Mittwoch, 1. Oktober 2014


For me, autumn is pumpkin time. I am absolutely obsessed with it and I annoy my family every year because it’s really all I want to eat. It also reminds of how near we are to Christmas and that makes me really excited. So here is my favorite way to eat my pumpkin.

 

Pumpkin Cream Soup – Recipe

 

Ingredients:

400g Hokaido pumpkin

1 onion

2 table spoons of butter

1 litre vegetable stock

250g sour cream

Spices:

Salt

Pepper

Cayenne pepper

Nut meg

 

Preparation:

Cube the pumpkin and chop the onion. Put the butter in a big pot and heat up the pot. After the butter has melted add the onion and the pumpkin. When the onion looks glazed, pour the stock in the pot. Let the mixture simmer for around 30 minutes. After that, mash the ingredients until they become a soup. Add the sour cream and season the soup with the spices.

Serve with fresh bread. 

 

I love the pumpkin cream soup recipe because it is a quick and easy dish, but it still tastes amazing and is so nice to eat when it’s getting cold outside.   

Donnerstag, 25. September 2014

Lasagne



Ingredients:
·         15 lasagnenoodles
·         Parmesan
·         butter
·         80g chopped onions
·         80g chopped carrots
·         80g chopped celery
·         600g minced meat
·         1 tin peeled tomatoes
·         100 ml red wine
·         4 tablespoons of oil
·         1 teaspoon oregano
·         2 bay leafs
·         2 chopped thyme
·         2 garlic cloves
·         2 tablespoons tomato purée 
·         salt
·         pepper

Bechamel sauce:
·         1L milk
·         60g flour
·         60g butter
·         nutmeg

·         salt

Preparation:
First, heat oil in a cooking pot and sweat the chopped vegetables in it. Then put the minced meat into pot. If the meat is done, deglaze it with the red wine and stir all with a wooden spoon. Then add the tomato purée and the peeled tomatoes and smash them with the wooden spoon. After that, intermix the herbs and the garlic and let that all simmer for one hour. Stir the sauce several times and in the end add salt and pepper.
For the béchamel sauce, melt the butter in a cooking pot. Then mix some flour into it and let it sweat for a short time. While you constantly stir it, pour the milk in it. Add some nutmeg and salt to taste.

Lubricate the casserole with some butter and put alternately the béchamel sauce, the meat sauce and the lasagnenoodles into the casserole until the ingredients are used up. Dredge the lasagne with Parmesan and put it for 25 minutes with 220 degrees Celsius in the oven. 

Montag, 22. September 2014

Hey everyone!

I've just spent the evening with my friends, who all love to cook! We had a great time preparing our favorite meal, which is sushi. It's a traditional Japanese starter, which I think the most of you know. Anyway, why go to the Japanese restaurant, when you can easily make them on your own. Actually you can fill the rolls, which are wrapped in seaweed (nori), with everything you like. I prefer raw or smoked fish with cucumbers and avocado. Additionally I sometimes buy bean spreads. For serving, i put small bowls filled with soy sauce and pickled ginger.

Ingredients: 
  • 2 cups uncooked short-grain white rice 
  • some rice vinegar
  • 3 tablespoons white sugar
  • 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 4 sheets nori seaweed sheets
  • 1/2 cucumber, peeled, cut into small strips
  • 1 avocado, cut into thin stripes
  • 50 dag raw salmon, cut into stripes
Directions:

  1. In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups water to a boil. Add rice, and stir. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. In the meantime mix a little bit of the rice vinegar, sugar and salt and add it to the rice.
  2. Center one sheet nori on a bamboo sushi mat and moisturize it with some rice vinegar. Also wet your hands. Spread a thin layer of rice on the sheet of nori and press it down a little bit. Take the cucumber stripes, avocado stripes, and salmon and arrange them in a line in the center of the rice. Lift the end of the mat, and gently roll it over the ingredients with little pressure. Roll it forward to make a complete roll. Repeat with all remaining ingredients.
  3. Slice the long roll into 2 cm thick pieces.
  4. Put them on a big plate for serving.
Hint: The rolling part is definitely the most difficult and it takes time to get a feeling for it. So don't give up, when they dont look really appetizing at first! 

Hope you will enjoy it!

Freitag, 19. September 2014

Milk Chicken



Milk Chicken is a traditional Indian recipe that’s really easy to cook and not at all spicy.
As this is a family recipe I learned from my mum, I cannot give exact figures on how much to use of each ingredient.

