It´s spring at last! Yay! Even sun-allergic me is happy about that! Yeah, I know, after spring comes summer and that means I will be complaining about the heat but in the meanwhile I´ll just enjoy my favorite season with all the pretty and incredibly well smelling flowers and people starting to cheer up and everything.

And among all those pretty trees and flowers I have a favorite: 

The huge peartree in our backyard. Look, isn´t it pretty? Ours is a five story, turn of the century house with super high ceilings and the tree is as tall as the house! Amazing, right? Unforunately the sheer size of it makes it problematic: 

a) It´s lowest branches are still too high to reach so I whave to wait for the pears to be super ripe and fall down, then hope I´m faster than the bugs or squirrels that are waiting for fallen fruits as well.

b) It´s so tall that it can´t be groomed properly. Doesn´t sound too bad, just let the tree grow as it likes, right? But! Fruit trees only bear fruit if maintained properly. So in the past few years we only got pears every other year. There should be fruit this year, though, and if that´s the case, I promise you some nice pear recipes.

Looking forward to that.

In the meantime, let´s do something completely different. 

In 1993, I was 14, I went to Great Britain with my mom. My only time traveling with my mother, believe it or not, and we actually had a lot of fun. And enjoyed the food. Yes, british food has a terrible reputation but I don´t think it´s that bad. Just look beyond Haggis and you´ll find great puddings and pasties and whatnot. 

My point being: when we got back we got a british cookbook and this is my favorite recipe from it (long lost since). 

Ingredients: 

225 g Flour (all purpose)

1/2 ts Salt

2 Eggs

250ml Milk

8 little Sausages

1 big Onion

1 ts Bakingpowder

How to: 

Preheat the oven to 200°C.

Mix the flour with the bakingpowder and the salt. 

Mix the eggs with the milk. 

Slowly pour the egg/milk mixture into the flour mix and stir well. It should be pretty runny and after resting for about half a minute the batter should be all bubbly.

Set aside for 15 minutes. 

 Bubbly batter

Fry the sausages in a pan until they are well browned. This time I had four big ones over from our first barbeque of the season so instead of eight little ones I used these. 

Cut the Onion and fry it until all yummy looking brown as well. 

Sausages

Handsome Onions

Grease a pan. I remember the book telling me to "arrange" the sausages and the onions and I still have no clue what that is supposed to mean. I put the onions on top of the sausages, that´s all the "arranging" I do. If you can think of something better... feel free to tell me! 

Steaming onions and sausages

Pour the batter over sausages and onions. 

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes. Or until everything is nice and golden brown. 

Half eaten before I could take a picture...

This is a very easy, very tasty recipe that I recommend for lazy days. Not much to prepare, nothing challenging... Best eaten with a bit of mustard.

So I dare you to try something british. Come on, be brave. It´s good.

Have fun. 

Thanks for reading.^^

a*

Ingrediences:

Nikujaga (Beef-Potato-Onion-Stew)

750g Potatoes

400g Onion

200g thinly cut Beef

Vegetable Oil

400ml Dashi

75ml Soysauce

3 TS Sugar

2 TS Mirin

1 TS Sake

Gyouza (Potstickers)

"Japanese Style"

250g Groundbeef

Springonion

Soysauce

1/2 big Mushroom

Ginger

Corn

"Korean Style"

250g Groundbeef

Springonion

1/2 big Mushroom

Kimchee

So I had lovely Gesa over last weekend. We hung out, watched silly stuff on Youtube, saw "The Good The Bad The Weird" (my sixth time), cooked and had an overall good time.
We made Nikujaga, one of my favorite japanese homecooking dishes ever. I´ve been told that you can get married for a good Nikujaga so... I´m trying.
I got this recipe from Kurihara Harumi`s book but everyone should know by now that I hardly ever follow instructions properly. I always use way more potatoes because I love the way they suck up the sweetness from the sauce. They´re even better the next day. It´s also pretty hard to get thinly cut beef around here so we usually use Gulash-Chops and cut them even smaller. I´m also pretty generous with the soysauce, the dashi and the sugar...

Here´s what you´re supposed to do:

Peel potatoes, wash them, get rid of the starch.

Peel onions, cut into 6 wedges each.

Cut meat into small pieces.

Heat up oil in a big pot, put in potatoes, then onions and beef. Fry for a few minutes.
Add Dashi, Soysauce, Sugar, Mirin and Sake (all of which is just NECESSARY for cooking japanese stuff and should be available at any respectable asian supermarket).

Get rid of the foam if any builds up. Let simmer until Potatoes are done.

Add more sugar or soysauce if wanted. Always remember: You have to like it, it´s yours, you decide. (Yeah, this is me trying to get everyone into wildstyle cooking again)

We usually eat Nikujaga on rice which is apparently not what the japanese do but... whatever. It´s good.

We also made Gyouza. This time I forgot to buy Cabbage and thought it would surely end up in epic fail but it didn´t. I just added tiny chopped mushrooms (well not that tiny but small enough), chopped springonion, a few tablespoons of (leftover) corn, and some grated ginger to the groundbeef, threw some soysauce on top, mixed well and put it in and it worked.

Gesa did pretty much the same with her ingrediences: ground beef, mushroom (her´s was smaller than mine), springonion and Kimchee. Tug in, done. Yes, it´s that easy. Well, you might have to practise folding a bit but that´s not hard, either. Gesa did it without folding, she just glued the Gyouza-thingies together with water.
Should I do a tutorial on how to fold Gyouza next time?
The folded dumplings go into a pan, get fried a little bit, the you pour water over them, put on a lid and let them steam. I usually let them fry some more after the water is all gone to get the underside of them crispy again. Because I like it.

And that´s it.
My only good note for this one is that if you keep ginger in the freezer it grates much easier than it does fresh. It peels really easy and you don´t have to fight the fibre-thingies that usually are a pain in the ass...

My gyouza filling.

Gyouzawrappers. This time not homemade but bought.