Plaice with Bacon Topping

This is called Finkenwerder style.

Finkenwerder is a part of Hamburg, a former island in the Elbe River. Today the Airbus Industry is located there.

Why the plaice got the name, I do not know.

But it is an easy way to cook such a flat fish. Now need to take the fillets out, just cook it as it is and serve it whole.

Bacon gives a salty and smoky taste. Be careful not to use to much of it, otherwise you wont have any taste of the fish left.

Recipe for 1:
500 g plaice
50 g bacon
3 spring onions
1 Clove of garlic
1 tbsp oil
3 Potatoes
1 Knob of butter

In a pan the size for the fish later start with the bacon. When it gets lightly brown, add the spring onions and garlic. Wait until soft and season with pepper and a bit of salt.
Get it out of the pan.
Cut off the ring of bones around the plaice and season it with salt and pepper.
Put oil on the pan and on medium high heat fry the plaice on each side 3-4 min.

Serve with the bacon mix on top and some potatoes.

Wellness Weekend with uninspiring food in Speyer

When you are looking forward to a nice getaway over the weekend in a wellness hotel and pay a good amount of money and you leave the next day very dissapointed, that is so depressing.

We stayed in Lindner Hotel & Spa Binshof in Speyer. The room was ok, but the bathroom a bit too modern for our taste- no door, just a seperate loo.
We were asked when we wanted to go to dinner, 6 pm or 6: 30 pm. We decided on 6:30 pm. We had to wait with a couple of others in front of the restaurant for a while, then discovered that other peeple were allready in. The food was offered in buffet form.

There was one starter and a soup to choose from. The soup was a aspargus cream soup, uninspiring bland with no topping and not a lot of flavour.

The starter was named salmon tatar with lime and deep fried arugula.Salmon tatar is usually made from fresh salmon, this one was made from smoked salmon with a lot of lime bits inside and some gherkins. Topping was cream cheese. Sorry, not so good. The fried arugula was just burned.

The salad bar was a bit undeveloped. Not so much to choose from. One yogurt dressing was very tasty, the other one was mostly stock from a jar -like Maggi veg stock - with something not to define in.

Now speaking about the main courses. Fish that had died twice, inedible.
One of us had veal with risotto and vegetables. The risotto was overcooked and not something I would serve. Maybe it was too long in the thermo serving container.

I choose Asian stir fry pasta with artichoke. Main spice was Cumin!? Since when is cumin used in an noodle dish? The artichoke was grey and overdone, the pasta uninspiring bad.

Last chance Dessert!
Is there a kid´s birthday party at the house? They are offering a chocolate fountain with fruits, but no skewers to stick that on. The best kinds of fruits were missing too, bananas and strawberries, meh....

It ended on a plate with a vanilla pudding with thick skin drenched in caramel sauce. I had to take a fork and put the pineapple pieces under the chocolate and get it somehow on the plate.

Some mousse with a blackberry on top looked edible. Well, someone took some Bounty and put that into a blender and mixed it with cream. Too sweet.

When you are asked, if you want your Soda with or without ice and you order it without ice, the you get 3 huge blocks of ice in the glass- you wonder why.

The one with a bit of strawberry on top was a Dr.Oetker Paradise cream orange with fake strawberry aroma added.

We hoped for a better breakfast.

Well, mediocre, with cold scrambled eggs, non descript sausages.

 Breakfast did not take the dissapointment from last night away.

Service was just ok

Lemon Drizzle Cake

This is an easy lemony cake and many recipes are found on different websites. I wanted to prepare a cake from Mary Berry, but these cakes were all traybakes. I was looking for a different kind of cake.
I found something on the SortedFood website and changed it a little bit.

I gave the recipe to my coworker and received slices of baked cake in the morning. She baked it for Mother´s Day and her mother liked the cake a lot and kept some for the next day too.

It tastes fresh and keeps moist a couple of days. --- If the cake last that long!

recipe:
2 lemons
1 1/2 cup flour
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1/2 cup whole milk
120 g butter
2 large free range eggs
250 g powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Get the zest off one lemon and toss it in a large bowl with butter and 1 cup of sugar. Beat that until creamy.
Add flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and make the batter.
Use a standart rectangular box form and butter and flour it.
Get the batter in and bake it for 1 hour.
Juice the zested lemon and mix it with the 1/2 cup of sugar in a small pot and let it dissolve on low heat. Cool down.
When the cake is done, get it out of the mould and with a toothpick make some holes on the top.

Drizzle the lemon juice on top.Cool it down completely.
Juice the 2 lemon and mix it with the powdered sugar to make the glaze.

Nutella Muffins witn Blueberries

At the office we have a communal kitchen with 2 fridges. A couple of years ago we decided on a monthly cleaning list were all users took part once a year. After this is in  motion for quite a while now, first the fridge is a lot cleaner and not so many spoiled food is stuck there.

But often the ones on the list forget their monthly duty and lets say only 7 out of 15 are really taking care of it. The first thing is to throw all things out that are long overdue. And sometimes there are goods in with a long shelf life, but taken there for a special event and forgotten.
Such as 3 bottles of a good bubbly wine. Six of us emptied the first one on Friday.Great Job!

