Instead of studying like I should I´ll tell you what we had for dinner last night:

Crispy Duck Breast

We wanted to make this for christmas but then we changed our plans and had my mom cook instead but we still had everything for it here and in the end we ate it on a regular monday which made the day still seem special. Nice.

Ingrediences:

2 Duck breasts

Potatoes

Sugar

Chestnuts

Salt & Pepper

Butter

Flour

Cream (or a subsitute)

Water

First things first: Cut crosses in the chestnutpeel and put them in the oven at a very high temperature. I used 250°C and let them in for about half an hour (the oven was not preheated). Keep an eye on them, you don´t want them all hardened and burnt. Let them cool, then peel them. Set aside for later. ( I actually made them in the afternoon because peeling hot roasted chestnuts is only fun when you´re outside in the snow and your hands are frozen anyways...)

Cook the potatoes in water, don´t salt them. Once they´re halfway done you can start with the duck.

I used frozen duck breasts because they are cheaper so I guess if you don´t have the time to breed and raise, then shoot and prepare your own duck, any kind of store bought is fine.

I rinsed the blood off, dried them, them cleaned the skin from any remains of the feathers.

Then cut little diamonds into the fatty skin. Be careful not to cut into the meat.

(Why diamonds? Why not into the meat? Diamonds because they´re pretty... No really, the fat will melt and tighten when heated and unless you want the whole thing to curl up you better cut into it so that only the little diamonds will get smaller. And the meat will bleed out and loose precious meatjuice if cut.)

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 350°F.

Now heat up a pan but no oil, fat, grease whatsoever. Once it´s hot, place the chicken breasts with the skinside down into it and let it fry for 5 minutes. You´ll be amazed how much fat gets out! Well, I sure was.
Then turn around and fry (Deep fry, really. There´s so much fat!) the skinless side for 2 minutes.
Now place the duck breasts into little tinfoil boats. Well, just make sure you wrap them into tinfoil so that only the skin looks out, everything else must be wrapped. This makes the skin extra crispy.

Put them into the oven for 10 Minutes then turn off the heat and let them sit inside the oven for another 5 Minutes.

Meanwhile:

I used the leftover fat from the pan for a extra good gravy. I just threw some spoonfulls of flour on it, mixed that well, then added cream (a fat reduced subsitute, really...) and then some water. Stir, add salt and pepper, let sit.

Get rid of the potato water.

Cut chestnuts. I cut them into four pieces each but go with how small you like them.

Dissolve butter in the pot you boiled the potatoes in. Add Sugar. I used about 50g butter(?) and 5 TS Sugar but it depends on how sweet you like it, on how many potatoes you have and on how strict your diet is, I guess.

Let sugar and butter melt together, when it starts to get brownish take it off the heat and throw potatoes and chestnuts in. Make sure every potato gets some sugarbutter.
Take the ducks out of the oven and cut them into strips, bite size pieces, whatever you like.
There´s gonna be quite some meatjuice inside the little tinfoil boats and I just added that into the gravy.
Put on plate, serve to someone you like. Way too good to waste on people you don´t.

Looks long, is not. Took me about half an hour, maybe a little longer counting in the chestnuts.

Duckie breasts, all naked. Hehe...

Fat skin cut into diamonds.

Don´t they look great in the pan already? And see all that fat? I told you!

Wrapped in tinfoil.

Pretty chestnuts. My favorite winter-treat.

Caramel potatoes with chestnuts. Tastes as good as it sounds.

Super heavy gravy looking good in the pan.

The perfect color inside.

Anyone has any good recipes with chestnuts to share? I´d love to try...

Happy The-Day-After-Christmas, everyone. I hope you all had a good one.

My Christmas was nice. And a few days before I had a Japanese day with my lovely friend Mako.

First we went out to lunch to a Japanese Restaurant called "Akari". I had the Teishoku menu, chicken katsu, which came with Miso soup, pickled veggies, rice and tea.

