Orange Crement Dessert

Crement is the star of the day today. It is New Years Eve. I used some for my Pumpkin Bellini. 

Now it is time for a boozy dessert.

It is not too sweet and not too heavy. Great to have after splurching on a heavy Raclette.

Preparation is easy, but to do in 3 steps.

Recipe for 4:

350 ml orange juice

2 egg yolks

40 g potato starch

105 g icing sugar

125 ml Crement or Prosecco

2 egg whites

Pinch of salt

150 ml double cream, 1 tsp vanilla sugar

Bring the orange juice up to temperature. Mix egg yolks with starch and sugar and pour 1/3 of the warmed up juice over it. Stir well. Bring the other juice to a boil and add the mix. 

Stir well and reduce the heat and cook until it thickens. Let it cool down 5 min.

Beat the egg whites with salt and stir that in the orange pudding. Split between 4 dessert cups and cool down completely.

Beat the cream with vanilla sugar and top the puddings.

Marshmallow fluff kind of dessert

I prepared a Dickmann's Schaumkuss Dessert a while ago.

This one goes in the same direction, but it is a lot easier and less fatty. This is made with Köhler Küsse. They are from a producer about 35 km from here. Available in some of our local supermarkets.

A Schaumkuss is a wafer topped with a fluffy eggshaped merengue, covered in chocolate.

 

This dessert has only 4 ingredients:

300 g curd low fat

50 ml milk

6 Köhler Küsse

1 tsp vanilla sugar.

Just cut off the wafer for decoration later. With a whisk smooth curd and milk and break the Küsse in the mix. Add the vanilla sugar. Stick the wafers on top.  Keeps in the fridge for a couple of days. 

 

One Pot ground Beef and Cabbage

This is sooo good and reminds me a bit of my childhood.

My Mom used lots of cabbage and potatoes and a little ground pork and beef to make ends meet at the end of long month when money was scarse. This big pot of cabbage stew helped us and provided a couple of meals.

Later when I was older and we had more money, this stew was still close to our hearts. But now she used a lot more meat and a little less potatoes. 

I had about 750 g of pointed cabbage left over from my Okonomyaki waffle and wanted to use it up in one go. Minced beef was on offer this week, so I bought 500 g. I had some potatoes on their last leg, so the best ones went in the pot too. About 500 g.

To add some more flavour to the ground beef, I added a good amount of Toscana seasoning from my Advent calender to it. A blend of paprika and mediterranian herbs. Together with salt and pepper and a tbsp of caraway seeds it went well with the spicy paprika paste and basic tomato paste.

200 ml veg stock went in as liquid. 

Ingredientslisting:

500 g ground beef, 2 onions, 4 garlic cloves

Tuscan seasoning, salt, pepper

2 tbsp oil, 2 tbsp hot paparika paste, 2 tbsp tomato paste, 200 ml veg stock from paste, 1tbsp caraway seeds

750 g shredded cabbage, 500 g cubed potatoes

On oil brown the seasoned beef and then add the onions and garlic. Give it 3 more min. Add both pastes and stir them well. Now follows the stock.

Put all shredded cabbage on top and now the potatoes, add caraway seeds and close the lid. Cook on medium heat for 6 min, now stir very well. Close the lid again and cook on low for 25 min. Check if potatoes are done and if it needs more seasoning.

It tastes great warmed up the next days.

 

One Pot Oven baked Cheese Pasta

This is a good way to get rid of different kinds of cheeses and it is just assembled and the oven does the work.

This is not the classic American Mac 'n Cheese. No roux to cook. Nothing to do on the stove top. Just raid your fridge for all kinds of cheeses that are lurking around half eaten.

A bit of greenery makes every dish look better. I found some and added that to the dish. 

The al bronzo pasta with its rough surface has a longer cooking time, but is higher quality. Take cheeper pasta and you will eat a little earlier. But if quality counts, take your time.

 

Recipe for 2:

250 g short pasta al bronzo

250 ml beef stock homemade

500 ml whole milk

1 tbsp butter for the dish

Nutmeg, smoked salt, pepper, piment d'Espelette

100 g American cheese slices

50 g grated Irish cheddar

30 g goat cream cheese

30 g grated strong mountain cheese

1 spring onion

2 tbsp chopped parsley

Take a square oven proof baking dish and butter it.

