Hello again. It´s been a while. Again.
I´ve been away, actually. In Japan. Which is pretty much Shangrila foodwise. At least it was for me. So much good food. I really, really enjoyed my stay. Perfect University (Tokyo Gakugei Daigaku), perfect friends, new and old (thanks and I miss you, you know who you are), perfect life as an exchange student. So carefree.  Everything good except for the kitchen of my floor in the dorm I stayed in. That was ... gross. So gross that I didn`t even want to cook my spaghetti there. So: hardly any cooking for me. Not cool considerung that I had access to a gazillion new things I could have tried out. Funny veggies and funny fruits, strange noodles, fishies I have never seen before or after, great meats (the beef, oh, the beef!)... But, well, can´t help it, right? 

I came back home, reluctantly and very unhappy, in march and of course I cooked. Actually my kitchen was one of very few things I was looking forward to. 

Of course there are other things for me here, now that I´m back. I had to get my job back (successfully achieved, that), I´m gathering books and reading things for my bachelor thesis that I´ll have to start writing soon, I have to start thinking seriously about what I want to do afterwards... Unsurprisingly my thesis will be about food. I will have to read books about japanese food and watch TV shows about it. Inspiration galore!

In the meantime I hope I´ll be able to cook. New stuff. Good stuff.

Here´s some of the stuff I made lately (mostly fails so no recipes):
For Easter I tried some good old yeast... stuff. Traditional german Hefezopf, sweet braided bread. 

It was a drag. First the dough wouldn´t rise. I decided to just ignore that and still get on with what I was doing. I braided it, let it raise (unseccessfully) again, then bake it. And boy did it grow in the oven... Suddely I had this giant... whatever! I was not happy.  Apart from being not the most attractive thing I´ve ever baked it also was kind of dry. Not really bad when it came to the taste but also not very good either. I´ll try again.
Then I made Purin. Japanese style steamed Custard Pudding. I got the recipe from my old japanese teacher (I miss you, Satô Sensei!) and it always worked great. But. While in Japan I kind of got addicted to something called "Morinaga Yaki Purin", baked Purin from the store. It was great so I wanted to try making baked Purin as well.
It tasted great. But looked... Well, you see, Purin has to be as smooth as possible. No bubbles inside allowed. My Purin was all bubbles. I will get this to work (I bought these little purin forms in Japan so I´ll just have to) and once I got it right you´ll get the (really easy) recipe here and tell you all about how to get bubble free Purin.
Last thing: Omlette. There´s bacon and peas in there but no secret. Just eggs, scrambled, salt and pepper. It just looks good, I think.:D
Oh yeah, I bought a camera. First day in Japan, I got to have a new DSLR. So I´ll try to take pretty pictures of food from now on. For those interested: it´s a Nikon D3100.Not very fancy but it does what I want it to. Yay.
Once again I´ll promise to write here more often. I´m aiming at once a week because if that worked out in Japan, it should work out here.
So: See you next week. ^^
Thanks for reading.
a*

It's been quite a while. Sorry. These past month were really busy and I had more downs than ups. But this semester promises to be...well, a little less work and a bit more fun. Also the work I have is not concentrated in the one last week of the semester only. It´s looking good. Wish me luck.
Good news: I have a new phone with internetaccess and all now so I can post here more. Yay. And I've cooked a lot so I actually have stuff to post.
Another piece of bad news: Until I get a new DSLR we´ll have to make do with the pics my phone camera takes. Sorry...
Just now I made myself a lovely asparagus quiche. I just felt like it.


Ingredients:
Asparagus( I used about 500gr)
4 eggs
A splash of heavy cream
Salt&Pepper
Bacon
Peas

It´s as easy as it gets. I used the same dough I use for apple pie since it´s not sweet and not much more than water, egg and flour so check out the recipe here.


A little tip: make sure the dough goes up the sides of that cake pan (or tarte pan, whatever you use).
Because it´s such a hassle to get pretty much anything that´s not super fatty out of a cake pan I used parchment paper. It also keeps things cleaner.

I then cooked the asparagus (green and white because I couldn`t decide). Looking back I should have cut it into smaller pieces...




I mixed the eggs with salt and pepper and some bacon cubes added some cream (or cream substitute with less fat, good for people like me who can´t really process fat), then added the asparagus.

Pour everything onto the dough, put a little cheese on top, put the whole thing into the oven for about 40mins at 180°C and voila!





Fancy-sounding asparagus quiche.
It tasted as good warm as it did the next day cold. And the day after that. Having a whole quiche to yourself keeps you fed for three days! Even though my friend the Bieberle also ate some. And liked it. ^^

Soup Week so far has been fun. I never thought I could eat so much soup. Last time I tried to fast with my mother I had to throw up at the sight of liquid food after two days. Oh, precious memories!

It´s been a while. Again. I´m sorry! I was busy first, then busy again and then my back decided it had been too long since my last herniated disc so... Yeah, fun.
But I cooked a little bit and will post about it, I promise.
Now for Soup Week: Nothing big, really. Just me and my sister deciding there were too many good soups for us to try and so we´ll have six days of soup before eating something nasty and oily like spare ribs on sunday.
So Monday brought us:
Potato Soup

Later tonight we´ll get a bit more sophisticated with a Parmesan-Zucchini-Soup. More about that tomorrow.

Love, anna