Pork Goulash with Chanterelle Mushrooms and Rice

A typical German dish is Goulash. Often served at the Sunday lunch and the leftovers eaten the next day. There are so many ways to cook that dish.

First is the choice of meat. Many like the pork version, others the beef version, and in many German households the mixture of both. But you can make Goulash out of turkey meat too.

In different regions are different additions to the pot. Some like to add bacon, sausages, others lots of different veggies or some use even Sauerkraut. You can see the influence of Austria, Hungeria , Serbia, Tchech republic or Poland. People came from this regions after the WWII and brought back their favourite kind of Goulash.

My choice today was pork meat and Chanterelle Mushrooms, the season of these just started. I kept ist fairly simple without much work and it tasted great and I have leftovers for tomorrow.

recipe:
500 g pork meat in 3 cm cubes
salt and pepper
2 tbsp flour
1 bay leaf
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
80 g celeriac
1 tbsp parsley
1 tsp paprika powder
1 tsp ground caraway
50 ml Bourbon
200 ml white wine
300 ml water
250 g Chanterelle mushrooms

Chop onions and garlic and season and flour the pork meat. In a large pot heat up some oil and brown the meat. Add the onions and garlic and then the Bourbon and the wine.  Get the brown bits off the bottom of the pot and add the water and the bay leaf and the veggie and parsley.

Let it cook for about 35 minutes and during that time clean the mushrooms with a brush and chop them into medium pieces. Add the mushrooms after the 45 minutes and cook for 15 more minutes.
Eat with fresh cooked rice.

But Goulash can be eaten with steamed potatoes, dumplings, pasta or even with a good piece of bread.

Gnocchi with pear cranberry and gorgonzola sauce

This time I cook under something like a campsite situation. My kitchen is cleared out of all the usual stuff that is hanging, standing around and crowding my workspace to get a renovation. Everything is packed in boxes and bags and is all over the place now. And it is really no fun, because the moment you packed utensils or herbs away you haven´t used in weeks, you will need them for a dish you will prepare now.

My local supermarket had a sale on electric table grills from Tefal today and since more or less everybody will start to grill their Bratwurst when the European Soccer Championship starts this weekend, I will smoke the area too. So I can cook on my balcony the next 2 days.

But for the last time, I used the space and the hob and a small oven to prepare a quick dish.
I bought a package of Gnocchi today and had some pears to go with them.

recipe:
500 g ready made Gnocchi- you don´t need to cook them before you use them
150 g Gorgonzola
200 ml cream
2 tbsp pine nuts
1 tbsp butter
2 medium pears or one small one
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp cranberrysauce  or Preiselbeersauce
lots of fresh ground pepper

Stick the Gnocchi into an oven proof dish and preheat the oven to 150 C.

Melt the butter in a pan and add the pine nuts, brown them a bit and scoop them out to the Gnocchi, leaving most of the butter in the pan.
You can peel the pears if the skin is not nice, otherwise use them with the skin for texture. Chop them into small pieces and add to the butter for 2 or 3 minutes.
You should get some pear juice out of them, if they are not ripe enough just add the water.
Scoop the pears to the Gnocchi and leave the juice in the pan.

Add the cream and the cranberry sauce and the Gorgonzola in small chunks.
Melt the cheese and season well and pour over the Gnocchi.

Stick that into the oven for 25 minutes.

ANIME Food, Gotcha Pork Roast

Who does not love bacon and mash?

I saw that on YT this morning at Runnyrunny999`s channel and thought, cool idea. I wanted to eat potato mash today anyway- some potatoes needed to get cooked soon, so I just checked my fridge and found a package of smoked bacon strips. And I was good to go.
As always, I ajusted the recipe a bit to my likes, so you get my version of runny´s.
With a side salad it makes two portions.

recipe: 
400 g potatoes
2 onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
salt and pepper

Cook the potatoes in salted water and drain them. In the meantime, chop the onions and the garlic and saute it in butter and oil and season them. Mash the potoatoes and add the mixture. Spread it onto a wider surface to cool down a bit so you can handle it. Then make a large football out of it.

100 g smoked bacon
a couple of toothpicks
1 tbsp truffle oil
1/2 tsp herbes de Provence
1/2 paprika

Preheat oven 180 C
Wrap the ball in bacon strips so they overlap a bit and when you´ve closed it, put some toothpicks in to secure the bacon. With the mixture of oil and seasoning coat the bacon all around and sit in on to baking dish on a wire or on baking paper.

Make a sauce:
4 tbsp white wine
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp honey
3 drops of chipotle tabasco
salt and pepper
1 green of a spring onion
some chives

Spiced butter Risotto with filled Chicken breast and mountain pine pea sauce

This is a combination of South Tyrolian flavours.

The spiced butter has the spices of the Vinschgau bread in, the chicken breast is filled with South Tyrolian smoked Speck and mountain cheese and the sauce has a butter made with young mountain pine tips combined with the creamy peas.

It is a lot of work and best done with friends, joining you at the stove.

Mountain pine butter:
in  May is the best time to pick some young shoots of the trees. Chop them and in a 200 g butter let them bubble for a while, get the butter cold and store it in the fridge for a couple of days. The taste gets more intense.
Vinschgau bread spiced butter:
1/2 tsp each of caraway seeds, coriander seeds, funugreek seeds, anis seeds, fennel seeds dry roasted in a pan and the put through a spice grinder.
Use 1 tbsp for 50 g butter and melt it and keep it warm for the risotto.

