Lavender Fennel Polenta Chicken

It sounds strange to have flowers in your food. Especially lavender, which is often used in soaps and parfumes. The coating is originally from a recipe with prawns, which sounds weird too.
The taste is awesome and you should give it a try.
I cooked with friends today and so it was fun to do all the steps of the many recipes together. Each and everyone had to do a lot.

I started with a pestel and mortar and grounded all the ingredients for the chicken coating. It has to be fine to mash with the polenta (corn) flour and took a while and a good amount of work.

recipe for the coating:
1/2 tbsp fennel seed
1 tsp lavender blossoms
1 tsp coarse sea salt
5 tbsp fine yellow corn flour
ground pepper
lemon zest of 1 lemon

4 chicken breasts
2 tbsp rapeseed oil
5 sundried tomatoes
25 g roasted pinenuts
40 g feta
thyme

Mix fennel seeds, lavender blossoms and salt in the mortar and start crushing it. You will smell you work immediately. It will take a good amount of time. When it is fine, ground pepper in and the lemon zest and give it a good mix. Then add the flour and set aside.

Oil the chicken breasts and coat them with the mixture. In a pan with a little oil, get the breasts in and brown them on all sides. Set into an oven proof dish and stick in the oven at 160C for 20 minutes.
Cool down.
Mix chopped sundried tomatoes, chopped pine nuts and cheese and a bit of thyme.
Cut the chicken breasts open and fill in some of the mix. Back into the baking dish and into the oven at 130 C for 10 min.

Serve with polenta, a tomato sauce and a bean salad.

Fried Onion Beer Bread

This bread is very tasty and strong onion flavoured. It goes great with all kinds of starters. It is a beer bread after all, so a snack with some beer sounds good to me. But I had it with Prosecco with mini tomatoes in.

The dough has to proof over night in the fridge. It is a bit dry and needs not much work after it comes out. Just make some sausage shaped breads and get them into the oven.

recipe:
500 g bread flour Type 550
100 g flour Type 1050
40 g fresh yeast
350 - 375 ml beer
20 g honey
2 tsp salt
75 g fried onions

Bake at 220 C for 25 min. Brush with some water at the start of the baking.

Onion Meatloaf and green beans

I packed a lot of fried freeze dried onion chunks into the meatloaf and lots more fresh onions into the sauce. Such an onion delight for someone who likes onions.

I had an opened box of these dried onions sitting around for quite a while and was tempted to throw them away. But now I am happy I found a way to use them.
The green beans were bought on my today's grocery trip to France. A huge bag for just 1 €. I topped and tailed them all and with some mountain savoury from the balcony cooked them.

They were very tasty. And now I have a bag with 2/3 of all the beans sitting in the fridge for more recipes.

recipe:
350 pork mince
1 egg
90 g bread crumbs
30 g dried fried onions
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp herbes de Provence
1 shallot
2 cloves of garlic

sauce:
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp Ayvar
1 tsp cornstarch in water
1 bay leaf
1/2 beef stock cube
300 ml water
10 ml white wine
1 big white onion
2 blocks of  beef Jus- frozen
1 bit of fresh chili

green beans:
1 kg beans
1 bunch of savoury
1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 bunch fresh chives
4 tbsp butter

Get the meatloaf together and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes to set again.
In a pan with a lid, brown the meatloaf on all sides, add onion and bay leaf and chili and let it roast a bit.
Add water, wine and stock cube an Jus and Ayvar and bring to a boil. Add cornstarch with water, close the lid and cook for 25 min. Turn the meatloaf twice.

In the meantime clean the beans, cook them with the herbs, drain and soak in cold water for 1 minute.
Make the topping with butter, breadcumbs, garlic powder and chives. Set aside.

Tomatoes and roasted Bread

Getting out of the car I saw some bright red dots in front of me. More tomatoed ripened in one day. Luckily I have an empty lunch box handy. Easy to start picking the fresh tomatoes. A good box full of them went with me into the kitchen.