It was really good. Mako had yakisakana (grilled fish) and that was good too. It was not cheap but still under 10€ each which I think is doable every now and then.

After that we went to Mako´s place. She and her husband live about a five min walk from where I used to live with my mother so going there was already fun and I even felt a bit nostalgic.

We had tea, cookies and then M proceeded to teach me how to make perfekt Chawan Mushi, a traditional japanese dish that I once tried to make and kinda failed.

Ingrediences:

4 Eggs

about 500ml water

Dashi (japanese Bonito Soupstock)

Sugar

Soysauce

You can put in whatever you feel like, we went with:

Shitake Mushrooms

Prawns

fake crab meat

we also sprinkled Yuzu, a japanese citrus fruit and herbs called "Mitsuba" on it.

What did we do? Well, actually, Mako did. I just stood around, got in the way and tried to memorize everything.
Soak Shitake in water unless you can afford to buy fresh ones. Then let them simmer in a pot on low heat in soysauce and a bit of sugar. This, once again, is according to your tastes. It was a lot of fun to see Mako cook the same way I do, just throwing things in...

Stir the eggs together.

Bring the water to a boil and mix in the Dashi (which should be available at any asian supermarket. It´s pretty essential thing in the japanese kitchen). Mako also saltened the Dashi which seems like a good idea to me.
Once the water has cooled down add the eggs. It should still stay liquid, so the water can be warm but really not hot. Get off any foam you get. No bubbles allowed!
Take small bowls (unless you have proper cool Chawan Mushi Bowls), place whatever you want inside in. We had those yummy, yummy Shitake (mmmh), fake crab meat and Prawns.

Fill the bowls with the egg-Dashi-mixture.

Cover bowls with tinfoil.

Steam for 15 Minutes.

Eat & Enjoy.

Sounds easy, right? Well, the trick is, to get the royale like stuff to not get bubbly inside. When I tried I had a gazillion bubbles in it and even though it was tasty enough, the housewife that´s hiding inside me wasn´t satisfied at all. I guess, the trick is, how you steam it. I´m guessing some kind of device to keep the bowls above the water instead of putting it in helps. Here you can get chinese steaming baskets for cheap at asian supermarkets. Or you do it the fancy way and buy a pot with a steaming basket like the ones they have at IKEA.

Don´t let any water touch your food while steaming. That makes bubbles on the surface. Not altering the taste but stealing satisfaction.

I´ll be sure to try this at home very soon. It´s easy, doesn´t take a lot of time, and you can vary as much as you like. Add chicken, salmon (or any other fish), other veggies...

And I was told not to let the egg-Dashi-mixture get too watery or too eggy. Mmmhhh... Okay.

まこ、茶碗蒸しの作り方を教えてくれて本当にありがとうございました！

Shitake simmering & being yummy!

Eggs being whisked.

Mitsuba. I haven´t seen it here so far but I´ll keep looking.

Eggs and fake crab meat. Yes, I am aware that this stuff is probably made out of fish heads or something but hey, it´s so good!

Bowls halfway filled.

Bowls filled.

The one perfect, non-bubbly bowl we got. And we forgot mitsuba and yuzu. :/

Excuse the rather crappy pics, I had to take the small camera instead of the DSLR...

I hope I can make another post while I´m off because, hey, it´s the holidays, right? Food galore!! I´ll try my best.^^

Remember the chickenbroth I made? Well, here´s what I did with the chicken the day after:

Ingrediences:

cooked chicken

peas

corn

chickenbroth

flour

butter

cream

This is a traditional german dish called "Hühnerfrikasse", something I grew up loving because both my grandma and mother made this themselves and regularly. If you tell germans you`re making your own Hühnerfrikasse everyone stares at you in disbelief as if it was complicated. But if you´ve been reading this blog, you know by know that I´m not really in for complicated stuff so... It´s easy!

