Cabbage and pulled Pork - Kalua Hawaii

It is a hommage to a Hawaiian dish- Kalua Pork. I have still pulled pork sitting in my fridge and saw a video from TabiEats on YT with Kalua Cabbage - Hawaiian style.
My way of preparing the dish is a bit more on the ingredients side- but not so much that it is a lot of work.

I am a huge fan of the Japanese TabiEats channel, they show food hauls from Japanese conveniant stores and supermarkets. They cook and travel and it is fun to watch.
One of the 2 presenters lived a long time since childhood in Hawaii and so many dishes from there found their way into the videos. I already prepared some of them, they all tasted great.

recipe:
180 g cold pulled pork
200 g cabbage
1/2 tsp Hawaiian salt
2 spring onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp Bourbon ( optional)
1 tbsp dark sesame oil
2 tbsp vegetable oil
pepper
1 cup rice

Heat up the sesame and veg oil in a wide pan and drop in the chopped onions and garlic and sauté a while.  Add the cabbage and let it wilt.
Add the pulled pork and let it crisp up.
To make a bit of steam, add the Bourbon.
Season well.
Cook some rice and enjoy

Tempura white Asparagus

This is Fast Food for me.

I bought a bunch of small white asparagus- they call it Deluxe, because it does not need to be peeled- but they are the tiny stalks that they wont sell otherwise. But with the "Deluxe" sign, they are sold to us at a high price.
I just chopped off half a centimeter at the bottom, washed them and I was good to go.

A box of cream cheese and some Ayvar are ingredients to be found in my fridge mostly all year round, some fresh herbs from the balcony and a Tempura flour bag from my Asian storage corner.

recipe:
200 g Tempura flour
150 ml ice cold water
1 tsp dried onion powder
chili salt and white pepper
60 g cream cheese
1 1/2 tbsp Ayvar
some fresh herbs
oil for frying

Make the tempura batter,
heat up the oil to 170 C,
mix cream cheese and Ayvar and herbs,
drop the asparagus in the batter,
a batch into the oil for 3 minutes ,
drain on kitchen paper,
serve.

Mediterranean Asparagus Platter

A Mediterranean asparagus platter sounds complicated, but it is not. Unusual is the use of white asparagus which is our main kind grown here in Germany. It is the asparagus that needs to be peeled and it takes a bit more time to cook then the green kind.

I had some dried tomatoes in oil sitting in the fridge, they were softened in foaming butter with some fresh herbs from my balcony.

There are so many ways to prepare the white asparagus while it is in season. So many people can barely await the season to start and even with nowadays methods of plastic coverings over the fields and sometimes heated fields it takes mostly time until Easter. The price per kilo is rather high in the beginning, but after a couple of weeks when the weather is playing its part, the prices get lower. The final day for harvest in June, 24th St John´s Day.

recipe:
500 g white asparagus
1 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp butter
5 pieces of sundried tomatoes in oil
1 spring onion
4 tbsp butter
1 slice of wholemeal toast
2 hardboild eggs
1 tsp Dijon mustard
3 tsp sour cream
a couple of rocket leaves
a couple of basil
a couple of slices of Pecorino 
1/4 tsp smoked paprika
white pepper and salt

Peel the asparagus and cut off the end.
In a pot with salted, sugared and buttered water cook for 10 minutes or until to your preference.
In a pan melt 2 tbsp butter and sauté the spring onion rings until soft, add the finely diced toast and
get it brown, set aside.
In more butter soften the chopped dried tomatoes and add the rocket and basil at the end.
Get the hard egg yolk out of the egg, chop the egg white.

Mix the egg yolk with mustard, sour cream, paprika, salt and white pepper and make a creamy dip.
Get the asparagus on a plate and dress with all the other things on the table.

Vanilla carrots

It may sound strange, but carrots are kind of sweet and they go very well with vanilla. You can just sesaon them with a vanilla pod in the cooking water, or as I did with some vanilla sugar and vanilla vinegar.

