Special ep. – Oktoberfest Marillenknödel

As the guys say,

Ich wart’ seit Wochen
Auf diesen Tag
Und tanz’ vor Freude, über den Asphalt
Die Toten Hosen, Tage wie diese

Well dear cats, you didn’t think you’d escape without a special Oktoberfest episode with something sweet and sour, did you? 😉

Marillenknödel or apricot dumplings come from the Austro-Czech area, but are also found at festivals as a dessert, along with the classic apple strudel. (If it was up to me, I probably would have made the strudel too, but as it is after the scale, we’ll do it next time. :)))

Es ist wahr that the recipe is similar to that of plum dumplings – in fact, if you can no longer find apricots in the market, go to the classic Transylvanian dumplings – the recipe here – you will certainly not fail.

Well, the dough: 3 large potatoes, boiled well, as for a puree, you clean and smash them with a fork while they are warm. Add a pinch of salt and a slice of butter (margarine) and mix well. Like for puree/ mashed potatoes. 🙂 When it has cooled, add a raw egg and 2 cups of flour and mix until a spreadable dough comes out. If you want you can add a tablespoon or two of sugar to the dough.

Meanwhile, prepare the fruits: I used 14 apricots, washed, cut in half, removed the seeds. Optionally you can put a little butter + sugar + cinnamon inside. I did the diet version, without anything.

Roll out the dough with a rolling pin (use extra flour, not to stick) and cut into square pieces. Put an apricot on each piece and give it the shape of a dumpling.

Put the dumplings one at a time in boiling water in a pot of hot water; normally if they are cooked they remain on the surface, but try one to catch the right time. Up to 15 minutes for each lap.

When you take them out of the pot, put them directly in a pan in which you have previously fried some breadcrumbs, with about 2 tablespoons of caster sugar and cinnamon powder, plus 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil (or butter).

You eat until you become a Bavarian from Kronstadt. 😀

Alles Gute and see you at the next edition. 🙂

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Ep. 75 – Oktoberfest, Bavarian feast with local ingredients

Grüß Gott, meine lieben Katzen, because since yesterday we are officially in Oktoberfest, today we have Bavarian food, directly from Kronstadt. 😀 Well, what to do, globalization. :))

I searched for a day through recipes to see what to choose for today and I must admit that it was extremely difficult. In the end I chose things that are done quickly and that are not very complicated… ja, genau, I thought of you. 😉 Krautsalat, Kartoffelsalat and Wurstsalat. Can you guess the common theme? 😛 Sehr gut !!!

As you will immediately discover, this is what we usually eat in Siebenbürgen, just a bit modified. 🙂

Krautsalat or cabbage salad: white cabbage, finely chopped with a sharp knife, tossed in a bowl with a pinch of salt and rubbed by hand. In a cup you make a dressing of sunflower or rapeseed oil, with white wine vinegar, finely chopped white onions, finely chopped sour apple, salt, pepper and cumin. And if you’re not vegan, you can decorate the salad with some bacon. Pork bacon. (You find at Lidl).

Kartoffelsalat or potato salad: a large pot of boiled red potatoes in the shell – the best are those that do not crumble, let cool and cut into round slices. Some sauce made from highly concentrated soup, wine vinegar, salt, sugar, pepper, chopped white onions – bring to a boil, then pour it warm on the potatoes. Sunflower oil, some sliced sour cucumbers and some chopped green onions. A dusting of cumin. Eat it like this or as a side for some pork chop.

Wurstsalat or salami salad: a few slices of peasant beef parizer (local type of baloney), from the neighborhood store (you can use ham salami, or sausages, or something else), sliced radishes, thin slices of cucumber, chopped dill. Salt, pepper, oil and vinegar.

With black or white bread with potatoes, Bavarian pretzels – see recipe here – and beer. Or garnish with some Dacian grill, with several kinds of meat and (at least) a small tray of sheep and beef minced meat rolls.

Gutten Apettit!

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Ep. 74 – minciunele (sweet fried ribbons)

Minciunele (in English, little lies) or scovergi or sweet fried ribbons, a traditional Romanian sweet pastry. 6 egg yolks, 100g wine, 1 teaspoon butter, flour as it needs. Fried in an oil bath. Oioioioiiii how good they were !!! ❤

I could tell a lie that I made them, but no, I’m too much of a disaster. :))) My mother’s friend made them and I remembered the times when my grandmother used to make similar things out of bread dough. It’s just that she didn’t have that much patience and as a result hers were bigger. 🙂

Wiki says that they are from Roman times, as a result we find them in many countries. They usually have sugar in the composition and powdered sugar on top, but these here are a dietary option. 🙂 Wine can be replaced with water or brandy.

If you make them, feel free to contact me. 😛

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Ep. 73 – breakfast burrito

Whole grain pita (accidentally found at Lidl), 2-egg omelet, pickled cucumbers. Rolled like pancakes, wrapped in foil, eaten in the car. Disastrous fast.

Here you have, a breakfast on the go. :))

Can you use regular pita? Yes, but you need to warm them before, because there are not very elastic.

Can other fillings be used? Well… :))))) You can use whatever you want, this is what I have found with my eyes half open.

