Sweet Potato Banana Mango Curry - vegan

Served with Lemongrass Rice.

I tried to cook the dish I ate a couple of weeks before at the vegan/vegetarian restaurant Tibits. I blogged it shortly after the visit there.

I remembered the key ingredients but added a little of my own things to it.

This is such a tasty curry and you feel very satisfied after eating it. I am looking forward to have the leftovers on Monday at the office.

Recipe for 2:
350 g sweet potato
2 bananas
1 ripe mango
2 spring onions
1 knob of ginger
2 tbsp coconut oil
300 ml coconut milk
3 Tsp Madras mild curry powder
Chives
Chili salt and pepper

Lemongrass Rice:
1 cup basmati rice
2 Stalks of lemongrass
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Cups of vegetable stock
Some turmeric or annato as yellow dye

Peel the sweet potato and cut the onion in rings. Start a wide pan with coconut oil and onions. Then chuck in the pieces of sweet potato. Season with salt and pepper. Aftet 3 min add 100 ml coconut milk, reduce the heat and close the lid and let it cook for 5 min. Add more coconut milk and cook until the potatoes are soft.
Peel the mango and make cubes if possible. Cut the peeled banana into wide slices. Add these both with the rest of the coconut milk to the pan.

Meanwhile cook the rice with the other ingredients.

Serve with some fresh chives or parsley.

Adria - Visiting a Croatian Restaurant

It has been a very long time since I was in a Croatian restaurant in Germany. They were plentiful 15 years ago, but today it is not easy to find any restaurants serving Balkan food.

I was out with friends for an evening of red wine tasting in a rose garden from a castle. But wine tasting started later then we thought.

Some food is always a good choice before you start drinking wine. We looked around in the lovely town of Klingenberg on the Main river and found the Adria restaurant.

We were lucky to get the last table without a reservation.

What is typical on a Croatian menu?
Dishes with meat or minced meat. Djuvec Rice. French Fries. Sheep Cheese.

I ordered Pleskavica. Minced meat filled with lots of sheep cheese. The cheese gets soft and oozes out when you cut up the meat.

A bowl of salad went as first course.

Apricot Coconut Cake

My friend visited the U.A.E. a couple of weeks ago. She likes to experience supermarkets. She went into different ones. SPINNEY's is a large one. Like our large supermarket chaines they have chain magazine issue free of charge to promote products.
The Spinney one was a very glossy one, more highend than the ones here. There was a sperate recipe booklet inside.

They used all kinds of Spinney products in the recipe, but you can easily use the ones from your supermarket.

The recipe had a messurement fault. The amount of flour in the crumble  was way to high, 2 1/3 cup of flour jumped into my eye. With the other ingredients a no go.
Preheat the oven to 170 C. Use a 15x30 cm baking dish. Grease it and put baking paper in

Recipe:
180 g soft salted butter
150 g coconut flower sugar
2 large free range eggs
200 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
180 ml coconut milk
Pinch of salt
80 g dried apricots with 50 ml orange juice
Lemon zest
60 g dessicated coconut
6 ripe fresh apricot

CRUMBLE:
2/3 cup flour
2 tbsp salted butter
2 tbsp demera sugar
2 1/4 tbsp dessicated coconut
2 tbsp coconut flakes

In a stand mixer combine soft butter and coconut sugar until creamy. That will take a couple of minutes. Add one egg at the time.
In a bowl mix the dry ingredients.
Soak the cut up dried apricots in orange juice.
Pit the ripe apricots and chop the roughly.

Add a third of the flour mix to the mixer and a third of the coconut milk, then repeat. Do not overmix the batter.
Fold in the soak apricots. Pour on the baking dish and top with fresh apricots.

Prepare the crumble and cover the apricots with it.
Bake for 60 min

Cherries in 5 different kinds of Alcohol with Sago Risotto

I never had a cherry compote like this kind. At first I laughed about the amount of bottles I had to carry to the kitchen, later the whole apartment smelled like a distillery. I exchanged the Amaretto for a hazelnut liqueur. I hate Amaretto because it reminds me of marzipan.

This cherry compote I will make definitely again as long as it is cherry season here. It goes great with ice cream.

Making a risotto with sago pearls was new to me too. The recipe is one of Eckart Witzigmann´s.
I changed it a little to my preferences. The recipe called for fresh coconut to break open and get some shavings out. I did not get any and used dried coconut flakes.

recipe for the compote:
300 g good quality cherries
250 ml red wine
200 ml Port wine
150 ml Creme de Cassis
20 ml cherry schnaps
10 ml Amaretto
1/2 cinnamon stick
1/2 vanilla bean
10 g vanilla pudding powder
Juice of a lemon
Juice of an orange
10 g honey

Pit the cherries and cook the pits with red wine and Port for 2 min. Get the pits out.
Add the creme de Cassis liqueur and cinnamon and vanilla and cook down to 500 ml.
Add the kirsch and Amaretto.
In a bowl mix the juice of lemon and orange with the Pudding powder and stir it into the hot sauce, let it get back to a boil and cook for 1 min, add the cherries and get the pot off the heat.
Cool it down to room temperature. Take out the cinnamon and vanilla sticks.

recipe for the Risotto for 4:

160 g sago pearls
pinch of fresh grated nutmeg
pinch of salt
a bit grated ginger
60 g white sugar
400 g coconut milk
50 ml whole milk
coconut flakes

In a pot with a lot of boiling water blanche the sago for 2 min, drain.
Clean the pot.
Grate nutmeg and ginger into the pot and add salt and the sago.
Pout 1/3 of the coconut milk in and loosen the sago, cook on low heat and slowly add more coconut milk and if needed a bit of milk. Stir often.
It takes About 15-20 min until the sago has the Right consistency, like risotto.
Pour into 4 bowls and let it cool down.

