Borlotti Beans in Tomato Sauce with Pasta

Poor peoples food from Italy.

But I cheated and added some smoked sausages to the sauce.

These beans are creamy and nutty tasting and go very well with tomato sauce. Serving it as a Primo with Medio Rigatoni al bronzo.

But a tomato sauce based dish without a couple of veggies in is not the Italian way. You have a garden or a market somewhere in town, veggies are easy to bulk out any meal.

Recipe for 3:

1 can Borlotti beans

1 can crushed tomatoes

1 tsp vegetable stock paste

175 g smoked sausages

2 tbsp olive oil

50 g leek

50 g celery

2 green onions

3 garlic cloves

6 tiny red chili

2 stalks of majoram

Salt and pepper and smoked paprika

Grated Parmesan so much as you like

Chop all the veggies and drain the can of Borlotti beans.

Heat up the oil and sautee the veggies for 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add the sausage chunks and cook them for 3 more minutes. Chilis and majoram in.

Then in with the crushed tomatoes. Pour some water in the can to clean it and add it to the pot as well.

Veggie stock paste helps with the taste, as does the smoked paprika. Let that cook for 10 minutes or until the veggies are soft. The Borlotti beans only need to heat through in the sauce.

Finish the dish with a good helping of Parmesan and eat it with short pasta or Italian bread.

Beef Pares Filipino style

Served with garlic rice and beef broth.

I love a good beef goulash. Then I saw this recipe online and thought: that is a lot of work but worth to try it.

The pudding on the right was for my neighbor.

Preparing it in 2 days makes the work a lot better to handle. And the beef has time to rest over night before it gets its final touch. It will fall apart very easy then.

The garlic rice needs day old cold rice anyway. I used the rice to cook it.

Ingredients for the first day:

500 g beef goulash

2 tbsp oil

2 yellow onions

5 cloves of garlic

1 knob ginger

3 bay leaves

Lots of fresh ground black pepper

Salt

2 1/4 cup water

2 tbsp veg stock paste (optional)

2 rice cooker cups longgrain rice

Chop onions, garlic and ginger. Season the beef with salt and pepper. Brown it in oil on all sides, add the veggies and the bay leaves and pour water over. Add veg stock.

Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat and simmer for 95 min. Cool down.

Cook the rice and cool it down.

Ingredients for the second day:

4 tbsp dark soy sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

2 tbsp tomatopaste

1 tsp fresh ground 5 Spice powder (fennel, anis, cinnamon, clove, szechuan pepper)

2 tbsp brown sugar (liquid)

ground pepper

Rice:

6 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp oil

1 tbsp butter

3 tbsp light soy sauce

spring onion greens

Reheat the pot and add all upper the ingredients and cook for an other 40 minutes. During this time prepare the garlic rice. 

Many people serve this dish with a beef broth. I used a beef stock cube and chopped some leek and used the white of the spring onion and some pieces from the cooked beef.

 

Gâteau invisible aux Pommes

I had some small good looking juicy apples sitting on my counter. But they were on the side of juicy sour. I found the recipe from casseroleetchocolat.fr.

You will need a Mandoline for this job. The cake batter is more a pancake batter than a cake one. It is thin enough to coat the single apple slices. 

Handle them carefully when you stir them through the batter. They should not brake or mush to much.

I used a little lemon juice to prevent the apple slices from oxedizing.

Recipe for a 25 cm loaftin:

6 regular size apples or 7 small ones, peeled

Enough butter to fat the loaftin very good

3 eggs

30 g sunflower or grapeseed 

140 g whole milk

80 g sugar

10 g vanilla sugar

10 g baking powder

Pinch of salt

120 g flour

Lemon juice

Slice the apples on the mandoline very thin and put them in a bowl with some lemon juice.

Preheat the oven 180 C.

In a bowl mix eggs, oil, milk, sugar and vanilla sugar until frothy.

