Banana Pancakes with Blueberries

This are pancakes you usually eat with rashes of bacon and no blueberries, but I wanted them sweet without any pork.
It is good to make the batter an hour before you bake them, they get more fluffy this way. A splash of seltzer water or carbonated mineral water helps even more.

Recipe
270 g flour
2 egg
300 ml milk
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
30 g butter
1 pinch of salt
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 small or 1 large banana mashed

1 splash of carbonated water just before you pour batter in the pan

oil for the pan
fresh blueberries
Maple syrup

Store the ones you just baked in an oven at 50 C and stack the others on top. It will take a while until you have made all the batter into pancakes.
4 blueberries per pancake work fine.

pho a Viatnamese classic

I have not made this great tasty soup for a long time. But two large jars of great chicken stock are sitting in my fridge. They go as the base of soup very good.

To make it in a pho stock I had to add several ingredients and I bought sone salmon fillet on the way home. Important are the spices. Fresh ginger, lemon grass, chili and garlic and dried spices like star anise and cinnamon stick.
A half package of dash stock and soy sauce gives it the final umami taste.

Recipe:
150 g salmon
Lettuce
Spring onion
Mungo bean sprouts
Rice vermiceĺli
Chicken stock
2 cloves of garlic
1 knob ginger
1 red chili
1 stalk lemongrass
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
Dashi and soy sauce

Heat the stock with the spices.
Use boiling water for the vermicelli and let them sit in a bowl for 3 min. Drain.
In a big of oil sear the salmon.
Pack the solid ingredients in a bowl and pour the hit broth through a sieve on top.

I made cheese again

I have not made cheese in a longer time. During the hot summer days it does not work. Now it is cooler and I found the special cow milk at the large supermarket.

When you start making cheese you have to save two days for it. Then you have to follow a strict way to make the cheese. It will take 36 hours until it goes into the fridge and then it has to rest and get better and better then.

I wanted to try my hand at adding things to the cheese like a French Affineur. That is someone who buys regular good quality cheeses and gives them a special treatment or adds some other things to the cheese.
Since I am overflown by tomatoes right now, I picked super tiny ones and had them in a pan with some white balsamic vinegar and sugar and I put the tomatoes in  one of my 4 cheeses later.
The other one is filled with a line of dried summer herbs.

They are finished with different kinds of salt, the tomato filled one is finished with a blend of Kampot and Szichuan pepper.

Haianese Chicken Rice

A very popular dish in Singapore and Malaysia.
The guys from SortedFood made it on YT and it stuck to my brain for a while now.

Yesterday I bought a 2 kilo free range chicken and the first thought was Haianese Chicken Rice when I put it in my grocery basket. I went back to the veggie isle and bought the other stuff needed to the recipe. I changed a few things in the recipe.

It is a wonderful dish, but not so easy to prepare. It has a lot of steps and it takes a lot of time. I started at 9 AM on a Sunday and plated the food around noon. And you have a lot of mess and dishes on your hands later. But the up side is, you have about 2 liters of premium chicken stock left and some chicken meat for other dishes.

First you have to give the chicken a massage with salt to exfoliate the skin. Place it in a bowl and rub it down, then wash away the salt. You are looking for silky smooth skin in this dish and believe me, it gets that way.
Keep the bowl at hand for the ice bath after you cooked the chicken.

recipe:
1 large free range chicken
half a hand full of salt

1 leek
1 large onion
1 bunch of spring onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 pieces of gin
stalks of 1 bunch of coriander
pepper
2 button mushrooms

2 cups Thain rice
1 tbsp duck fat
1 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 pieces of ginger
3 cloves of garlic

50 ml soy sauce
50 ml water
1 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp sweet chili sauce

fresh mungo bean sprouts
1 tomato per person
coriander leaves

Peel and clean all the veggies and cut them roughly.
Set the chicken in a big pot with all the veg and add pepper and bay leaves.
Bring to a boil and after 10 min skim off the foam. On low heat let it cook for 50 min.
Fill the bowl with cold water and fill ice cubes or a freezer block into the water. Dump the chicken in strait from the pot. Let it cool down to room temperature.

Bring the soup back to a strong boil and reduce it for 30 minutes. After that you can salt the soup to your taste.