I had a couple of carrots - 3 and a half to be correct sitting in the vegetable drawer of my fridge for a while. They looked very sad and  were a bit rubber like on the outside. I was not doing any kind of stock in the next couple of days- I would have thrown them in otherwise. I decided to prepare them as chopped carrots. It was a bit of a deal to peel them with a speed peeler, but I got my carrots diced into fine cubes. One spring onion to flavour and a bit of olive oil.

recipe:
use fresh carrots if you have- but sad ones will do the job as well
1 tbsp olive oil
1 spring onion
1/2 tsp brown vanilla sugar
1 tsp rich dark vanilla vinegar
1 tbsp water
salt and pepper

It is not much to do.
Just start onion and carrot dices in the oil, wait until they get a little soft, add vanilla sugar and caramelize a bit, add the vinegar, salt and pepper and finish with some water.
When the carrots are tender enough, just serve.

Sweet Rice Pudding

A comfort food for me. I love the kind of light bite that Risotto rice has. The regular pudding rice gets too mushy for me.
I used the Thermomix this time. It gives me time to do something else. No stirring required.
I like my rice kind of creamy and not to thick, that is a reason why I seldom buy the supermarket veriaty from "Müller´s Milchreis" with fruit compote or different kinds of pastes like hazelnut, pistacchio and coconut. The rice is to soft and the whole is too sticky and sweet for me. But many many people love it and look at me kind of strange, when I tell them I cook the sweet rice myself.

Serving it with fresh blueberries and little cumquats balances out the sweetness of the rice.

recipe:
125 g Risotto rice like Carneroli or Aborio
650 ml whole milk
30 g sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 egg yolk
1 pinch grated fine vanilla bean
some white chocolate swirls.

Prepaing it in a pot requires some attention, because the rice loves to stick and the milk loves to boil over.
Wash the risotto rice.
Heat milk with salt and sugar and vanilla then add the rice, let it boil once and reduce the heat to low and let it cook for 25 min. Stir and take care not to boil it over.
When the rice is cooked, let it sit for 3 minutes, add the egg yolk and the lemon juice and serve with the fruit

Triple Chocolate Coconut Cookies

I have to make use of small amounts of different chocolate drops and curls and coconut chips. I was looking for a cookie to bake, because the Kangaroo cookies have been gone at the office.
This is very chocolaty- but on the other hand I call it "a bit healthy" due to the use of organic coconut oil, organic coconut sugar and organic sweetened and unsweetened coconut chips (crisps).
The cookies are a bit chewy in the middle with all the coconut.

I will keep my eyes open for lots more cookie recipes and check if they are good to bake.
The base to this one was from Imperial Sugar producer and they have a lot more on their website.
But I reduced and replaced several ingredients making it my own recipe.

recipe for 24 cookies:
1 1/4 cup flour
1/3 cup high quality coco powder- unsweetened
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup (3,7 oz) or 100 ml melted good quality coconut oil
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup coconut flower sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup cappuccino chocolate drops
1/4 cup milk chocolate drops
1/2 cup white chocolate drops
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut chips(crisps)
1/4 cup sweetened coconut chips(crisps)

Use 2 bowls.
Preheat the oven 175 C.
Put the dry ingredients, except the sugars and the last 4 ones in one bowl- stir.
Put the wet ingredients with the sugars in the other bowl- stir well.

Pour the dry stuff into the wet stuff. Make it into a dough.
Pour in the last 4 ingredients and try to incorporate them in the dough.
Use baking paper and place a tbsp of the mix spaced on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes.

Cinnamon Pannacotta

Wow!  I just finished eating one dessert and I am flashed.

Well cinnamon for me is not a spice only used in winter time, I can eat cinnamon all year long.
Applesauce and apple pie without cinnamon, not good. Pancakes or sweet rice with cinnmon, a great dish!
After Matcha pannacotta on Easter weekend, I had to try something for this long weekend. We have a holiday on Monday, May 1.
Cinnamon goes great with different kinds of fruits, not only apples and pears, but with strawberries or honey melons as well.

recipe for 4 cups:
400 ml double cream
100 ml whole milk
30 g sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
3 -4 gelatine leaves
ready made caramel sauce

Preparing it is similar to last weeks Matcha pannacotta recipe. So check it out for too.