Apple and crispy baked goods dessert

Wibele, the Swabian baked goodies were theme on my blog from Aug 2nd 2020 before. This time they were used as the crunchy base to a Tiramisu like dessert.

One of the main components is usually Mascarpone cheese. But both my friend and I are not such huge fans of it. We always use curd instead and loosen it with double cream. It makes the dessert a lot lighter.

The apple sauce is cooked with Calvados. It is important to prepare the apple sauce the day before. It has to loose the liquid. Put it into a fine sieve over a high container and put it in the fridge. Use 3 tbsp of the liquid to moisten the crunch. The rest of the liquid is nice with a bit of sparkling water as a drink.

Recipe for 4:

100 g Wibele or other crunchy baked goods

5 apples, 60 ml Calvados, 2 tbsp water, 50 g sugar, 1/2 tsp cinnamon

250 g curd, 250 ml double cream

1/2 tsp mixed spice, 1/2 lebkuchen spice, 30 g brown sugar

60 g toasted almond flakes

Crunch the baked goods with your hands and put them on the bottom if the dish. Sprinke with apple liquid. Next layer are the stewed apples.

Mix curd, beaten double cream with sugar and spices. Check for sweetness and remember that the rest is sweet too. Mix with half of the toasted almonds and spread on top of the apples. Finish with the rest of the almonds on top. Let it sit in the fridge fot two hours. 

 

 

Chicken Bacon Corn and Garlic Dish

 This was my Thanksgiving Dinner today.

Thanksgiving is not celebrated here like in the USA. But I am so used to this holiday due to the 10 times I have celebrated it in South Beach, Florida for 10 years in a row with my family. The only thing Germany has transported here are the Black Friday Sales. The majority of people have no idea, were the origin of it lies. 

Wednesday evening I remembered that the next day was Thanksgiving and I needed something special or slightly American to cook. I stuck my head in the fridge and looked through the ingredients on the shelves. During covid-19 times I do my shopping once a week, mostly on Saturday mornings at 7 AM when the supermarkets open. I often plan ahead to cook during the week, but still take things on the go to prepare when the mood strikes.

I put organic chicken breast, bacon, cream cheese, Parmesan and double cream on the counter. Now I needed an idea. Checking the internet I found "Garlicky cream corn chicken". After reading the recipe, I added a good amount of more garlic, some Noilly Prat and more seasoning.

Recipe for 4:

500 g organic chicken breast, 

80 g bacon lardons

7 cloves of garlic, bunch of fresh thyme, salt, pepper, chicken seasoning

200 ml double cream  3 tbsp butter, 4 tbsp cream cheese, 3 tbsp Parmesan

300 g sweet corn, 3 tbsp Noilly Prat, chili flakes, piment d' Espelette

Use a wide pan and fry of the bacon. When it is done, take it out and leave the grease in the pan. Cut the chicken breast through the middle, thrn butterfly both parts. Put them in a plastic bag and give them a good whack to flatten them. Season them and fry them off in the grease. When they are mostly cooked, take them out, store them on top of each other in a bowl and cover them. The rest of the heat will make them perfect.

Clean the grease from the pan with a kitchen paper. Froth the butter and add the garlic  pressed or chopped and let it cook on medium heat to release the flavour. Add the thyme. Pour in the double cream, season and add the cream cheese and Parmesan to melt. Loosen with the Noilly Prat. Now in the the chicken, bacon  and drained sweet corn. Reheat everything and check the seasoning.

Now enjoy a Happy Thanksgiving.

Christmas Trees project

I baked 3 boxes full of butter cookie stars.  Now is the time to built.

The best kind of glue is Royal Icing. I bought a couple of packages online from a British shop. I used some gel color from the Cupcake Jemma store.  Just some water, just a little at the time to get the right consistancy. I have some plastic bottles to decorate cupcakes with different tip openings and I used the small round one. Getting the icing into the bottles is only good if you have a steady hand.

150 g royal icing, 2 1/2 tbsp water, 1 toothpick tip of green food gel is enough for 8 - 10 trees.

