Tart in Quiche Lorraine style

No, this is not the real deal. This is a baked dish with leftovers. Do not waste food or a yeasty dough for the matter.

I had some scraps of dough leftover from my Belgian Tarte au Riz. An absolute burner, btw! My neighbor liked it too.

What to do with the scraps? I checked my fridge and found a couple of ingredients that scream Quiche Lorraine very lout. But the QL is made with shortcrust pastry! Now I prepare one just in the style of it.

Recipe for a 6 inch baking dish:

Use up any kind of dough you have

110 g bacon bits, 1 leek

2 eggs, 175 ml double cream

Salt, pepper, nutmeg, smoked paprika, dried herbs

Use a pan withour oil and cook the bacon for 5 min. Add the cut up leek and season with pepper. Cook 3 more min and then cool down to room temperature.

Cover the baking dish with the dough scraps and press them in. Poke some holes in it with a fork. Add the leek and bacon mix.

Mix eggs, cream and seasoning. Pour it over and bake at 230 C for 40 min.

Let it set while it cooks down completely.

 

Beets with Feta on Pasta

That titel sounds confusing when you see the pictures. 

It is an ovenbake method and all of it goes in to a blender. That makes the sauce for the pasta.

But with all these things, there are a couple of problems. I saw a Reel and their was no recipe. To get some of the red beet coloring, I had to drop a not baked beet in the blender with the other ones. Without it, the blend looked rather drab. But it tasted great. 

Recipe:

400 g red beets + 50 g extra

2 red onions, 3 garlic cloves

200 g Feta, 2 tbsp olive oil, herbes de Provence, salt and pepper

250 g Rigatoni

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Cook the beets about 15 min, cool down and peel. Cut in quarters and place on baking paper. Peel and quarter the onions, peel the garlic. Get the Feta in the middle, season everything and bake for 30 min. 

Cook the pasta and reserve some pasta water.

Chuck everything in a blender and add the other beet. Make a creamy mix.

Mix some pasta water with some scoops of beets cream and stir in the pasta.

Perch on Leek

I was in our large Rewe Center yesterday and stood at the fishmonger booth. The first thing I saw was a sign for Perch from freshwater aqua culture in the nearby capitol city of Hessian. Fresh fish there? Normally only bad politicians are there, hmm.

I bought a whole perch, about 650 g. Later at home I checked the Internet and found many things about a very modern built Rewe Center in Erbenheim. A full wooden structure that is topped with a hydroponics garden and fish tank. They grow basil there to sell and grow perch. The fish water fertilizes the basil. 

These plants are not sold in the usual plastic pots, but sit only in a paper. I have bought those at Rewe last year some times and thought it a great idea. But I never investigated any further.

Recipe for 2:

650 g perch

Fish seasoning, 2 lemons

1 large leek, salt and pepper

Mashed garlic 

50 ml Noilly Prat

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Cover a baking dish with paper and cut the leek in 2 cm rounds. Season them and put them in the middle of the dish. Add garlic and Noilly Prat.

Wash the perch inside and outside. Pat dry and season with fish seasoning. Stuff 3 lemon slices in the belly of the perch. Place it on top of the leek. Set some more lemon slices on top.

Bake for 30 min. When you can pull out a fin from the perch, it is done.

 

Tarte au Riz Belgian style

I was watching last Sunday's Kitchen Impossible. In Belgium is a society that favours the Tarte au Riz. 

A German 2 Michelin star Chef had to cook it without a recipe in the bakery of a local. Making pudding rice and a yeasty dough sounds easy on the first glance. But the devil is in the special preparation.

I cook pudding rice or sweet risotto very often. But never in a pot. The tedius stirring was the reason I went on cooking it in the Thermomix for so many years. But today I used the pot and spend 25 min at the hob.

Dough:

100 g AP Flour, pinch salt, 20 g sugar, 50 ml lukewarm water, 25 g soft unsalted butter,   5 g fresh yeast

Make a dough and set it aside 20 min covered to rise.

Filling:

180 g Carneroli Risotto rice 

950 ml whole milk 3,5 % fat+ 50 ml double cream

1 cinnamon stick, 150 g sugar, pinch of salt

1/2 egg beaten

Wash the rice. Heat up the milk and cream in a wide pot. When it gets warm pour 150 ml over the washed rice to soak it. When the milk in the pot is boiling, pour the rice and milk in. Add salt. Reduce the heat and stir and adjust the heat so that the rice wont burn at the bottom. 

After 10 min add the cinnamon stick and stir. After 10 more min add the sugar. When you reach 25 min check if the rice is done. Stir in 1/2 of the egg.

Fill it in a wide bowl and let it cool down without covering it. 

Place the dough in a baking dish. Loose bottom or fluted pie dish, about 22 cm. Poke some holes in it. Fill in the rice.

Heat up your oven to 250 C. Cover the rim of the dish with some foil. I baked mine at 230 C, because my oven runs too high. Baking time is 25 min. Dark spots on top are welcome.

Let it cool down 3 hours to set.

Parmesan and Butter Pappardelle

Easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Hungry? Needing a quick pasta fix?

This is the way to go!

Drop the pasta in heavy salted water and cook al dente.

Take a chunk of Parmesan and cut it in smaller chunks and use a minichopper.

Use a wide deep plate and sprinkle 1/2 of the cheese on it. Add some chunks of butter and a good grind of black pepper.

