Mahlzeit - Food without Borders

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...

I got some raspberries a couple of days ago. I love raspberries. I have a raspberry dressing. Why not add the raspberries into a salad. Here we go: Tomatoes, cut into small pieces Cucumber, peeled and cut into small pieces Onions, cut into small pieces mushrooms, sliced (optional) raspberries salt and pepper to taste raspberries dressing I was hoping that fresh raspberries would enhance the flavor of the dressing, but it didn't. A picture will follow. My main computer is in maintenance.  

 Saturday morning I ended up catching "The kitchen". Katie talked about slow cooking chicken breast. This is something I have not had in a long time. Normally chicken breast gets easy dry. What I made out of the inspiration: 2 chicken breasts, washed and pad dry 2 cans of diced tomatoes 1 can of tomato sauce 2 bell peppers, cleaned and cut into bite size pieces 1 medium onion coarsely chopped 1 tsp smoked ground paprika 1/4 tsp of ground tumeric 1/2 tsp ground Allspice 1 tsp of sweet paprika 1/4 tsp ground cumin 1 cup of water salt and pepper Mix the spices in a bowl and season the breasts with it. Add all the other ingredients into the slow cooker. Place the chicken breasts on top. Sprinkle all the remaining seasoning over everything. Cook on high for 4 hours. When done I ended up shredding the chicken breast a bit. Serve with rice. -Mahlzeit-

I just came back from a week in Portugal. Needless to say, I had a lot of seafood. I love octopus. Coming home, I found in my freezer a packages of octopus. Yeah 4 years old, but no freezer burn or anything. I took it out and put it in the fridge to completely defrost. It ended up being 4 baby octopuses. Surfing the net and asking a friend I came up with something. The consistent message on the internet is, octopus need to be cooked before it goes on a grill. And cook time can be 1-2 hours depending on the size. My recipe: water (make sure the octous is covered by about 1" of water) was 6 cups for me 1 medium onion coursely chopped 3/4 tsp of salt 3/4 tsp of ground Allspice, I wanted to use kernels, but I only had ground Allspice.  8 juniper berries 3 Bay leafes 1 black cardamon kernel Rinse the octopus and dry it a bit with a paper towel. Add all the items into a pot, add the octopus, bring to a boil, turn down the heat and simmer for about 1.5h.  Life throws sometimes a curv...

I still had puff pastry in the fridge, that needed to get a purpose. The original plan was to do  Beef Wellington. Then I didn't have the patience to work through all the steps. Back-up recipe: Pigs Ears. This time without the chocolate covering. The ingredients are very simple: 1 sheet puff pastry (store bought), sugar and cinnamon.  I mix the sugar with the cinnamon and then put it in a sugar shaker. It makes it for an easy distribution. Unroll the sheet of puff pasty. I do that on a silicon matt, that has measurements on the side. This comes up really handy when folding. The bottom left corner lines up with the 0 marker on the matt. The sheet is 15" high. The first fold of  both ends needs to meet roughly at 7.5". Add some of the sugar and cinnamon mixture on the entire sheet and then fold. Add more sugar and cinnamon on the folded puff pastry. Then fold both sides again, so they meet at the existing 7.5" line again. I did run out of the sugar cinnamon mixture.  I...

This is really easy to make and there is actually not a lot of room for screwing things up. The recipe consists of puff pastry sheets, sugar and cinnamon. And that is it. The trick is the folding. This is very nicely explained here .  Also it helps to put the folded pastry into the freezer for 30 minutes. It makes cutting a lot more easy. So far so good.  This looks promising: What I ended up with: The cookies did not expand as much as I have hoped. They were supposed to be at least double in size. Looking at the package: ok expiration date was about 6 months go. That explains that they didn't no expand as much. However taste wise, they were great.  I also got to have a few more tries on the chocolate covering. Well one lives and learns. -Mahlzeit-

My grandma made great pierogies. I loved her blueberry version. I will make them some time, when the blueberries in my backyard are ripe. For now I am going for the potato/cheese/sour cream version. The idea for the recipe comes from  Nagi . Now I don't need to feed many people. So I am cutting things down and changing the process. There are several components that come together at the end. Potato cheese mixture (part 1): Peel about 6 potatoes, cut them, and cook until done. When they are still fairly hot, put them through a potato ricer. (I got myself one a few years back, as I also like to make German potato dumplings, and for those I would need that.) Spread the potatoes on a flat board or plate and let it cool down. When they are room temperature, cover tight with cling wrap and into the fridge they go. I did that yesterday. The next day (part 2): Put the potatoes in a bowl, add some salt and pepper, 2 tbsp of melted butter, and some cheese. I used a mix of smoked gouda and par...