I placed the American cheese as a block in the middle and let the pasta fall around it. Now in with all other cheeses, except the mountain cheese. That gets grated on top when the dish comes out of the oven.

Mix broth and milk and pour it over everything in stick it in the oven at 200 C for 30 min. Then take a spoon anf stir it around to check if still liquid is there. Give it 10 more min, then let it rest with the oven shut down.

This is the time to grate on the intense cheese.

Waffle Okonomyaki Osaka style

KantanFood by Satoshi made it on YT. He is the second half of TabiEats and does mostly easy cooking videos.

I saw this in the morning and went grocery shopping afterwards. A pointed cabbage went in my shopping cart. All other ingredients were in stock at home.

When I made Okonomyaki in the past I either used a smaller pan or put the ingredients on my tepanyski plate. They cooked on one side, but then I had to flip them over.  That was the time when desaster often striked. The okonomyaki broke apart or stuck to the pan and later resembled a hot mess. It always tasted fine, but did not look good on any kind of photo.

The waffle maker is the solution for these problems. Just do not overfill it and give it enough time to do its work. Depending on your waffle iron cooking the waffle can take between 5 to 8 minutes.

I have a Belgium square deep waffle iron. It needs time to heat up and the waffles have a good size. It took me 7 minutes to cook the batter.

Ingredients for 3 waffles:

75 g flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 75 ml water

200 g shredded cabbage 

2 medium eggs, 1 tsp dashi powder

1 1/2 tbsp benishoga or red pickled ginger

2 tbsp dry pancake strips or tempura bits

Salt and pepper

100 g smoked bacon strips

AO Noori, Okonomyaki sauce, Kewpie Mayo

Mix everything except the bacon in a bowl. Preheat the waffle iron, brush it with a little oil.

Pour the batter in and top it with bacon strips. Close the waffle iron and cook. Take thrm out and sprinkle Ao Noori on top, glaze with Okonomyaki sauce and finish with Kewpie.

Chicken Thighs oven baked with Soy sauce and Muscovado sugar

I thought about a recipe made in the slow cooker since it is still not back in the basement storage. But I was out in the morning to get the last ingredients for the Christmas days and it was very busy.   That took a lot more time than I thought it would.

I changed the cooking method from slow cooler to oven. It reduced the cooking time from 4,5 hours to 45 minutes. 

I kept some of my recipe ideas from the slow cooker, but added some more veggies. Th3 chicken thighs rested on top of carrot pieces, shallots and ripped apart green onions. Even the garlic cloves and ginger slices went in whole. Direct heat from below did not touch the chicken thighs. That kept them juicy.

I put a big of marinate on them. A combination of soy sauce and muscovado sugar. With a bit of Argentinian spice rub on the chickens and the aromatic veggies on the bottom it was a great flavour bomb.

Baked at 180 C fan for 35 min.

I served it with rice.

Ingredients:

4 chicken thighs

2 carrots

Juice of 2 clementines

6 garlic cloves, 5 cm fresh ginger, 4 shallots, 3 green onions

1/4 cup soy sauce, 2 tbsp muscovado sugar, 3 tsp Argentinian spice rub for meat, pepper

No Bake Lime Cream and Ducales Cake Colombian style

This fridge cake is common in several Middle- and Southamerican countries. It only varies with the cookies they use. 

This one is made with Ducales. Square shaped cookies that reminded me of not salty thin Ritz crackers.

In Mexico Maria biscuits are used. I bought the Ducales online, but I think the German Leibniz Butterkekse will work too.

The lime cream has just 3 ingredients:

100 ml lime juice

Zest of 1 lime

1 can sweetened condensed milk

250 ml double cream

1 used 3/4 of a whole package Ducales

I used a square dish and placed baking paper on the inside. That makes it easier to get the cake out, when it is cooled over night in the fridge.

Octopus on Potato and Chorizo Galicia style

If you can get your hands on cooked octopus tentacles and some chorizo, you have got to try this.

