Ginger Chicken

I bought a new cookbook. It is from the German TV series Kitchen Impossible. 

A 3 Michelin star Chef Jan Hartwig was sent to Dubai on a challenge. Since top of the line restaurants are everywhere there, he thought that he would cook in that segment too.

The Ravi Restaurant is well known. It is a Pakistani restaurant. The dish the German Chef had to cook was the meal for the service personnel. Not one from the restaurant menu.

Recipe for 2:

350 g chicken breast

120 g shallots, 4 cloves of garlic, 1 yellow chili, 65 g ginger

130 g canned chopped tomatoes, 60 g butter, 3 tbsp oil

100 g Greek yogurt 3,5%

1 tsp tumeric, 1 tsp chili flakes, salt, pepper, 1 1/2 tsp Kasoori Meti

1/2 bunch coriander, 1/2 bunch parsley

1 cup Basmati rice

Chop the shallots and put them in a little pot with 200 ml water. Cook them for 10 min, then put them in a blender and make a paste.

Chop garlic, chili and ginger.

Cut the chicken breast in wide strips. Sesaon with salt and pepper. Heat up the oil in a pan and start the chicken without getting brown color. Add garlic, chili and ginger and give it 3 min. 

Now add tomato paste and tomatoes. Add all of the seasoning. Cook on low heat. Add the yogurt and check if the dish has enough salt. Finish with coriander and parsley.  Eat with some rice.

Spanish Omelet

There are so many interesting recipes regarding the Spanish omelet or Tortilla de Patatas. 

I made one before, but that was only potatoes, onions, egg and olive oil. This time I used up some ingredients I had in the fridge.

The addition of Guanciale and a green bell pepper made the dish a bit more tastier. Well, when you love bacon with your potatoes, you can not go wrong with Guanciale.

Recipe for 4:

800 g potatoes, 2 yellow onions, 3 cloves of garlic, 1 green bell pepper

50 g Guanciale, 5 eggs

Smoked salt, smoked paprika, pepper, thyme, 3 tbsp olive oil

Peel the potatoes and use a Mandoline to cut them in 3 mm slices. Keep them in a bowl of water until you cook them.

Cut the onions in strips and the garlic in small bits. Chop the bell pepper in small chunks. 

Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the seasoning. Cook the potato slices in salted water for 6 min, drain.

Use a wide pan and place the guanciale chunks in. Heat them up and render some fat out. Add the olive oil and toss in onions, garlic and peppers. Season with salt and pepper and cook on medium heat for 12 min, stir often.

Now in with the potato slices. Stir and give them 5 to 7 min to get a little color. Pour the egg mix over and reducebtge heat to medium to cook 5 min.

Stick the pan in the oven under the grill for 5 min. 

Let the omelet rest for 5 more min before serving.

Hojicha Tea with Soba Noodles

I discovered roasted green tea, Hojicha, the first time I was in Japan. Since then I like it. It is available bottled in most Combinis and Vending Machines.

This time the tea is served as a soup.

Soba noodles are Buckwheat noodles. The veggies added were yellow pepper, celery stalk and shiitake mushrooms. Finished with soft boiled egg, scallion greens and sesame seeds. Gor a little boost, serve it with Wasabi and Sriracha.

Let the Hoijcha tea steep for 3 min. Add 1 clove of garlic, 1 chunk of ginger, 1 tbsp Mirin.

Cook the Soba Noodles and drain them and wash them in cold water. If you use dried Shiitake mushrooms, soak them for 20 min. Either blanch the veggies in salted water or in the tea broth.

Soljanka- soup with roasted peppers and pickled gherkins

I made this soup a long time ago and posted it at Sortedfood. It is a recipe from the former German Democratic Republic. My former coworker came from East Berlin and after the fall of the wall she came with her husband to Frankfurt in Hesse. We worked together for 1 year until she retired. This was her favourite recipe.

Pickled vegetables were a staple in the former GDR. Many had gardens and grown their own veggies. This soup uses somes of these.

The Bologna sausage I used was made from chicken. This was the sugestion from my co worker. But use what ever kind of mild sausage you can get. This soup was often made with leftover cold cuts from different kinds of meat. Throw them in a soup, don't waste them.

