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PostedRest in Peace, Ulli.
Thanks for teaching me food. You´ll be missed.
a*
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6 years ago
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! 
But we´re eating other stuff for breakfast and lunch, so... Yesterday we actually had such a wholesome turkish lunch that we didn´t eat anything else for the rest of the day. No soup.
Today it was Parmesan Soup. Yum! 
Ingrediences:
(two servings)
Onion (I used half a big one)
Zucchini (Again: half a big one)
2 medium sized Potatoes
300ml Milk
300ml Instant broth
10 Tortellioni (not self made but freshly made by the not so friendly italian girl...)
100gr Parmesan (fresh, not pre-grounded. That stuff is just nasty!)
Salt
Pepper
1 ts Mustard
Garlic (as much as you like)
Pretty much all my ingrediences minus milk, broth and pasta.
How to:
Dice potatoes, onion, garlic and Zucchini. Put it into a pot and make it sweat. Add the broth and the milk. Let it cook for about 10 minutes then purée it all. The original recipe said to take out some lumps and pieces beforehand and re-add those later but i like it creamy.
In the meantime cook the tortilioni/totolini/ravioli/whatever pleases you. Ours were filled with ricotta and porcini. Fingerlicking good!
Add the grated Parmesan.
Put in bowls or plates or glasses or... (you get the point), add the pasta. Done.
Easy, tasty and it sounds pretty fancy.
Love, anna*
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
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
Ingrediences:
Potatoes (we used about 8 medium sized ones for two people)
3/4l of Water
Instant broth
Something to give some taste (I used classic german "Kochwurst", thick little sausages, strong in taste and made to be cut into hearty soups or to be eaten with all kinds of cabbages.)
How to:
Pretty easy. Cook the potates. once they´re done, add water and instant broth and smash them real good. We used the immersion blender. Make sure you don´t overdo it, though, because then you don´t get soup but some kind of sticky glue...
Also, I like to keep it a bit... lumpy. But since my sis doesn´t like potato lumps this one is pretty creamy. Sigh.
Cut the sausage in bite size pieces, add to the soup, add some salt and pepper and tadaaa: Potato Soup. Yes, easy. But: Be careful with the salt if your using instant broth!
The blackish stuff you see in the picture? It´s soy sauce. While I know some people who would eat anything with soy sauce (*cough*Jens*cough*), I think it does make soups better.
Yesterday we had the yummy chinese style corn soup that we made here and that has since become one of my favorites.
Later tonight we´ll get a bit more sophisticated with a Parmesan-Zucchini-Soup. More about that tomorrow.
Love, anna
Turkey- rolls and Clafoutis
Posted in cake, cream cheese, easy, fruits, ice cream, puff pastry, turkeyIt´s been a while.
I´ve been quite busy with University stuff... But now it´s the semester break, three heavenly months without classes, just me, work and food. Yay!
My first week off was well spent: I went to a very nice restaurant with my dear friend Mire. They offered an amazing set menue for a fixed price which included a course of wagyu, japanese beef, better known as kobe beef. It was good, I can tell you that much. In taste much closer to wild game than to ordinary german cow. Mmmmh. The other courses were amazing too. I loved the dessert, variations of coffee. Thanks for that supernice evening Mire!!
We didn´t dare to take pictures because it was such a nice restaurant so you´ll just have to trust my words, sorry.
Anyhow. I also got to cook. Last tuesday was my nameday so... Nah, I´m not catholic so actually I shouldn´t care about this particular "holiday" but it brings back pleasant memories from my childhood were my grandma´s italian-catholic neighbor who had the same name as me, Anna, used to bring me supernice presents just for being called "Anna". And I had time so:
I made Turkey-rolls filled with creamcheese with herbs in puff pastry and for dessert we had Clafoutis (which is basically fruit baked in light dough) and homemade ice-cream.
Sounds tricky and highclass? It´s not.
IngrediencesTurkey Rolls:
2 pieces of Turkey
Creamcheese
Herbs
Puff pastry (I´m too lazy to make my own...)
Clafoutis:
1 Egg
20g Butter
40g Sugar
60g Flour
100ml Milk
Baking Powder
Fruits (I used Raspberries & Blackberries)
Icecream:
Icecream machine (my sister got us one two weeks ago)
200ml Milk
125ml Cream
Vanilla
2 large Eggyolks
60g Sugar
How to
Turkey Rolls:Mix herbs with creamcheese, smear on turkey, roll turkey. Put turkey on puff pastry, cover with more puff pastry. Put into the oven for 35-45 minutes at 180°C.
It really is as easy as that. You can maybe add some salt and pepper but I found that the creamcheese was tasty enough.
Ice Cream:While the turkey was getting ready I had the ice cream machine running. It´s so nice to have one. For this simple icecream you mix the eggyolks and the sugar with the vanilla until it´s all white and foamy. Add the cream.
Heat the milk in a pot, don´t cook it, it just needs to dissolve the sugar that is added when the milk is warm.
Slowly add the egg-sugar-foam.
Let it all cool, then put it into the freezer for 20 minutes. Just don´t forget it, it just needs to cool.
Mix once again then let the icecream machine do it´s job for 35-40 minutes.
Clafoutis:
Melt the butter and mix it with the egg, sugar, milk and vanilla sugar. Carefully add the flour and the baking powder.
