Tag Archives: cheese

main dish, vegetarian

Summertime Happiness

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Being outside. Throwing your arms up in the air. Simply because you can.

Sunbathing. A book to that?

Dancing in the warm rain. And finally being barefooted again.

Counting the stars, whilst thriving in the coolness of the night.

Celebrating simplicity. Complicated can come back later.

Even more sun! And noshing tarte flambee.

Tarte Flambee Goat Cheese

Tarte Flambee with Goat Cheese, Pear, and Mushrooms

Ingredients for 2 portions

For the dough:

  • 185 g wheat flour
  • 90 ml soda water
  • 2 tbsp peanut oil
  • 1/2 tsp salt

For the topping:

  • 150 g soft goat cheese
  • 2-3 tbsp sour cream
  • 1/2 pear
  • 2-3 champignons or other mushrooms
  • some fresh thyme

Knead the ingredients for the dough until it is smooth and soft. Cover the bowl and let it rest for 1-2 hours if you’ve got the time (the resting isn’t really necessary but it will be better with it in the end).

Preheat the oven to 250°C.

Cut the pear into small dices. Cut the mushrooms and the cheese into slices. Divide the dough into two halves and roll out each of them very thinly, until you almost can see through. Put each of them onto a baking tray with baking paper. Spread half of the sour cream thinly onto each tarte and scatter half the remaining ingredients onto each tarte as well. Bake for 5-10 minutes until the dough is crispy. Serve hot.

main dish, meat & fish, soul food

Good Things Take Time (and Love)

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Venison Lasagna

Some caring attention and time is always nice for proper food, and sometimes exactly what makes the meal present itself in the best light. But time is something that likes to lack in this hasty world. Sometimes even almost too much. So you hurry through daily life, trying to find something – anything – to eat. Because eating is something you just have to do. Right?

But when most of the Christmas turbulences are over and the quiet, long desired tranquility between the years settles over the world, you actually could invest some of this preciousness again.

A nice venison ragout for example can taste a lot better if you just let it simmer patiently to let it soak up even more flavour. Also a bechamel sauce brightens up if you give it time with spices, that make it more aromatic. More fascinating. More round. And if you even have the time and the joy to make you own pasta, you will be rewarded with a lasagna that delights your senses with every single layer and that is worth every tiny bit of work. Creamy, spicy, soothing, and full of loving attention you can taste.

And best you share this piece of art with your most favourite person… because food always tastes better when it is shared.

Venison Lasagna

Venison Lasagna

Ingredients for 2-3 portions

For the venison ragout:

  • 1 tbsp butter
  • 250 g minced venison (without bone)
  • 150 ml strong, red wine (for example Shiraz, Primitivo or Pinotage)
  • 200 ml meat broth of your choice
  • 200 g tomato sauce or simply sieved tomatos
  • 2 laurel leaves
  • 2 juniper berries
  • 2 springs of rosemary
  • 2 springs of thyme 
  • salt and pepper for seasoning

For the pasta layers:

  • 250 g wheat flour
  • 125 ml water
  • 1/2 TL salt

For the bechamel sauce:

  • 25 g butter
  • 25 g flour
  • 450 ml milk
  • 1laurel leaf
  • 1 clove

Additionally:

  • 75 g freshly grated parmesan
  • 75 g freshly grated cheddar

To prepare the ragout melt the butter in a pan on medium to high heat, then add the venison to fry it. Deglaze it with the wine and pour in the broth and tomatoes. Put in the laurel, juniper, rosemary, and thyme, put a lid on the pan, and let the ragout simmer for 2 hours on low heat. Remove from the stove and best let it rest overnight. Season with salt and pepper to your taste and remove the laurel leaves, juniper berries and herb stalks.

Knead the ingredients for the pasta until you have a firm and smooth dough, that is neither wet and clingy nor too dry and dusty. Cover it, let it rest for 1 hour and roll it out very thinly (the thinnest adjustment on your pasta machine, if you happen to have any).

Melt the butter for the bechamel sauce in a pot, mix in the flour and after 2 minutes stir in the milk. Let it simmer on low heat for 5 minutes whilst stirring from time to time before adding the laurel and clove and let it rest on very low heat for about 20 minutes. Remove the laurel and clove.

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Pour a thin layer of ragout into a dish or casserole and cover it with one layer of pasta. Add on thin layer of bechamel sauce and cover that with another layer of pasta. Continue until all the ingredients are used up – the last layer should be a bechamel sauce. Sprinkle it with the cheese and bake for about 40 minutes until the surface of the lasagna is golden brown and bubbly.

main dish, meat & fish

I fucking love stars!

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Miso Carbonara

The days are getting shorter. The precious hours of sunshine are slipping through our fingers while we are occupied with our daily business… just to find ourselves surrounded by pre-hibernal darkness in our free time. But is this really such a bad thing? The local nature needs this winter rest, the withdrawing from everything, the silent slumber under a cold and heavy snow cover, so it can rise again in spring, with all its power. Besides, this darkness indulges us with a sight we usually don’t get during summer if we don’t want to stay up too late: the starry sky. In all its glory and magnificence it now shines on us at a time we leave from work and it shows us the way back home. How often do we really look up to appreciate this spectacle of nature? Almost too quickly we’d rather hurry inside – into the lulling warmth and the flashy glow of artificial lighting.