Recipe for 3:

400 g Bologna sausage

1 large potato, 1 red onion, 2 garlic cloves, 6 cherry tomatoes

2 tbsp paprika paste, 2 bay leaves, 1/2 tsp allspice, salt, pepper, 800 ml chicken stock

1 jar Letscho (roasted peppers in tomato sauce), 60 g pickled gherkins, 1 tbsp oil

3 toast slices in butter, 3 tbsp sour cream, parsley

Cut the sausage in bite size pieces, the potatoes in cubes and onion and garlic in strips. Cut the cherry tomatoes once. Heat oil in a pot and toss it all in. Cook for 5 min and stir often. Add paprika paste and season.

Pour in the chicken stock and add the bay leaves. Cook for 15 min.

Now add chopped gherkins and the jar of Letscho. Cook for 5 more min.

Toast the bread chunks in butter and chop parsley. Ladle soup in bowls, add parsley and croutons and top with sour cream.

Fettuccine with Pear, Guanciale, Sage and Beans

I have still some Guanciale in the fridge. The problem is cutting it without holding to it a lot with my left hand. That is still out of order since my operation 3 days ago. But I have managed. Everything else was not a problem to handle with just one hand.

I was looking for frozen green beans. But you can only get frozen string beans here at our supermarkets. But I found a package of frozen Edamame. They are a lot quicker to prepare than regular green beans.

The cooking time of this recipe is about 20 min. Cut the Guanciale in cubes and stick it in a cold pan, turn on the heat to medium high and render the fat out. Start the pasta water with a good amount of salt.

Prepare the frozen Edamame as advised on the package. I am using my microwave for that. When they ate cold enough to touch, get the beans out. I did it earlier and the beans were ready when I started to cook.

Take the zest off the half lemon and add it to the beans. Get the juice in a small bowl. Peel the peer and cut the flesh in slices. Put them in the lemon juice. Cut the sage leaves in strips.

Now the Guanciale is ready, add pear with juice, beans with zest and sage. Give it 3 min and use a tong to transfer the pasta with water to the pan. Toss and finish with freshly ground pepper.

Spaghetti Carbonara

This is the real deal. And it was my last fresh cooked meal for the next couple of days. I am having a carpal tunnel operation on my left hand. 

This dish has no cream or panchetta in it. A mixture of Pecorino romano and Parmesan and lots of black pepper went in with the eggs. I bought a chunk of Guanciale. That is the cured and peppery cheek from a pig.

I wanted to prepare it in the Roman way. It took some checking of different cooking videos. 

Spaghettinos with a rougher surface area are better to combine with the sauce. But they have a longer cooking time then regular spaghetti. The cooking water needs a lot of salt. 

1-10-100  = one litre water, 10 g salt, 100 g pasta.

I cooked the spaghetti and cut the Guanciale in 2 cm cubes. The cubes went in a cold pan and went up to high heat. The grease that comes out is poured in a small bowl. 1 tsp of it goes in the egg/cheese mix.

The 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk get mixed in with the 2 cheeses. The grease makes it even richer. Ground a good amount of  black pepper in the mix.

To loosen it a bit, I kept the bowl over the boiling pasta water and stirred it constantly. Do not cook the eggs. That makes it easier to emulsify the sauce later.

Take your tongs and get the al dente spaghettino in the pan with the guanciale. Stir well. Take the pan off the heat an stir in the egg/cheese/pepper mix. Add more cooking water to the pan as you stir.

Take a soup ladle and turn some pasta with tongs in it and set it on a warmed  serving plate, place sauce and guanciale on top. Finish with a bit more Pecorino romano.

Tumeric Chai Rice with caramelized Apples

This is a recipe from German Chef Nelson Müller. Chai tea is absolutely not my favourite kind of tea. But I needed two tea bags for flavouring the milk. It took me some time to find the tea. This is tumeric chai tea. Sold to be used to make Golden Milk as well. Not as bad as I thought.

I used a mix of pudding rice and carneroli risotto rice. I did not have enough pudding rice for this recipe. The consitency is a little more firm.

Recipe for 4:

1 litre whole milk, 2 sachets Tumeric Chai Tea or any other Chai tea you like

3 tbsp sugar, 250 g pudding rice, pinch of salt

2 apples, 100 g sugar, 1 cinnamon stick, 1/4 vanilla bean pod, 2 star anise

20 ml Calvados, 50 ml white wine

Crush some sweetened cashews as topping

Bring the milk up to a boil, do not let it boil over and place the Chai tea bags in. Take off the heat, cover and let them sit for 10 min.

Discard the tea bags, sprinkle sugar in the milk and reheat it. Add washed rice and salt and let it cook on low for 30 min. Stir often.