For the sauce or whatever you want to call it, the liquid part of this, we need a roux: But some butter in your pot, maybe a tablespoon or maybe a little more, let it melt. Then throw a big tablespoon of flour on it. Get the pot off the flame and mix well. It has to be a thick butter-flour-pulp. Now comes the part that`s a bit tricky: Keep the wirewhisk in your "good" hand (the one that you write with), have chickenbroth ready. Now stir the flour-pulp like mad and add a bit of the broth. Only stirring will prevent the flour from clotting and being gross.

Don´t use too much broth, you´ll still want your sauce to be kinda thick and you still have to add the cream. Which is what´s next: you add the cream. I usually substitute cream with something with less fat and less lactose (like the german creme fine)... Now leave it all on low heat and see whether you like the thickness and richness of it. Add broth or cream if needed.
This done you pretty much have your stew ready. Only little stuff left:

Cut the cooked chicken from the chickenbroth into small, bite-sized pieces, throw it in the sauce. (I kinda just rip my chicken apart. It adds to the thickness of the stew) Add as much peas and corn as you like and tadaaa! ready!

Well, okay, you still have to add salt and pepper if you want to get rid of the blandness. I also added some of my selfmade mustard this time and it fit perfectly.
You can eat this on rice, with noodles or like we did this time, with puff pastry cups (which are easily found in well stocked german supermarkets. We used to have them with Hühnerfrikasse for new years eve when we were kids so we kinda got nostalgic seeing them and had to have them).
Anybody has any good tips for this? Something new I haven´t tried yet? Suggestions are welcome.

Mmmmh, chicken!

puff pastry thingies.

With their tops off and ready to be filled.

Stew looking good.

Finally some cooking again.

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...

So Gesa: anytime again. It was delicious and fun. We´ll try baking next, right? Yay!

It sounds so complicated and yet...
Ingrediences
Paneer Cheese:
1 liter Milk
4 TS Vinegar

Sweet Mustard:
100gr Mustardseeds
10gr Salt
50gr Sugar
60gr Vinegar
40gr Water

See, not many ingrediences, right? Usually that means it´s easy. And it is!
I hereby admit to being obsessed with cheesemaking! Yes, I can´t deny it. Any documentary about cheesemaking on TV, I´m glued to the screen. No clue why but I´d love to make cheese myself. This is the best I can do at home so...
For the Cheese bring the milk to boil. As soon as the milk starts coming up, add the vinegar and take it off the range. let it stand there for a few minutes. The whey should seperate itself from what it to become our cheese. Pour it all into a clean cloth or use a self made "tofu press" like mine. Basically you need to get rid of the whey and kinda press the rest into a shape. The harder you press, the firmer the cheese will be in the end. You can pour it into a cloth, tie the four ends together and just let the cheese hang there overnight, maybe over your kitchen sink or the bathtub. You´ll have a lovely cheeseball in the end.
I let mine sit there for about four hours and it was so firm that it could be cut. You can, of course, go with whatever you like and just use it immediately as creamcheese or something.

Yeah, that´s it. Easy, right?

The Mustard is just as easy, just takes more time. This recipe is for Sweet Mustard, hence the sugar. You grind the mustard seeds as fine as you like. Traditionally sweet mustard still has some intact seeds in it so I didn´t really pulverize it. This done you bring the water to a boil and pour it over the mustard...stuff. Let it cool for about 5 Minutes (yes, it´s okay to stir and mix it). Add the rest, mix well, put in a glas, let it rest in the fridge for at least two weeks.

Careful, it´s very hot at first and gets milder with age. I also found that it smells of vinegar but doesn´t taste much like it. Oh, and I used Apple Binegar because I like that best. My lovely tandem partner M`s husband even tasted the apple. Wow.(And they both said they liked it...)

And again: easy. I wanted to make fig mustard and apple mustard with it but didn´t have the time yet. And now it´s almost used up already because it´s good. I guess I´ll have to make more. Betting this´ll make good christmas gifts.

Milk minus whey plus vinegar in my "tofu press".

Cheese is ready!

I have so much more stored here but uni eats my time and my soul so bear with me. I promise I´ll do my best to update more often.