Let down the soy sauce with water and sugar in a pan, heat it up and set aside for later.
The bean sprouts need to be in boiling water for 30 seconds.
Use a small blender and put a little rapeseed oil with ginger and garlic in and make a paste.
Soak the washed rice for 15 min.

In a pot with a lid, start the paste and add the duck or chicken fat. Put the rice in and let it get coated all around. Add 4 cups of chicken soup and reduce the heat and let it sit for 10 min.

Be careful when you lift  the chicken out of the ice bath, do not destroy the lovely skin too much.
Cut it into pieces and let them sit on the rice bed. Drizzle with sauce and a bit of soup.
Serve with the bean sprouts and a tomato and coriander greens.

Mushroom Bagels Keto friendly

No bread to see here in this Bagels.

They are a wonderful starter to a meal, light and fresh and an eye catcher. I found the recipe in my newest French Gourmand magazine issue- this time they are calling all recipes "Salt Free".
The tomato quiche was also from this issue.

You have to buy some very large and fresh mushrooms and you need an apple corer and a serrated knife.

recipe for 4: 
4 large white champignons
2 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp Greek yogut
1/2 lemon
4 tbsp fresh herbs like parsley, chives and tarragon
1 knife tip of Dijon mustard
1 dash of Agave syrup
pepper

Get the stem out of the mushrooms and half them. Use the apple corer to make the hole in the top so it looks like a bagel.
Chop the leftover mushroom pieces and put them in a bowl with the other ingredients and mix well.
Use a good tablespoon of mixture to make the filling for each mushroom.
Serve and enjoy.

Quiche with cherry tomatoes

I have a lot of tiny tomatoes picked this morning and a handfull of cherry ones. I had a huge bowl of caprese salad last night but the plate with the tomatoes is not getting empty. I found the recipe in a French cooking magazine issue and had all ingredients on hand.

The quiches on the photo was made in individual small bakings tins, but I found my long rectangular one while I was looking for the others in my huge plastic baking dish storage container. It looks good serving it in such a form.

recipe:
1 ready made short crust pastry
little tomatoes
2 large eggs
50 g grated Emmenthaler
250 g curd
1 tsp Pul Biber or any other chili fleakes
pepper and salt
1/2 bunch of chives
1/4 tsp fresh thyme

Heat up the oven to 180 C
Butter the baking dish and place the dough in. Use baking paper and ceramic baking beans and bake for 8 min.

Crack one egg in the bowl, from the second egg keep a little egg white to the side and brush it on the short crust pastry when you remove the ceramic beans. Place it back it the oven for 4 min.

Add to the bowl all the ingredients, except the tomatoes and make a smooth batter.
Fill it into the prebaked pastry. Drop the tomatoes on top.
Bake for 30 min.
When it comes out of the oven, let it sit 15 min then serve.

Little Dumplings and beans

The little dough pieces are made from a soft pasta batter. When you use a press you can make the typical southern German Spaetzle or little sparrows.

The batter can be dropped into boiling water and the pieces cook for 3 to 5 minutes and are ready to eat.
They go great with all braised meat that had enough sauce. Or just eat them as they are. Browned in a pan in a bit of nut butter.
With a salad to the side that is a good lunch.

I made a green bean salad.

Courgette Poffertjes

Poffertjes are a sweet treat from the Netherlands. Little pancakes baked in special pans or electric poffertjes makers.

The idea started as a Takoyaki making. The Japanese octopus filled balls that are sold as street food or in Izakayas in Japan. The baking dishes are not easy to get here. The solution to our problem were the Dutch Poffertjes dishes. These are sweet little pancakes that are found at fairs and street markets.

Recipe
120g courgette
1 egg
2 tbsp flour
salt and pepper
30 g feta
oregano
Paprika powder
Oil

Grate the courgette and salt it. Let it sit 15 min. Drain and squeeze.
Add the ingredients and put enough oil into the poffertjes moldes that you have a bit sitting in the middle. Brush the oil around the pan surface too. Keep some more oil at hand. Put 1 tbsp of batter into each mould, let it set on medium temperature. Take two teaspoons and start to turn. You will need more oil when you turn them. Get the poffertjes brown. Set them on a kitchen towel.