Wait until the pasta is done. Use some pasta spoon and fish the pasta out of the pot and drop it with the bit of water on the plate. Toss the other 1/2 of the cheese over it and start stirring the pasta on the plate. It takes a while until the butter and the Parmesan are melted and are clinging to the pappardelle.

Now find your happy place!

Endive Ham and Cheese Soup

This is sooo good!

I have bought a huge bag of endives in France last Saturday. Some of it went in some salads. Now it is time for something new, a soup.

This recipe is pretty quick to prepare. The cheese makes it smooth and creamy. Just leave the chunks of ham and endive as they are. No need to put the soup in a blender. Cut up the endive and the ham in smaller pieces and that helps.

Recipe for 4:

500 g endive, 1 spring onion, 1 tbsp butter

150 g cooked ham, 100 g Velveta cheese

1 cup cooked cold rice

650 ml chicken stock, nutmeg, salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a pot, toss in onion and ham and give that 3 min. Add the endive and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 2 min.

Fill up with hot chicken stock and cook for 10 min. Add the rice and the cheese and season with nutmeg. Let the soup get up to temperature again, but do not bring it to a boil. 

Enjoy!

KINDER Chocolate Panna Cotta

Kinder chocolate is not my favourite. I did not like it even when I was little. But with some recipes this chocolate goes fine.

I made some Kinder Chocolate alcoholic drink before. It is on this blog.

The work that is needed for this dessert is small. Just remember, the gelatine needs time to set in the fridge. Since this Kinder chocolate is very sweet, there is no need to add any sugar to the panna cotta. Just leave one stick of chocolate in the package for later.

Recipe for 3:

400 g double cream

200 g KINDER chocolates

2 gelatine leaves  - soaked in water

Hershey chocolate syrup

In a casserole pan heat up the cream. Break the individual chocolates in small pieces and add them to the cream. Stir constantly to prevent the chocolate to stick to the bottom of the pot. Let it boil up once, take off the heat and stir in the squeezed out gelatine until completely dissolved.

Divide in 3 jars and cool down to stick in the fridge to set. Decorate with a little Hershey and a bit of Kinder chocolate.

Breadpudding savoury with Mozzarella

Three days old French Baguette rolls needed a new purpose. I had some French toast in the morning with Maple sirup.

That brought up the idea to use up more bread in a savoury version. Buffalo mozzarella was expiring today as well. Tomatoes and Black Forest ham was in stock.

The soaking liquid was a combination from 4 different ingredients. 

Recipe for 2:

2 Baguette rolls

1 egg, 200 ml whole milk, 2 tsp Pesto, 2 tsp Zataar seasoning

1 Buffalo mozzarella, 8 cherry tomatoes, 4 slices Black Forest ham, black pepper, 1 tsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180 C fan.

Cut the rolls in 3 cm slices. Mix the soaking liquid and get the bread in. Turn until fully soaked. 

Coat a oven proof dish with olive oil. Set the bread in, cut the tomatoes in halves. Cut up the mozzarella. Roll up the ham. Stick it all between the bread slices.

Ground some pepper over it and stick it in the oven for 16 min.

Lower the heat to 160 C fan and bake for 10 more min.

Green Onions fried with Rice Noodles

This is a dish that I found as a Reel on You Tube. 

I saw it and knew I had to make it some other day. Today I just remembered it and it took me a couple of minutes zu see it in front of my inner eye. Did I write it down, no. Often I grab a pen and a scrap of paper and make some notes. They litter my recipe box and get thrown out after a while.

But as simple as it was, this dish is tasty. When you like onions.

It is not as fast to prepare as other simple dishes. You need to be good with a sharp knife to get a huge amount of green onion strips. Thry will take a while until they are crispy in the pan too. But that gives you enough time to boil a kettle with water and soak the thin rice noodles for 10 min.

Ingredients:

100 g thin rice noodles, 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

2 big or 4 regular green onions, 1 tbsp neutral oil

3 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 tbsp dark soy sauce, 1 tbsp agave syrup, 1 tsp Gochugaru hot pepper flakes

 

Cut the green onions in 7 cm pieces, then in fine long strips. Store in ice cold water.

Heat up oil to medium high and saute the drained strips until brown and crispy. Add agave syrup first, then both soy sauces and the hot pepper flakes.

Add the noodles and serve.

Red Cabbage with toasted Fennel Seeds

I was grocery shopping in France yesterday. Finally, after a very long time.

One of the Supermarkets sold special items for €1 a piece. Half of a huge head of red cabbage went for that price in my shopping cart. Still a lot of cabbage to eat. 

At the fishmonger I bought some squid rings. They are the fastest way for cooking seafood. 90 seconds in s very hot pan. They come out all tender and tasty that way.

Both ingredients went well together on the plate.

The red cabbage went in the oven with a dressing. I never thought that fennel seeds would be a good combination with cabbage. Caraway seeds, yes! Fennel seeds?

I toasted the fennel seeds in a dry pan. Crushed them in a pestle and mortar and mixed them with the dressing.

Dressing:

1 1/2 tsp fennel seeds, toasted and crushed

2 tbsp black currant vinegar or balsamic vinegar

2 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper

1 tbsp honey, parsley

Cut wedges off the red cabbage. Use baking paper and drizzle a little dressing on the paper. Place the cabbage on top and brush with the dressing.

Bake at 180 C for 35 min. Sprinkle a little leftover fennel seeds over the cabbage and finish with some parsley.