Curried Soba with Salmon Patties

This is half preprocessed dish.

Sometimes I love good Japanese Soba Noodles and I had some salmon fish cakes stored in the fridge. This is a kind of fast food I love. Cooked in less then 10 minutes.

A carrot and 2 spring onions in 6 cm fine slices, in some salted boiling water blanched for 2 minutes and then drained.
Chuck the salmon patties in a pan on medium heat and cook it 4-6 minutes, turning occasionally.

Heat 125 ml of water and 125 ml of broth in a pot and add the package of Soba Noodles with the dried veggies. Cook 3 minutes until most of the water is gone, add the curry roux paste and stir fry the Noodles. Add the fresh carrot and spring onion and cut up some dill.  DONE

Oxtail with vegetables and Pretzel Gnocchi

Once again I cook from the German cookbook of Hannelore Kohl.
Today I invited friends who love to cook and we will prepare the  recipe together.
We have met over many years once a month to serve a Sunday dinner to the others. That was a nice way to enjoy food and adventures with others.

Oxtail with Pretzel Gnocchi

Oxtail is a dish that needs time to prepare, because simmering it to break down the meat for a long time is necessary. But you only get the full flavour of that dish, when it has braised in wine and broth for long.

recipe:
2 kg Oxtail
50 g Ghee or butterfat
850 g mixed veggies like carrots, celery, swedes, leek, cabbage, parsley
2 large onions
5 cloves of garlic
1 l red wine
400 ml broth ( I used my rabbit broth frome the recipe the day before)
3 tbsp tomato paste
4 tbsp flour
3 tbsp creme fraiche
2 tbsp thyme
salt and pepper
2 tsp potato starch with water

seasoned and floured meat

Season the oxtail and season the flour, coat the oxtail lightly with flour and in the hot butterfat start to brown it on all sides. That will take more then 10  minutes. Chop all the veggies and when the meat is brown start with adding the onions and garlic, after 2 minutes all the other veg. Add broth and the whole bottle of red wine - don´t take a swig, you need it for the oxtail! Bring to a boil and cover reduce the heat and cook for 1 hour, open the lid and cook for 1 hour more reducing the liquid.  Use the potato starch to thicken the sauce a bit more. Add the tomato paste and at last the creme fraiche.

In the cookbook they were served with pasta, but for Valentine`s Day the extra mile so....

Serve with the Pretzel Gnocchi
recipe:
3 Pretzels for the day before cut in very fine pieces
4 tbsp hot milk   let that rest for 15 minutes
Preheat oven 170 C

Pretzels soaking in a little milk

200 ml water
75 g butter
50 g grated pecorino
heat butter and water together until the butter is nearly melted, add the pecorino and melt that too.

Dump in
125 g flour and make a choux dough by stirring it on the heat until it comes away from the sides and gets glossy

Take it off the heat and add
3 eggs   combining one at the time and stirring permanently
add the pretzel pieces salt and pepper and some dried parsley.

it is a bit fiddely

Roll with your hands 2 cm sausages from the dough and with some flour on a board shape them into Gnocchi. Take a fork and make a line in the top. Set them on  a baking sheet with baking paper and bake them for 20 minutes, check if they are firm on the ourside but tender on the inside.

makes to baking sheets

Let them get cool a bit, the flavour gets more intense, when they are not hot. They are great with the sauce and the veggies.

You can even have the left over ones as croutons in a soup.

Braised Rabbit in red wine with beans

For the first time this year I went grocery shopping to France. Last time was the Saturday before Christmas.
It is kind of sad to drive all the way alone, but since my Dad died in January there are no more family trips to France like in the last 10 years. It is something I have to get used to. Lugging around a huge ice box packed to the top is no fun. But it was a very good trip and the car´s trunk was full and now I am happy.

I wanted to cook something unusual today and I found a rabbit, brother or sister to Cottontail  ;-)
Rabbit legs were more expensive than the whole rabbit, so I took the whole and prepared it. Since you have more value using a complete bird -  ah  rabbit, it makes sense.

I cut up the rabbit and used the rest to make a wonderful stock, which I can use tomorrow.

recipe:
1 rabbit complete with heart, kidneys and liver
50 g smoked bacon
300 ml red wine
200 ml chicken stock
2 parsley roots
2 spring onions
3 tbsp flour
South African rub or any kind of spicy rub
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp butter
salt and pepper
300 g green beans
1 Baguette

It needs 45 minutes

cut off the fore and hind legs and extract the rabbit fillet. Cut out the liver and the kidneys. If you love to eat the heart, extract it too.

whole rabbit

pieces for braising

Use the rub to season the meat and dip it into flour. Chop the bacon and the veggies.

In a pan with a lid start the bacon in some oil, add the rabbit pieces and start to brown them. Get the veggies in and add the red wine and the broth. Bring to a boil and reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes.  Top and tail of the beans and in rapid boiling salted water cook them until al dente.

