Carrot Soup with Fourme d'Ambert

After work I was hungry but lazy. I checked my vegetable drawer and the grocery list on the door of my fridge what was near the expiration date from my haul from France. A thick slice of moldy cheese, yeah! No, just the Fourme d'Ambert. A cheese from the Auvergne region of France, only produced with the milk of the Salers cows.

A carrot soup topped with this creamy intense cheese sounded like a winner.

Beeing lazy ment cooking in the Thermomix. No need for lots of cutting veggies. Just a bit of peeling and some rough cuts.  Prep time about 5 minutes, cooking time about 25 ninutes. A dash of yogurt and some more seasoning and the soup was ready to serve.
Drop a couple of cheese cuts on top and you have a decent meal.

There was even enough for lunch the other day.

Recipe:
1 large potato
1 red onion
30 g bacon
500 g carrots
1 beef stock cube
750 ml water
1 tbsp oil
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp yogurt 10%
80 g Fourme d'Ambert

Put the small pieces of bacon and the quartered onion into the Thermomix. 10 sec, speed 6. Use a spatula and brush the pieces down. Add oil. 2,5 min 100 C, speed 1.

Add peeled and rough chopped potato and carrots. 6 sec, speed 6. Push everything down with a spatula.
Fill in water and stock cube. 25 min, 100 C, speed 2.

When the bell rings, check the seasoning and add yogurt.

Put into soup bowls and top with chunks of cheese. They will melt on your tongue with the soup.

Toffifee Caramel Muffins

On Saturday I bought a huge package of Toffifee. Usually I eat just 2 a day for a couple of days, the rest sits in the cupboard for a long time. Now I have more then double the amount - for the price of the small package. I wanted get rid of some and looked for a way to do this.

I found several Thermomix recipes and decided for a blond muffin. Most of the recipes contained dark chocolate and cocoa.

Since I used my kitchen helper, it did not take long to make the batter. With an ice cream scoop I filled the muffin cases.

Baking time was 22 min at 180 C.

recipe:
125 g Toffifee
100 g melted butter
90 g sugar
10 g vanilla sugar
pinch of salt
250 g flour
2 tsp baking powder
200 g creme fraiche
2 eggs
4 tbsp caramel sauce

Mix the toffifee until they are a rough cream.

In a stand mixer combine creme fraiche, eggs, melted butter, caramel sauce, sugar and vanilla sugar.

Blend flour and baking powder and add it to the batter. Now add the toffifee and start filling the cases.

Nudja with red onions and pasta in tomato sauce

Sausage from Calabria- the very South of Italy. Nudja is a very hot spreadable kind of Salami. Chili is one of the mayor ingredients of the sausage.
Sometimes it is available at our large Super Center here in town. You do not need a lot of this sausage to make a great dish. I bought about 130 g and it gave maximum flavour.
When I unpacked the stuff from the butcher counter, I discovered that the lady who packed it gave me the rest of the sausage for free. On other 80 g. This sausage was good to go into the freezer.

Red onions are a bit sweet and are going well with the hot sausage. The Calabrian recipe called from a huge bunch of fresh sun sweet tomatoes.  But Tomato Passata work fine as well.

Made 2 different dishes with Nduja already for the blog.

recipe for 3:
350 g pasta that soaks up a lot of sauce
2 red onions
3 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
130 g Nduja sausage
500 ml Passata
1 tsp sugar
pepper
salt
basil
3 tbsp creme fraiche

Cut the red onion into strips and the garlic in slices. In a high pot heat up the oil and sweat off the onions and garlic, season with salt and pepper -  with a lid on for 10-12 min.
Add the passata and heat that up - carefull- it spits hot tomato sauce! Break the nduja sausage in small pieces and drop them in the sauce to melt. Stir often.
Check the seasoning.


Cook the pasta.
Serve the sauce with some creme fraiche and basil.  

Courgette Clafoutis with Rocamadour and Rosemary

From my last shopping trip to France I had a package of Rocamadour goat cheese in the fridge.
It smelled strong when I opend the fridge door. This cheese is made from raw milk and this cheese has an protected sign of origine.

I still had a lot of courgettes in the veggie drawer and found a recipe for them in one of my Gourmand magazin issues. A savouy clafouti.

