Sweet Corn Pancakes - Korean

This is the second recipe from the YT Aaron and Claire Channel. I saw it this morning and it did linger until the evening. I was checking my ingredients and was ready to go.

If you have a problem with weird textures, maybe you should think about making it. The potato starch makes the pancake a bit gloopy.

The sweet and savoury combination in this recipe is something I like. But if you do not like sugar and Parmesan together or chili flakes and condensed milk...... 

Aaron made it clear that the right amount of sweet corn and starch was important. But I think the European potato starch is much drier than the Korean type. I needed a bit more water.

Ingredients:

280 g sweet corn, drained   pinch of salt, 5 tbsp potato starch, 3 tbsp water

1 /2 tsp sugar, 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes, 2 tsp Parmesan, 1/4 tsp granulated onions and garlic, condensed milk 

Mix the starch with water, it will be very tough. Get the corn in. That will loosen it. Heat up some oil in the pan. Stir the corn again before you drop halve of it in the pan. Let it sit at least for 4 min on medium high heat before you flip it. When it is cooked, transfer it to a plate.

Mix sugar, red pepper flakes, onion and garlic granulate and Parmesan together. Sprinkle some over the hot pancake and drizzle some condensed milk over it. Enjoy.

Chicken Puff Pastry Squares

Upcycling my Christmas Eve leftovers. A nice way to eat the dinner again, without just reheating it.  Pastries on the days after the holidays are a good choice to get rid of the amount of food that nobody could have eaten on these days. 

I had the few veggies from the tray stored in a Tupperware container. I only discarded the olives and the quartered lemons. I put the veggies in one of my mini choppers and made a coarse blend.  I ripped one of the chicken breast into strips. While doing so I remembered my jar of homemade cranberry sauce. Why not.

I cut 15 cm wide strips from the puff pastry roll and brushed the edges with egg wash.

A layer of veg mix up to the middle, a couple of strips of chicken on top and two teaspoons of cranberry sauce. The pastry folded over, pressed down and sealed with a fork around the edges. Egg wash on top. Black and white sesame seeds and chili flakes on top.

At 200 C for 20 min.

Egg Toast in the Air Fryer

On Christmas Day with lots of time on my hands I was surfing You Tube. Korean ingredients have been a part of my Christmas presents and I checked my favourite channel Maangchi. YT offered me an alternative on the side panel: Aaron and Claire".

I have never heard of them. But the offered recipes were from the Air Fryer. That made me curious. What a find. I started binge watching their videos and laught a lot about the way Aaron presented his cooking methods. Everything can, but nothing must.

The egg toast has hooked me and on the seco d Christmas day - yes, we have two holidays - I prepared it for breakfast.

Ingredients:

Toast, cream cheese

Salami, mayo, egg, salt and pepper

Aaron uses in this recipe condensed milk from a bottle. The sweet kind and spread it onto the toast. He told to use cream cheese instead. Condensed milk is not used here and I think the other option is tastier.

After the cheese, put some ham or salami on top. Now use the squeeze bottle to make a thick line around the edges of the toast. That should keep the egg from running away. Well....

Seafood Ramen Hokkaido Style

Seafood broth/ Dashi is often used in the North of Japan. An other "style element" is a good chunk of cold butter on top of the bowl. Hokkaido is very famous for their dairy products and butter is one of them.

From my whole Loup de Mer I had the carcass thrown with veggies and spices into a pot with water and cooked a stock. That was the base for my soup now. I added a package of Instant Dashi and salt and a little shoyo extra. 

I wanted to make Shio Ramen Soup, that means salty Ramen soup. Up in the North of Japan, seafood is a mayor component. Often found in Ramen soups. I used frozen Kamaboko fish cake and shrimps.

I had some lambs lettuce and a good amount of lentil sprouts to use. Fresh spring onion was going in too.

In the morning I soft boiled two eggs and when I peeled them I made a stock from LeeKumKee Dumpling Sauce, Mirin, light soy sauce and a bit of syrup for the sweetness. The eggs rested about 5 hours in the marinate. They were lovely colored on the outside and smooth and creamy on the inside.

I was very proud of my Ajitsuke Tamago. They were delicious in the soup. 

The noodles came from a package of Dan Dan Ramen. They were cooked in 2 minutes and kept their bite in the soup. Some roasted sesame seeds and a sheet of Noori finished the soup.

Garlic Noodles San Franisco Style

Everybody is raving about them. They were just a side dish in a Vietnamese restaurant in San Francisco for their Dungeness Crab. Now the noodles are the star.

Very easy to prepare and if you love garlic, they will become your favourite. Otherwise keep your hands off them.

I watched a lot of different YT videos in the last week. Today I watched one of my favourite one:

Food Wishes. This is his recipe. He calls the noodle sauce the secret sauce!

