Chives Oil

A hunk of fresh bread and a small bowl of green gold and you see yourself sitting in a high end restaurant.

This is a recipe of one of my favourite German Chefs Thoru Nakamura. I prepared a couple of his recipes and you can find all of them here on various blogs. This is the 9th recipe.

It is not that complicated, but be warned, you have to clean a lot of stuff afterwards.

When you go to a fancy restaurant, olive oil and some baguette are served often. Why not make a different kind of oil and serve that when you have friends over for dinner.

recipe for 3 bottles at 250 ml:
900 ml rapeseed oil
100 g baby spinach
5 bunches of chives about 150 g

Wash spinach and chives and put it through a salad spinner to get dry.
Roughly chop it and place it in a strong blender

Add 600 ml oil and give it a first good blitz, add the rest of the oil and make a very find blend,

Pour it into a pot and with a spatula on medium heat get it up to 90 C.

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Use a big bowl with ice cubes in the water and place a second bowl inside.
Use a fine mash sieve and pour the blend into the bowl.
Discard the green mash.

Use a one time piping bag and fill the oil in, close the top neatly and hang it up.
The liquid will separate.

Clean the bottles and use a funnel.

Place the dirty bowl under the piping bag and cut a hole into the tip.
Let the clear and the foamy green stuff run out until you get to the dark green one.
Fill that into bottles.

They keep in the fridge for 3 weeks.

Tsukemono or pickled Cabbage

Since I was in Japan I love pickled vegetables.

Here in Germany we mostly have pickled gherkins and sauerkraut. Sometimes you will find some sour green beens. But that is all I grew up with.

I watched a video on YT from Niki Niki. Her Japanese mother is still cooking and she is filming and translating during the process. The style is easy and no problem to adept here.

Tsukemono can be eaten with rice or just as a side dish for meat or fish.

Since my head of cabbage has enough leaves to have several meals, I took a couple of leaves off and ripped them in small pieces. The hard middle bit is not used.
Give it a good wash and place it in a freezer bag.

recipe:
2 hands full of shredded cabbage
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp hot red pepper flakes (I used Korean)
1 1/2 tbsp rice vinegar.
1/2 package of instant dashi
wakame seaweed optional

Add salt and massage the bag a while. Set aside for 20 min.

Now add vinegar, dashi stock and pepper flakes and mush again.
Set aside for 2 hours.

Drain and place in an airtight container and add some wakame if you like.
Keep in the fridge.

Restaurant Attilios Mare Monti- once again

I have been to this restaurant last year in November. Now was the second time I was eating here.
A good classic Italien restaurant is getting rarer and rarer. Now we have so many nations with their kitchens in the city. So many choices. It gets tougher for the restaurants, that serve dishes everybody loves and often cooks at home.

Pizza joints are no longer in Italian hands. Often other nationals are the owners and cooks. They are often serving Pizza, Döner, Burger, Schnitzel and sometimes Wok noodles all in one place.
I do not eat there. But lots of people do.

Going to a restaurant that is in business for a long time and is family owned is a great thing.

As a starter we had two different kinds of soups.

One was a very creamy and rich potato soup the other one was a fruity tomato cream. Both have been delicious.

The other starter was Insalada al Mare, mixed seafood on top of some salad. Not too briny or chewy.
It tasted freshly made and went very good with some white wine.

We had three different main courses. Mine was tagliatelle with pork fillet peaks and roasted tomatoes.

My best friend had rabbit with veggies and roasted potatoes and her husband ate some cod on a bed of veggies and potatoes.

We shared a Panna Cotta with some raspberry couli. For my taste, the Panna Cotta was not wobbly enough and it took a bit of effort to get through the top layer. It reminded me of a German cream pudding.

We had a nice evening and enjoyed our time there.

Pork "cookies"

At the office we were talking about the seasonal cookie baking. Most of us were not in the mood to really show what the cookie monster would love.
I decided not to bake this year. There are enough sweets around that I get my fix.

On my way home I went grocery shopping and bought a Bavarian classic made with finely minced pork and spices. It is called Leberkäs or Fleichkäse here in Germany.
The fine mix is filled into loaf tins and baked in the oven until it is done. Then you cut it up into slices and eat it on bread or with pretzels. When you like more savoury, put it in a pan and get it a bit seared on the outside.

I had the butcher cut me some 1/2 inch slices. When I came home I looked for my Christmas cookie cutters. I haven´t used them in years but still know where I stored them.

A XMas tree, an angel, a shooting star, a bell and polar bear were pressed into the slices of Leberkäs.

I seared them in a pan in a little oil for a couple of minutes. I had a huge head of cabbage at home. I made a simple Kraut dish with onion and caraway seeds.

Restaurant at the Zoo

Darmstadt has the Vivarium, a medium size zoo. It opened in 1965. Since I grew up 250 m down the small hill from it, I feel a long lasting relationship with it. Even now I visit at least once a year and enjoy looking at the animals.

A while after the zoo was opened, a restaurant was attached outside of it. From the beginning it was always named Ristorante Vivarium. The owners changed over the long years, but Italian food was served there all the time. I went there with my parents and their friends often. But haven´' t been there for a long time.