Now what to do with them? Tomato salad sounded boring, but levelled up tomato salad sounded great. To bring it to an other level, I used a couple of slices of rye sourdough bread, lots of garlic and good olive oil. I had 3 small Baby Bell cheeses sitting in their bright red waxy skin, that together with a good bunch of fresh herbs from the balcony gave a great salad.

recipe:
300 g mixed tomatoes
3 slices of bread
5 tbsp olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
1 spring onion
3 Baby bell
a bunch fresh herbs
2 tbsp good quality balsamic vinegar
fleur de sel and pepper

Cut the bread into chunks and peel the garlic and chop the spring onion.
Put 3 tbsp olive oil into the pan and start the garlic, then add the bread and spring onion and season with salt and pepper.
Cut the cheese into small chunks, roughly chop the herbs and quarter the tomatoes.
Bring everything together in a bowl and add the rest of the olive oil and the vinegar and a final seasoning of salt and pepper.

Homemade Mango Tomato Ketchup

I had to harvest two days in a row bowls of tomatoes in all colours and sizes and I was not able to eat all of them at once.
A fresh mango was sitting in the fruit bowl and it was ripe.
It is a not to thick version of a ketchup and I did not use so much sugar.

recipe:
450 g mixed tomatoes
1 ripe mango
1 shallot
1/2 lemon juice
1 clove of garlic
2 cm fresh ginger
1/4 fresh hot yellow chili
1 1/2 tsp koriander powder
1/2 tsp mild curry
70 g brown sugar
70 ml white balsamic vinegar
pinch of salt and pepper

Put the solid ingredients into a blender and mix fine.
Pour into a pot and add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil.
Let it simmer for 20 minutes.
Pour through a fine sieve into clean jars.

Chocolate Sweet Rice

We had such a thunderstorm with hail yesterday and the temperature dropped about 12 degrees and when I came home I needed something comforting.
I decided to make a sweet risotto and found some Cadbury milk chocolate and a unripe pear.

The combination of chocolate and pear goes great.
Do you remember the dessert  Pear Helene? Vanilla ice cream with a syrup pear and chocolate sauce. So delicious and so 1980s.

Recipe:
600 ml whole milk
150 g Risotto rice
30 g butter
2 stalks of caramelized ginger
1 pinch of salt
20 g sugar
1/2 vanilla pod
2 eggs
1 lemon
1 pear
1 tsp butter
1/2 tsp sugar
60 g chocolate

Melt the butter in a pot and let the rice coated. Takes about 2 minutes.
Add the ingredients down to the vanilla pod.
Let it cook for 20 minutes.
Break the chocolate into pieces and melt it in the rice. Get it off the heat.
Add the egg yolk and a bit of lemon juice.
Seperate the eggs and beat the egg white to stiff peaks.
Press half the lemon.
Melt butter in a small pan and add pieces of pear with skin on. Add lemon juice and some sugar and cook until the pears are a bit soft.
Grate some chocolate on top.

Chicken Miso Ramen

This soup is so good and reminds me of a dish I ate in Japan.
Miso is a famous part of many dishes in that country. In many regions the people make the fermented stuff themselves.

In this Ramen soup is the second main ingredient chicken mince with a good amount of spice. The mix of heat and umami goes straight into the soup to flavour it.
I did not have Ramen noodles at home. I took some Cappellini pasta and cooked it in 2 tsp baking powder. It makes a difference when you cook them this way.

Recipe for 3:
350 chicken breast fillet
2 tbsp Takoyaki sauce
2 tbsp Sriracha
2 tbsp white miso paste
1 tbsp sweet chili sauce
5 cm ginger
4 cloves of garlic
2 spring onions
1 small can sweet corn
2 tbsp soy sauce and Mirin
Ao nori
250 g Cappellini pasta
3 tsp baking powder
1.2 l water
3 soft boiled eggs
2 tbsp light sesame oil

Cook the pasta in 3 l water with baking powder, drain and set aside.
cook the eggs.




Take a mixer and make chicken mince out of the fillets, put in a bowl and add the sauces. Stir well and set aside.
Peel garlic and ginger and chop well.
Heat up the oil and fry the garlic and ginger and add the mince.
Let it turn brown all around and fill in 1.2 l water and bring to a boil.
Cook for 5 min. Add soy sauce and mirin and take a small sieve and put the miso paste in and dissolve it in the broth.

Chop spring onion, peel eggs and open can of sweet corn, put the noodles in the bowls and add soup. Put the rest on top and finish with Aonori.