After you build the trees, wait over night until you stack them into a box. Royal icing needs time to fully set.

Friends and coworkers were pleased when they found one on their table.

Pasta with Applesauce

Many of you will shake their head and say yuck. But do not be so fast and give it a try.

That is comfort food of my childhood and I know a lot who like that too. My BFF' s step mother has a live in caretaker from Poland. On the list she made of her favorite dishes was pasta with applesauce. The Polish help looked very strange when she requested it for lunch. My friend told him the different methods to cook or later to eat the dish.

My grandmother always used Papardelle pasta. Others like it with Spirelli or short Makkaroni. I thought it was a classic Hessian dish. But I even found several  recipes of this kind in Switzerland. 

Recipe for 1:

100 g Papardelle pasta. Salt

30 g breadcrumbs. 40 g butter

250 g applesauce

Cook the pasta in salted water until soft. 

In a pan melt the butter until it foams and toss the breadcrumbs in. Brown them and mix them with the pasta.

Now either eat the hot pasta with the cold applesauce on the side, or warm the applesauce up a bit and mix it with the pasta like a real sauce.

If you like cinnamon and you haven't seasoned the applesauce with it, put some cinnamon in the breadcrumbs.

Paprika Soup with Ricotta Dumplings

I found a health food magazine issue with lots of recipes inside. I started turning the pages and mostly shook my head and thought hell no. Oatmilk, vegan cheese, Saitan etc. Nothing I have stored in my cupboards or fridge. I thumped through more pages and found one soup recipe that caught my eye. It was the only recipe I ripped out. I read the recipe and the steps were very time consuming and one did not match the picture on the page.

I upped the seasoning and reduced the cooking time by 15 min. And I added more veg for flavour. The ricotta dumplings needed a good amount of seasoning, they were just bland. And I would recommend to add an egg to the mix to keep them in shape and not fall apart.

Recipe for 3:

3 large peppers red, orange and yellow

1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 50 g leek, 2 small celery stalks, 50 g celeriac

2 medium potatoes, 500 ml veg stock. salt and pepper, dried thyme, oil

5 tbsp flour, 3 tbsp crushed oats, 4 tbsp butter

100 g Ricotta, 1 tbsp Parmesan, 2 tbsp parsley

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, chili

1 egg optional

Clean the peppers and cut them in rough chunks. They go in the pot with oil to fry off for 15 min. Season with 1/2 tsp salt and later pepper. Stir often.

Clean and chop all other veggies. Get them in and cook for 10 min more. Stir more. Add the veg stock, bring to a boil and cover and reduce the heat and cook 15 min more. Use a stick blender to make a creamy soup.

In the meantime make the Ricotta dumplings and cook them separately in some stock for 10 - 12 min.

French Toast- the savoury way

This was made as s midweek meal by SortedFood. They made a sweet version for the breakfast lovers and one for people like me, who love cheese and herbs.

I had still some Bloomer loaf end piece sitting in the bread box. Just on its last leg and a bit dry around the edges. I cut it up and let it dry even more during the day. That was perfect for the egg milk mix. It soaked it all up. A tomato salad with lots if fresh herbs are the best side dish to go with the bread. I took the leftover piece to work with me the next day and warmed it in the microwave. Still delicious.

Recipe for 3:

2 large free range eggs, 2 cups of whole milk, bread

2 tbsp grated parmesan, 2 heaped tsp zaatar seasoning

Salt and pepper, rapeseed oil

Use a wide container to soak the bread in. Mix the eggs and the milk and add cheese and seasoning. Pour in the container. Cut doorstep sandwich slices off the bread and put them in the liquid. Let them sit a while, turn them and wait more. 

Heat a wide pan with the oil on medium heat, stick in the slices. When the heat is too high, they will burn on the outside and stay soggy inside. Turn and grate more parmesan an top. When they are slight brown, crank up the heat to finish them.

Eat with some tomato salad.