In a small pan in some butter fry off the liver short before the rabbit is done. Out and season the liver with salt and pepper and use the butter to season the beans in.

Serve with enough  Baguette so that everyone can dip the red wine sauce with it.

recipe for the stock:
all left over rabbit pieces
2 carrots
1 parsley root
3 cloves of garlic
1 shallot
1 bunch of fresh herbs
1 tsp black pepper
2 bay leaves
1 liter water

let it simmer for 1 hour

Tuna with Cabbage

I found some Sashimi quality Tuna today, yeah! That is a novelty in the Super Center I do some of my grocery shopping in. A wonderful looking tuna loin caught my eye while I was waiting that other customers finished their fish shopping.
It is the first time, that I found Sashimi quality there, when I came there 1,5 years ago and they opened that Super Center I asked for seafood in Sashimi quality and was told, that they don´t sell any - people wont ask for it ???!!! Now I am happy, that making Sushi is going to be a lot easier around here.

But my mood was not for Sushi today, after work and a lot of household chores in front of me, I wanted something quick without much hassle. Fiddling around with Sushi was not on my agenda.

Since the Tuna was so good looking, keeping it simple is easy.-

recipe:
250 g Tuna loin
3 tbsp roasted sesame oil
Japanese pepper, salt
1 tbsp Mirin
1 tbsp  light Soy sauce

Just put some roasted sesame oil on the whole tuna and let it rest in the fridge for 30 minutes. In a very hot pan, sear the tuna on each side for 90 seconds, turn and turn until all sides are seared. 

150 g red cabbage shredded
1 carrot
1/4 red pepper
1 spring onion
1 tbsp parsley
1 tbsp dill
50 g sweet corn
2 tbsp light sesame oil
1 tbsp rice vinegar
salt and pepper
throw everything together and mix well

Frankfurter Rindswurst - beef sausage

I wanted something quick today and not a long time to spent at the stove. I bought some sausages a couple of days ago. Sausage for me is a kind of fast food without being of low quality and no need to order Take out. Get it with some salad and the meal is good to go.

Rindswurst - beef sausage

This is a specialty from the area where I live. And  not only a specialty but an institution. This type of sausage is old and a butcher in Frankfurt came up with the recipe in 1894 and their descendents in the 5th generation still produce it today. And it is sold everywhere. The Name is Gref-Völsing.

You either eat it with the skin on, that makes it a bit chewy or you strip off the skin and have a good mustard to go with it and a roll or piece of sourdough bread. The sausage meat is pure beef.
It goes great with a steaming potato, pea or lentil soup, too.

Herring on Ash Wednesday

It is a tradition to eat Herring on Ash Wednesday here in Germany. People eat it with boiled potatoes.
It should help with all the alcohol people consumed over the carnival and the loads of Krebbel (donuts) we all ate in these days. And it was a cheap meal starting the time of fasting.
I had a huge bowl prepared for my coworkers and it was gone so fast, I even hadn`t time to shoot a photo :-)

just add the eggs and the salad is finished

recipe:
400 g Matjes herring
5 shallots short in boiling water blanched
1 red apple
100 g gherkins
2 hard boiled eggs
30 g walnuts
4 red beets cooked
250 g sour cream
200 g yogurt
2 tbsp vinegar
salt, pepper and celery seed

Matjes Herring

sour cream, vinegar and the yogurt and season with salt, pepper and celery seed.

The salad is best, when it can rest over night. A huge pot of potatoes goes great with the salad.

Pancake Day

Everybody is celebrating Pancake Day. It is not celebrated here in Germany. For the last day before lent, people here bake Krapfen or Krebbel, similar to Donuts.

I wanted to have something savoury today, since we had lots of Donuts at the office the last two days.
A big fluffy pancake with egg and flour and no sugar is a great cover to put in some beef mince with mushrooms, well seasoned. And the beef mixture makes a great pasta sauce for the next day, when you add it to some tomato sauce. I am looking forward to it.

Savoury Pancake with Beef and Mushrooms

recipe for the pancake:
3 eggs
1 tsp melted butter
125 g flour
250 ml milk
1 pinch of salt
oil

Pancake

Mix the melted butter with the eggs and the flour. Add the milk a bit after a bit until you have a smooth liquid. Let it rest until the beef is ready.

recipe for the beef mince:
300 g lean beef mince
50 g smoked bacon
1 tbsp oil
2 medium onion
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 chilli
1 tsp of veg stock
3 tbsp water
1 small jar of mushrooms
5 dashes of Tabasco
thyme
salt and pepper
3 tbsp sour cream

Ingredients

Beef mince

In some oil start the bacon and then add the beef mince and let it brown. Add the onions and garlic and chilli. Cook for 10 minutes and add the stock and the water and seasoning. Cook for more minutes and add the mushrooms and the Tabasco.
Bake the pancakes and fill them will the beef  mixture and add some sour cream.