Okra Curry with Prawns

I love Curries!

I found some Okra in my local supermarket. I never cooked them before, but eaten them a couple of times in New Orleans.

But for making Gumbo I had not enough ingredients at home. But I found some prawns in the freezer, some tomato/veggie sauce leftover and a couple of bits and pieces and decieded to go Curry with this ingredients.

Okra Curry with Prawns

The basic flavours of a curry are the onion and garlic and the tomatoes mixed with the spices.

I build myself an Indian treasure box with spices a couple of years ago, so I have my indian spices handy. I have two boxes, because one has the powders and the Tiffin box is filled with whole spices.

Indian Tiffin with Spices

recipe:
100 g fresh Okra 
1 red onion
3 cloves of garlic
100 g tomato/veggie sauce
10 king prawns defrosted
2 spring onions
3 quail eggs
2 tbsp parsley

fresh Okra

50 ml chicken stock
50 ml water
salt and pepper
1 tsp curcuma
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili
2 tsp coconut oil
2 tsp Madras curry

In a pan heat up the coconut oil and fry the onions and garlic, add the spices and give them 2 minutes, add the okras, fry them 2 minutes then add the tomatoes and the stock and water. Put in the defrosted prawns. Season and let it simmer until the okras are soft and the prawns are cooked. During that time put the three quail eggs on top. They should keep their runny middle.
Serve it with rice

Beef Soup with Pasta

Beef soup with pasta is a long time tradition in our family. On Holidays like the first of May or on Easter Saturday this soup is something to fall back to. When we were on tour and came back, the next possible day, that soup was made. It feels like home.
It is a soup you can eat all year around, hot soup is fine in the summer too.

Beef Soup with Pasta

You need a good stock for this kind of soup, so starting with beef ossobuco or beef shanks and some marrow bones the day before, adding some bay leaves, peppercorns, onion, garlic and chili. Then a large carrot, one leek, 1/4 celeriac and some parsley stalks are added.

To get a clear broth, skim off the foam in the beginning with a spoon. When I really aim to have a wonderful super clear broth, I start of with the beef and the bones in some water, boil it for a couple of minutes until all the foam comes out, take a sieve and drain everything and wash the pot. Then I start with the actual soup. But that is only for special occations.

The meat has to cook on slow heat between 1 hour to 90 minutes. Let it cool then a little and get the marrowbones out, scoop out the marrow, eat it or smear it on toast or just throw it back into the soup, and who gets lucky, eats it. Take out the meat, cut it off the bone and cut off all sinew and fat. Slice the rest into small cubes and put them back into the soup. When you cooked the soup with whole veggies, cut up the celeriac and carrots and fish out the rest of the onions and leek.

You have to cook the pasta seperately

To the Pasta:
we have tried so many diffent shapes of pasta over the years. Some of us love the long ones, like 10 cm Papardelle, but I prefare the short ones. There is one good reason for that, if you don´t want to have some of the soup on your shirt, use short pasta.

Beetroot and Papaya Salad Asia inspired

A beetroot and papaya salad sounds strange, but since I bought the veg and the fruit the same day and remembered the Thai style Papaya Salad.  It is a combination of fruit with veggies and crunchy nuts and the spiciness of the chillies.
It is kind of strange, I plan a regular German Schnitzel dish for today and as a side the leftover Spaetzle from yesterday.

These dishes come regularly with some salad to the side, but mostly greens or mixed with carrots and kraut. An Asian inspired salad is not something a regular restaurant would come up with, and so would not most households. 

Beetroot Papaya Salad

First I combined the 2 mayor parts, then added what I had sitting around and thought how much Asian I could go.

recipe:
2 cooked beets cubed
1/2 ripe papaya cubed
1 spring onion sliced

dressing:

just a few ingredients

1 stalk of lemongrass finely chopped
1 lime juiced
1/2 tsp dark sesame oil
2 tsp light sesame oil
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 2 cm grated fresh ginger
1/2  red chili in rings
3  tbsp parsley chopped
2 tsp palm sugar
1 tsp Pomegranate syrup
2 tbsp salted peanuts chopped

The salad is on the spicy side! 
Cut down the amount of chili and ginger and use little more palm sugar! 
But I love it hot! 

Icelandic Skyr and Kiwano Smoothie

Icelandic Skyr is a high protein, low fat kind of cream cheese that looks more like a Greek yogurt with half the fat.

Skyr and Kiwano Smoothie

I found it a couple of month ago in our big supermarkets. Now you get it on top of fruit ready made to buy.

I love the plain variety, it is easy to use in many different dishes.

Kiwano is a tropical fruit that I found in La Palma on the Canary Islands for the first time. It grows there.  Since I never had this before and had no idea how it tasted, I couldn`t resist to buy it. I see it always as a challenge to use unknown produce and I rarely give up on something.
The other name is Horned Melon or Horned Cucumber, the origin is south or central Africa, the taste is between Melon and Cucumber. So you can it either use as a sweet component or a fresh component in something savory. It is has a light taste on its own, so in combination with an other fruit just tasty.

recipe:
250 g Skyr
1 Kiwano
1/2 ripe Mango
1  Passion fruit
2 tsp honey

Cut the Kiwano lengthwise and take a serrated spoon to scoop out all the seeds with the green fluid. Put it into a blender and mix it up. Put it through a sieve.
Cut the Mango and blend it up to, add the Passion fruit with the seeds to give a little crunch.
Mix in the Icelandic Skyr and the honey and enjoy a creamy Smoothie.