A jar of organic hazelnut chocolate spread was from our last after Christmas breakfast, open and a couple of spoons out. Still in great condition. My roomie at the office was cleaning the fridge and came back with the jar - aka Nutella- and gave it to me. You are baking and cooking often, just use it up, she said. It was to expensive just to throw it into the waste bin.

recipe for 14 muffins:
100 g Nutella
40 g sugar
80 g soft unsalted butter
a pinch of salt
3 large free range eggs
100 ml milk
20 ml egg liqueur
300 g flour4
2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp milk chocolate chips
42 blueberries

Preheat the oven to 200 C.
In one bowl mix flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate chips
In a larger bowl combine the other ingredients except the bluebs and make a smooth foamy liquid with an electric whisk.
Use a spatula and get the dry ingredients in. Use paper cups and a muffin tin and spoon the batter in.
Push the blueberries on top into the batter.
Bake for 25 min  until a wooden skewer comes out clean.

Berlin boiled pork knuckle with sauerkraut

During the week in Berlin, there was no time to try all the specialities of the City.

Berlin Eisbein or pork knuckle is served in old school Family Restaurants. We had no time to look for one.

But there is no problem just to try it at home. I bought a hind leg at my favourite butcher shop in the morning. The preparation itself is not such a hassle, it just takes a bit of time to cook.

Traditional the huge piece of pork is served with Sauerkraut and some Peas, mashed or otherwise.

recipe for 2:
1 pork knuckle About 1,4-1,5 kg
1 onion unpeeled
1 spring onion
4 cloves of garlic
2 bay leaves
Fresh lovage, rosemary, parsley, tarragon
1 tsp yellow mustard seeds
1 tsp caraway seeds
4 juniper berries
1 tsp black pepper
2 tsp salt

Bring the ingredients to a boil in a huge pot and then reduce the heat and cook for 2 Hours.
Take off the skin and most of the fat.
Serve with peas and sauerkraut and mustard.

Keep the broth and use it to make a pea soup with it and some leftover pork meat.

Asparagus Salad with egg based dressing

We are on a Holiday in an asparagus area , the Mark Brandenburg. The sand box of Germany. Asparagus is a crop that grows here very well.

I made a salad. At the supermarket I bought a couple of fresh goods and some herbs like wild garlic leaves and dill. A bunch of red radishes and a box of greens.
I boiled some eggs and used the hard boiled egg yolk for the base of the sauce, that made it very creamy.

When I cook white asparagus, I cook the peel and offcuts first with some salt and sugar. After 10 min I get that out and discard it. Then the stalks go in and cook. A knob of butter gives the water an intensive taste. That is a good way to counteract the loss of flavour from the asparagus during cooking. The water already is saturated.

recipe for 4:
600 g asparagus
3 hard boiled eggs
40 g wild garlic leaves
20 g dill
6 cherry tomatoes
125 g baby green salad leaves
1/2 cucumber
8 red radishes
2 tbsp olive oil
6 tbsp asparagus water
1 lime
salt
pepper
paprika
sugar

Prepare the asparagus and cut it into bite size chunks. Cook the way as I cook it.
Save some  hot asparagus water.
Boil the eggs
Use 2 egg yolks and  mix them with oil and asparagus water to a creamy consistency. Add lime juice, spices and a dash of sugar.
Thinly slice the cucumber and the radishes on a grater, mix them with salt and let them sit for 10 min. Drain.
Chop the herbs and quarter the tomatoes. Bring everything together and mix with the dressing.

Spanish Omlette or Tortilla

Sunday Evening after a long sightseeing trip through Berlin, we were hungry and all the shops were closed.  The day before when we arrived we went to a Supermarket in our neighborhood and did the first shopping. We knew what to eat that night but nobody made some suggestions what to eat the next night. We shopped a bag of potatoes, onions and garlic and a dozen eggs. Together with the olive oil in the shopping cart, that was the dinner for the next night.
I did not say anything to my friends, just loaded up the cart.

Sunday afternoon the question of what to eat at dinner came up. We haven´t bought anything!
Wrong, we have all what we need at the apartment.

 

recipe for 4:
800 g salad potatoes
250 g mixed onions (red, white, yellow and spring onions)
3 cloves of garlic
6 eggs
3 tbsp olive oil
salt, pepper, paprika

Peel the potatoes and slice them evenly. Peel the onions and slice them into strips, not rings.
Crush the garlic and chop it. Use a wide pan that is oven save.

Cook the potatoe slices for 8 min, then drain.
Heat up the oil in the pan and heat up the grill of your oven to 180 C.

Cook the onion mix with the garlic for 10 to 15 min, then add the potatoes.
Now let them cook together until the potatoes are almost tender.
Pour the beaten and seasoned eggs on top and let them get all over the potatoes. Reduce the heat to medium low and let the eggs set.

Now place the pan under the grill for 5.min until the eggs on top are set too.
Place on a cutting board to serve.