Porkneck Steaks on Onion Bed Oven baked

It is always a surprise what kind of recipes you will find on the Internet. One ingredient on the search list and then you have most of the time a plethora of choices. The difficult time is to choose one.

This one caught my eye. It was from " schmackhaft.tv". A short video clip. The listed ingredients sounded as if someone was stacking a burger.

Normally I would pan fry the pork neck steaks, but this is a lot easier. Only a bit of work to peel an amount of onions and garlic. Everything is cut in strips.

Spray some oil on the baking sheet and put the strips on top. Pat the porkneck steaks dry and season them with salt and pepper. Place them on the onions.

With a teaspoon spread whole grain mustard on the top of the meat. Cut some cornichons or small dill gherkins and lay some on each one.

Use grated Emmenthal to top that and as a final some mayo.

Bake at 180 C fan for 30 min.

Ingredients:

4 medium red onions

3 shallots

3 garlic cloves

Oil for the pan

4 porkneck steaks

3 gherkins

80 g Emmenthal cheese

Mayo for topping

Salt and pepper

4 tsp wholegrain mustard

 

Sweet Potatoes with Lemon Butter Japanese style

This is an adaptation of a Japanese recipe. The type of sweet potato used there is not available here.

The recipe is by "Kantan Food by Satoshi". He is a part of the YT channel TabiEats = travel & food.

Fall season is the reason for this dish. It is easy, but a little time consuming. 

His recipe used a 400 g purple outside and white inside sweet potato. I went for 2 smaller orange ones. They are the classic you can get here in every supermarket.

Scrub them, top and tail them and cut them in 2,5 cm or 1 inch pieces. Let them sit in a bowl of water for 10 minutes to get out some starch. Rinse them.

Use a pot or a pan wide enough that all pieces can sit there side by side, without overlapping. Pour 250 ml water with 2 tbsp Sake, 2 tbsp Mirin, 2 tsp sugar, 1/3 tsp salt in. Bring to a boil, cover and cook until forktender. About 10 mintes.

Drain and rest them on a wire rack to dry. 

In a wide pan melt 15 g butter and place the sweet potato chunks in. Let them take color on medium high heat from both sides.

While they are cooking make the sauce. Warm 1 1/2 tbsp of water with 1 tsp lemon juice and 2 tsp honey. That way the honey easy dissolves. Pour it over the now baked sweet potatoes and reduce the heat and let that coat them. Season with some pepper.

Get them on a plate and sprinkle sesame seeds on top.

Ground Beef Sauce with Tortellini

The amount of ground beef I had used for the filling of the Puff Pastry was just half of what I cooked.

A second dish was the answer to use up the other half. The easiest would have been a tomato sauce to dump the beef in. But my tortellini were filled with a tomato and ricotta filling. 

There own flavour would have dissappeared in a bolognese sauce.

I prepared a beef sauce with the help of a beef stock jelly cube and cooked the tortellini in beef broth. The broth with the starch from the cooked pasta was the base. In it I dissolved the stock jelly and added the cooked beef to it to reheat that.

The tortellini went in last. A bowl of lettuce on the side made it a nice meal.

 

Sweet Corn Buttermilk Bread

My BFF send me two pages of recipes she found in a magazine issue. The first one was this recipe.

It is Sunday today and I wanted to spend time in the kitchen. I need new vegetable stock paste for the Winter months.

Mostly all ingredients were at home, but buttermilk was missing. No problem for me, just 250 ml whole milk and 1 tbsp lemon juice and 15 minutes time= buttermilk.

The only thing I had a problem with was the written size of the loaftin (20×10×8 cm). I looked at the ingredients and thought: no way that will fit. The 25×12×10cm) was full to the rim.

Recipe:

185 g flour

Pinch of salt

170 g Polenta

1/2 tsp baking powder

120 g sour cream

250 g buttermilk

2 tbsp honey

2 eggs

110 g melted butter

450 g canned sweet corn

2 shallots chopped

2 tbsp fresh chopped herbs ( they use coriander)

20 g pecorino grated

1 tsp crushed coriander seeds

You need 2 bigger bowls and a small one for melting the butter and a large spoon and whisk.

Use baking paper to line the loaftin. Let an inch stand over.

