My perfect dry aged Rumpsteak

I am not a huge fan of steak every day. Mostly the beef is to tough or to bloody for my taste. When I am in the mood to eat one, I look for high quality beef and I prefare dry aged meat. It has a more complex taste and is worth its price.
Eating nearly raw beef is not to my liking, so having a steak English or bleu is nothing for me. I feel as if I have to take a bite out of a living animal.
Beef in steak form well done is a no go, so I have to catch the right moment when I cook it. l rarely go out and eat some in a restaurant, they seldom get it the way I like it. I love the core temperature 58 C.

One other thing is important: a rumpsteak needs the right thickness. Often you get them as thin slices and that wont do.
A big piece of beef steak is lovely. I love the leftover piece to make either a steak sandwich with remoulade sauce and leafy greens or a salad. And I have a bit more the 120 g left of mine. I am looking forward to it!

I bought a 270 g piece of rumpsteak. It was thicker on one side -the shape of a very long Onigri.
I seasoned it with salt and oil and put it in a hot cast iron griddle pan.  4 min on each side. I the stuck a thermometer in and put it into the oven at 140 C fan.  It took 6 min to reach 58 C core temperature.  I shut the heat off and opened the oven door and let it rest for 5 min.
Served on a warm plate!

Vegan Mexican Polenta with Courgette

The polenta is made with Oatmilk!
We have a supermarket chain named ALNATURA here in our area. They started small in the year 1984 and offered only organic produce. They now have about 114 supermarkets all over Germany. But you can get their organic products in many regular supermarkets as well. So the distribution is much bigger.
I go there- we have 3 supermarkets in the city here - when I look for something organic, that is not sold in the regular stores. I always find something new to try and my vegan kind of cooking is coming along quite nicely.
That does not mean I am a vegan!

The Mexican polenta contains a lot of ingredients, such as: Kidney beans, tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, garlic, chili, cumin and coriander and some more spices.

I still eat parts of my snake like courgette, I am preparing it Balkan style with onions and Ayvar.

recipe for 2:
450 ml oatmilk
125 g polenta mix Mexico
350 g courgette
1 tbsp olive oil
2 spring onions
salt and pepper
3 tbsp Ayvar

Bring the milk to a boil, stir in the polenta and pull the pot away from the heat. Let it sit 3 min and it is done.
Chop the courgette into bite size pieces and the spring onion into rings. In a pot heat the olive oil and put both in and season with salt and pepper, on a medium heat cook until the courgette is done
I left the skin on, so it took a while longer. Add the Ayvar and a dash of water.

Ready to serve.

Jerk Chicken with beans and rice

This is inspired by the SortedFood recipe.  I changed a couple of thing, like the beans and I had to prepare my own Jerk seasoning. It is not available here in a supermarket which has a huge wall of spices. I have to order it online some time.

But checking several Jerk seasoning recipes I discovered that they vary a lot. Some are on the hot side with chili and cayenne pepper, others have curry powder in it. But most of them have allspice and several other dried spices in. As a wet ingredient they sometimes use Worchestersauce or brown rum. I decided to go for both.

Here is my spice blend.  btw:  it tastes great!

1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp mild paprika
1/2 tsp dried thyme
2 tsp  dark brown sugar
salt
1 tsp kampot pepper
Ground this in a pestle and mortar and you can store it in a jar for further use.

3 tsp spice mix
2 tbsp Captain Morgan brown rum
1 tsp Worchestersauce
1 spring onion
1/2 red chili
3 cloves of garlic
Mix it in the oven dish you will use later for the rice.

Spatchcock the chicken before you rub it with the Jerk seasoning. It takes less time in the oven later.
Ben poked a lot of holes with a metal skewer into the chicken, but it dries it out. So I did not.

It does not sound easy to hack through the chicken to get the backbone out and trust me, it takes a good knife and a good amount of elbow grease. Then flatten it and rub it on both sides with the mix.

In a wide pan with a tbsp of oil brown it on both sides for 4 min, then transfer it to a wire rack.


