Thai Pineapple Stir fried Rice

Khao Pad Supparot

On my shopping trip to our Asian supermarket I found some spice blends. One is the base for the pineapple rice. This consists mostly of shrimp paste and fish sauce.

I bought fresh pineapple, bell peppers and lots of spring onions.
The evening before I cooked 1 cup longgrain rice. It has to be cold for the best result.

Recipe for 2:
125 g prawns
1 cup cooked rice
2 bell peppers
1 carrot
1 bunch spring onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 cup fresh pineapple
1 package sauce for Thai pineapple rice
2 eggs
1/2 cup chopped cashews
1/2 bunch coriander
2 tsp coconut oil
Salt and pepper

Make the mis en place. Chopping everything is key to Thai kitchen. Beat the eggs.

Use a wok or a wide pan.
Heat up the coconut oil and get the onions in first, after 2 min the other veggies. Give them 4 min on high heat and toss in the pineapple.
Add the sauce package and cook for 3 more min.

Scoop it out of the pan and get the rice in. After 3 min, make a clean spot in the middle and add a little more oil. Pour in the eggs and start to scramble them. Mix with the rice.
Add the cooked prawns and veggies. Season.
Finish with cashews and coriander.

Radiccio out of a pan

I needed 4 leaves for the mushroom burgers. Now I had a medium head sitting around.

What to do with it? A bowl of salad was no option on a cold and rainy evening.

Radiccio is a kind of salad that can easily eaten warm as a veggy. You can see that often in Italy. They quarter the salads and place them with garlic and olive oil in an oven proof dish and roast it.

I wanted to leave some of the bitterness in, just mellow down the taste a bit.

Lemon juice and oil with a little butter as the base. A little bit of broth is good to have too.

Brown sugar and salt and pepper are the other ingredients.

Not much to do and you have a great side dish. But you can eat it on its own.

Girl's Night out at our favourite Italian place in Frankfurt

When we look for a decent Italian eatery in Frankfurt, the Pasta e Panini is our first choice.
We've been there a couple of times now and the quality of the food is always first choice. So is the staff.

We have shown the last blog about this place shown to the owner and he appreciated it.


For dinner one of us had pasta with parmigiana regiano and black truffles

The other was spaghetti with Nduja, a very spicy kind of smooth Italian sausage and a scoop of ricotta cheese to lessen the heat.

For dessert we had Tiramisu and a chocolate souffle.

As every time, we had a great evening here.

Sicilian Orange Spaghetti

The awesome taste brings back memories of great holidays.
And if is so easy, just 20 minutes to the table.

Oranges are the best in Sicily, that is something you will hear everyone there say. The great Etna volcano has a mayor roll in that. The temperatures between night and day are wider, that makes the oranges sweeter and sometimes dark red inside.

I was on the Etna twice and tasted great oranges there. Yesterday on the telli was a 30 min movie about food on Sicily. Different cities are known for their local fare.
One snippet was about the tasty oranges and a chef made this dish.

On my way home I stopped and shopped organic oranges and some creme fraiche.

Recipe for 2:
2 organic oranges
60 g smoked raw ham (I used Black Forest Ham)
1 tbsp Butter
Juice of one orange
1 tbsp chives
3 tsp creme fraiche
Pepper and salt

Take a speed peeler and cut strips of one orange without the white.
In a small pot with a little water boil them for 10 minutes. Press the juice out of this orange. Cut the other one in 1 cm slices.
Start the spaghetti in heavy salted water.
In a wide pan, heat up the butter with the orange juice, drop in the sliced discs. Use a knife and cut the cooked peel into thin strips and toss them in the pan too.
Spoon in the creme fraiche.
Rip the raw ham into fine bits and toss them in the pan.
Use tongs and transfer the cooked pasta into the pan. Mix well, season with pepper and chives.

Onion Soup with Cheese Bread

I was not in the mood to make the classic French onion soup.

It is such a cold and rainy day today and that called for a heart warming bowl of soup. The other reason for it was the amount of onions I have sitting in an old pail. I bought a veriaty for my bhajis, but could not find any loose ones-  I had to buy them in larger amounts.

