Pizza with Blue Cheese Medlar and Pear

This are not the only ingredients, but the dominant ones.

Walnuts, leek, more cheese and a base of creme fraiche mixed with pesto are part of the pizza topping too.

Yesterday afternoon I still had no idea what to cook on the Sunday. I had not bought stuff especially for it.

I took the Biscoff ice cream out of my freezer and behind it I found a frozen ball - pizza dough.

It went down in the fridge to defrosted until the next morning. Then I took the bag out to let it come back to roomtemperature and get soft.

I sprayed a sheetpan with olive oil and rolled out the dough later. A bit uneven, but who cares.

The leek needed a good wash because it was pretty sandy. Wet as the discs were, they went in a microwave tupperware for 3 min at 800 watts to get a bit soft. I let them sit in the closed tupperware afterwards for a couple of minutes more outside. 

Preheat the oven 240 C.

Mix creme fraiche and pesto and spread on top. Add fresh ground pepper. Layer the other ingredients and finish with the grated Emmenthal.

Bake for 10 to 12 min.

Recipe for 1 pie:

Homemade dough, about 320 g

3 tbsp creme fraiche + 1 tbsp pesto

100 g leek

1 pear

1 medlar

60 g blue cheese soft

8 walnuts

50 g Emmenthal cheese grated

Arnavut Cigeri or Turkish Chicken Liver

It is a recipe from the Bosporus area of Turkey. The recipe is from "Merceile".

A very fast dish to serve. The short pickled onions with the parsley are often found in dishes where kebap meat is on the menu. The meat is the star, not all kinds of sauces and lots of different veggies you will find in a German Döner Kebap.

Recipe for 2:

300 g chicken liver

2 heaped tbsp flour

1/4 tsp each of paparika, smoked paprika and green paprika

Salt and pepper

4 tbsp oil

1 red onion, 3 shallots

Salt, pepper, lemon juice

Lots of fresh parsley

I served mine with mashed potatoes, but piede or pilaw will do too.

Peel the onions and cut them in rings. Put in a bowl with salt and lemon juice and let them pickle for 20 min. Chop the parsley and add it.

Put flour in a freezer bag and all the paprikas and salt and pepper and drop the liver pieces in. Shake until they are coated.

Heat up the oil in a wide pan and place the livet in. Shake off excess flour before that. Cook 2,5 min on each side.

DO NOT OVERCOOK the liver. It should be pink in the middle.

Serve with the onion salad on top.

 

 

Somen Noodles with Bacon Topping

The somen get a little color from oyster sauce and a bit of tamari.

A quick dinner after a long day does not need to be fancyful. Just tasty.

Somen noodles are from Japan. They are very thin wheat noodles and they cook very fast. After draining them, they need to be washed under running cold water. That makes them bouncy.

I had a bacon package sitting in the fridge. It was over the expiration date for 2 weeks. But use your senses and look and smell, the bacon still was fine.

With a teaspoon of oil I rendered the fat from the bacon to get it crispy and added 3 chopped garlic cloves.

The fat stayed in the pan. Only bacon and garlic went on top of the somen noodles.

A mix of oyster and tamari soy sauce was added and some fresh chives.

 

Potato Salad with Ranch Dressing and Pork Steak

Homemade Ranch dressing does not last long in the fridge. There are no additives in to prolong shelf life.

I wanted to use up the last potatoes in my bag and looked for an easy way. Potato salad is ond of them.

No need to wait for cold potatoes, just cook them and add them to any other ingredients and sauce you like.

Warm potatoes soak up the dressing a lot better than cold ones, so do a little more dressing to keep the salad smooth.

From yesterdays Turkish white bean salad I had some grilled bell peppers left in the jar. Together with a spring onion and fresh parsley they were the best company for the potatoes.

I loosened the Ranch dressing with a little light vinegar and salt and pepper. No more enhancement needed.

Ingredients:

5 medium small potatoes

1 spring onion

2 grilled red bell peppers from a jar

3 stems fresh parsley

2 tbsp light white vinegar

1/4 cup Ranch dressing

Salt and pepper

I served the potato salad with Hong Kong Streetfood style Pork Neck Steak (recipe on the blog)

 

White Bean Salad or Bombay Fasulye Piyszı

A very tasty bean salad from Turkey and it is vegan.

My problem was where to get Bombay beans. The large Turkish supermarket did not had any and I asked one of the staff, but they could not help me.

The photo in the food magazine issue showed medium sized white beans. There was a variety to choose from.

All other ingredients were already at home. It is a good salad to take to a foodie gathering, not only vegans will like it.

Recipe for 3 :

1 can white medium size beans

1 green onion

3 soft dried tomatoes

3 roasted red bell peppers from a jar 

3 tbsp chopped parsley

1/2 lemon juiced

2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar

3 tsp tahin

3 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

Chop the green onion very fine and drain the beans. Cut up the dried tomatoes in tiny cubes and chop the bell peppers. Get everything together and check if there is enough lemon juice and salt added.

Serve as a side or with meat or just with piede.

Biscoff Ice Cream

Everything Biscoff (Lotus) is the new trend since last year. I found some ice cream in the supermarket freezer and had to give it a try.

There were 2 choices. Sandwiched ice cream between the famous cookies or on a stick like a Magnum. I choose the sandwich. 

4 tiny sandwiches in a package for €3,97.  They were good, but too sweet due to the 2 cookies.

Then I started my search on foodwebsites. The sandwich recipes popped up first. No big deal to make. But I looked further and found a regular ice cream with Biscoff.

Even easier to prepare.

Recipe for 6:

200 ml double cream

1 pack cream stabilizer

1 can sweetened condensed milk

100 g Biscoff cream - crunchy

5 biscuits and some for decoration

Warm up the Biscoff cream a little in the microwave. Beat the cream with the stabilizer to soft peaks.

Pour in the condensed milk and the Biscoff and fold that in. Crush the biscuits and add them. Fill in a large loaftin or in smaller containers, put a biscuit on top and freezer over night.

Sushi the lazy way

I cooked a larger amount of Japanese short grain rice and saved and treated it with salt, sugar and rice vinegar.

Later I thought about making onigiri or sushi rolls, but I was so lazy. On the Internet I watched some people combining all ingredients with the rice, wrap that in Noori or set it on top of Noori and called it a day.

I had to give that a try. But first a Japanese omelet, this time in a round pan. I wanted a flat one, not the pillow kind out of the small rectangular pan. Worked fine. It is a little sweet, I used Mirin to loosen the eggs a bit.

Then the ingredients were cut in small pieces and the tuna drained and loosened. The amount of soy sauce and Mirin to your preference.

Ingredients:

2 cups cooked Sushi rice

Salt, sugar, rice vinegar

1 can tuna fish

2 snack cucumbers

2 eggs

2 tbsp Mirin

1/2 cup Kewie mayo

Oil

Soy sauce

Sesame seeds

Noori sheets

Salt and pepper 

Wrap a ball in a piece of Noori or press it in a smaller bowl and upend it on a Noori.