Clafouti is normally a sweet dessert. Fresh fruits are in a kind of pancake batter in an oven proof dish and baked. Mostly cherries are used for this baked good.

But courgettes and rosemary with a strong cheese are pushing the bounderies of a dessert. It falls in the category of a light lunch option.

recipe for 1 or 2:
150 g yellow courgette
150 g green courgette
1 stalk of rosemary
3 Rocamadour cheese
2 heaped tbsp flour
150 ml whole milk
pinch of salt
2 eggs
25 g Parmesan cheese
olive oil
1 tbsp butter
salt and pepper

Use a mandoline and make courgette discs 2mm thick.
Heat up the oil in a pan and cook the courgettes, season with salt and pepper and add 1/2 of the finely chopped rosemary. It will take about 8-10 min. Cool down.

Butter a baking dish and preheat the oven to 200 C.
In a large bowl combine flour, pinch of salt, more rosemary and grated Parmesan.
Add the eggs and then the milk to make a smooth batter.
Dump the courgettes in and transfer all of it into the baking dish.

Put the Rocamadour cheese on top. Bake for 40 min, take it out of the oven and let it rest 10-15 min. Serve and enjoy.

A great way to have veggies!

Pico de Gallo

A Mexican tomato relish.

Serve it with all kinds of Tacos or Hot Dogs. It goes great with a lot of Tex Mex Food too.

This is the 4th of July today and I want to celebrate it with some friends overseas.  About 15 years ago a lot of US Soldiers were stationed here in town. On days like this you could get Hot Dogs from vendors outside the army camp. I haven´t made any for such a long time.

One Hot Dog recipe calls for Pico de Gallo as a complementary with the dog.

recipe:
1 large tomato
2 inch of cucumber
half bunch of coriander
1 Jalapeno
1 lime juiced
olive oil
salt and pepper 

I cut the onion into halve rings and pour boiling water over them for 30 seconds. The cucumber is without the wet middle bit.
Since I used a Coeur de Boeuf Tomato, it does not have a lot of wet stuff inside. When you use a regular tomato, take the seeds out.
Mix it with the Jalapeno without the seeds and all the other ingredients

Courgette Carpaccio with Parmesan

Yellow and green small courgette are the star of this dish. It is a great summer dish.

The fresh roasted pine nuts are giving the right amount of toasted goodness and the Parmesan brings the saltiness to this recipe. It is important to use a mandoline to cut 2 mm discs. When are they thicker, the taste is not the same. The mouthfeel changes.

You can prepare it as a salad for a large amount of people, just serve it without spreading it out on each plate. My recipe is just for one.

Recipe:
125 g green courgette
125 g yellow courgette
1/2 lemon juiced
1/3 Bunch of fresh basil
20 g pine nuts
20 g Parmesan
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
Some dried salad herbs

Use a speed peeler for the Parmesan and make strips.
Rip the basil leaves.
Toast the pine nuts.
In a bowl mix the dressing and toss the slices in. Add basil and start to plate it.
Parmesan shavings and pine nuts on top.

Waldorf Salad

Since the first time this salad was served at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York 1883, it has changed its ingredients often.
Not a Chef but a waiter had created it.

Basic ingredients were used like celery, apples and walnuts. Now you will find all kinds of stuff in it. When I checked YT and Chefkoch.de, I found pineapples and grapes and an assortment of nuts and a lot of different styles for the dressing.

I made my own version and kept it simple. The taste was awesome.

Most recipes use celeriac and a grater to make a rough salad. I am not a huge fan of raw celeriac. I just cooked 1 inch slices for 6 minutes in salted water.

Recipe for 2:
400 g celeriac
50 g celery stalk
1 Braeburn apple
Zest of a lemon, half of the juice
60 g walnuts
3 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp creme fraiche
1 tsp American mustard
Salt and pepper

Cut the cooked celeriac into battons, grate the apple with the skin on. Zest a bit of öemon and oress a bit of juice.
In a small pan heat up sugar until it is light amber, toss the nuts in and coat them. Let them cool down on a sil pat. Chop.

Mix the dressing and let the salad sit for 15 min.