And yet the firmament in November is so beautiful… and we always cannot have enough pretty around us. More than ever in a season that leaves the trees bare-branched and will bleach the bright autumn colours until we will be left with nothing more than a world out of grey and grey in gray in December. So yes, I’d rather turn my gaze up to the sky above, even if that means to stay in the cold for a bit longer. I admire the Orion, always easy to recognize, and wink at the Unicorn that dances right next to it. From time to time I might happen to spot at a falling star. I want to catch it, carry it around with me and lose my heart to it… to finally set it free again, where it belongs. Am I a hopeless romantic? Maybe. But all the same I know: Soon I will stand outside again, under the sky, to gaze upwards in awe and gently whisper to myself: „I fucking love stars“.

And this version of an Italian-Asian carbonara… I love that, too!

Miso Carbonara

Spaghetti with Miso Carbonara and Sausage Meatballs

this recipe (again) is inspired by the lovely and fabulous Mandy

Ingredients for 2 portions

  • 2-3 high-quality salsiccia or other really good pork sausages from the butcher
  • some oil for frying
  • 250-400 g spaghetti, depending on how hungry you are
  • 50 ml sake (or sherry)
  • 4 eggs
  • 20 g freshly grated parmesan
  • 20 g freshly grated pecorino
  • 2 tbsp white or yellow miso
  • 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves
  • freshly ground pepper for seasoning

Cut the sausages open lengthwise, get rid of the skin and roll them into small meat balls between your hand. Heat up a pan on medium heat and bring a pot with salted water for the pasta to a boil. Pour some oil into the pan and add the sausage meatballs to fry them until they are golden brown all way around. Put the spaghetti into the boiling water and cook them al dente, according to the instructions on the package.

Crack the eggs open into a bowl, add the grated cheese, the miso, the thyme and some pepper. Mix well.

Deglaze the sausage meatballs with the sake and strain the pasta through a sieve. Let them drain for just a few seconds and immediately add them to the pan. Mix well. Turn off the heat of the stove, add the egg mixture, and keep on swinging the pan around. Divide onto two plates or bowls, and serve quickly with additional cheese, thyme, pepper and sesame if you like.

Miso Carbonara

Asian food, meat & fish, soul food

They are Among Us: Tuna Onigiri

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Tuna Onigiri

I wish there was a clone ship for onigiri! Just like this huge Cylon thing in Battlestar Galactica: Filled with huge bath tubs where all the onigiri that have come to die are magically reborn again… an inexhaustible source. They would wonderfully reappear, freshly come back to life and immediately jump into the next spacecraft to fly right back to me and directly onto my plate… A girl can dream, right?

Yes, onigiri make me happy. Really happy. So happy in fact, that I almost can’t describe it. And yes, personally I could talk about them all day long. About how easy they are to make. About how beautiful they are. About how they can be eaten cold or warm and freshly roasted under the grill. About how you can fill them or mix the rice with the ingredients or just leave the rice plain. About how perfectly you can eat them just with your hands and about how much I love to actually touch the food I eat. About how well they can be prepared in advance – and therefore are the perfect food to bring to parties, picnics or lunch break in your bento.

Yes, I am madly in love with onigiri. We both are actually. So why isn’t wasn’t there a recipe on this blog yet? My bad. After all you can nicely take them with you to the sofa to indulge in a long-awaited Battlestar Galactica relapse again. It’s been too long!

How much you get addicted to them depends strongly on the quality of the rice you use and the other ingredients. They can turn your “ordinary ball of rice” into some sheer poetry. In our most favourite recipe we use Cheddar… not really traditionally Japanese, but well – it’s delicious, so what!?

Tuna Onigiri

Tuna Onigiri with Cheddar, Chili & Ginger

after this lovely recipe by Mandy

Ingredients for 8-10 rice balls

For the rice balls:

  • 2 cups (à 180 ml) sushi rice
  • 1 sheet nori
  • 1 tsp sesame oil
  • some sesame or furikake

For the filling:

  • 1/2 can tuna in oil (about 90 grams)
  • 2 tbsp freshly grated Cheddar
  • 1 tbsp mayonnaise
  • 2 tsp sesame
  • 1-2 tsp chopped ginger
  • 1/2 tsp chili powder or freshly chopped chili
  • 1/2 tsp red chili paste and/or a little Tabasco

Put the rice into a sieve and wash it under cold running water. Cook it in a rice cooker according to the producer’s instructions or in a pot on the stove: Add 2 cups of water to the rice in the pot. Close the lid and switch the stove to low (heat level about 2 of 10). After 10 minutes switch to medium heat (level 4-6 of 10 – depending on the kind of stove you have) and let the rice steam for 10-15 minutes. The water should not boil and you should keep the lid of the pot closed. After 15 minutes the rice should have absorbed all the cooking water and it should be tender und fluffy. Pull the pot away from the stove. Get a spoon and carefully fold the rice before closing the lid again and let the rice rest for 5 more minutes.

Let the cooked rice cool down. Drain the tuna and mix it with the other ingredients for the filling. Season to taste with additional chili, cheese or ginger if you like. Cut the Nori sheet in half and cut those halves again in 4-5 rectangles each.

Moisten one of your hand palms and put 2-3 well-heaped teaspoons of the rice on it. Gently press it down a bit. Add 1-2 teaspoons of the filling on top of it and cover with 2-3 more teaspoons of rice. You can also use an onigiri mould for this: Dip it into water too, before filling it, and fill it up loosely right up to the top.

Now use your other hand (or the lid of the onigiri mould if you use one) and press the onigiri to your preferred shape. Wrap the onigiri in nori, brush a little of the sesame oil over it and sprinkle it with sesame. Arrange on a plate and serve with soy sauce and green tea if you like. Or dip them in this sweet and sour chili sauce. Heaven!

The onigiri taste best when they are fresh but are also perfect companions for a bento on the next day.