Biscoff Panna Cotta

A 3/4 jar of Biscoff spread from my puff pastry Christmas trees is sitting in my pantry. 

I had no idea what to do with it. Pinterest helped and I saw lots of ways to use it up. But Cheesecake or Tiramisu needed too much other ingredients. I was looking for something simpler. Panna Cotta was the aim.

For decoration purposes I went out and bought some Biscoff cookies.

Recipe for 4:

400 ml double cream, 100 ml whole milk

40 g sugar, 1/3 cup Biscoff spread

4 gelatine leaves, Biscoff cookies.

Soak the gelatine in cold water for 10 min, squeeze out.

Heat up milk, cream and sugar in a pot. Microwave the spread. Pour it in the pot.

Constantly stir until the cream starts to boil. Take off the heat and stir in the gelatine.

Fill in jars, put some crushed cookies in. Let it set in the fridge for 3 hours or on your cold balcony.

Potato Slices stacked with Garlic, Parmesan and brown Butter

I watched a French Reel on Insta. My French language knowledge is good enough for food and cooking. I had no problems to follow the recipe.

I had only one problem. The potatoes I had at home were all different sizes. Tiny, medium and ugly ones. So I went out in the morning to buy some new ones. Mostly the same size.

It is important to use a mandoline to cut the potatoes all in the same thickness. Otherwise they will not cook evenly.

Brown butter or Beurre noisette is the key part in this recipe. I had some butter dith real white truffel sitting in the fridge, since the holiday. But still good to eat. It went with more regular butter in a casserole to brown. Keep your nose near the pot, you will smell the moment when it turns brown. Don't wait too long or it will burn soon. 

Ingredients:

6 medium size potatoes

4 garlic cloves, dried thyme

80 g butter, salt, pepper

Parmesan cheese

Mix all ingredients well and stack them in a muffin tin to the top. Place a baking paper over the tin and a heavy dish on top. Pkace in the oven.

Bake at 180 C fan for 15 min. Take dish and paper away, bake for 15 min on 180 C, tgen put under the grill for 10 min.

Eat it with any kind of dip you like. I used Greek yogurt, ketchup and sweet chili sauce.

Seaweed Soup - Miyeokguk

Do you love Wakame Seaweed? The green floating stuff you will find in Japanese Miso Soup.

Well, this is the richer Korean style of soup. And I even mixed it with a little German style. 

Base to this soup is beef. A hearty beef broth with slices of thin cut Brisket in it. But wait, these kinds of beef are not available here in Germany.

I went back to my favourite German beef soup with a piece of beef shank with some bone marrow in. To make the broth tastier, I added carrots, a bit of green top of a leek (why throw it away) and some spring onions. All these veggies were discarded after cooking, but helped the broth to be more flavourful.

Recipe for 2:

450 g beef shank, 1 tbsp toasted sesame oil, 3 tbsp Korean soup soy sauce

2 carrots, green tops from a leek, 2 spring onions, 4 garlic cloves, 1 tsp Dashida beef stock powder

8 g dried wakame seaweed, soaked, washed and cut up.

In a pot heat up the sesame oil and fry off the beef shank on both sides for 3 min each. Add big chunks of veggies. That makes it easier to get them out later.

Pour the soup soy sauce, add 850 ml water and the Dashida. Bring to a boil and cover. Reduce the heat and cook for 1h 45 min.

Soak the Wakame.

Get the veg out, cut up the beef. Get the seaweed in and cook for 5 min. Serve with a bowl of rice.

 

Pudding Rice with Batida de Coco

My bottle of Batida de Coco has still some liquid in it. A can of coconut milk fell off my shelf and got dented. It needed to be used soon. But what do with it now?

Sweet rice on a very stormy winter day is something to look forward too. No better way to get rid of some ingredients. Serving it with some fresh mandarine oranges made it even better. I did not put a lot of sugar in the rice, but I drizzled some Dutch pancake syrup on top later. The light caramel taste went very well with the Batida de Coco.

The alcohol content is low, mixed with lots of other liquid and cooked for a long time is mostly gone.

Recipe for 2 made in the Thermomix:

400 ml coconut milk, 100 ml Batida de Coco, 150 ml whole milk

Pinch of salt, 2 tsp vanilla sugar, 1 tsp agave syrup

120 g pudding rice, 

2 tsp dark Dutch pancake syrup, 2 mandarine oranges

Wash the rice. Add all liquids, vanilla sugar, salt and agave syrup to the Thermomix and on 100 C 8 min, speed 1 heat it up.

Toss in the rice, 90 C, 35 min, left turn, speed 1. Peel the mandarine oranges, add the Dutch syrup on top.

Apple Kohlrabi Arugula Salad

A Salad to clear out some stuff. 

My least favourite typ of salad is Arugula. Greens that taste like a couple of dogs pissed on them, sorry out there Arugula fans. I had to buy one for an other recipe. I could not swap it out for an other kind of greens. And since this salad comes in large quantities, I needed to get rid of some.

Some apples and a kohlrabi waited for their use, salad was the best way to tackle them.

Freshly toasted pine nuts helped a lot to mask the arugula taste.

Ingredients:

2 red apples, 1 kohlrabi, 1 lemon

30 g arugula, 3 tbsp pine nuts

125 g Greek yogurt, 1 tsp Date vinegar, 1 tsp olive oil with cinnamon, lemon salt, pepper, 1 tsp agave syrup

Squeeze the lemon in a bowl. Use an apple divider to make wedges and cut them in cubes. Peel the kohlrabi and cut it in slices and then in battons. 

Different cuts in a salad makes the salad more interesting. Chop the arugula in 1 inch pieces. Toast the pine nuts and be careful not to burn them.

Mix the dressing and toss the salad with it.

One Pot Chicken Tomato Honey

My friend asked me to cook some dishes for very busy Business Ladies. I found an other one in the new cookbook from Jamie Oliver ONE.

Honey Roast Chicken it was called there. But honey just is put to the dish in the last five minutes, the orange plays are more dominent role.

The preptime is very short. While your oven heats up to 180 C, put the salted chicken in a  cold pan in a dash of oil and heat the pan up to high and brown the pieces on both sides for 10 min. 

During this time peel and cut the onions in strips and take a speed peeler to take off the skin of an organic orange. Toss it in the pan with the chicken and add the vinegar. Put in the oven for 40 min.

Recipe for 3:

3 chicken thighs, salt, 1 tsp oil, pepper

Dried oregano, peel from an organic orange, 2 red onions, 2 tbsp red wine vinegar

120 g colorful cherry tomatoes, juice from 1 orange, 1 tbsp honey

2 tbsp cream cheese, 2 tbsp chopped pistacchios

Take the pan out of the oven and put it on medium on the hob. Cut the tomatoes in chunks, press the juice of the orange on top and toss that in the pot. Spread the honey all over. Cook for 4 min. Chop the nuts and drop some cheese on top.

Eat with rice.

Wiener Sausage filled with Spaghetti

A small package of Wieners was on its last day today. 

I checked on Google for a combination of Wieners with pasta and saw a picture of strands of spaghetti hanging out of Wiener pieces. 

It sounded like fun, but no way! No fun to stick dry spaghetti in some sausage without breaking a lot of them. Cooking this combo did not really help, because the Wieners split open when they were cooking in boiling water.

But I made a couple of the combos and used some of my still good lemon parsley pesto as a sauce.

When you have time on your hands for arts and crafts, or kids with nothing to do: try this.