Trout topped with Almonds oven baked

A fresh trout from a regional fish pond is a great choice for a Sunday dinner. 

That is a treat you can not often get. But I was lucky. A simple cooking method is the best way to celebrate the trout. I choose to prepare it in the oven. The trout stays whole and does not dry out.

A balcony raid brough a good amount of fresh herbs to stuff inside the trout. It's end of October, but lots of herbs are still going strong. As long we don't get down to freezing temperatures over night, I will harvest lots more.

Recipe for 2:

750 g trout

50 g mixed fresh herbs (watercress, basil, lovage, celery greens, lemon verveine, thyme  piminelle, tarragon)

1/2 lemon

30 g butter

Fish seasoning, salt and pepper

40 g spliced almonds, 3 tbsp Brandy

Preheat the oven 200 C.

Clean the trout inside and outside. Season with fish seasoning. Stuff all the herbs inside. Place lemon slices on top and 3 slices of butter. Season the top with salt and pepper.

Put in the oven for 10 min. Then crank up the heat to 240 C and finish for 5 min.

The trout is ready when you can pull out any fins without resistence.

In a small pan foam some butter and toss the almonds in. After 5 min stirring, finish with the brandy. Serve on top of the trout.

I ate it with some leftover pastasotto.

 

 

 

Mexican One Pot Chicken Chorizo

A Mexican dish for the Formular 1 Weekend!

The dried Ancho Chili Package is in my storage box for a long time. But dried stuff keeps its shelf life longer than anything else. On the backside of the packaging was the recipe. 

It called for chickpeas, but I have yellow split peas already cooked from my hummus prep.

Ancho Chilis are on the fruity and milder side. I took out the stem and the seeds and poured hot water on top to let them rehydrate for 15 min. After that I just ripped them apart and put them in the pot.

Getting the caseing off the chorizo is a task, but you need to do it. Then cut in slices for later. I seasoned the chicken and let it rest on the counter for 30 min to come up to temperature. Searing fridge cold meat is not the best way to do it.

Recipe for 4:

4 chicken thighs, 1 tsp oil, chicken seasoning

120 g Chorizo

2 Ancho chilis rehydrated

300 g cooked yellow split peas

2 onions, 3 garlic cloves, 3 bay leaves, 1 rosemary twig

200 g cherry tomatoes, 1 large can chopped tomatoes

200 ml chicken stock, pepper

Get some color on the seasoned thighs in a pan. Take them out and set aside. Get the sliced onions in for 3 min, add the chorizo and garlic. Let the oil come out of the chorizo. Get the tomatoes in with the canned ones. Season with pepper.

Add the chicken pieces and bay leaves, Ancho and rosemary. Bring to a boil, cover and reduce the heat and cook for 10 min.

Now stir in the yellow split peas and cook 15 more min. Get the cover off, just use a meshed lid to prevent splatter.

Serve with some cornbread.

 

Yellow Split Pea Hummus

I wanted to make a red lentil hummus.

The problem was: no red lentils in storage and a lousy rainy day. No way I was going out to buy some.

But my search helped me discover a lock n lock box with dry yellow split peas and a package of Ancho Chili. Why not use the ones I already have? The Chilis are for tomorrow.

The peas needed 40 min cooking time in plain water. I skimmed all the foamy stuff off in the beginning. A half cup of the cooking water needed to go in the hummus later. A clear water is a lot better, so get rid of the scum.

I cooled one part of the peas down on a tray and packed the other part away for the next dish.

In a blender went:

2 cups cooked yellow split peas

1/2 cup cooking water

1/2 cup Tahini

1 tbsp olive oil

1 lemon juiced

Salt, pepper, smoked paprika, sweet paprika

2 tsp garlic paste

Serve with breadsticks or taco chips

 

 

Fregola Sarda Pastasotto with Zucchini and Pork

A piece of zucchini / courgette was left over. I wanted to use it in an other dish. Some risotto, may be.

I looked for a certain storage container for my hot Indian snack mix and found the container, but with fregola sarda in it. Just enough for 2 servings.  That was great as a type of risotto too.

I bought 3 French Roscoe pink onions in the supermarket. One of them went in the pastasotto with 2 cloves of garlic.

The zucchini cubes went in a pan with some olive oil and seasoning to get some color first, before beeing added to the pasta in the last 5 min.

Recipe fot 2:

160 g fregola sarda toasted

50 ml white wine

500 ml chicken stock, heated up

1 pink onion, 2 cloves of garlic  

30 g butter

150 g zucchini, 1 tsp olive oil

50 g Parmesan, pepper

All kinds of risottos are cooked in my Thermomix. Pastasotto is cooked in it too. But use s pot and a spatula and prepare it on the stove.

First step: throw Parmesan chunks in and for 5 sec at speed 7 grate them. Fill in a bowl and clean the pot with a bit of cold water.

I shredded onion and garlic for 5 sec, speed 6 and pushed them down with a spatula. Added the butter and for 2,5 min, speed 2, temp 100 C I cooked them. Next in with the fregola sarda. Give it a stir and add the wine. Close the lid and for 2 min, speed 2 left turn, st 50 C give it time to cook down the wine.

Pour in the warm stock, for 25 min, speed 2 left, 100 C cook the pastasotto. In a pan brown the small cubes of zucchini, seasoned with salt and pepper. They go in the Thermomix the last 5 min. Finish with the Parmesan and some pepper.

I served it with Hong Kong streetfood style Pork Neck Steak.

Fig Syrup with Rose Petals

This years hot and then warm and sunny October has given the second batch of figs on my tree in the front yard a chance to ripen.