They were served with a fried green tomato and a mild yogurt dip with fresh tomatoes.

Lavender Fennel Polenta Chicken

It sounds strange to have flowers in your food. Especially lavender, which is often used in soaps and parfumes. The coating is originally from a recipe with prawns, which sounds weird too.
The taste is awesome and you should give it a try.
I cooked with friends today and so it was fun to do all the steps of the many recipes together. Each and everyone had to do a lot.

I started with a pestel and mortar and grounded all the ingredients for the chicken coating. It has to be fine to mash with the polenta (corn) flour and took a while and a good amount of work.

recipe for the coating:
1/2 tbsp fennel seed
1 tsp lavender blossoms
1 tsp coarse sea salt
5 tbsp fine yellow corn flour
ground pepper
lemon zest of 1 lemon

4 chicken breasts
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
5 sundried tomatoes
25 g roasted pinenuts
40 g feta
thyme

Mix fennel seeds, lavender blossoms and salt in the mortar and start crushing it. You will smell you work immediately. It will take a good amount of time. When it is fine, ground pepper in and the lemon zest and give it a good mix. Then add the flour and set aside.

Oil the chicken breasts and coat them with the mixture. In a pan with a little oil, get the breasts in and brown them on all sides. Set into an oven proof dish and stick in the oven at 160C for 20 minutes.
Cool down.
Mix chopped sundried tomatoes, chopped pine nuts and cheese and a bit of thyme.
Cut the chicken breasts open and fill in some of the mix. Back into the baking dish and into the oven at 130 C for 10 min.

Serve with polenta, a tomato sauce and a bean salad.

Fried Onion Beer Bread

This bread is very tasty and strong onion flavoured. It goes great with all kinds of starters. It is a beer bread after all, so a snack with some beer sounds good to me. But I had it with Prosecco with mini tomatoes in.

The dough has to proof over night in the fridge. It is a bit dry and needs not much work after it comes out. Just make some sausage shaped breads and get them into the oven.

recipe:
500 g bread flour Type 550
100 g flour Type 1050
40 g fresh yeast
350 - 375 ml beer
20 g honey
2 tsp salt
75 g fried onions

Bake at 220 C for 25 min. Brush with some water at the start of the baking.

Onion Meatloaf and green beans

I packed a lot of fried freeze dried onion chunks into the meatloaf and lots more fresh onions into the sauce. Such an onion delight for someone who likes onions.

I had an opened box of these dried onions sitting around for quite a while and was tempted to throw them away. But now I am happy I found a way to use them.
The green beans were bought on my today's grocery trip to France. A huge bag for just 1 €. I topped and tailed them all and with some mountain savoury from the balcony cooked them.

They were very tasty. And now I have a bag with 2/3 of all the beans sitting in the fridge for more recipes.

recipe:
350 pork mince
1 egg
90 g bread crumbs
30 g dried fried onions
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp herbes de Provence
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic

sauce:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Ayvar
1 tsp cornstarch in water
1 bay leaf
1/2 beef stock cube
300 ml water
10 ml white wine
1 big white onion
2 blocks of  beef Jus- frozen
1 bit of fresh chili

green beans:
1 kg beans
1 bunch of savoury
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 bunch fresh chives
4 tbsp butter

Get the meatloaf together and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to set again.
In a pan with a lid, brown the meatloaf on all sides, add onion and bay leaf and chili and let it roast a bit.
Add water, wine and stock cube an Jus and Ayvar and bring to a boil. Add cornstarch with water, close the lid and cook for 25 min. Turn the meatloaf twice.

In the meantime clean the beans, cook them with the herbs, drain and soak in cold water for 1 minute.
Make the topping with butter, breadcumbs, garlic powder and chives. Set aside.

Tomatoes and roasted Bread

Getting out of the car I saw some bright red dots in front of me. More tomatoed ripened in one day. Luckily I have an empty lunch box handy. Easy to start picking the fresh tomatoes. A good box full of them went with me into the kitchen.