Add flour and baking powder and make a smooth batter. Fold in the apples.

Pour everything an a buttered loaftin and bake for 1 hour. Use a wooden skewer to check. If it is still runny, reduce the temp to 160 C and bake a bit more.

Let it cool down in the loaftin.

Trip to Fachwerkstube Cafe

About 30 km South from here is the city of Heppenheim. Located in the middle of the city with a huge public parking space in front of it lays the Cafe.

It is a half timbered old building with a mezzanine inside. It was fully booked and we were lucky that we had a reservation for 6 for weeks. A cozy place with great interior design old and new to fit the style of the house.

They have a small menu, but everything is freshly made. No convenience products. 

The portion sizes were good, many asked for the smaller senior citizen plates.

I had cold sausage salad with French fries. My friend had pork loin with Roesti.

National Hot Chocolate Day

I have never heard if this day before today, January 31. That hot chocolate is been celebrated.

But I have a couple of single pieces of chocolates laying around that I wont eat, so what is better then to make a hot chocolate with them.

I akways start with some water in the pot. All kinds of chocolate pieces and a good amount of cocoa powder is going in. 

Since I used flavoured milk chocolate pieces, they were sweet enough that I did not add any sugar to the pot. Bring to a boil and wait until the chocolate pieces are melted. Stir with a whisk to prevent from burning.

Add milk and bring back to a boil. Fill in mugs, cover with cream and tiny marshmallows.

Ingredients:

175 ml water

100 g mixed chocolate pieces

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa

350 ml whole milk

Double cream

Minimarshmallows

Mushroom Cream Pork Goulash

I haven't had creamy pork goulash in a long time. 

Not sure what to cook, I walked through the supermarket and picked up a punnet of brown button mushrooms. OK, a dish with mushrooms was the way to go.

At the fresh meat section I looked in and was not getting an idea. Then I found some pork goulash that had a red sticker on top. Only good for today and 50% off. Fight foodwaste.

The goulash with mushrooms was the dish of the day. Some longlasting double cream needed to go too. Perfect choice.

Recipe for 3:

500 g pork goulash

3 medium yellow onions

3 garlic cloves

1 bay leaf

2 tbsp oil

3 tsp flour

400 ml beef stock

125 ml veg stock

3 majoram stalks

salt, pepper, smoked paparika, sweet paprika, thyme

250 g brown button mushrooms

200 ml double cream

Salt the pork and brown it in oil. Add chopped onions and garlic and give it 3 more minutes.

Add seasoning and flour and stir well. Pour in the stock and add the chopped mushrooms and bay leaf. Bring to a boil, cover and cook for 85 min on medium heat.

Serve with short pasta.

AirFryer Broccoli Asian style with Shin Ramyun

I pimped my Shin Ramyun Spicy Chicken to be cheesy and creamy and topped them with the airfried broccoli florets.

The broccoli was my first part of the dish. I wanted to give this Asian style florets a go. But what to eat it with? I choose a very easy way to combine the broccoli with some other Asian food: Instant Noodles.

Shin Ramyun are now available in many supermarkets here. It is no longer neccessary to drive to an Asian market. I bought two different kinds last time I saw them. 

Recipe:

500 g broccoli

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp light soy sauce

Onion powder, garlic powder, chili flakes

Toasted sesame seeds

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1 package Shin Ramyun spicy Chicken 

1 egg yolk

2 tbsp kewpie mayo

30 g grated mozzarella

Sencho pepper

Cut off the florets and wash them. In a bowl combine the upper ingredients, except the sesame seeds. Coat the florets well and dump them in the airfryer.

At 200 C for 8 to 12 min, shake after 5 min. Sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Cook the Ramyun in 500 ml water with the dry stuff for 4 min. Add spicy soup powder. In an Asian serving bowl mix egg yolk, mayo, cheese and sesaning and pour the noodles in.

Put the broccoli on top.