Biscoff Cream filled Apricot Dumplings

Served with vanilla sauce.

I've made this Austrian classic before, but in the traditional way. This time I used a shortcut and a very unusual filling of the apricots. The shortcut was the potato dough. 

We have 2 very good producers of ready to roll wet potato dumpling dough. You can choose between different dumpling styles. That makes life a lot easier and the chances that the dumplings fall apart during cooking due to the wrong kind of potatoes goes near 0.

The usual filling of the center of the apricot, after taking out the stone, is a cube of sugar that is sometimes dipped in Bailoni. That is an Austrian apricot liqueur. 

While looking for my sugar cubes in the farest corner of my cupboard, a jar of Biscoff cream fell in my hands. It has just a bit of cream left in it.

Why not change the flavour profile? I am not an Austrian and I like to make recipes my own way. A teaspoon Biscoff cream went in every apricot.

The potato dough wrapped around and formed to a closed ball. Make sure that there are no tiny holes in the ball. The cooking water will get in and the dumpling will split open.

To make sure the dumplings stay closed, a starch slurry is added to the cooking water. Depending on the dumpling size the simmering time will be 20 to 25 min?

While they simmer, I made the toasted breadcrumbs. A good amount of butter to brown them on medium high heat and to finish some cinnamon.

The dumplings get out of the water, shake off some of it and roll them in the breadcrumbs. Now they are ready to serve with custard.

Ingredients:

800 g ready made silk potato dumpling dough

5 apricots

5 tsp Biscoff cream

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp potato starch + 3 tbsp water

150 g breadcrumbs

50 g butter

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Vanilla custard

 

Asian Meatballs on Vermicelli Salad

Cold mungbean vermicelli to eat in this heat are great. They taste like nothing and invites you to get creative with them. But a little meat helps a lot too.

I went out early in the morning to the butcher to get the famous raw seasoned pork that most of us love to eat on a fresh breadroll with raw onions on top: Mettbrötchen

I used the seasoned pork to season it some more to resemble Asian taste and rolled it in small balls. The airfryer is the best option in this heat to cook them.

Lots of fresh veggies to go with the vermicelli and a good sauce.

Recipe for 2:

300 g sausage meat

1 spring onion

2 tsp garlic-ginger paste

Dried chili

2 tbsp light soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp Mirin

1 egg

100 g panko breadcrumbs

Parsley

Salad:

100 g mungbean vermicelli

1 carrot

1 red long pepper

1 spring onion

3 radishes

2 tbsp rice vinegar

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

2 tbsp grapeseed oil

1 tbsp Mirin

2 tbsp light soy sauce

3 tsp sesame seeds

Pepper, salt, chives

Airfry the meatballs 15 min at 180 C

Put boiling water over the vermicelli noodles and let them sit 6 to 8 min, then drain.

 

Apricot Crumb Cake or Streusel Cake

It is a 2×1×1  method cake : flour, sugar, butter.

Recipe for s 24 cm round loose bottom cake tin:

300 g flour

150 g sugar

150 g cold unsalted butter

Pinch of salt

2 tsp vanilla sugar

8 to 10 apricots

2 tsp runny honey

Cut the cold butter in small slices and put the ingredients down to the vanilla sugar in a bix bowl. 

You could blizz it in a foodprocessor, but I thought I use an old method. 

Since it is very hot here, I used for the combining the stuff together a potato masher, then my hands in the end. With hot hands the dough does not get sandy, but melting. Only the last few minutes it then was good. 

I buttered the baking dish and put 2/3 of the crumbs in and pressed it down and a bit up the sides.

Take the stones out of the apricots and quarter them. Place them skin down on the dough. Drizzle with honey.

 

Beef Soup Indonesian style

One of my spiceblends I brought back from the Netherlands called for either chicken or beef. I wanted to give beef a try.

During the heat dome weather here not many people go for beef soups. It was a problem to get a good beef shank. It took me two weeks to finally got one.

All other ingredients were easy to find in the veggie section of the supermarket. 

I cooked the beef stock the day before I wanted to eat the dish. It took 1:40 minutes cooking time. The beef was super good after that time. I filtered the stock and cut the beef shank in small pieces. Both went in the fridge over night.

The next morning I cooked my potatoes and chopped leek, celery and green onion. 

Recipe for 4:

Stock:

600 g beef shank

1,5 liters of water

1 carrot, green from a leek, leaves off the celery, 2 garlic cloves, 2 dried chilis, 1 bay leaf

Salt and pepper

Dish:

1,2 liter stock

Beef cubed

1 Soto Ayam spiceblend

4 hardboiled eggs

1 tbsp oil

4 medium potatoes

150 g leek

75 g celery

1 green onion

Salt and pepper

4 tbsp crunchy fried onions

In a large pot heat up the oil and sautee the green veggies for 5 min. Add the paste and give it a good stir.

Pour in the stock and bring to a boil and cook until the veggies are soft. 

Now in with cooked potatoes and beef and heat it through. Just takes 5 minutes. Check seasoning.

Peel the eggs and get the plates ready. Sprinkle with fried onions.

Tunafish Egg High Protein Spread

Our large food producers lable everything and more "high protein" nowadays. 

They have found a new way to make extra money with a lable like that. For years it was "vegan", even on products you don't eat like shampoo, shower gel or cleaning stuff :-)

Most of the high protein products have protein anyway and nobody wanted them extra advertised.

This spread is from "Wolgadeutscher Koch" and he asked himself why people pay a lot of money for a little spread when a larger amount is easy and less expensive to make at home.

Recipe:

2 hard boiled eggs, mashed

1 can drained tunafish

150 g cottage cheese

1 small cucumber, choppef

2 tbsp fresh parsley

1 garlic clove or 2 tsp paste

Salt and pepper

Use a bigger bowl and a fork and start mashing the eggs, then the drained tuna.

Add cottage cheese and the cucumber dices and season and add parsley.

Give it a good mix and store in the fridge to spread on bread later.

Figs and Raisin Bread Bake with Tonka Bean

After a couple of days the endpart of my Luxembourg Raisin bread was getting hard. 

A combination with fresh fruits and some jam sounded like a good idea.

But first I had to soak the ripped apart raisin bread in milk to get it softer. Then I pulled a hand full of fresh harvested figs out of a bowl.

They were quartered and set aside. I buttered an oven proof dish and put the figs with the soaked bread in. 4 dollops of cherry jam as additional sweetener went on top.

More milk with 2 eggs, a vanilla sugar package and halve a Tonka bean grated on top. Mixed and poured over the filling.

Baked at 180 C fan for 30 minutes. Let it cool down for 15 minutes, then sprinkle powdered sugar on top.

 

Cucumber and Mortadella Salad

It sounds like an easy way to prepare a salad. But the amount of ingredients boggles the mind here.

This recipe is from a supermarket chain magazine issue EDEKA.

The cucumber is made in ribbons and they are salted and drained. The figs and radishes are sliced. The Burrata and Mortadella is set on top.

The dressing is made then and poured over.

Ingredients:

1 ball of burrata

8 slices Italian Mortadella

1 cucumber

3 radishes

4 figs

Pistacchios, chopped

Red peppercorns

2 tbsp Raspberry vinegar

4 tbsp Orange juice

3 tbsp Olive oil

Salt and pepper

4 mint leaves

Chives and Parsley