Frankfurt Green Herb Soup

Green herb sauce with eggs is a regional dish in Hesse. I made the sauce before. The idea to this dish was from "savory lens"

It shows the spring season when the herb packages shows up in the markets. Funny to say that these packages are only available in a small radius. I talked to a friend 300 km away, he is not able to buy these herb packages there.

But today was soup day for me. Yesterday CAR Friday or Good Friday with fish. 

Aside from checking and cleaning a huge package of 7 herbs and spinach (which is in there to bulk out the herbs, because this spring season is too cold for lots of herbs) the recipe is pretty easy. 

Peeling and cooking floury potatoes. Mixing clean herbs with double cream and boiling water for my veg stock paste, this is very simple.

Recipe for 2:

200 g 7 different fresh herbs (parsley, chives, garden burnet, chervil, sorrel, borage, cress)

500 g floury potatoes

250 g double cream

250 ml veg stock from paste

100 ml white wine

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, Piment d'Espelette

12 quail eggs

Sour cream

When the potatoes are soft, put them in a big bowl and mash them with a potato masher. Put 2/3 of the mixed herbs in and stir well.

Transfer it to a bigger pot, add stock, wine and the leftover cream. Season well and bring to a short boil. Take it off the heat.

Now add the 1/3 of the herb mix. That garanties that the soup stays green. Halve the quail eggs and place on top of soup in bowls. A bit of sour cream as an extra.

 

Easter Layer Dessert

It is a Dr.Oetker dessert with ready made red fruit compote - rote Grütze- from the pudding section of the supermarket and a Paradise cream package.

Just dump the powder in 300 ml whole milk and mix for 3 minutes.

Fill the base of 3 glass jars with 1/3 of the red fruits and top it with the cream.

Either serve it this way or make it an Easter themed dessert. I used store bought sugar eyes, a piece of carrot for the nose and some liquid sugar paste to write the mouth and whiskers.

I found chocolate rice crispy chips and used them as ears.

Pollock on Mustard Carrots

This is a fast oven baked fish dish. Only the carrots needed to cook for a couple of minutes in a pot.

It is a recipe from "koch jetzt.de". I wanted something easy and light. Just fish topped with gryêre on precooked carrot slices in a honey mustard sauce with lots of fresh dill.

No side dish done. But eat it with potatoes or rice if you want a complete meal. I skipped it, because my White Wine Cake was waiting later for me. 

Peel the carrots and and slice 0,5 cm discs. Heat up some salted water in a small pot and toss the carrots in. Cook them 7 to 8 min. Just taste one, they should still have some bite to it.

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

In a small bowl combine the sauce, add some dill and pour it over the cooked carrots in an ovenproof dish. Season the pollock and set it on top of the carrots and add more dill.

Grate the gryêre and mix it with breadcrumbs. Layer on top of the fish. Spray with olive oil and bake for 20 min.

Ingredients:

300 g pollock

Fish seasoning

1 tsp lemon juice

Dill

3-4 medium carrots

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp honey

1 tbsp Dijon mustard 

1 tsp white balsamic vinegar

Sakt, pepper

Dill

100 g Gryêre

30 g breadcrumbs

Olive oil spray

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