A soup with bit more then 500 g of onions made a big hole in the pail. And all different kinds make for an even tastier soup. Of corse you can use only one kind of onions.
I had half of the cheese I used for the mushroom burgers yesterday still in the fridge. A pepper cheese goes so well with it.

recipe for 2:
500 g mixed onions
2 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp butter
250 ml white wine
750 ml beef stock
1 tsp Marmite
1 tbsp flour
2 tbsp chives
chili salt
pepper
hart pepper cheese
old bread and butter

Peel garlic and onions. Cut into half rings.
In a big pot heat up the oil with the butter and chuck the onions in. Give them a good stir and then reduce the heat and put a lid on the pot to steam the onions soft. Stir a couple of times.
Add Marmite and flour and stir well.
Now first the wine. It needs to cook down a little, then pour in the stock.
The soup needs to simmer on low heat for 15 minutes.
Toast some bread and butter it lightly. Put cheese on top and place it in the bottom of your plate. Add chives. Now ladle hot soup on top.

Mushroom Burger

We have still mushroom season. Well, it is mushroom season now all year long when you can get cultivated ones in supermarkets and at farmer markets.

I was downtown today and walked over our X-mas market.  The place is usually filled Saturdays with farmers and their goods. Now they are scattered around.
I found a tent with a bubbling pan of mushooms and two guys selling all kinds of cultivated mushrooms from their farm.
I bought brown button mushrooms and 4 shitake mushrooms. The guy wanted to know what I was cooking and I told him. Mushroom Burgers.

He grinned and showed me packaged mushroom patties and told me very proud that they were vegan.
I told him thanks but no thanks, mine would contain scrumptious cheese and egg.

Somewhere in the center of Hessian there is the cheese barn and they sell cheeses from an Affineur.

I bought a hard cheese wrapped in lots of black pepper. Part of that will go into the burger.

Recipe for 2:
2 lye rolls or any other kind
4 shitake mushrooms
100 g brown button mushrooms
3 spring onions
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp clarified butter
1 egg
1 tbsp chopped chives
3 tbsp panko breadcrumbs
60 g peppered hart cheese
4 radiccio leaves
2 tsp chili mustard
3 tsp creme fraiche
1/2 tsp agave syrup

Clean the mushrooms with a bit of kitchen paper, take out the stems and discard them.
Cut them into small cubes. Finley chop the onions and garlic.
In clarified butter start with them until they are soft, then add the mushrooms. Season lightly with salt and pepper and saute them until they are soft. Use a cold plate and pour them on and spread out to cool completely.
Grate the cheese, mix it with breadcrumbs, chives and egg and the mushrooms.
If you have a burger press on hand, use this to make the 2 patties.
Drop them in a heated pan with some oil and fry them until the bottom is brown, then turn them carefully.

Make the burger sauce. Mix mustard, creme fraiche and agave syrup. Smother the rolls with it, place salad on each side and put the burger on one and close it. Enjoy.

Italian Restaurant Mare Monti in town

Attilio's Mare Monti, my new favourite Italian Restaurant in the city. Well it is actually on the outskirts of the city, a couple of 100 meters behind the central train station.

It is a family owned business for many years now. I was there today for the first time, because parking is a pain in the neck. We had some trial and error before we found a spot to leave the car.

We had a reservation for 7pm and that was the best on a Friday evening. The restaurant was packed. They have 2 blackboards with the daily specials and you can order from the menu too.

We started with 2 Aperol Spitz and a Vitello Tonnato starter. We shared it, because the portion size was huge. In addition to the bread came a bit of pecorino, some garlic mayo and a couple of olives.

Next course was linguine with loup de mer in a creamy sauce. But they had black truffles with an other pasta dish and we wanted to mix it.
The kitchen said no way, that does no go well together.
And they were right. The sauce had a faint taste of Anis seed from the Pernot and the dill. Truffle would have made the dish go wonky taste wise.

It was such a huge portion of pasta that we both were not able to finish it. We took the offer of a doggy bag. Others in the Restaurant did the same on their tables.

We were stuffed, but there was a surprise from the kitchen. Panna cotta in home made caramel sauce. Moreish.

We just finished it somehow and then came a plate of hot pastry.
It reminded me of the batter used for Cannoli. But just deep fried and covered in icing sugar in the former caramel sauce.

The next year a second trip to the restaurant is already been planned.