The recipe is based on some Spanish ocotopus dishes from the Northwest of Spain. Galicia has a long coastline and seafood is common at Restaurants there.

I only saw a combination of spiced potatoes and topped with octopus. I pulled the very last piece of chorizo out of the fridge and some veggies.

Since my Advent calender boasted lots of tasty spiceblends, I used some of them and made a tasty oil to brush on the cooked potatoes.

The chorizo cubes let their oil out in a pan. To that onion, chili and pepper were added. That went on top of the brushed potatoes.

The ocotopus tentacles were already cooked, they just needed 3 minutes in the pan to heat up. Soft and buttery, no toughness!

Finish with lemon juice and parsley.

Ingredients for 1:

200 g ocotopus

6 very small potatoes cooked in their skin

Patatas bravas- Piri Piri- and Argentinian rub mixed with 1 tbsp of warm water and then with 1 tbsp olive oil

1 green onion, 1 red chili, 1 long green pepper

35 g Chorizo, 1 tsp olive oil

Lemon juice

Parsley

Pistachio Espresso

I watched a travel documentary about some small islands off the coast of Trapani in western Sicily. They are called the Egadic Islands. Life there is very quiet and not many tourists visit these islands.

People there get the income from agriculture, fishing and a little tourism. Tuna fishing and canning was a mayor industry until it was shut down due to the loss of the tuna.

The guy who made the documentary often sat outside some cafes and had espresso. Then he came in contact with a speciality:

Espresso con Pistachio

A while ago I was in an Italian market and bought a jar of pistachio cream. I was not sure what to cook with it and thought about some kind of dessert. 

Now I used most of it already for my Espressi.

Put 1 teaspoon of pistachio cream on the bottom of a cup, pour espresso on top carefully. Either enjoy it this way or top it with foamed milk.

Slow Cooker Tortelloni Soup with Chicken

This soup is based on a recipe from "Mandy in the Making". She posted a couple of slow cooker recipes on YT.

One of my friends told me about it and how to adept it to my needs. I do not know why the original recipe called for a cooking time of 5 to 6 hours on high for chicken breast.

I used a high quality French label rouge cornfed chicken breast. That was tender and ready after 2 hours and 15 min on high. 

The onions and the garlic did not go raw in the pot. I sauteed them in a bit of oil until they got some color. That makes them a lot tastier. I seasoned the chicken and put it in the pot with the sauteed onions and garlic and all the liquids. The chopped Parmesan too.

Recipe for 2:

350 g high quality cornfed chicken breast

Chicken seasoning, salt, pepper

1 can crushed tomatoes

500 ml homemade stock - beef or chicken or vegetable

200 ml double cream

50 g Parmesan chopped

250 g tomato mozzarella tortelloni - I used RANA brand

150 g Baby spinach

When the chicken breast was ready, I took it out to cut it up. But while I did that, the tortelloni and the spinach went in the pot to cook. I added the chicken and gave everything an other 8 min. Now the soup was ready to serve.

Puff Pastry Piede

People from Turkey will hate me and my Turkish co-workers know that I am able to make a real piede from scratch.  

But I saw this shortcut on the Internet and had a puff pastry ready to be baked. It was easy and tasty. The flakey crust goes well with the spiced beef. 

I had some Koefte seasoning left and used that up with a grated onion and grated garlic. A long green pepper went in the mix too. The ground meat has to stay in the fridge after seasoning for 3 hours. Just prepare it in advance and when ever you are ready to cook, preheat the oven to 200 C fan.

I used a rectangular piece of puff pastry and divided it in 3 equal strips. When you transfer each of them to a paper lined baking tray, try to pull the ends out a little. That helps with the boat shape. Pull up the sides and poke a couple of holes with a fork in the center.

Press down the seasoned meat and bake it in the oven for 20 to 25 min.

Prepare a dressing with Mayo, Greek yogurt, garlic powder, salt and dried mint. A bit of ripped parsley on top of the piede is tasty as well.

Ingredients:

1 sheet fresh puff pastry

250 g ground beef

40 g Turkish Koefte seasoning

1 grated onion

2 grated garlic cloves

50 ml water

1 long green pepper

Parsley