Preheat the oven to 160 C.

In one bowl stir together flour, salt, polenta and baking powder. In the other all the wet ingredients and fold in the melted butter last. Bring both together.

Seperate 300 g of sweet corn. Add this with shallots and herbs to the batter. Stir well. Transfer it to the loaftin.

The 150 g sweet corn gets combined with cheese and crushed coriander seeds and is put on top and pressed in a little.

Bake for 75 min. Let it cool in the loaftin for 30 min before placing it on a wire rack. That prevents that it rips.

Serve the bread with avocado and chili sauce.

Red Lentil Bolognese

A fine recipe from a healthy cooking class, but don't look down on it - it is very tasty.

A couple of recipes I brought back from this class. I am looking forward to cook even more recipes like that in the future.

Cooking classes are always a bit chaotic. The skill level is never on the same step and that makes it funny. You have to look for someone who takes the lead and tell the others what they have to do, otherwise you will never finish the dish.

The other problem is cooking in a regular kitchen with one stove and a sink in the corner, but 2 groups cooking at the same time. 4 pots boiling at the same time. Getting all the ingredients in the right dish is a challenge too.

But we managed in the end and all the food was good.

Recipe for 2:

100 g red lentils, washed

2 red onions

1 garlic clove

100 g celery

250 g carrots

400 ml can chopped tomatoes

1/4 chili

3 tsp tomato paste

1 tbsp olive oil

200 ml vegetable stock

Salt, pepper, fresh oregano, basil, parsley

Serve it with 120 g pasta like whole grain

Chop the veggies first. Heat up the oil in a bigger pot and start the onions and garlic. Then add the other veggies. They need a couple of minutes to soften.

Add the tomato paste and roast it for 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. The veg stock goes in next together with the lentils and canned tomatoes and the herbs.

Let it cook for 20 minutes. 

Cook pasta and add some parsley to the stew.

Puff Pastry filled with Beef and Beet Leaves

Nothing too complicated here.

I had a box of ground beef that needed to go, but did not have time to cook a dish with it. The easiest way was to put it in a pan to crumble and brown it. During that time an onion and garlic was peeled and chopped.

Just basic seasoning and everything went in a storage box and later in the fridge for the next day.

I was out on the balcony looking for my beets I had planted. They were tiny, but had a bunch of beautiful leaves. I used them as the vegetable side in this pastry.

What goes well with meat? Mustard. I draw an imaginare line in the middle of the rectangular puff pastry sheet and spread the mustard on one side.

The cooked beef went on the other, then the chopped beet leaves. A good amount of seasoning on top and then the second part of the pastry sheet foldet over. The seames pressed together. A cross cut in the middle, please.

I thought about adding cheese, but the filling was high enough.

I used some creme fraiche to brush the top of the pastry and sprinkled sesame on top.

Baked at 200 C fan for 25 min.

Ingredients:

400 g ground beef (200 g of it cooked later for the filling)

1 red onion

3 garlic cloves

1 tbsp olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 rectangular puff pastry

2 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 bunch of red beet leaves

2 stalks fresh majoram

Salt and pepper, smoked paprika

3 tbsp creme fraiche 

Sesame seeds

Espresso Cream and Blueberry Dessert

A little bit healthy dessert, but nobody will tell because it is tasty.

Desserts in glass jars not only look pleasing, they are easy to prepare and can be made short before guests arrive. Stick them in the fridge for 30 minutes and they are ready to serve.

The dessert has a couple of layers. But first you need two double espressi for the start.

The cookies crumbled at the bottom are whole grain. Crush them, but not too fine and pour the one shot of espresso on top. Divide them in 6 glass jars.

In a big bowl mix 400 g Greek yogurt with 250g curd, 2 tsp vanilla sugar and 1 tsp sugar. Put that mixture on top of the cookies.

In the same bowl add 150 g Greek yogurt and  50 g curd with 1 tsp sugar and the other espresso. Put that on top of the other layer.

Wash the blueberries and drop them on top.

Ingredients:

8 whole grain cookies

2 Double shot espresso

550 g Greek yogurt

300 g curd

1 heaped tbsp sugar

2 tsp vanilla sugar

125 g blueberries