.

Checking out the grains left me with a cardboard box of Freekeh. Produced in the Be´kaa Valley in Lebanon. This is so delicious. The wheat is harvested when it is still green, dried and roasted. The nutty flavour comes through.

I made it 125 g freekeh with 250 ml chicken stock. Cooking time is a bit longer then risotto. It needs about 25-30 min.

recipe for 2- 3:
125 g freekeh
250 ml chicken stock
1 spring onion
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
pepper
250 g green asparagus
3 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp butter
salt and pepper

Chop spring onion and garlic and start it in a pot with oil. After 3 min, add the washed freekeh and coat it well with the onions. Add the stock, bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and cook around 25 min.

Clean the asparagus and chop off the tips. Cut the stalks in 1 cm pieces, toss them in butter in a small pan and season them. Cook until tender, but still a good bite. Take them out of the pan.
In the same pan in more butter cook the tips and season them.

When the freekeh is done, stir in the stalks and the cream cheese. Set on plates and garnish with the asparagus tips.

Chicken Thighs and Vegetable Bake

More cooking when you work from home. Here in Germany we created a new word for that: HOMEOFFICE

Each and every neighbor is working from home in this times. Taking care of children since day care and schools are closed. This is called HOMESCHOOLING

Many Chefs are on YT or on TV having cooking series to create easy meals to teach people at home. I love this shows, they are so down to earth, no fancy stuff.

Last week I saw this preparation method on YT.Use basic ingredients you shopped once ir twice during the week and toss all of this in the oven. Not much hassle and pretty tasty food.

Since I made Shakshuka yesterday for lunch, I used up all my tomatoes, but one long red pepper was left. Combined with a courgette and some spring onions, it made a nice vegetable side.

Not many dirty dishes. Just an oven proof dish.
A chopping board, a knife and a spoon. Serve it on s plate.

4 chicken thights on the bone
Salt and pepper
Grilled Masala
1 Medium Courgette
1 Long red pepper
2 Spring onions
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tsp sugar and salt
1/2 Tsp Trader Joe's Mushroom

Heat up the oven at 180C fan

Season the chicken thighs.
Chop the veggies and season with the other stuff.
Bake for 35 min.

Ricotta and Courgette Sauce with Pasta

Conchiglioni giganti were the pasta I used for this creamy sauce. Shaped like large shells, they could take some of the sauce in as a filling.

When you like it more fancy, make the sauce less fluid and spoon it into the individuell shells. But when mixing the sauce with the pasts, the shells took a lot of the sauce in automatically.

On a pasta plate, the large pasta shells look impressive. The cookjng time on the package said 8 -10 min. I took one shell out and cut it in halves. It was hard and there was a large white strip in the middle of the shell. When you are going to fill them and bake them again, this will be the right moment to get them out of the water.
I cooked them 3 min more.

The sauce:
1 small courgette
125 g ricotta
1 spring onion
3 cloves of garlic
100 ml double cream
1 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
Dried thyme
Piment d' Espelette
2 tbsp Noilly Prat
1 tbsp Parmesan cheese
160 g pasta shells

Grate the courgette. Chop spring onion and garlic. Saute in olive oil sns season.
Add the Noilly Prat and let it reduce.
Now in with ricotta and 3 tbsp pasta water.
Add the cream, as much as is needed for a thick sauce.


Mix with the pasta and grate some Parmesan.

Puff Pastry with Spinach and Ricotta

Leftover ricotta and courgette asked for a recipe. The only fresh thing I bought in the morning was the bag of baby spinach. Be lazy and take some frozen spinach leaves. No one will see a difference.  Fresh harvested spinach frozen in the factory immediately has more nutrients then the one that is sitting around in the veggie shelves at the store.

Recipe for 3:
1 fresh puff pastry package
200 g baby spinach
1 small bit of courgette
125 g ricotta
2 tbsp grated Cheddar
1 spring onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 tsp olive oil
Nutmeg
Salt and pepper
1 egg
1 tsp Baharat
1 tsp grilled masala
Some drops Tabasco sauce
Sesame seeds

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Wash the spinach and put it wet into a hot pan. Let it wilt and pour into a colander. Press out the water and chop.

In the same pan in oil fry off tiny courgette cubes, onion bits and garlic. Season with Baharat and salt.
Put into a bowl with the spinach. Add ricotta and Cheddar and season with grilled masala, salt and pepper and a bit of Tabasco.

Cut the puff pastry into 3 equal parts. Brush egg wash around the sides. Put a third of the filling on one side and flip the other over.
Brush the top with egg wash too and sprinkle some sesame seeds.
Bake for 18 to 20 min.

Dandelion and Daisy Honey

It is not real honey, but an extract from flowers.

In the old times the flowers were collected and made into a spread. Honey was too expensive for many people.

Next weekend our garden will finally see the lawn mower. Many daisies are showing their blooms. Dandelions ard not so much this year. But the neighbors helped out and were lucky to get rid of them.

It is a bit time consuming to prepare this honey. First is collecting the flowers, you will need 4 hands full of them. 2 hands full of dandelions and 2 hands full of daisies.
It is important to get the green part off the dandelion flowers. That will prevent that the liquid gets too bitter. Do not worry with the daisies.

Recipe for 5 jars:
2 hands full of dandelions
2 hands full of daisies
1 organic lemon
1 litre water
1 kg sugar

Give the flowers a quick wash, then rip off the green part of the dandelions.
Cut up the lemon and toss it with both flowers and 1 litre of water in a pot. Bring it up a boil, cut off the heat and let it sit covered over night.

Do not worry when you open the lid next day. The liquid will be darker. The more dandelions you use, the darker it will get. Drain the liquid off to use and clean the pot for the cooking again.
Add the sugar and bring to a boil. When it wells up, reduce the heat on low and cook for 3 to 4 hours. That depends how fast the syrup congels.

Put it into clean jars.

When you use mostly dandelion, it is a good cough medicine.

Pork Loin with Tropic Fruits

This recipe is so early 70s!

That time canned pineapple and other exotic fruits reached Germany. Not many were able to travel to these far away countries. Only at special fruit shops or around Christmas times you were getting fresh pineapples. But they were so expensive. Mangos came a lot later. A dessert with canned fruits was always welcome.

The typical fruit cocktail in cans was the thing to go to. When you get a bowl of this fruit cocktail today for dessert, many people do not eat it, because we all know the taste of the freshly available fruits. But these cans still have their place on the shelves. And during Corona times, people stocked up on them too. They were all gone in the first weeks of March.

recipe for 2:
350 g pork loin
clarified butter
salt and pepper
flour
1 small can pineapple rings
1 medium can apricots
1 medium can tropic fruit cocktail (pineapple, guava, banana,mango)
1 cup Jasmine rice

Cut the pork loin after taking off the thin white skin into 3 cm thick pieces. Flatten them with your hand. Season with salt and pepper and coat with flour.
Start the Jasmine rice.

Open the cans and take the fruits out without too much liquid.

Use two pans and melt the clarified butter in and bring up to medium high heat.
In one pan start the pork loin pieces. When they take color on one side, then start the other pan with
the fruits. Season them with salt and pepper too. Let them get some caramelization. Turn down the heat and do not overcook them.

Bring everything together. When you are a fan of meat with some sweet fruit, this is a dish to try.


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