Put the fruits into some kind of buttered pie pan, pour the mix over it and then let it sit in the oven for about 35 minutes at 180°C.
To butter cake pans and the like I usually use a little plastic bag like a glove, grab some butter with it and when I´m done I just throw it away. Not an important trick but one that, I happen to know, is not known to all mankind....
Mmmmh, doesn´t that look great, even in that crappy picture?
I served the Clafoutis hot together with the ice cream. It was pure heaven.
Excuse the pictures. My dear brother took the good camera with him on a hiking trip so I have to make do with my own. Not happy. I miss the good camera.
Here´s some yeasty awesomeness: 
I used this recipe from over at Joy the Baker and it worked great so: use it. Not hard to do (as usual), very handsome and incredibly yummy! I didn´t even have to alter anything, really. I thought about using the yeast dice you usually gt over here instead of the dry yeast but then decided against it and stick to the recipe. It was my first time using dry yeast and I was happy with it.
Yeast dough always reminds me of my early childhood where my grandma used to make a lot of sweets with yeast dough. I loved sneaking into the kitchen, stealing little pieces of the lukewarm dough, I loved the smell of it and everything my grandma made from it. And this Pull Apart Bread is pure love, too. Go ahead, make it!
Ingrediences:
For the Dough:
2 3/4 Cups all purpose Flour (330gr)
1/4 Cup Sugar (55 gr)
2 1/4 ts Active Dry Yeast
1/2 ts Salt
2 ounces Butter (60gr)
1/3 Cup Milk
1/4 Cup Water
2 large Eggs (at roomtemperature)
1 ts Vanilla extract
For the "Filling":
1 Cup Sugar (220gr)
2 ts ground Cinnamon
1/2 ts ground Nutmeg
2 ounces Butter (60gr)
If you need a converter for cooking measurements these are the ones I usually use:
convert-me.com , onlineconversion.com and for germans: usa-kulinarisch.de
Ingrediences:
For the Dough:
2 3/4 Cups all purpose Flour (330gr)
1/4 Cup Sugar (55 gr)
2 1/4 ts Active Dry Yeast
1/2 ts Salt
2 ounces Butter (60gr)
1/3 Cup Milk
1/4 Cup Water
2 large Eggs (at roomtemperature)
1 ts Vanilla extract
For the "Filling":
1 Cup Sugar (220gr)
2 ts ground Cinnamon
1/2 ts ground Nutmeg
2 ounces Butter (60gr)
If you need a converter for cooking measurements these are the ones I usually use:
convert-me.com , onlineconversion.com and for germans: usa-kulinarisch.de
Here we go:
Mix 2 Cups of flour, the yeast, salt and sugar for the dough in a bowl and set aside.Whisk the eggs together and set aside, too.
Warm up the milk (no cooking needed) and let the butter melt in it.
Add the water and the vanilla extract to the mil and butter.
Let it cool down to about 50°C/115-125°F. For me that didn´t mean letting it cool down because it never got that hot in the first place. I´m used to handling things lukewarm when dealing with yeast.
Now the milk mixture goes into the flour mixture. Joy says to mix with a spatula. But remembering my hate of floury hands I used the handmixer. Worked great.
Add the eggs. That´s what I call gooey. It really takes a minute or two to get everything mixed together and then it looks... well... not pretty.
Add the remaining flour, mix and let the very sticky dough rest for about an hour. Make sure it´s covered and in a nice warm place. On a sunshiny day I put my dough on the windowsill and hope that someone walks by and thinks "Oooh! Dough! Nice!" Never happens because I live on the fourth floor...
While the dough rose I watched cartoons. I can recommend that.
<-- Dough before rising.
An hour later:
Put together the sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon for the filling.
Butter your cakepan. Let the butter melt and get a bit brown. Watch out because butter is a bitch: it refuses to get brown when you watch. You look away and suddenly it´s all black... 
<-- Dough after rising.
Deflate the dough by kneading it. Add two tablespoons of flour to it to get rid of the stickiness.
Let it rise for another 5 mins.
As usual I didn´t flour my work surface but used baking paper to roll out the dough. Try to make it rectangle shaped if you can. I couldn´t.
Butter it. It´s easiest with a pastry brush.
Then sprinkle all the sugar mix over it. It doesn´t look like much when you´ve got in in a little bowl but it seems like and endless supply when you´re sprinkling... I actually didn´t use all of it. I thought the dough would die of diabetes...
Cut the dough into stripes. Joy made six, I only made 5 and those weren´t particularly good looking. Or evenly shaped. Or anything else.
Stack the stripes, then cut them into little piles. I made six piles. I thought I´d never fill the pan with this...
But I did. Put the stacks/piles into your cake pan. Set it aside and let it rise for another 30-45mins. It´s supposed to double it´s size but it didn´t. It did rise notably, though so I figured it`s be ok.
Sugary, yeasty pull-apart-leaves to be...
Let it bake for about 45min at 175°C/ 350°F. I think it took me a while longer because my oven sucks. But: Make sure the top is a yummy golden brown. Yeast doughs are tricky and they can look good on the outside while still all gooey on the inside.
Mmmh, yum! It does taste good the day after but certainly is most amazing when its fresh. Just let it rest after baking for about half an hour, then eat. Yes, it is pretty buttery but... who cares!