Now what to do with them? Tomato salad sounded boring, but levelled up tomato salad sounded great. To bring it to an other level, I used a couple of slices of rye sourdough bread, lots of garlic and good olive oil. I had 3 small Baby Bell cheeses sitting in their bright red waxy skin, that together with a good bunch of fresh herbs from the balcony gave a great salad.

recipe:
300 g mixed tomatoes
3 slices of bread
5 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 spring onion
3 Baby bell
a bunch fresh herbs
2 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar
fleur de sel and pepper

Cut the bread into chunks and peel the garlic and chop the spring onion.
Put 3 tbsp olive oil into the pan and start the garlic, then add the bread and spring onion and season with salt and pepper.
Cut the cheese into small chunks, roughly chop the herbs and quarter the tomatoes.
Bring everything together in a bowl and add the rest of the olive oil and the vinegar and a final seasoning of salt and pepper.

Homemade Mango Tomato Ketchup

I had to harvest two days in a row bowls of tomatoes in all colours and sizes and I was not able to eat all of them at once.
A fresh mango was sitting in the fruit bowl and it was ripe.
It is a not to thick version of a ketchup and I did not use so much sugar.

recipe:
450 g mixed tomatoes
1 ripe mango
1 shallot
1/2 lemon juice
1 clove of garlic
2 cm fresh ginger
1/4 fresh hot yellow chili
1 1/2 tsp koriander powder
1/2 tsp mild curry
70 g brown sugar
70 ml white balsamic vinegar
pinch of salt and pepper

Put the solid ingredients into a blender and mix fine.
Pour into a pot and add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil.
Let it simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour through a fine sieve into clean jars.

Chocolate Sweet Rice

We had such a thunderstorm with hail yesterday and the temperature dropped about 12 degrees and when I came home I needed something comforting.
I decided to make a sweet risotto and found some Cadbury milk chocolate and a unripe pear.

The combination of chocolate and pear goes great.
Do you remember the dessert  Pear Helene? Vanilla ice cream with a syrup pear and chocolate sauce. So delicious and so 1980s.

Recipe:
600 ml whole milk
150 g Risotto rice
30 g butter
2 stalks of caramelized ginger
1 pinch of salt
20 g sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
2 eggs
1 lemon
1 pear
1 tsp butter
1/2 tsp sugar
60 g chocolate

Melt the butter in a pot and let the rice coated. Takes about 2 minutes.
Add the ingredients down to the vanilla pod.
Let it cook for 20 minutes.
Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it in the rice. Get it off the heat.
Add the egg yolk and a bit of lemon juice.
Seperate the eggs and beat the egg white to stiff peaks.
Press half the lemon.
Melt butter in a small pan and add pieces of pear with skin on. Add lemon juice and some sugar and cook until the pears are a bit soft.
Grate some chocolate on top.

Chicken Miso Ramen

This soup is so good and reminds me of a dish I ate in Japan.
Miso is a famous part of many dishes in that country. In many regions the people make the fermented stuff themselves.

In this Ramen soup is the second main ingredient chicken mince with a good amount of spice. The mix of heat and umami goes straight into the soup to flavour it.
I did not have Ramen noodles at home. I took some Cappellini pasta and cooked it in 2 tsp baking powder. It makes a difference when you cook them this way.

Recipe for 3:
350 chicken breast fillet
2 tbsp Takoyaki sauce
2 tbsp Sriracha
2 tbsp white miso paste
1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
5 cm ginger
4 cloves of garlic
2 spring onions
1 small can sweet corn
2 tbsp soy sauce and Mirin
Ao nori
250 g Cappellini pasta
3 tsp baking powder
1.2 l water
3 soft boiled eggs
2 tbsp light sesame oil

Cook the pasta in 3 l water with baking powder, drain and set aside.
cook the eggs.




Take a mixer and make chicken mince out of the fillets, put in a bowl and add the sauces. Stir well and set aside.
Peel garlic and ginger and chop well.
Heat up the oil and fry the garlic and ginger and add the mince.
Let it turn brown all around and fill in 1.2 l water and bring to a boil.
Cook for 5 min. Add soy sauce and mirin and take a small sieve and put the miso paste in and dissolve it in the broth.

Chop spring onion, peel eggs and open can of sweet corn, put the noodles in the bowls and add soup. Put the rest on top and finish with Aonori.