Serve with coconut shavings and some cherries on top, the rest on the side.

Ox Heart Tomato filled

This is a recipe from Süddeutsche Zeitung, written by 2 star Michelin Chef Christian Jürgens.

My friend made it last week and gave me the recipe last Friday. I went Tuesday to my favourite grocery centre and they had all kinds of tomatoes. But no Ox Heart ones. On my way home I stopped at my local large supermarket and looked for these tomatoes. No chance. I asked one of the staff and he told me, that they wont get any this week. I wondered why.
In the afternoon I watched a commerical from LIDL. They promoted "Tomato Week" with all kinds of tomatoes for lower prices. Yesterday I went to LIDL and bought Ox Heart tomatoes. They were cheap! Since every LIDL has them in the moment, all other grocery chaines got none.

The tomatoes need a bit of tuning before you actually prepare them to eat. Last night I cut off the top and used a Parisian spoon to hollow them out. I kept the flesh for the next day.
With olive oil, lemon juice and black pepper I made a marinade and filled them with it.   

Recipe for 2:
2 ox heart tomatoes
12 cm cucumber
1 small red onion
1 clove of garlic
25 g pine nuts
1 chiabatta roll
8 raw prawns
Basil
Olive oil
White balsamic vinegar
1 tsp honey
Salt and pepper
Lemon juice
Herbes de Provence

Get it of the marinate.
Chop the tomato flesh, peel and cut the red onion into strips, get the seeds out if the cucumber and cut them into 5mm chunks. Cut half of the basil.
In a pan toast the pine nuts.

Mix 3 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar with honey, salt and pepper and make the salad.
In the pan with a little oil start the seasoned prawns until they are nearly done, take them out of the pan.
Get in more oil and the chopped garlic and fry rhe bread cubes. Add some herbes de Provence. When the bread is done, adf the prawns agsin to finish.

Stuff the tomatoes with the salad and top with bread and prawns and a little more basil.

Karaage Salad

Japanese deep fried chicken -Karaage. Why not eat it a little healthy as topping over a couple of vegetables.

I am a huge fan of the YouTubers TABIEATS, two Japanese guys.
The mother of one us lives in Hawaii,  cooks her fast and easy recipes with her son, when she visits Tokyo.

I have done several of her recipes now and they are really good and easy to prepare. I saw the new YT video in the morning and went grocery shopping for the main ingredients: chicken, broccoli and cucumber.
The rest is found at home.

Recipe for 2:
500 g broccoli
1/2 cucumber
4 Spring onion whites
1 Chicken breast
4 tbsp corn starch
Oil for frying

Marinade:
3 tbsp shoyu
2 Tbsp sake
1 Tsp ginger juice
1 Grated garlic clove

Dressing:
4 tbsp canola oil
1 Tsp dark sesame oil
1 Tsp ginger juice
1 Tsp sugar
3 Tbsp rice vinegar


Marinate the chicken first. Cut it into thin strips, it cooks faster this way. Store it in the fridge while you prepare the other ingredients.

Cook the broccoli florets and cool them in ice water so that they keep the bright green colour. Drain.
Cut the white part of the spring onions open lengthwise and take the core out. Lay the onion flat and cut into very thin strips. Put inice water until you need them. That way they will loose the strong onion taste and get crunchy.
Take the seeds out of the cucumber abd cut into small strips.

Place the corn starch on a plate and coat the chicken strips well.
Heat up the oil in a pan to 180 C and in 2 or 3 batches fry the chicken golden brown. Place on kitchen paper to drain.

Make the dressing and assemble the salad, top it with chicken and pour the dressing over.

Dumplings with Strawberry filling

I am a huge fan of dumplings. I even started this blog to talk about the diversity of dumplings.
In summer I love the Austrian method of filling dumplings with fruits, starting with Marillenknödel or Apricot dumplings. Later in season fillings with damson plums.

We are here high in strawberry season.  Today is St. John's Day, the proverb says: asparagus is dead and the cherries are red.
That is the best time of the year to cook with fruits.

I never packed strawberries in a potato dough. But why not. The idea for this recipe came from the brochure of the Hengelein producer of potato dough and other potato products. My Dad loved their different versions of potato dumpling dough. Easy to roll dumplings, and nearly always perfect outcome.

Recipe:
500 g silky potato dough for dumplings
150 g strawberries
30 g butter
40 g bread crumbs
Pinch of cinnamon
125 g raspberries
150 g blueberries
1 tsp lemon juice
Sugar and salt
Vanilla custard
Some mint leaves

Cook a vanilla custard and put clingfilm on top and set it in the fridge to cool.
Wash 50 g strawberries, the raspberries and blueberries an chuck them in a blender. Add some lemon juice and a bit of sugar. Give it a good mix and pour it in a fine sieve to get the skin and pits out. Set in the fridge to cool.

Use a big pot and fill it with lots of water, add 1 tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt. Let it get to a simmer.
Clean the few strawberries and quarter them.

Divide the dumpling dough in 12 parts. Press the dough flat in your palm and add 2 pieces strawberries and close the dough around. Roll it.

Cook them with a slight simmer for 12 min.

Make some roasted breadcrumbs with a pinch of cinnamon.