Rice and beans:
250 g long grain rice
salt
400 ml chicken stock
150 m coconut milk
200 g beans from a can- SortedFood used kidney beans
I used french small green beans.
Lime juice

Bake for 40 minutes it the oven and serve with fresh cut rings of spring onion and chili and some lime juice.

How to get rid of a huge courgette Part 2

This method came to my mind after I was picking the just ripened tomatoes off the vines behind the house in a heavy downpour. It was raining for 24 hours straight and the tomatoes still ripened. Now I had a bowl of tomatoes and the big end of the courgette to prepare.

I remembered the satellite courgettes I cooked last year and had the idea what to do.
I peeled and seeded the head part of the courgette, cleaned and chopped the tomatoes and foraged trough my fridge to find anything else edible. A half box of buff mozz balls sitting in liquid and some Gryere was found. A bag of flatleaf parsley too. Since spring onions are a staple in my kitchen I was ready to prepare the courgette bowl.

Preheat the oven 180 C fan.

Season the bowl with salt and pepper, place on layer of tomatoes, chunks of buff mozz and parsley in, season again and repeat until the bowl is nearly full. Some spring onion chunks can get squeezed in between the layers.
Crack the quail egg with sharp knife and carefully set it on top. As many as you like. Set some cheese strips on top and set it in an oven proof dish.
bake it for 15- 20 min.

How to get rid of a huge courgette Part 1

I know it will get boring. I still try to eat that huge piece of veg. The top is great to place on a grill because this part is free of seeds. The seed part is like a round ball in the wide part of the courgette. Take it out and you have a wide bowl to fill something in.

The first night I prepared a salad out of grilled slices of courgette, the second night I used the scooped out bowl.

Recipe for the salad:
9 x 0,5 cm slices of courgette
3 cloves of garlic
3 tbsp olive oil
Salt pepper
Herbes de Provence

6 cocktail tomatoes
2 stalks of parsley
Greens from a spring onion
Grated Parmesan cheese
White balsamic vinegar
oregano

Use a grill pan.
In a bowl mix the upper ingredients well and lay the slices out in the pan with some onion pieces.
Grill and turn to grill more. Cool down and mix as a salad with some tomatoes.

Grate some cheese on top and garnish with some oregano.

Udon Noodles with Tempura

I still fight to eat the huge courgette, that started this Sunday as a fresh salad. It is a challenge to find lots of different recipes to show the best sides of this vegetable.
I looked at the snake like top part of the courgette and thought Tempura.

This was a great idea, the slices of veggie tasted amazing after they came out of the frying oil. I had an leftover boiled egg sitting on the counter and put that through the tempura batter as well. After frying it, it was delicious.

Recipe for tempura:
60 g tempura flour
60 ml ice cold water
Japanese pepper and salt
Frying oil
Courgette
Egg

1 pack Udon noodles
500 ml Dashi stock
1 spring onion
1 tbsp soy sauce

Slice the courgette into half centimeter discs.
Mix the batter.
Heat up the oil 180 C
Put slices and egg through the batter and fry until golden.

Cook the Udon in salted water. Drain and wash under cold water to get out starch.
Make the broth.

Souffé with red fruits de la Noyon

The red fruits of Noyon!

A city in the Picardie, department Aisne,  is famous for the farms that grows them. During my day trip to Noyon in late June I did not see any of them. I was looking for farms to buy directly. The local supermarket just offered some drab strawberries.

recipe for 4:
4 eggs
250 ml whole milk
40 g butter and some for baking dishes
1 tbsp flour
1 tsp cornstarch
150 g mixed fresh red fruits
5 tbsp icing sugar

190 C 25 - 30 min

In a casserole melt 30 g butter and add flour and starch. Make a paste and loosen it with milk, a bit at the time. Let it cool down.
Separate the eggs and beat the egg white to stiff peaks with a pinch of salt.
Use red currants, raspberries and blackberries or any other kind you mite like, strawberries will work as well.

Blitz up half of the fruit and put in the icing sugar and add the egg yolks. Pour it into the white sauce.
Now fold in the egg white and keep it fluffy.

Butter 4 ramequins or a bigger oven proof dish and fill it in. Set some whole fruits on top.
Bake and garnish with the rest of the fruits.