Prawns and Rice Tagliatelle Stir Fry

This is a very quick recipe from Chef Stefan Marquard in his home kitchen cooking during the pandemic. In one of his last Q&A has asked his viewers what kind of dishes he should prepare. Asian stir frys were asked a lot. This is nearly the way he did it on YT. But you know me, I have my own twists.

If you are looking for Fast Food without asking the delivery service, I can recommend this dish. I always stock my freezer with prawns. Rice noodles or other Asian noodles are in a wide range in my kitchen drawers. I only have to pick.  But you can use Italian pasta as well.

I finally got my induction wok out if the basement. I have it for so many years, but it is too large to store in the kitchen. I usually use a frying pan for stir frys. But I was in the basement anyway unloading the dryer and remembered to get the wok.

Recipe  for 2:

8 white tiger prawns defrosted, 1 large shallot, 3 spring onions, 1 clove of garlic, 1 small knob of ginger, 1 red chili

2 carrots, 1/2 lime, 2 tsp coconut sugar, 2 tbsp oyster sauce, 2 tbsp light soy sauce

2 tsp coconut oil, 2 tsp dark sesame oil, pepper, pistacchios for crunch

150 g wide rice tagliatelle

Heat water in a kettle and soak the noodles in a bowl for 4 min, drain. Chop carrots, sprin onions - leave some of the greens to the side for garnish. Cut the shallot in rings. Different cuttings are great for the mouthfeel.

Chop ginger, garlic and chilli with a large knife into a fine mash and put that into the hot coconut oil in the wok first. Stir well and give it 2 min. Now in with the seasoned veggies. 

5 parts salt to 1 part sugar and you can season them 5 min before starting to cook. They will  taste a lot better. Now in with the prawns and noodles, stir and stir.

Next is the sesame oil, the oyster sauce and soy. Next sugar and lime. Toss in the pistacchios and the onion greens and you are ready to serve.

All prep and cooking time is 15 min. Better then any kind of delivery.

White Chocolate Mango Passion Fruit Dessert

Ritter Sport is one of the well known chocolates here in Germany. I love their whole hazelnut chocolate, the one with raisins and nuts and the basic milk chocolate. Every year they come up with new seasonal specialties. In summer they create often some with white chocolate. I am not a huge fan of white chocolate. It is often too sweet for my taste.

This years new creation was white chocolate with mango and maracuja or passion fruit to celebrate a tropical feeling. I got one last week as gift. I tried a single piece and knew that moment, that I could not eat more of it, too stinkin sweet. Throwing it in the bin, no, what a waste.

Gifting it to someone else, not a good idea with the missing piece. Making a dessert from it was the solution. With fresh Mango and Passion Fruit and some ladyfinger cookies.

Dessert for 3:

90 g white Ritter Sport chocolate Mango Maracuja

200 g Greek yogurt

50 g double cream, whipped

100 g vanilla pudding

9 round ladyfinger cookies

1/2 fresh mango

1 passion fruit

Melt the chocolate over a Bain Marie and mix it with the yogurt. Add the cream.

Start the building process with 2 tsp of pudding, 1 cookie, yohurt cream, cookie, passion fruit, pudding, mango pieces, cookie, yogurt cream and finish with passion fruit.

Place in the fridge or on a cold balcony for a couple of hours. The cream with the melted chocolate went nearly solid and the combo with the fresh fruits in the middle was a huge hit with my friends.

Roasted Red Pepper and Walnut Dip -Muhammara

I am happy that just have reached 1515 blogs in exactly 5 years. On Dec 5th, 2015 I started this adventure. I have learned so much about food. I learned so many different techniques and experienced so exotic tastes. The blog jouney has opened my horizon foodwise.

And boredom in the kitchen is no longer on the menu. When I hear other people talk about the things they cook and cook all the time, I think that is very boring.

The kitchen of the Levante is something I wanted to discover for a while. It covers mostly the regions of Lebanon, Jordania and Syria. Parts of Israel and a small part of Turkey are in that region too. Since the war in Syria many refugees have come to Germany. Local papers sometimes features their kitchen and the food they love. Middle Eastern shops have popped up in some places. It is nice to browse through them and find things to prepare.

This recipe is from Aleppo, Syria.

3 red bell peppers, 1 shallot, 1 clove of garlic

60 g walnuts, 60 g breadcrumbs, 

Juice and zest 1 lemon, 2 tsp pomegranate syrup

Cayenne pepper, salt, pinch macis, pinch nutmeg, black pepper, 

3 tbsp olive oil

Preheat the oven to 200 C. Cut the peppers through the middle and scoop out the seeds. Place them skin side up on baking paper and put them in the oven for 20 min. Put tgem in a bowl and cover them with clingfilm. Let them rest 10 min or as long as you will need not to burn your fingers, when you pull off the skin.

Whack them into a strong blender with all other ingredients, except the oil. Make a fine paste. Pour in the oil and mix just once again

.

Serve as an appetizer with flat bread or baguette.

White Tiger Prawns as a small Starter

My good friend and I had booked a Prawn Cooking Event in May  for November, 26th 2020. But due to the Pandemic it was cancelled. We also had planned a nice Restaurant dinner to celebrate my birthday. You know what: the Restaurant has closed.