For my birthday celebration I wanted to give it a try after such a long time.
The wait staff was very friendly and we felt good there. The restaurant filled up very quickly.

We started with a Grapefruit and Prosecco drink and waited for the fish soup.
The fish soup came with a bit of Aioli and some bread. The soup contained salmon and shrimp and was very tasty.

One of the choices of the day was Iberico pork chop.
Very tasty and coated with some peppery butter. The side were just plain French fries. The meat was very tender and not dry.
We had a glass of wine each. Primitivo to go with the pork and Pino Grigio with the monkfish.

Thae other main course was monkfish with herb butter and rice.
The fish was very good. The rice was overcooked and under seasoned.

The dessert menu offered some Chocolate Mousse and Hot Love - vanilla ice cream with cooked raspberries. Both very good.

A good Grappa was the finish of the evening.

When you have something to celebrate, going there is a good choice.

Caramel cream and Chocolate Tart

I had to bake something for the office to celebrate my birthday. I made a cheese cream, but there are some coworkers, who prefer sweet stuff in the morning.

At my supermarket check out was a food magazine issue LUST AUF GENUSS - all about caramel. The way the cover was made spoke to me. Later, when I checked the content at home I was a bit disappointed. A friend of mine bought the same issue and she felt the same. The cover was clever marketing.

But at least one recipe caught my eye. But they used Chai Tea in the mix. This is a tea I don´t like and I switched to Earl Grey tea.
I prepared the shortcrust pastry yesterday and stored it in the fridge. That made my live today a lot easier. The recipe is a bit time consuming. Having the pastry out of the way helps.

RECIPE for 24 cm fluted pie tin:
200 g flour
pinch of salt
100 g soft butter and some for the tin
320 g sugar
3 eggs size M
3 egg yolks
60 g double cream
500 ml whole milk
3 earl grey tea bags
1/2 vanilla pod
60 g 60% chocolate
50 g cashew nuts
1 tbsp chopped pistachios
1 mandarin orange

Preheat the oven to  200 C.
Knead flour, salt, butter  and 80 g sugar and 1 egg to a dough. Roll it out and place it in the buttered pie tin. Prick with a fork. Put that for at least 30 min into the fridge.
Place baking paper on top and put ceramic beans on top.
Bake for 1t min.
Get it out.

Reduce the heat of the oven to 120 C.
Use 2 small pots and put 100 g sugar in each one of them, make a light brown caramel. Do not stir, just swirl the sugar in the pot.
When the first one is ready, get it off the heat and pour in the double cream. Cook until it is all melted. Take 1 tbsp out for later.

In the second pot pour in the milk, the vanilla seeds and hang the tea bags in.
Cook for 5 min until the whole caramel has been loosened in the milk. Cool down.
Take out the tea bags.
In a larger bowl, break 2 eggs and 3 egg yolks. Stir and add the milk- tea mix.

Place the pie crust in the oven and pour the tea mix through a fine sieve in. Do not spill.
Carefully push it in the oven and bake for 70 min.
Cool down and get the pie tin off.

Over a bain marie melt the dark chocolate and mix it with the other caramel. Bring it back over low heat to make it smoother.
Pour over the caramel layer.
Use the rest of he caramel and make some lines with a small piping bag.

The rest of the sugar goes into a pan. When the caramel starts, drop in the cashew nuts and coat them.
Chop them when they have cooled down.

Get the skin off the mandarin and place pieces on top. Sprinkle some pistachios and cashews.

Keep it in the fridge!

Cherry layered Cream Dessert

Are you craving for something sweet and creamy without much fuss. You found the right place.

This dessert is so easy to prepare, when you skip the fancy part of piping. Just spoon it into the bowls and you are good to feast.

I wanted a kind of "light" dessert after two heavy courses. Nothing with double cream or Mascarpone cheese.
Here in Germany we have curd. That is a thick like a very good Greek yogurt. If you can´t buy curd where you live, make it yourself. You will need untreated milk from a cow and lemon juice.
Our curd can be bought low fat, with 10, 20, 40 or 50 % of fat. That depends of the amount of cream that is added.
For this recipe I used the low fat, less then 10 % kind of curd.

I bought a 300 g package of frozen sour cherries. There were destoned and really unsweetened. I kept 2 tbsp of cherries to the side and put the rest into a blender with a good amount of Agave syrup.

recipe for 5:
750 g low fat curd
320 g can of sweetened condensed milk
300 g sour cherries- defrosted
90 g Ladyfingers
5 tsp cherry brandy
3 -4 tbsp Agave syrup
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp chocolate shavings for decoration

Mix the curd and the sweetened condensed milk until smooth.
Put 1/3 into a second bowl and add the vanilla extract.
Pour the cherry mix into the larger part, be careful not to use all, it will loosen the cream too much.

If you like it fancy, put both creams in piping bags and use some tall glasses. Break 1 Ladyfinger in
4 pieces and drop them on the bottom. Pour 1 tsp cherry brandy over.
First pipe the pink layer, then a white layer. Now 1 Ladyfinger again and a pink layer.
Finish with 2 of the leftover cherries and a bit of chocolate shavings.