On the side a plate of defrosted raw and then marinated white tiger prawns. No crabs to get here anywhere. 

250 g fresh pasta or dry spaghetti

2 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1 tbsp oyster sauce, 2 tsp Worchester sauce, 2 tsp fish sauce, 

1/4 tsp sesame oil, pinch of red pepper flakes

8 cloves of garlic, 4 tbsp butter

1/4 cup fine grated Parmesan, spring onion greens and more red pepper flakes

Mix the secret sauce before you start with the garlic.

Melt the butter and add the finely minced garlic. On medium low heat give it time of soften. Do not brown it. Add the sauce and stir well and stop the cooking until the pasta is done.

Transfer the pasta with some pasta water to the pan, mix well, add the parmesan and finish on the plate with some spring onion greens.

Spatchcock chicken Ras al Hanut on a veggie tray

Christmas Eve is the time to enjoy with the family or friends. This year I have to enjoy it alone.

Doing a lot of dinner preparations on this day was not my thing to do. I made the dessert for the holidays and used the baking tray and the oven to prepare dinner. No pots or pans to clean.

I bought a free range chicken with a lot of meat on the bones. I wanted to use all of it during the holidays. With strong poultry sissors I cut out the back bone. It took some strenght and a little curse to get it out. Then I pressed it down to make it flat and rubbed it in salt and Ras al Hanut seasoning.

The baking tray was prepped with baking paper and a lot of different veggies, lemon and olives and hearty herbs from my balcony. A bit of coarse salt and olive oil was all that was needed.

The chicken on top took only 45 min at 180 C fan. It was very juicy and perfectly cooked. 

The whole bird without the spatchcock technique would have take  1:15 min to cook. The breast meat tends to get dry this way.

Ingredients:

1,85 kg free range chicken with gizzard and innards

1 sweet potoato, 4 medium potatoes, 1 red onion, 1 shallot, 5 cloves of garlic

1 large carrot, white of a leek, 1 red bell pepper, 1 medium courgette, 60 g green olives, 

1 lemon quartered, rosemary, thyme, sage, majoram

Use strong kitchen or poultry sissors and cut out the back bone. Take out the gizzard and put both into a freezer bag for an other day to make a stock. Discard the innards or fry them with onions on toast.

Clean the bird and pat it dry. Rub salt and Ras al Hanut all over and place it on the veggies.

No bake Cheesecake with X-Mas baked Apple in a jar

A Christmas dessert for the next days. I love cheesecake and traditional spiced baked apples. One other ingredient are vanilla kipferl or crescents. They are the crushed bottom of the dessert. My room mate at the office gave me a bag of her baked Christmas cookies and the vanilla ones were part of it.

I used Italian liqueur to soften them.

Recipe for 3:

3 apples, 12 cookies, 3 tsp Galliano liqueur, 150 ml apple juice, 1  tbsp sugar syrup, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp Allspice, pinch ground clove, ground vanilla bean

100 ml double cream, 170 g  Mascarpone, 2 tbsp icing sugar

Peel and core the apples. Cut them into small bits. Heat up apple juice  and sugar syrup and put the apples in. When they get a bit soft, add most of the cinnamon and all of clove and allspice. When they are done, they have to cool completely.

Whip the double cream. Whip the mascarpone with the icing sugar, vanilla and the rest of the cinnamon. Bring both cream and mascarpone together.

From the cookie stash, leave 3 aside, put the rest in a sandwich bag and give them a good bashing with a rolling pin.

Set out 3 jars. Fill in 2/3 of the cookie crumbs

and drench each jar with a tsp of Galliano. Or more :-)

Now most of the cold baked apples on top. Then the mascarpone mix. Add some crumbs and a few apple chunks on top and stick 1 vanilla kipferl in.

Refrigerate for 2 hours.

Brillat Savarin open face Sandwich Sandwichwith Plum Pear Chutney

In the region of Troyes in France is the Deparment Aube. This is the aera were the creamy white cheese Brillat Savarin comes from. I spent a week in the Champagne region a couple of years ago and came to love this cheese. But it is very difficult to buy it here. 

Since the Pandemic my monthly trips to go grocery shopping in France have been suspended. I miss that a lot. I only managed 3 trips this year.

But I found a small piece of that cheese at the large grocery store in town and payed a fortune for it.

Make two open faced sandwiches:

2 thick slices of good quality bread. I used a bread made with wheat and corn flour ftom the in store bakery of the same supermarket where I bought the cheese.

A jar of homemade plum and pear chutney

150 g Brillat Savarin cheese

Olive oil, lime juice, salt and pepper

1 bok choy, sprouts

Heat up the oven to 180 C fan. Brush the bread with olive oil and put it in the ovrn to crisp up. Put slices of cheese on it after you took it out of the oven, still warm.