Ingredients:

Chicken
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Almonds
Cream
Cinnamon Sticks
Cardamom
Dried Laurel Leafs
Ketchup
Vinegar
Optional:
Garam Masala (Indian Spice)

Side Dish: Rice Or Roti (Special Type of Indian Bread)

1.
Chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces and put it into a normal frying pan. Add milk and a little bit of cream until all of the chicken is covered. Now add the all spices (salt, pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, laurel leafs and, if you happen to have it at home, Garam Masala) and the almonds. Once you think that you have put in enough spices, put in some more. There can never be enough spices!
2.
Let it simmer for one hour, and stir every few minutes. Be careful: Don't let the milk overboil! Add more spices.
3.
Once about half of the milk has evaporated, take a cup and fill a quarter of it with ketchup and another quarter of vinegar and mix it. Depending on how much chicken you cooked, you might need some more of the ketchup-vinegar mix. Put it into the pan and stir. The milk now should have a light maroon-reddish colour. Add some more spices.
4.
Cook for another half an hour. The milk should now be a bright maroon sauce.
Serve with rice or traditional indian bread (Roti).

Best consumed with Bollywood Music and some Mango Lassie.



Donnerstag, 18. September 2014

Weisswurst


The Münchner Weisswurst is a tradtional Bavarian sausage composed of very finely minced veal and pork back bacon, flavored with parsley,  in a clean pork casing. Back when refrigerators hadn't been invented yet, Weisswurst were prepared in the morning and had to be eaten by noon because they could not be preserved and would go bad. So following this culinary rule the sausages were consumed before lunch, leading to people to call the meal "Weisswurst breakfast". They always come in pairs and are served in a pot of hot water, accompanied by a traditional german pretzel, sweet mustard (the custom brand is "Händlmaier", you might receive a very disappointed gaze if this is not the served brand) and, more times than less, a german beer. I don't even think it's necessary to state that this dish has "Bavarian" written all over it. 

Ingredients:

2.25 kilograms of veal
30 grams of ground mustard seed
2.25 kilograms of lean pork butts
1 Tablespoon ground white pepper
100 grams of non-fat dry milk
1 teaspoon ground celery seeds
100 grams of salt
1 teaspoon mace
100 grams of soy protein concentrate
30 grams of powdered dextrose
1 teaspoon Spice onion powder 1 qt. ice water
1 teaspoon dry parsley

Preparation:

Grind meat on a grinder plate until it's in very fine state of matter. Add all the ingredients except the water and mix thoroughly until evenly distributed. Place the meat in the food processor, adding the water as you go along. Stuff 16 sausages  (clean pork casing) using a sausage stuffer or a sausage stuffing attachment. Do not overstuff, when twisting the links, leave a little room for expansion in each link. If necessary, remove large air bubbles by piercing the casing with a skewer. Tie off the links. In a large stock pot heat up water to 80°C. Place sausages in hot water, leave in for 30 minutes, adjust heat to keep temperature constant at 80°C. Put sausages in a bowl of hot water and serve with a pretzel and the all-important Händlmaier sweet mustard. 


Last but not least, enjoy your culinary masterpiece of prestigious Bavarian cuisine, the Lord of the sausages! The Münchner Weisswurst!


"Kasnockn"

My favorite food? There is no simple answer to this question.. After a moment of thought I have decided to share the traditional recipe of "Kasnockn" with you. In my opinion this food evokes memories of cozy ski huts after a long day of skiing. It is typical for Austria and  I recommend “Kasnocken” to everyone who likes full-flavoured cheese and who is not on diet.

Ingredients
 
250ml water
2 eggs
300gr flour
250gr full-flavoured cheese
70gr butter
1 big onion
salt, pepper
 
 
Preparation
 
1. Mix the flour, eggs and water together.
2. Pass it through a special colander for "Spaetzle" into boiling water.
3.Boil the "Spaetzle" about four minutes than drain them with a colander.
4. Put them together with the butter in a pan, spice them with salt and pepper.
5. Add the cheese slowly.
6. Wait until all cheese is melted and add the choped onion.
7. As soon as the onion becomes brown the meal is ready to enjoy.
 
"Kasnockn" are traditionally served with potato salad.


Enjoy your freshly cooked "Kasnockn"!

 
 
 
 
 
Spaghetti Carbonara











Ingredients:

500g pasta or spaghetti                                                             
2 L boiling water                                                                            
1 tablespoon salt                                                                          
1 pinch of pepper
1 pinch of nutmeg                                                                        
3-4 eggs                                                                                            
250 ml cream                                                                                  
100g processed cheese                                                              
200g bacon slices                                                          

Preparation:


Cook spaghetti in salted, boiling water until just cooked. Drain the noodles in the colander. Then fry the bacon slices in a frying pan with oil. Add the boiled spaghetti, cream, processed cheese, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Stir everything and cook it for some minutes until the processed cheese melted. Then separate the yolk and the egg white. Also stir in the yolk and after it, it is ready to be served.