Beef Stir fry with Broccoli and Carrot

On Saturday I bought Lee Kum Kee Dark Soy sauce at my local Asian supermarket. Wrapped around the bottle was a package of LKK broccoli and beef stir fry sauce.

Broccoli and cauliflower were left over from other dishes and the recipe called for a carrot too. The only thing to buy was a piece of beef. I choose a bit of rump and sliced this very thin. Stir fry is a quick meal but when you need all the cutting and chopping time in advance, it made sense to cook that for dinner and not during lunch break.

The recipe was enough for two meals. Good for a fast one the at lunch in two days time.

Recipe for 2:

200 g broccoli, 150 g cauliflower

420 g beef sirloin

1 carrot, 1 spring onion

1 tbsp oil, 1 package sauce Lee Kum Kee

6 tbsp water, pepper

Basmati rice cooked

Start with the beef and let it get color, then take it out of the pan and set aside. In with the veggies and stir fry them, add a little water to steam them. Pour in thr Oyster sauce package and toss the beef back in. Give it 3 min and check the seasoning.

 

Serve it over rice.

Cream Cheese and Bacon Pasta

This is a 10 minute meal. Great during lunch break when working from home.

I cook on an induction hob. Getting a pot full of water to a boil is fast. On slower hobs, heat up the water in an electric kettle. I used Buccatini pasta with 8 min cooking time and cooked them in very salty water. That way, I used the pasta water to loosen the sauce and did not need any extra salt.

Start the pasta. Chop the spring onion and the garlic very fine. If you us bacon rashes, chop them. Otherwise use bacon bits. In a tsp of butter start with the bacon. After a couple of minutes, add onion and garlic and season with pepper.

Now the pasta has given up enough starch to the water that you can transfer 50 ml to the pan. Melt the cream cheese it it. When the pasta is ready, drain it and transfer it to the pan. Beat the egg and pour it over and mix it through, cutting off the heat first.

Chop some parsley for the finish.

100 g Buccatini pasta in salted water

1 small spring onion, 1 clove of garlic, 50 g bacon

1 tsp butter, pepper, 50 g cream cheese, 1 egg, parsley

Broccoli Salad baked with Miso and Oyster sauce

A new recipe from Thoru Nakamura. The only thing I changed was the Anchovis to the Oyster sauce. Tossing broccoli in a pan with olive oil and keeping it more on the raw side was not a method I used before. I just eat my broccoli raw sometimes, which is fine by me. I hate over cooked broccoli. 

Thin sliced fennel and tomatoes add a different texture to it. As well as the butter fried Panko breadbrumbs and the fresh grated Parmesan.

Recipe for 2 :

350 g broccoli, 100 g fennel bulb, 8 cherry tomatoes

1 large shallot, 2 cloves of garlic

2 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 2 tbsp butter

1 1/2 tbsp white miso, 2 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tbsp rice vinegar, 1 tbsp lemon juice and zest, salt and pepper

Fresh herbs, 2 tbsp Parmesan, 50 g Panko

Cut the florets off and peel the stem and cut it into cubes. Slice the fennel in thin strips and the tomatoes in halves. Chop onion and garlic. In a wide pan in olive oil start with the broccoli. Season it with salt and pepper. After 5 to 7 min add a splash of water. When that is gone, take the broccoli out. 

Add sesame oil and fry off onion and garlic. Add oyster sauce and miso. Now in with tomatoes snd fennel anf cook that for 5 min. In with the broccoli again, zest and juice of the lemon and vinegar. Chop the herbs.

In a small pan heat up the butter and brown the Panko. Put it over the mix and grate Parmesan on top. Ready to serve, but not piping hot.

I had some pollock with it. A good combination.

 

Bundt Cake with Dominos and Cherries

A special treat during the pre Christmas times here in Germany are Dominos. The base is Lebkuchen , topped with a fruit jelly and either marzipan or an other wíth cream layer. They are covered in dark or milk chocolate. Since I hate marzipan, I looked for the different ones and found some.