Spiced Risotto
recipe:
1 1/2 cup Carneroli rice
1 onion
1 clove of garlic
200 ml dry white wine
700 ml veg stock
salt and pepper
40 g Parmesan
50 g spiced butter

In the butter saute the onion and the garlic and add the rice and coat it well. Add the white wine and let it cook down, stir often and add the veg stock, one ladle at the time until the rice is plump. Add the Parmesan cheese and serve.

Chicken breast stuffed
recipe:
4 chicken breast, a butterfly cut to fill them
4 slices of smoked South Tyrolian Speck- it needs the strong aroma to counterpoint the other ingredients
1 slice of mountain cheese about 2 cm  thick, cut into 1,5  x 6 cm pieces and wrapped in the Speck.
2 eggs
4 tbsp flour
250 g Panko flour
seasoning
Stuff the chicken breast, season it with salt and pepper and take a tooth pick to close it, go through flour, egg, panko, egg, panko.
In some oil brown them on both sides, put them in the preheated oven at 160 C for 18 min.

Pea and Mountain pine butter sauce
recipe:
150 g defrosted peas
1 small onion
60 g Mountain pine butter
50 ml cream
salt and pepper

In a little of the butter sweat off the onion and the peas, add the cream and let it cook for 5 minutes. Take out some of the peas and set them aside and then take a stick blender and make a sauce.
Just before you are ready to serve, drop in the rest of the butter and give it a good blitz to make a foam. Drop some of the peas on top.

The last food on the trip in Iceland

I was in one of the public swimming pools in Reykjavik this morning. They are scattered all over the city and in the cold weather, in winter or in summer outdoor pool activity is a must. The water in the 25 m basin has comfortable 27 C, but I didn`t come for that, but the hot pools that surround the place. They have 36-38 C, 39- 41 C and 42-44 C. The last thing had me just dipping my toe in and that was to hot for me.
After that experience I dropped buy the local supermarket next door and bought a salmon steak for lunch today. Great quality and not so expensive. With some cocktail tomatoes and rice it was a complete meal.

Since that day is my last here in Iceland and I have to leave for the airport at 4 AM, I just had my "Last Supper" at the Reykjavik Fish Restaurant again.
And in Britain is national Fish&Chips day, so I new what to eat.

Since fish needs to swim, I had a local beer.

That concludes my journey and my food blogging from Iceland.

On the hunt for local products in Iceland

Today I had a recommendation for a food market that sells mostly local and organic products.
And products of organic producers from other countries. I found a collection of demeter products from Germany there too. I got a package of 3 different salads, they were so fresh as if I had plucked them myself off a field.

I bought a slice of smoked wild salmon from Iceland and I was flashed when I opened the package and smelled and touched the fish. So intense and a high quality fish. It will take a long time until I eat the every day verity of smoked salmon at home again. I used a sharp knife and cut off slices of the salmon from the skin.

In my fridge and on the kitchen counter were sitting several half or quarter eaten bags of  veggies, all from the island and they needed to be used.

I boiled a couple of mini mini potatoes, this time I peeled them first but they still needed an awful lot of time to cook. I soft boiled eggs and had a small pot with some water boiling, in which I added leek in rings and a shallot in half rings, just for 2 minutes and then I drained them.
Some cherry tomatoes from the trip to the tomato farm completed the salad.

The dressing was kept really easy, some double cream, olive oil, balsamic white vinegar, salt, pepper, dried dill and celery seed and a good dose of water.

recipe:
175 g smoked wild salmon
2 eggs soft boiled
8 mini potatoes
12 cm leek
1 shallot
5 cocktail tomatoes
1 package of mixed fresh salad leaves
2 tbsp double cream
1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp water
salt, pepper
celery seed and dried dill

Beating the rain with food

The weather here is on the rainy side today. With the right amount of closing, walking about  5 k through a city is not too bad. Especially when you can make use of the many great cafes that are scattered all around the city.

On the way up to the big church is a lovely little place called MOKKA Kaffi. It´ s interior is made with very dark wood and it has a cozy atmosphere. I had a wonderful fresh baked waffle with cream and jam and a latte. Very satisfying. Going out into the cold drizzle wasn´t a hassle afterwards.

Tokyo sushi is a place to get the good stuff for a reasonable price.
But they deliver and the different menus are sold in the local supermarkets too. The soy sauce is a bit on the thin side, but that is no difference to the little plastic fishis, they place the soy sauce in with our meals at home.

Food home cooked is a better option, but you have to work with what you get. Since I was in downtown on foot, supermarkets are bit scarce. There is one basic BONUS store that sells all kinds of basic food stuff, but fish is not really something to get there. The only fish product was the FISKIBOLLUR. Well, these are precooked microwaveable fish patties, with about 44 % of fish. You see these packages in every supermarket, small or large.

Making a creamy mushroom rice dish was the main course, I tried some of the fish patties with it, but actually, after one of these three I had nuked in the microwave, I decided to eat just the mushroom rice. The patties went into the bin. They tasted of salted or dried fish, but looked as if they were made out of some kind of mash. Reading the ingredients listed didn´t help a bit, since I don`t understand Icelandic.