I invited my friend and cooked her dinner. The White Tiger Prawns were just a little hommage to the missed event. She is highly lactose intolerant. That is the reason I bought lactose free dairy products. 

She is not a fan of fresh herbs like coriander and parsley, but likes some dill when she eats smoked salmon. So I sneaked in fresh dill in both starters. I made a very unusual Guacamole. Lets call it an avocado dip. And I created something on a spoon. The season of the cooking show "The Taste" had just ended.

2 Spoons:

3 tbsp lactose free creme fraiche, smoked sea salt, Japanese Sancho pepper, a pinch Shimichi Togarashi

1tbsp chopped dill, butter roasted Rye sourdough bread in tiny cubes

1/4 of a date tomato and a little fennel fond per spoon

1 fresh baked salted prawn per spoon

Mix the upper ingredients with the dill and place a neat dollop on the middle of the spoon. Adf the fresh baked prawn right on top. Place tiny bread cubes around and set a slice of tomato topped with a fennel fond on the side.

2 jars:

1 avocado, 2 date tomatoes, 1 tsp fresh dill, lime juice, lemon sea salt, pepper

1 baked salted prawn per jar

Get the flesh of the avo out of its peel and mix it with the lemon juice and mash it a little. Do not make a fine paste. Mix in the other ingredients and fill it in the jars. Place a baked prawn on top and serve both immediately.

Duck Legs braised in Red Wine and Port

The cold part of the year is a good time to eat hearty food. Duck is one of them. In November it often starts with a nice piece of goose at Saint Martin's Day on the 11th of the month. But my supermarket only sold whole geese and that was way to much for me. But in the same ice chest were a couple of organic sourced duck legs.

There are so many cooking methods for duck. It took me a while to get my inspiration.

I made a pot of red cabbage as a side and some potato dumplings to soak up the sauce.

Recipe for 2:

2 duck legs, 1 tsp duck fat

100 g leek, 60 g celeriac, 100 g carrot, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp rice syrup

150 ml red wine, 50 ml red, 150 ml chicken stock

Salt and pepper, 8 bay leaves, 1 star anise

1 tsp potato starch in water

season the duck legs with salt and put them in the pan with a little duck fat. Brown them on both sides. Take them out and toss the small veg cubes in. Roast them a little. Wen it tets some color, sprinkle the rice syrup over them and stir well and let it caramelize a bit.

Preheat the oven 150 C.

Ground some pepper into the pan.

In with the Port wine to deglaze the pan, then red wine and stock.

Put the duck legs back in with the meat juice from the plate. Add bay leaves and star snuse and bring to a boil. Cut off the heat, close the lid and put the duck into tge oven for 100 minutes.

Get the legs out to rest. Fish out the star anise and bay leaves and start to skim off some duck fat with a large spoon by getting it around the top of the liquid. Reduce the sauce. Use a potato masher and crush the veggies, check the seasoning.

If the sauce is too thin, use the starch slurry to bind it.

 

Lemon and Buttermilk Bundt Cake

I watched a cooking show with Giada di Laurentiis. She made a bundt cake with lots of lemon. I checked the internet until I found the recipe. Baking without exact messurements is always a bad idea. But I only used 1 3/4 cup of sugar and a different glaze.

First step was to candy the lemons for later. The way Giada did it was a very basic. I candied orange and lemon peel before and it took days. Today I just cooked the lemon slices in sugar water for 10 min. Then put it on a drying rack and let it sit there until I had finished the batter. If I make the cake again I will take the time to candy the lemons more.  I did not like the bitter taste of the lemons.

recipe:

2 organic unwaxed lemons, 1 1/2 cup sugar, 1 1/2 cup water

Cake batter:

3 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt

1 cup buttermilk, 230 g butter, 4 eggs  all at room temperature

Zest 2 lemons, 1/3 cup lemon juice

Glaze: 100 g Lindt compound chocolate + 1 tsp coconut oil

Heat up the sugar in the water, wash the lemons and cut them into slices. Put them in the pot and cook them for 10 min. Put them on a rack to dry out and cut them into small chunks.

Use a standmixer and beat butter and sugar together. Add eggs, one after an other and beat in between. Scrape the bowl. Now in with buttermilk and vanilla. Next in with the lemon zest and juice.

Mix the dry ingredients and add them in 3 steps. Mixing all in. Use a spatula and put the candied lemon pieces in.

Preheat the oven 175C.  Use a bundt cake tin and butter it. Bake the cake for 50 min. Check with a wooden skewer, if it is done.

Take it out of the tin after 10 min and let it cool down completely. Melt the chocolate and add the coconut oil. Drissle over the cake.

 

Pineapple filled with Blueberries

The fresh pineapple was this week on sale in one of our discounters. I was able to get one on Friday. Fresh blueberries are available all year round.

A light dessert after starter and main course is the right thing to offer. 

1 pineapple, 300 g blueberries

2 tbsp cassis syrup, 150 ml water

1 tsp potato starch in water

Cut the pineapple lengthwise and save the top. Cut the hard core out with a knife. Cut out the flesh and add to the pot with the blueberries.  Cook for 6 min or until the blueberries spring open. Add slurry  and thicken the sauce. Fill into the cut open pineapple.

Make some vanilla sauce if you like it.