I never thought that kind of sweet treat is good for baking. The different layers prevent that- so I assumed. But I was wrong. In one of the womens magazines - " Freundin" or girlfriend, I found this recipe.

Since I bought a new bundt cake tin just 3 weeks ago, I was ready to start. 

Use a standmixer.

recipe:

150 g dark chocolate dominos, 75 g 60% chocolate, 150 g canned or frozen cherries

4 eggs, 175 g sugar, 250 g soft unsalted butter

350 g flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, pinch of salt

50 g ground almonds, 125 ml Irish Mist or any other kind of Whisky liqueur

100 g compound chocolate for the decor later

Cut the dominos in halves, drain the cherries. Combine sugar and butter until fluffy, add eggs one after an other, beating in between.  

Mix flour, almonds, salt, soda and baking powder and add in 2 stages to the mix.

Take out the paddle and and use a scraper to clean the sides of the bowl. Now follow with liquid, chopped chocolate, cherries and dominos. Use a well sprayed bundt cake tin and put the batter in.

Bake for 60 min, depending on your oven. When the cake has completely cooled down, melt the couverture and add a little coconut oil and brush the top of the cake.

 

Spinach and Bacon Sauce on Pasta

I needed a quick fix during the work from home. Not much time to cook.  

Fresh baby spinach is a good veggie for a pasta dish. Not a lot of preptime. Just sort out the leaves that are bruised and wash the rest. Bacon is a great partner for that dish. It is smokey and salty and gives the amount of Umami you will seek in a quick fix.

Just add onion and garlic and a bit of stock and cream cheese. 

The longest cooking time had the pasta. A local bakery makes Swabian hand scraped Spaetzle. They needed 18 minutes to cook. But no worry. The sauce always waits for the pasta. Not the other way round.

recipe for 2:

300 g baby spinach leaves, 1 red onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 red chili

1 tsp rapeseed oil, 125 g smoked bacon bits

50 ml veg stock, 3 tbsp cream cheese

nutmeg, paprika, salt and pepper 

No need to chop the spinach leaves, just use them as they are.

In oil fry off the bacon. When it starts to get crispy, add the onions, chili and garlic and give them 3 min. Now let the spinach wilt in the pot. Add veg stock and a good amount of nutmeg.

Now in with the cream cheese and check the seasoning. I only had to add a tiny bit of salt and lots of pepper.  Let it simmer on low heat until the pasta is ready to drain.

Toss through the sauce and serve.

Eggplant Minced Meat Oven Bake with green Beans

One of my favourite Chefs posted this recipe in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung. When you follow my blogs, you will find a couple of recipes. The Chef I am talking about is Thoru Nakamura.

One of my new favourite dishes for the cold season. When the main work is done and the oven does the work, the rest is easy.

Leftovers can be microwaved to be good as freshly cooked.

Recipe for 3:

2 medium eggplant, 4 shallots, 3 cloves of garlic

120 g cherry tomatoes, 350 g green beans

400 g beef and pork mince, fresf thyme, 2 bay leaves

300 ml dry red wine reduced by 2 /3; 300 ml water, 5 tbsp light soy sauce

1 hand full panko breadcrumbs

4 tbsp Butter and 4 tbsp oil

Salt and pepper

2 cups Basmati rice

Cut the eggplant in battonets, halve the tomatoes, top and tail the beans, chop onions and garlic. Reduce the wine.

Heat up the oven to 180 C fan.

Use an oven proof pan with a lid. Heat up the oil and fry off the eggplant. That will take up to 10 min, season with salt and pepper.

Push the eggplant to the side and in s knob of butter saute shallots and garlic. Add the minced meat in chunks. Just stir it through to get some color. Add tomatoes, bay leaves and thyme. Mix wine, soy and water and pour it over. Bring to a boil, close the lid and stick it in the oven for 1,5 hours. If the stew has too much liquid, use some starch slurry to bind it. I did not need it.

Cook the beans. Drain in ice cold water. In  a pan in butter brown the panko. Toss the beans in the breadcrumbs and keep warm.

Cook the rice in the meantime.