Some teaspoons of chutney. Chop up the bok choy and dress it with salt and pepper, lime juice and olive oil and heap it on the bread too. For finishing touch some sprouts. 

 

Plum and Pear Chutney

 This chutney is part of a cheese dish. But it can stand on its own, because it is delicious.

It was on a recipe from Chef Christian Juergens. But when I looked it up on google lots of American recipes popped up. 

You can have it with a cheese board or serve it with turkey instead of a cranberry sauce. Which I made from scratch today too, btw

Recipe for 2 jars:

1 medium red onion, 1 red chili, 5 cm grated ginger, 2 tbsp olive oil

150 ml red wine, 50 ml Port wine, 3 tbsp fruity vinegar, 1/2 lime

150 g dried plums, 1 fresh ripe pear

Salt and pepper

Chop onion, chili and grate ginger in the oil and saute for 5 min until soft. Add wine, port, vinegar and reduce 15%.

Chop plums and finely dice pear. Chuck both in and cook until soft. Press in the lime juice and check the acidic level. Season with salt and pepper.

Goat Cheese Mascarpone Cream with Carrot Pasta

Leftovers on the table and winning against food waste.

The red lentil soup from last weekend required goat cheese cream. Half of it was sitting in the fridge for further use. But what zse? Sticking my head in the veggie drawer I fouünd spotted carrots. Only bad on the outside. A good peeling later, they were as good as new.

Since I had the speed peeler already in my hand I made lots of carrot strips and ate the core. For a complete dish it was not enough. I streched the carrots with some Pappardelle.

Cook the pappardelle first. When they are nearly cooked, add the carrot strips. They just will need a minute. Drain and keep a little pasta water.

Mix some of it with the cheese to loosen it. Then add that to the carrot pasta. Some sprouts for more crunch and that is some tasty leftover food.

If you haven't read the recipe for the goat cheese cream:

75 g log of goat cheese, 75 ml whole milk, 75 g mascarpone cheese. Melt the goat cheese in the milk. Cool down and blend, add the mascarpone and refrigirate.

 

 

 

 

Cake Pops

I have a new kitchen helper.  It is a 3 tier baker with cake pops, donuts and muffins.

Today I started my baking match with cake pops. The small recipe booklet included has some easy recipes to bake. But as always I changed the basics a bit. 

For 24 cake pops:

100 g butter, 100 flour, 100 g sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla sugar, pinch of salt, 1 tbsp orange blossom water, 2 tsp chocolate powder

Compound chocolate and sprinkles

Beat butter, sugar, vanilla into a smooth paste, add eggs beating in between, then salt and flour. Add the rest of the ingredients. Do not over mix. Pour into a piping bag.

Fill the heated up cake pop cups to the edge and close the lid. Bake as long as your iron is supposed to do.

When they are cool, melt the chocolate and dunk them in. Put the sprinkles on.

Since we are in a hard lockdown since last wednesday, I was not able to buy cake pop sticks. I used what I had on hand.

Loup de Mer with Cucumber and Caviar

This is an other recipe from 2 Michellin star Chef Tim Raue. It is a bit time consuming. And it does not matter if you cook a single dish or prepare it for 4 people. I took some shortcuts. But the taste was still awesome.

I was at my local fishmonger yesterday to buy some loup de mer. Big pieces were not available. I had to buy a whole fish. That sounds like a lot of fish, but the biggest one just had 345 g. But since I made the dish just for myself, it was big enough. I cut out the two filets and used the rest with some frozen veggied, allspice and juiniper berries to cook 700 ml fish stock. Not wasting the rest of the fish. Thinking about cooking some Shio Ramen with seafood in the next 2 weeks??

Recipe:

165 g loup de mer filets

200 g floury potatoes, 2 shallots, 60 g bacon, 1 bay leaf, 1 sprig rosemarie, 1 tsp butter, 600 ml strong chicken stock, 150 ml double cream, ground allspice

1 large cucumber, 1 lemon, 2 sprig fresh thyme, fresh grated ginger, 2 tbsp ginger syrup,250 ml sparkling water.

6 drops green Tabasco, lemon salt

Sprouts and caviar

Start with the potato and bacon cream. Peel and chop potatoes and onions and cube them with the bacon. A bit of butter in the pit and all stuff in. Give it a couple of.minutes. Add stock and cream and bay leaf, rosemary and allspice. Cook on low for 20 min.

Take a Parisian spoon and make cucumber balls. Put the rest of the cucumber in a blender and mix and get the juice out with a fine sieve. Add green Tabasco and lemon salt and set aside. 

Make the lemon squash. Press a lemon in a jug, add fresh grated ginger and fresh thyme and enough ginger syrup or other to sweeten to taste and add sparking water.