Mahlzeit - Food without Borders

Somebody posted a Harissa Chicken on Facebook. It sounded delish. So I worked my way through a few recipes. I didn't want to use a whole chicken. I didn't want to  eat all week from this. Here is what I came up with. 4 tbsp of mild Harissa 1 read onion quartered and then pick the leaves apart 1 red bell pepper, cut into bite size pieces 1 yellow red pepper cut into bite size pieces (I had some frozen yellow and orange bell pepper, so I wanted to use some of this) 2 medium potatoes, peeled and in cut into small pieces 2 chicken legs olive oil salt and pepper to taste Preheat the oven to 350F In a oven save bowl, add the peppers and the onions. Drizzle some olive oil over it and add the Harissa. Season with some salt and pepper.  Mix all of this up with your hand.  Then take the 2 chicken legs and put them on top. Coat them with Harissa as well.  Put it into the oven. After 15 minutes add the potato pieces. Make sure they are coated as well. Bake for another 35-40 minu...

I bought last week a few more things, thinking I can cook more meals and freeze them. Life had a different plan. I ended up with 1/2 celery root, leaks, plenty of tomatoes, red peppers. The original idea was to make Letscho . This is a pepper based with tomato dish, that can be a side dish or a sauce.   What my fridge had in mind: Veggies: 1/2 celery root 3 stalks of leeks 6 tomatoes 2 red peppers 1 large onion 3 stalks of regular celery Other things 3 tbsp of olive oil 4 cups water 3.5 tsp of Knorr chicken bullion 4 cups of tomato juice 1/2 tsp thyme 1 tsp of ground cumin 1 tsp dried smoked paprika 1/2 tsp of curry 1 pack of turkey sausage (optional) Clean and cut all the veggies into almost  equal pices. Slice the sausage into thin slices, but keep them seperate.  In a large pot add the olive oil and heat it up over medium heat. Add the onions. when it starts to get translucent add all the celery. Keep them over medium heat. Stir every now and then. After another 1...

My fridge was the home for 2 bottles of Guinness.  I had bought them for cooking some time ago. I don't drink Guinness. I don't like the muddy taste. I like Kilkenny a lot better. What do I want to do with that? Krustenbraten is made from pork shoulder with skin still on. For my version 2.0 I decided to variate things a bit. I did read about 10 recipes and that is what I came up with. Pork shoulder with skin on. The shoulder I found was bone in and pretty small already. I had the butcher cut it 1 more time, so I end up with food for about 2-3 days. The other piece went into the freezer.  1 large onion , coarsely chopped 3 carrots , peeled and chopped into pieces 1/2 celery root, cleaned and cut into pieces similar size to the carrots 2 bottles of Guinness (0.33l) 4 cups of veggie broth ( I used Better then Bouillon, 1 generous tbsp for 4 cups of boiling water ) 1 tbsp of tasteless veggie oil 1 tbsp yellow mustard 1/2 cup of water Salt, Pepper Wash the pork and then pad it dry....

This rub will work on any pork. It depends on how much pork you have.  The unit is tbsp. So (1) is 1 tbsp and (2) is 2tbsp and so on. The rub I used Ground coffee (2) Salt (1/3) Pepper (1/3) dried thyme (1/3) ground smoked paprika (1/2) light brown sugar (3/4) ground cumin (1/2) garlic powder (1/3) According to google,  3 tsp are 1 tbsp. I did not measure anything. I just eye balled it.  Wash the pork, pad dry and then rub some olive oil over all the surface. The spices need to stick. Cover it generously with the spice rub and let the pork sit on the counter. Preheat the oven to 375F.  My pork was pretty fatty. So I covered a tray with tin foil added some water to catch the fat drippings and cleaning easy. I added the water so the fat does not burn and stinks up the kitchen. With a deeper dish and water, this mixture can be used to make a nice sauce. Cook until you reach your desired temperature. For me it was about 30 min. It really looked as it all burned, but noth...

Pedro is a friend at work. He loves cooking as much as I do. Every now and then we talk about food. I asked him last week for a recommendation. So this is him. This is very easy and simple: one needs duck breasts and rice.  I bought 4 duck breasts. They were frozen. I did defrost 2 of them in the fridge for 24h. After defrosting them, I did pad dry them, sliced a skin just a little bit. Season with salt. I didn't use any pepper on them. In the biggest frying pan I could find (has about 1ft in diameter), add the duck breast skin side down. Keep the temperature to a very low setting.  The purpose is, to render the fat and get the skin crisp. The breast meat does tense up at during the process.  For my duck breast it took about 15-20 minutes for the fat to render. Now I didn't put a timer on it. Turn up the heat and sear the breast all around. When you are satisfied, remove the breast from the pan, put aside and let them rest.  In my fridge I found a small little jar wi...

Growing up we had a green house at home to grow tomatoes and cucumbers. During high season we had a lot of cucumbers. Of course a lot of them got canned. Many ended up in salads and then for lunch we braised them. This is a nice vegetarian version. If the cucumbers have a lot of seeds, you may want to remove them. Mine were seedless... or what the industry calls seedless...lol...  Here we go:  Peel the cucumber and cut them into 4 pieces. This is just to make the cucumber easier to handle. Then cut the 2 pieces along the long side and cut it into small pieces about 5mm wide. We also need  1/2 of a medium onion (chopped) olive oil ( it depends on how much cucumber you used. For me I used about 5-6 tbsp. ok, I didn't measure). 2 heaping spoons of creme fraiche or sour cream fresh chopped dill (frozen dill can be used as well) salt and pepper to taste In a pan heat the olive oil add the onions and let them get translucent. Then add the cucumber pieces, salt and pepper to tas...