White Wine Cake

I was looking for a cake recipe for Easter. But most recipes were for carrot cakes.

Since I have eaten the last piece of mine 2 days ago, carrot cake was not my choice. The next most featured cake was with Advoocat, the thick egg liqueur. Not my choice either.

Sitting around thinking what easy to prepare cake there is, Red Wine Cake came to my mind. But it is a wintery type of cake with spices and chocolate combined with red wine. 

But that put up the question: is there a white wine cake? Google helped and a couple of recipes popped up. I used the one from "Zimtblume".

Recipe for a bundt cake tin:

300 g flour

4 eggs

200 g sugar

2 1/2 tsp baking powder

2 tsp vanilla sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1 lemon zest and juice

150 ml white wine - not a dry one

120 g sunflower oil

Butter and breadcrumbs for the tin

Frosting:

100 g icing sugar 3 - 4 tbsp wine

chopped pistacchios and rose petals

Preheat the oven 180 C.

In a big bowl put in sugar, vanilla sugar and eggs and just use a whisk to combine it. No machinery needed.

Add zest and juice of the lemon and all the dry ingredients. Just stir it in.

Now wine and oil and the batter is ready.

Butter the bundt tin very well and toss some breadcrumbs around for coating. Fill in the batter and put it in the oven.

Baking time 45 to 50 min. Use a wooden skewer to check. Cool for 10 min in the tin, then turn it out on a wire rack. Cool down completely.

Mix the frosting and pour it over. Add the decor.

Vol-en-Vent with Rice Belgian style

I bought a jar of Vol-en-Vent at Hypermarché Carefour in Malmedy, Belgium. Looked like an interesting kind of sauce with 30% chicken in.

At home I went to the supermarket and got some chicken tenders to add to the sauce.  

This dish usually is served in a bigger puff pastry shell. It is a French classic like the Bouchées à la Reine. That one is served in single puff pastry cups and often cooked with veal.

I seasoned the chicken tenders and cut them in bite size chunks. A little oil in the pan and in they went. After 5 minutes I added some chopped spring onions. 

To get the chicken pieces done, a splash of Noilly Prat helped. Then the jar with the vol-en-vent went in. It only needed to be combined with the chicken and heated through.

Served with Basmati rice instead of puff pastry. A little parsley helps.

Mango Yogurt Easter Dessert

A bit of fun is great to serve as a dessert. This one is from "einfach backen".

I need two different ones over Easter, that is the first one. Not only yogurt, but curd and schmand and double cream are in the white layer. 

A fresh ripe mango with 2 tbsp of a fruit juice was pulsed. 

1/2 cream, 1/4 mango 1/4 cream. Stick some ladyfingers in as bunny ears, some sugar eyes, a piece of carrot for the nose and some sugar paint for the mouth.

All bigger supermarkets sell these stuff in their baking section.

Recipe:

150 g double cream

1/2 package cream stabilizer

1/2 package vanilla sugar

175 g curd 10% fat.(magerstufe)

50 g Schmand (sour cream mixed with creme fraiche)

85 g Greek yogurt

30 g sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon zest

1 ripe mango

2 tbsp fruit juice

4- 6 ladyfingers

Sugar decor for the bunny face

Feta and Vegetable Bake with Pappardelle

Short before Easter I wanted to get rid of some veggies from my fridge drawer. On the top shelve a small block of Feta caught my eye.

The dish for the day now was easy. Chuck all veggies in an ovenproof dish and drop the feta in. Seasoning and olive oil followed and then 30 min in the oven.

The Thermomix made a creamy sauce out of it.

Pappardelle are great to use when a thick sauce should stick to them. I cooked them in salted water and put them directly from the pot in the sauce. The pasta water made the sauce even creamier.

A good amount of grated Parmesan and some fresh parsley rounded up the dish.

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Ingredients for 2:

150 g Feta

2 bell peppers

2 celery stalks

2 green onions

4 garlic cloves

Green parts of a leek

10 cherry tomatoes

3 tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper, herbes de Provence

225 g Pappardelle pasta

Swiss style simple Sausage Sauce

I found this dish on a Swiss website. But it had even less ingredients. I pimped it a bit.

It is a cheap version of a Zurich speciality: Geschnetzeltes. But that is made from veal and mushrooms in a creamy sauce.

I wanted to use the leftover caramelized onions from my burger and looked for a bit of crunch in my dish. Pickled gherkins were the answer.

Instead of veal, I used the other slices of the Fleischkäse. The ones I used on my burger. Thin strips to be browned in some butter.

Vegetable stock, double cream and a bit of gherkin brine to cook it. The glazed onions worked well, as did the cubes of gherkins.

Lots of black pepper and some paprika as seasoning and a slurry to bind the sauce. I served it with little potato dumplings (store bought). Finished with fresh parsley.

Ingredients:

200 g Fleischkäse

1 tbsp butter

50 g caramelzed red onions

1- 2 pickled gherkins

150 ml vegstock from paste

100 ml double cream

1 tsp potato starch, 2 tbsp water

Pepper, paprika

Bavarian Burger

The Fleischkäse is a speciality here in Germany, but can be found in Austria and Switzerland too.

It is seasoned very fine sausage meat that is baked in a large dish in the oven. Later cut cold in slabs or sliced fine as deli meat on bread. The thicker slabs get panfried or microwaved and served inside a breadroll.

But this time I used smaller pieces instead of beef patties to put them in a burger bun.

But what is a German burger without sauerkraut and onions? Or mustard?

I ssuteed 2 red onions and used honey and balsamic vinegar for the taste. The bun was buttered and went in a pan to brown the inside. Then mustard went on the bottom, the first pattie, then onions and an other pattie, saurkraut onions and Sriracha Mayo.

I liked this kind of burger. Sweet, sour, meaty and a little spicy.

Belgian creamy Chicken Waterzooi

This is a Flemish special dish from Gent. I have eaten it at the buffet at the racetrack in Spa Francorchamps.

There was no sign at the buffet about the dishes. At home I checked the 10 most popular dishes from Belgium and found it.

It is a very hearty and easy to prepare dish. I was surprised that it tasted like the food I ate at Spa. The difference was the cutting technique of the veggies. 

The kitchen crew at the restaurant used Brunoise style aka tiny cubes of veggies. I used the more simple way of chopping everything a bit coarse. But that did not change the taste, just the texture.

Recipe for 2 - 3:

5 chicken thighs boneless

Chicken seasoning

1 onion, 1 spring onion, 3 garlic cloves

2 celery stalks

1/3 of a leek

2 carrots

Salt, pepper, paprika

1 tbsp olive oil

150 ml chicken stock

200 ml double cream

2 egg yolk

2 tsp potato starch + 2 tbsp water

Bunch fresh parsley

Season the chicken thighs on both sides. Heat up the oil and brown them on both sides 5 min each. Take them out.

Pour out some of the fat. Add all the veggies and season them. Put a lid on and reduce the heat and let them cook for 6 to 8 min.

Add chicken stock and cream and get the meat back in. Cook for 18 to 20 min. Get the pan off the heat and stir in the egg yolks. On low temperature cook them and then use a slurry to bind the sauce to the consistency you like.

Chop the parsley and stir it in.

This dish is traditionally eaten with potatoes, but I choose rice instead.