Spaetzle or the art of making handmade pasta

The art of making Spaetzle with lentils and Wieners

This is a traditional food of the southwest part of Germany, well known for the Mercedes Benz and other top industrial products. These homemade kind of pasta is a family classic and is served with many toppings or meat dishes.

The way to prepare the Spaetzle I have learned from a nice lady on the German/French border near Kehl/Strassbourg.

You find many favorites like:
Käsespaetzle - Cheese melted in layers of Spaetzle with browned onions
Krautspaetzle - Sauerkraut often with bacon mixed with Spaetzle and baked sausages

Spaetzle served with braised beef or pork and it goes great with wild boar and venison dishes.

Spaetzle Lentils and Wieners

My favorite is a simple dish of cooked lentils, yummy sausages and a good portion of Spaetzle mixed in.

First rule in preparing Spaetzle:  
never use an electric whisk, always use a large wooden spoon and lots of elbow grease! The dough is done, when it makes large bubbles when you beat it with the spoon. Then let is rest 30 minutes.
Making it with 1 kg of flour and 10 eggs will make you sweat more then doing a workout in the gym.

Simple Ingredients

recipe Spaetzle :
300 g plain flour
3 whole eggs
1 tsp salt
a pinch of nutmeg
some water to get it together, depends on the size of the eggs, just 3 to 5 tbsp may be enough

Take a huge pot with boiling salted water.

You have different ways to make the Spaetzle.
If you have a large colander with bigger holes, you can press the dough into the boiling water.
They sell from Tupperware plastic boards with a scraper for making Spaetzle.
If you have a potato ricer, they often come with different plates with large or small holes.
On the Internet you can find the real Spaetzlepress to buy. 

cooking time is 2 to 3 minutes

recipe lentils:
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
150 g lentils
1 bay leave
1 carrot
1 piece of leek
1 broth cube
1 tbsp vinegar
1 sprig of parsley

green and brown lentils

Eat as much Wieners as you like.
If you prepare the lentils with bacon, you can eat it without the Wieners, but who wants that?

Hokkaido Pumpkin Soup

Hokkaido Pumpkin Soup with a Beef and Green Onion Topping

This year the Hokkaido Pumpkins comes as a really small version of the regular Hokkaidos. It was to dry to get the larger sizes.

Hokkaido Pumpkin Soup with Beef and green onion topping

I was thinking about many versions to cook a pumpkin and ended up with a soup. I only bought the pumpkin and  the beef mince meat. Other things I´m using from my fridge salad drawer.

I prepare the Hokkaido with the skin, it is edible and dissolves while cooking. This soup will be blended, so it will be smooth. Less work than any other pumpkin kind.
Hokkaido pumpkins are the  most used here in Germany, because dealing with the skin is no problem and so it is easy to use.

Orange, Onions, Garlic, Ginger and Bay Leaves

I have some veggies from Christmas left and use some things out of my freezer too.

Soup needs to bubble for 35 minutes

recipe:
Hokkaido Pumpkin about 700 g
2 Parsnips
3 potatoes
1/5 celeriac
50 g leek
8 cherry tomatoes
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
4 cm ginger
1chilli
1 orange
2 tbsp olive oil
2 bay leaves
2 beef stock cubes

Topping

400g beef mince
1 bunch of green onions
sour cream
seasoning

In some oil start with onion, garlic, ginger and give them a couple of minutes to soften, add the veggies and stir them for 2 minutes, add the orange and the stock cubes and the water  until everything is covered. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and let it simmer for 35 minutes until the pumpkin is soft. Fish out the bay leaves and the chilli and take a stick blender to the soup. Do not make it to smooth, it can have some veggie pieces left.

In a pan after 20 minutes cooking time of the soup, heat up the rest of the oil and fry the beef. When it is getting brown, add the spring onions and season well.

Take a bowl and serve the soup with the beef and green onion topping a a teaspoon sour cream.

Lamb´s Lettuce with Mushrooms

Lamb´s Lettuce keeps me company during the winter. 
Something refreshing on the first day in the New Year is necessary to serve.

Lamb´s Lettuce with Mushrooms

It is the perfect winter salad because it still grows outside and can be harvested as long, as there is no ice on top. My grandma covered it up during the worst of winter and went out to cut up as much as we wanted to eat.

The only thing I hate about this salad is, that you have to clean every single small head of salad and that washing it will take several tries to get the sand and grit out. Many people are not so thoroughly and chewing grit down isn`t fun. Maybe it is a texture thing ;-).

There are so many ways of preparing an interesting salad, just with onion, oil and vinegar doesn`t do it for me. I sauteed some button mushrooms with garlic and onion and seasoned that well and added it to the wash salad. So you have extra taste and a seasoned salad. But keep in mind, the moment you put a warm dressing on top, the salad will wilt down in a couple of minutes. So it is a last minute dressing before bringing it to the table. At the end, just splash a bit of Truffle oil on top.

A good bacon dressing also goes great with Lamb´s Lettuce, I can recommend that too.

recipe:
300 g Lamb´s Lettuce
2 spring onions
1 white onion
2 cloves of garlic
4 medium sized brown mushrooms
olive oil
sherry vinegar
salt and pepper
truffel oil

I wish everybody a wonderful, healthy and enjoyable 2016! Let us cook together and have lots of fun in the kitchen.