Vinegar with Roses

A small bottle of homemade vinegar is a nice Thank you gift.

This time I did not use garlic or herbs, but some great smelling dried Damask rose petals.

I bought a bottle of rose colored wine this morning, a sweeter one. The bottles I wanted to use had different sizes. I filled both with water and poured them in a measuring cup.

To get the right amount of vinegar concentrate to wine, I needed the total amount of liquid.

Most vinegars have an aciditiy of 5 or 5,5%. Take a calculator and voila, I new how much concentrated vinegar I needed.

Ingredients:

30 ml vinegar concentrate

540 ml rosé wine

5 ml Rose water

1 tsp dried Damask rose petals

After 2 weeks the vinegar is ready.

 

Brazilian Lemonade or Limonada Suiça

Swiss Lemonade? Nobody knows this lime drink in Switzerland. But all over the Internet is this Brazilian Lemonade the new drink of this Summer.

I wanted to prepare it for a couple of weeks now, but my go to drink in this heat is the Iranian carrot/vanilla ice cream and rosewater concoction. 

An opened can of sweetened condensed milk finally made do it. Otherwise the opened can would go in the trash.

You will need a strong blender and a fine mesh sieve.

Recipe for 1,2 l:

3 limes

4 tbsp sweetened condensed milk

1 l water

Ice cubes or crushed ice

In the evening a dash of white rum could be nice too.

Kohlrabi Stew

Not only the cucumbers are overtaking my kitchen, the kohlrabis in my friends garden have reached my kitchen too.

The hot weather of the last couple of weeks helped with the speedy growing of vegetables. I started harvesting even the first tomatoes.

Now I had 4 heads of kohlrabi on the counter. A taste test helped with a quarter of one. 

But I helped myself by buying a package of ground beef and pork today. That formed the base of the stew. Chopped kohlrabi and a hand full of rice with some veg stock made my stew very tasty. I am looking forward to the leftovers too.

Recipe for 3:

400 g ground beef and pork

2 kohlrabi

1 1/4 rice cooker cups rice, 600 ml veg stock

2 onions, 3 garlic cloves, 1 tbsp oil

1 bay leaf, 1 lovage, 1 celery green

1/2 tsp thyme, 1/2 tsp herbes de Provence, 1 tsp smoked paprika, salt and pepper

Start with the meat and sauté it until no longer pink. Add onions and garlic. Cut the kohlrabi in bite size chunks and add it. In with the washed rice too.

Season with salt and pepper. Add the veg stock

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat. Cover and cook for 20 min.

Focaccia

The rose cooking class afternoon  brought some focaccia. But since we've been 18 people, only some small cubes were available per person. 

The recipe was provided and I decided to bake one today. That showed that I have neglected my dry storage for a while. No regular fresh or dry yeast in the house. Just a unknown package with yeast that does not require resting time of the dough. For a round cake tin.

Let's bake and see how that works out. I needed less flour in total, but had to mix it up. The bread flour was not enough in the container for a full dough.

I used 210 g bread flour 550, 110 g cake flour 405 and 55 g semola - a total of 375 g, 10 g fresh yeast

1 tsp rose salt, 2 tbsp olive oil and 270 ml water

These ingredients went in my Thermomix to be kneaded in a dough. I used a small ceramic baking sheet and put olive oil and a sprinkle of flour on it. I worked the dough with my hands all over the dish. Then I gave it a rest of 20 min covered.

Brushed with olive oil and then decorated with red chard stems, green onions, tomatoes and some fresh herbs. A sprinkle of grated Mozzarella and an other dash of oil and then put in the oven.

Bake at 240 C for 20 min

 

Cooking class with Roses - Rose Butter

What takes a long time to get done, should be worth the wait.

My BFF gifted me the cooking class at a Rose Garden Center Rosenschule Ruf in Steinfurth on my birthday in November 2019. I was signed in for June 2020. We all know what happened.

Now after such a long time, I finally went to the cooking class. With Summer temperatures of 36 C arriving in front of a 100 % Glass House structure was great. When I was here in Novemer 2019 it was cosy against the cold outside. But cooking inside today with temp around 45C was a challenge. We started at 3 pm and I left 9:15 pm. Chef Alexander worked us through many steps this day.

Bottled water, about 4,5 liters, was the go to today.

We did a blossom picking tour first. Then picked the single petals off. That takes a while, even when 15 people are working. 

Our first part was making rose salt. That was used in the rose butter later. Making butter in that heat was fun. The butter came out of the fridge just before we started. When we finished with all the ingredients, it had nearly melted. It took some wrangling to get it on a sheet of clingfilm on rose petals and then wrapped for the freezer.

Rose Butter:

250 g unsalted soft butter

1 tsp red beet juice, 2 tsp whole grain mustard

1 tsp rose syrup, 1 tsp lime juice, lime zest

Chili powder, 1 tsp rose water

Chopped fresh organic rose petals

Fresh thyme, chives flowers

Rose salt, pepper

Watermelon with Goat Cheese

I saw this on Pinterest. It was called a watermelon salad.

But it just a cubus of watermelon with toppings. We are having a heatwave just now. Eating a cold lunch is great. Even better, when you have a chunk of watermelon sitting in the fridge. Just the right size for a cubus.

Take a sharp knife and a small bowl and a nice plate. Get the piece of watermelon face side down on your chopping board and cut 4 sides off to get it in shape. Next is the top. 

Do not throw away the offcuts. Get them out of the peel and in the bowl and back in the fridge to enjoy later.

Season the top of the cubus with Bergamotte salt and Asian pepper mix. Smear goat cream cheese in a layer on top. Make it even. Chop some pistacchios and sprinkle them on the cheese. Peel a bit of red onion and slice some of it very thinly. Set it on top of the pistacchios. Add a little bit of fresh greenery (I used Pimpinelle).

Use a squeeze bottle of balsamic cream and after cleaning the plate around the cubus, dot some of it around. That's it.

Cold Soba Noodles or Memil-guksu

36 C is not the temperature we are used here in Germany. Enjoying cold Korean noodles is the best choice on days like this.

I needed something fast, because I went to a cooking class in the afternoon. I know from others that food ready to eat comes late that day. But I had a blast there, even with inside temperatures in a glass house with over 40 C. Blogs will follow.

Soba noodles eaten cold with a dipping sauce is very well known in Japan. I love these kind of dishes. From Korea I only knew the cold sweet potato starch noodles in broth and the Bibim guksu - the cold gochujang somen noodles. 

This dish was made by YT Maangchi, whom I follow for many years now. All ingredients on hand - lets go!

Recipe for 1:

150 g Soba noodles - I used the Korean ones

60 g Daikon radish- grated and squeezed 

2 spring onions, 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds, 1 sheet Noori, 1 drop Wasabi

1 soft boiled egg

100 ml veg stock ( from homemade veg stock paste), 30 ml Tsuyu or Poke Bowl Sauce

Cook the noodles, wash them in cold water after that to firm up. Pull 1 hand full of them in a ball and set on a Sushi mat on a plate. That way water can still drain. Put green onion and shredded seaweed on top.

Mix the daikon with the other ingredients and most of the green onions in a bowl.