I am out on a testdrive with the new VW ID 7. The amount of kilometers to drive is restricted.
Looking for a nice spot not too far away took me to the Rhine river at Gernsheim. The old Gernsemer Fährhaus Restaurant Rheingold was the spot to go.
A bit of lunch sitting, outside and looking at the ships on the river, sounded good. The deal of the day was Beef Goulash with Spirelli pasta.
A good "home style" cooked Beef Goulash.
That was a nice trip to check out a new car.
Cod one Pot Dish with Peas.
At first reading the French recipe it sounded complicated. But it had only 2 from 4 Chef toqs for difficult. And it really wasn't that much of a problem.
The ragout is not served with rice, pasta or potatoes but with garlic croutons. A nice variation this time. That way you can use up day old baguette.
A lot of veggies are in this dish, not only peas. They go in just like an afterthought. Take your time with this recipe. This will force you to go step by step. But it is worth the efford.
Recipe for 2:
300 g cod
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp grapeseed oil
2 tsp garlic paste
1/2 baguette
130 g leek - mostly green part
1 fennel bulb
100 g Baby spinach
1 tsp fennel seeds
Fish seasoning
1 stalk tarragon
Salt and pepper
500 ml veg stock from paste
100 ml creme fraiche
6 tbsp Noilly Prat
1/2 lemon juiced
Preheat the oven 180 C.
Cut the baguette in bigger chunks. Mix garlic paste with grapeseed oil and brush them with it. Put on baking paper and put in the oven for 12 min.
Cut the leek in rondelles and crush the fennel seeds with a pestel and mortar. Heat up tge olive oil in a pot and toss them in. The washed leek next. Season with salt and sauté for 8 min. Chop the fennel and keep the fonds for later. Add the fennel and half of the tarragon. Give it 4 more minutes.
Pour Noilly Prat and hot veg stock in. Cook open for 4 min, then cover and cook until the veggies are done. Now in with the peas.
Cut the cod in large chunks and season it with fish seasoning. Set it on top of the soup and cover for 3 min. Now spinach and cream can go in. Let the spinach wilt, then add lemon juice and the tarragon.
Serve with the garlic croutons.
A YT guy from Gera made this (dr.emkus) to remind himself of school lunches and the smell of linoeum school floors during his youth in the German Democratic Republic.
This special kind of sausage - Jagdwurst = Huntersausage - is some kind of Bologna with tiny chunks of sausage in the fine mass. The people in Eastern Germany used this kind of sausage for Jägerschnitzel too. Just breaded and baked like a schnitzel.
But in this recipe the sausage is the meat part of the sauce. And very important to eat the sauce with Spirelli pasta, no Rigantoni or Fussili only Spirelli.
Recipe for 2:
180 g Spirelli egg pasta
230 g Jagdwurst
1 onion
2 tbsp butter
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp flour
200 ml veg stock
50 ml ketchup
1 tsp sugar
Salt, pepper, paprika, thyme
Cook the pasta. Cut the sausage in small cubes and chop the onion.
In a pan melt the butter (magerine if you have) and add the onion. Sauté for 3 min and add the sausage cubes. Let them get some color. Season with pepper and salt.
In with the tomato paste. Give that a moment to roast, then add the flour. Stir well. Pour in the veg stock and the ketchup. Add sugar and paprika and thyme. Let it cook until the sauce thickens. It it gets too thick add pasta water.
Drain the Spirelli and add them to the sauce.
Going out for lunch in Frankfurt is ending mostly at a very good Iranian restaurant.
My friend loves the kitchen and I am a huge fan too. Getting there by car is easy, there is a parking garage just 200 m away. A bonus when you are going out in Frankfurt.
The restaurant had lots of seating outside, but we optioned for inside. I am not a huge fan to fight off wasps at the table who wants to share my food.
I ordered a strawberry lemonade to drink. Not too sweet and very refreshing.
Today the offered a set lunch menu, either with lamb or vegetarian. We went for the meat offer. All dishes had yellow lentils as the main component in a lamb stew meat sauce.
Sides were two types of rice - saffron and plain and a mixed salad.
But the meal started with a lentil soup with flatbread.
We had some orangeblossom water type of semolina pudding roses for dessert and went for Mokka both to finish the meal.
A very good deal for a lunch option.
I am not a baker, but I always try.
A 90 seconds Reel often is just the bare bone of a recipe. I wrote down the ingredients and the baking time and thought: lets give it a try.
The amount of chocolate sprinkles around the buttered baking dish was what lured me in. Since the Dutch breakfast classic of Toast with Hagelslag or buttered bread with chocolate sprinkles, I had a lot of them left over.
Since chocolate does not keep so long, the Reel was the inspiration to get the sprinkles sorted.
A can of sweetened condensed milk was the next on my list to go. The chocolate cake itself was a basic cake mix from the supermarket.
A buttered a loose bottom bundt cake tin and tossed all the chocolate sprinkles around. Looked funny. Then added the condensed milk on the bottom and the cake mix batter on top.
What I did not consider was the loose bottom. While the cake was in the oven, most of the condensed milk ran out and caramelized on the baking sheet. I was lucky to have kept it in, otherwise my oven would have been a mess.
The cake was baked and I needed a heavy knife to loosen it from the caramel. After cooling it a bit, I 've tried to get the cake out in one piece.
No luck, but the chunks covered in chocolate sprinkles on the outside were very good.
It took a lot of boiling water and scrubbing to get the caramel off the baking tray.
I love my trips to French supermarkets.
Discovering a product I haven't tasted or even seen before is pleasure. Special offers or Promo as they are called in France draw me to them. Then I need time to read the back and find out more about these offers.
Luckily my food French is very good and I understand what I am reading about.
There was a Promo sign over at the "meat" isle and lots of different prebaked pastries were offered.
A meat pie with Riesling wine sounded tasty and the oven time to heat it through was on the back too.
Just 20 minutes and the Tourte au Riesling d'Alsace was ready to eat.
A piece of it went to my neighbor to try too.
On my way back from the French racetrack weekend I stopped at a Supermarket at the border before I crossed over to Germany.
A little French grocery haul was the nice cherry on top to the weekend. I did not buy much, because I only had a 20 liter icebox with me and about a 3 hours drive in hot weather.
But sausages, cheeses, curd and other perishable goodies filled up the box very fast.
On the non perisable side were veggies and strawberries and coffee and baked goods. I love these food hauls.
I bought a head of broccoli and some tomatoes. A salad sounded great, especially made with French thick creme fraiche and organic eggs I bought there too.
Recipe for 2:
400 g broccoli florets
200 g tomatoes
2 hard boiled eggs
150 g creme fraiche
1 medium pickled gherkin
A bunch of fresh herbs
1 garlic clove
1/2 lemon juiced
1 tbsp gherkin brine
Salt and pepper
Cook the broccoli, but keep it on the more al dente side. Keep some of the cooking water for the sauce.
Chop eggs, tomatoes, herbs, garlic and gherkin.
Mix gherkin brine, lemon juice, creme fraiche and broccoli water to a smooth sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.
In a bowl bring everything together.
