Sweet Pasta with Poppy Seeds

Poppy seed dishes are very common to me. My Mom was born in Slesia, today Poland and poppy seeds been used there a lot.

This dish is from Hungary, but can be found up North too. It is a very comforting dish. The only problems are the black dots between your teeth after the meal.

It is a very easy dish to prepare. Cook the pasta in good salted water. They need to soak up the salt a bit.

Mix poppy seeds with icing sugar in a bowl. Add a good piece of butter to it and stick it in the microwave to melt the butter. Drain the pasta and mix in the poppy seed cream.

Eat it with some fruits. I had some pomegranate seeds for some crunch and sourness.

Avocado Cucumber Pistacchio Salad

This is not a shaker salad!

Cubes of avovado and cucumber are mixed with red onion slices, chopped pistacchios and a slightly minty dressing.

The wet middle of the cucumber gets removed to prevent the salad from getting soggy. The cubes of avo and cucumber are the same size.

Very fine strips of red onion, soaked in boiling water for 1 minute rounds the salad up.

The dressing is made from:

2 tbsp olive oil

1/2 lemon juiced

1 tsp agave syrup

3 tbsp Skyr

1/4 tsp dried mint

Smoked salt and pepper

Salad ingredients:

1 cucumber peeled and deseeded

1 avocado

1/2 red onion

2 tbsp chopped pistacchios

 

Kürtöskalács or Baumstriezel

A Hungarian sweet treat, baked on a rolling device over fire.

But not at home. My rolling device was a rolling pin, covered in aluminium foil and sitting on a deep baking dish to be rolled around a couple of times in the oven.

This Baumstriezel is sold on most Christmas markets since the last coupke of years. It is either just covered with cinnamon sugar or filled with vanilla or chocolate cream.

It is made from a yeasty dough, which is cut in strips and rolled around the rolling device. It gets buttered and coated with sugar and baked. Then freshly down off the rolling device, covered in cinnamon sugar.

This baked goods are pretty expensive when you buy them at the Christmas market.

On different online platforms methods for homebaked Baumstriezel popped up. I wanted to give them a try.  

The first recipe I saw was with puff pastry. Proclaimed as the easier one. No so here at home. The dough did not stick to the rolling pin, but dropped in the baking dish. It tasted too flakey for me and did not look good.

A few days later I used a yeasty dough and put the strips solid on the buttered alu foil. Rolled in sugar and rolled 3 times during the baking time. Then rolled again in cinnamon sugar. It came off the rolling pin in 2 pieces, but that was good enough.

Since it was a yeasty dough, I could eat some of it the next day. 

You will need:

A sweet yeast dough

Butter

Sugar

Cinnamon

Beet Root Filet Wellington

No cow had to die for this, it is vegetarian.

For the second Christmas holiday day I was looking for a meatfree dish. The kitchen appliance producer NEFF had a vegan one on their webside to promote the new multifuncional oven.

But eating vegan on a holiday was not my cup of tea. I used the inspiration and a bit of the cooking method, but made it a lot more simple.

The result was amazing. I used a lot more seasoning to add more flavour to the dish. Reading the origional recipe let me thinking that the taste would be boring. Boring food is the last thing I like

The evening before today, I wrapped the wsshed but unpeeled beets in aluminium foil and put them at 180 C fan in the oven for 50 minutes. I kept them in the foil over night, then peeled them.

Fresh button mushrooms went in a foodprocessor together with a green onion and were blizzed in a mush. Seasoned with some veggie seasoning. That went in a pan with a dash of oil and had to cook on medium high until most of the moisture was gone. That took about 15 min. I transfered it to a plate and put in on the balcony in the cold for 10 min to cool down.

Roasted hazelnuts went in the blender next and were blizzed up. Mixed with the cooled mushroom paste and more seasoning was added (African rub) and pepper.

I took out the sheet of butter puff pastry and spread the mix on top. The beets went on top. A bit of egg yolk around  and then closed and brushed on top with egg too.

Baked at 200 C for 20 min.

The sauce was the same mulled wine sauce as the day before. It matched very well with the earthy taste of the red beets and mushrooms.

Ingredients for 2;

2 medium sized red beets

200 g white button mushrooms

1 green onion

50 g roasted hazelnuts

Veggie seasoning, African rub, pepper

1 tsp oil

1 round sheet butter puff pastry

1 egg yolk

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Smoked Herring Salad

With Greek yogurt and Schmand (Hessian style sour cream) dressing.

I have never used smoked herring in our family classic salad, but it was a great and tasty idea. I found it in the French supermarket Match and thought: Why not?

It worked well with fresh apples, pickled gherkins and beets and red onions.

The beets are giving pink vibes to the salad. To make it even more pink, add some of the brine from the beets to the dressing.

I sliced the onions in very fine strips and pour boiling water on them for 1 minute. That helps with taking away the sharp taste of them.

Add some fresh ground black pepper and let the salad sit in the fridge for 2 hours before serving.

Chickenbreast in mulled wine sauce with figs

Mulled Wine or Glühwein is a tradition on all our Christmas markets. It is served hot and I don't like it.

But using wine combined with spices is a very good base for a sauce. I reduced the wine on high temperature down to one third and added roast stock paste to it. Sauce done.

The chickenbreasts were covered in African rub, a spiceblend from my Advent calender. It has deep earthy flavours and goes very well with chicken. I fried the chickenbreast in clarified butter and added a stalk of rosemary and 2 green onions.

After browning the chicken on both sides, I took a sauce ladle filled with the mulled wine sauce and added it to the pan and closed the lid and reduced the heat. That way the chickenbreast cooked through and kept juicy.