Usually I get just the first 25% of the figs on the tree to ripen. The weather is normally colder and it rains a lot. 

Not so this time. I made 3 batches of fig jam, salads with figs and desserts during Summer. This morning I came back from grocery shopping and walked alongside the tree and there were many ripe ones to see. Since it rained yesterday, 2 were split open.

I stuffed the pockets of my parka with figs. First I only saw 4 figs, but getting in the garden to reach them, there were a lot more.

No more fig jam! 

I went for a fig syrup. That can be eaten with cheese or in a cocktail with Vodka or Gin.

Recipe:

500 g cleaned fresh figs

2 lemons, zest of one

380 g sugar, 2 tbsp pumpkin spiced agave syrup

1 cinnamon stick

10 g dried rose petals

150 ml water

Quarter the washed figs, just cut off the tip and a little from the bottom. Put zest and juice in the pot together with the cinnamon stick. Stir well and let it sit for 15 min.

Add the sugar, agave syrup  water and rose petals and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 min and fill in sterilized jars.

 

Courgette covered in Indian hot Snack mix and baked

Courgette or Zucchini are often called boring vegetables because they are on the bland side. But they will shine, when they are combined with something flavourful.

The courgette in my fridge needed a boost to shine. I had an idea. During my holiday in Bahrain I shopped for food stuff to take home with me. Spices were my first go to, but a couple of snacks went in my suitcase too.

Indian snack mixes could be found in any potato chip (crisps) isle of any supermarket. Here in Germany you have to go to an Asian or Indian food store to buy these. I went for some hot lentil and gram flour bakes. I've tried a bit of it at home. Sorry, spicy but otherwise bland. Now I have to come up with ideas to use the snack mix.

I saw the Boys from Sortedfood use some kind of Indian snack mix to bread meat with it a while ago in a video. This idea stuck, but with a vegetable. Using Ghee to fry the slices in a large pan is good, it can be heated up to a higher temperature without burning. And the buttery taste compliments the breading.

Recipe:

1 medium sized courgette, sliced in 1 cm discs  

150 g flour

1 egg, 50 ml milk

150 g Indian hot Snack mix, 50 g cornflakes put in a foodprocessor and blended

50 g Ghee

Serve with Greek yogurt and dried mint from a teabag.  

Onigirazu

I thought about Onigiri, but I made a big pile of stuff to wrap in some Noori sheets.

The Tulip breakfast meat can caught my eye at the supermarket. It looks like Spam, but it only comes on one flavour. The last time I made myself some Hawaiian Musubi, I used German Fleischkäse. No way near any kind of Spam.

I opened the can and pulled out some of the meat. Easy to cut it in slices this way. It was really soft. I browned it in a little oil in the pan.

The rice cooker made my Japanese short grain rice. I seasoned it with some rice vinegar, salt and sugar - like Sushi.

Tamagoyaki was next. I pulled my rectangular pan out of storage and beat 3 eggs with Mirin and a little salt. It is a long time since I made this egg omelet. Getting it perfectly shaped was not so easy. It looked a bit wonky in the end. But it tasted good.

Now pat down some rice in the middle of the noori and put a slice of Tulip and 2 pieces of tamagoyaki beside it. Cover with rice and fold the noori over. Wrap in clingfilm and let it rest.

Cut up in the middle and serve.

Black Lemon Powder with Chicken and Rice

I have seen a barrel filled with black lemons in the Souk in Bahrain. Sitting outside a shop near a 4 lane street. That did not encourage me to buy some of them.

Luckily, in the supermarket they sold Black Lemon Powder, made in Bahrain. Now I had to cook with it. I looked through some different recipes and found a rice dish that used whole black lemons. The lemon chicken is based on a YT video from Chef John - Foodwishes.com. I did use it as an inspiration and the chicken drumsticks came out very tasty. I added some Black Lemon Powder to the marinate as well. 

Black Lemon Powder tastes a bit bitter and fermented. The lemon flavour still comes through. It colors the rice very nicely too.

Recipe for 2:

4 chicken drumsticks

1 tsp olive oil, 1 1/2 lemons, 1 tsp Black Lemon Powder, 2 tsp chicken seasoning, cayenne pepper, cumin, pepper, smoked salt, dried thyme

1  ricecooker cup Basmati

1 red onion, 1 red bell pepper

350 ml chicken stock, 1/2 tsp Black Lemon Powder, 1 tsp ground coriander

1 tbsp olive oil, salt, pepper

Marinate the chicken for 30 min, not in the fridge!

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Put the chicken with the marinate in the oven for 35 min.

Chop onion and bell pepper and sauté both in oil for 4 min. Add Black Lemon Powder and Coriander and cook it 1 min. In with the washed Basmati and stir it very well.

Pour in the chicken stock and add salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and cook for 12 min. Take off the heat to rest. The rice looked a lot like a rice dish at the Hotel buffet. I think, I did something right.

 

Air Fryer rosted Tomatoes with Spaghetti and Burrata

Large Tomatoes roasted with some garlic in the air fryer are a great idea to improve the flavour of a homemade tomato sauce. Add a habanero chili for some heat.

Seasoned and sprayed with olive oil, the tomatoes need 25 min at 200 C to get caramelized. 

Squish out the garlic and put both in a blender with some fresh basil and a little more oil. Just 5 seconds later, the puree gets in a hot pan to cook just for a couple of minutes on medium heat. 

Add the pasta directly from the pot. A bit if pasta water is needed for the sauce. Mix in the grated Parmesan cheese and add more pepper.

Some more fresh basil. Put the pasta on a plate and top it with a small burrata.