I had some figs from my harvest as a compote in a jar. Some figs were served with the dish.

A pilaw rice with some green onion was cooked in the rice cooker and finished with a knob of butter. Parsley to the finish.

Ingredients:

2 chickenbreasts

African spicerub

500 ml mulled wine

1 beef or pork roast sauce base

Clarified butter

Cooked figs

2 green onions

1 rosemary stalk

1 cup pilaw rice

Oninon greens

Salt

1 knob butter

 

KINDER Chocolate Cream Cheese Dessert

One of my Advent calenders was the big KINDER kind. Filled with KINDER Eggs, chocolate bars and Santas.

Since I do not eat so much chocolate, I build the little figurines inside the yellow pastic eggs and kept them. The chocolate after 3 times of daily eating went in a box.

Today I made the dessert for the holidays. 3 days = 3 portions. But there are lots more pieces of chocolate waiting for an other dish.

Maybe my KINDER chocolate liqueur, which has now nearly 1000 clicks today.

I had some chocolate covered marshmallow kisses in a box and ate the wafer on the bottom, but throw the fluffy filling in my cream. That was the only kind of sweetener I used.

Recipe for 3:

150 g cream cheese

250 g high fat Bibbeleskäs or Greek yogurt

5 cocolate covered marshmallows (Dickmann's)

4 KINDER EGG chocolate shells, crushed

3 chocolate chip chocolate cookies

Use jars with a lid. Put a cookie inside and crush it.

Mix the upper 3 ingredients until smooth and put them in layers with crushed KINDER EGGS in the jar.

Close the lid and refrigerate.

The other KINDER pieces went in a KINDER Chocolate Liqueur. Recipe on this blog from 30.06.2016 with about 1000 clicks.

 

 

Afghan Rice Patties with Cauliflower

The amount of rice I brought home from the Restaurant was huge. The bag felt es heavy as a usual take out bag.

I mixed the cold carrot and raisin rice with 2 eggs, 50 g pomegranate seeds and some Cheddar cheese. Arabian seasoning or Baharat as an addition to the Afghan rice is good.

I used some metall food rings and sprayed them with oil. Some oil on the pan and stuff the rings with rice. On medium high heat let them set a crust on the bottom.

Be careful, the pomegranate seeds tend to splash when they come in contact with the hot oil. Turn the metall rings over and press the patties down. Let them get color on the other side.

Cauliflower salad:

Little florets with a little water in a microwave dish with a lid cook for 10 min on 800 watts. Let them sit in the closed container for 5 min more.

Dressing:

Sunflower oil, white balsamic vinegar

Salt. Pepper, dried chives, onion and garlic powder

2 tsp creme fraiche

Eating out in an Afghan Restaurant

I had an apointment at the hairdresser to get ready for the Christmas season. Just around the corner is an Afghan Restaurant - WATAN-.

I wanted to go there for a while, but it is in the industrial part on the other side of the city. Not a spot I turn to when looking for a place to eat out.

But today I used the chance to get here. It is imbedded in a car complex with carwash and Toyota dealership.

I ordered Mango Lassi and Chai to drink. For lunch yellow rice with carrots and sultanas together with a chicken and lamb skewer. Everything is made fresh and it takes a bit of time until the food arrives.

A huge plate of food came. The amount of rice with carrot strips and raisins would have fed 3 people.

I ate my portion with all of the lamb pieces and a few of the chicken ones.

A huge grilled tomato, a huge green medium green pepper and mixed salad with yogurt completed the dish.

These green peppers are usually hotter when they are darker. This one was not so dark, but it surprised me. It was HOT. Good to have yogurt on the salad and the Mango Lassi.

I went home with the rice and one large piece of chicken to make it in an other dish. When I am the next time at the hairsaloon before lunch, I will go there again. Maybe try some of their starters.

 

 

 

Marinated Pork Neck with Oatrice

Short cooktime for a pork dish is great. Marinated chunks of pork neck do not need too much time in the pan. Just a bit more than 15 minutes.

That was the time the oatrice needed to cook.

Oatrice are polished oats grains that look like whole grain rice. They need to cook in lots of salted water. Put them in a strainer, drain and serve.

The pork neck went in a oilbased marinate with paprika and BBQ seasoning. I chopped some onions and put them in the marinate too. I did not let that sit over night, but 2 hours in the fridge were enough.

A piece of leek in a tbsp of oil started the cooking. Then the marinated meat went in to take color. I used veg stock paste and hot water for some sauce and cooked the pork for 12 min.

A starch slurry thickened the sauce, a good amount of fresh ground pepper and the oatrice added to the sauce made a great lunch.

Ingredients:

250 g pork neck steak

2 tbsp sunflower oil

Paprika, smoked paprika, BBQ seasoning, salt

1 small onion

100 g leek

250 ml veg stock 

1 tsp potato starch 1 tbsp water

Pepper

65 g oatrice, salt

 

Pomegranate and Blueberry filled Chocolates

I wanted to prepare an other sweet treat, but in two different supermarkets I could not get the special ingredient - fresh cranberries.

That's why I choose to do something else I have seen on the Internet.

I bought a pomegranate and took the seeds out, no so pleasant, but durable. 

Melted chocolate in the microwave in 30 sec blasts and stirred in between. 1/3 of the chocolate went in the melted part whole to temper the chocolate. It works fine.

I have a couple of silicon moulds, but only one was deep enough to take the large blueberries and pomegranate seeds in.

They rest in the fridge now.