But if we put chicken, french fries, cabbage salad and mayo, is it still called burrito? No, it’s called shaorma with everything. :))))))))

Perfect for the parade, good appetite. 😛

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Ep. 72 – blackberry jam

Well, first of all, in order to implement this super delicious recipe – and slightly bitter :)) – you need organic blackberries, picked with your little hand from your friends’ garden. You have no friends with the garden, you have no recipe. 😀

Secondly, you need gelling sugar – because we only like disastrously fast recipes – and lemons, more precisely their juice. It’s not a must, but the bitterness passes with sourness… 😛

Third, in addition to pots or pans, spoons and stove, you must have prepared: scandalous clothes, mop and bucket of lukewarm water and cleaning solution with the smell of flowers (blackberries LOL) and a piece of cloth.

Plus you have to be relaxed, otherwise you might end up with a nervous breakdown instead of jam. :))))

Otherwise, making blackberry jam is disastrously easy. 🙂 In my case, approx. 1.5 kg of blackberries, cleaned of tails and washed, boiled, until the juice reduces and the splashes did not reach the neighbors. :)))) After that 750g of gelling sugar and juice from a lemon. Mix on the fire, until the ingredients are homogeneous, melt the sugar and bind the jam. Put in jars recycled from yogurt, close the lid, put the label and let cool under a towel until the next day.

It comes out slightly liquid, that’s why it’s called jam. 🙂

After which you spend two days cleaning up the disaster on the stove and near the stove.

Doing it again? I will think about it. :))))

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Special ep. – yellow string beans with onion

Yellow string beans with onions. Episode 4. Carmen mother…

Take a 401 pages book with recipes for grills, pies and other things that Americans eat at the barbecue. Okay, 376 if you don’t count the covers, the contents list and some nonsense. Read it once. Forget about it. Read it again. Think about. And conclude: the level of the kitchen skills is still at the level of 7-12 years old. As a result….

Recipe:

2 pounds thin young green beans, trimmed, ¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons chopped fresh chives, Sea salt such as fleur de sel.

That is, yellow string beans, olive oil, some kind of onion and salt. Sea salt.

Preparation:

You wake up on Sunday morning because your sister called you too early. You walk on your two legs into the kitchen, grab a coffee and a cigar and get dressed. You wake up completely when your sister calls you again to get off the ivory tower and move motorized to your mom. Who sends you into the garden to strengthen your leg muscles and you come back with a bag of string beans and some onions.

Then you look at your brother-in-law spinning some things on the grill and wondering why the chicken is red. You go home and forget the beans in the fridge. And onions in the pantry. For a week.

After that, you clean the beans and wash them. Put a pot of water on the fire, throw some salt in it and wait for it to boil. That’s what the book says. If your name is Carmen, throw in a cup of vinegar, because you’re not sour enough. When the water boils, put the beans in the pot and wait about 5 minutes. Drain the beans and wait. Again. To cool down.

Then peel the onion and try to cut it into thin slices as your mom taught you. You can’t do it, but throw it over the beans. Pour some olive oil over and mix it. And theoretically some salt. Yes, you put it in the water too. So you skip it. You feel proud of yourself for cooking like the Americans.

P.S. That’s not the onion from the recipe, but my mother only has red onions.

P.P.S By the end of the year, I might be able to follow a recipe. I might.

The recipe is part of the number four book proposed at cookingbookclub and entitled The Big Book of Backyard Cooking 250 Favorite Recipes for Enjoying the Great Outdoors.

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Cookingbookclub 4 | barbecue recipes

The last book was The Big Book of Backyard Cooking 250 Favorite Recipes for Enjoying the Great Outdoors.

Lots of meat, salads, fruit tarts, yada-yada, read or do research on the internet for American recipes, because they are all about the same. 🙂 I decided to show you today some unhealthy, grilled, delicious ideas. 🙂 A kind of lateral thinking. 😛

Mix of meat and pasta salad with Mexican vegetables. For when you’re bored of the classic potato salad. 🙂

Toast – on the grill, of course, chopped green onions, grilled pork fat. With any luck, you won’t burn it completely. 😛 (Do not salivate on the keyboard, please).

What else do we know to do is stew in the cauldron and goulash in the cauldron. Next time, the pictures. 🙂 So that I don’t look through the archive and start giving home recipes made in the country kitchen. :))))

The next few days we have another special recipe, from the category of the disastrously simple ones. 🙂

The next virtual meeting of our club will be at the beginning of September.

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Ep. 71 – potato salad with mint sauce

Just when I thought I had tried all the possible variants of potato salad, ups, I found another one. 🙂 Extremely easy to do even by the disaster of me, the most complicated thing being boiling potatoes. :))

For this type of salad, the best are red potatoes, which do not crumble. Good luck finding them. :)) As a result I boiled some white potatoes which, miraculously, remained almost whole. Over the peeled and sliced potatoes, I poured a vinaigrette made of olive oil, lemon juice and fresh mint, finely chopped, salt and pepper. Another option is to add mustard and blend the sauce.

At the end, some finely chopped green onions and a little more freshly chopped mint.

And the proteins? The girl who wrote the recipe suggested some beans… brrrrrr… I think the salad is good as a side dish to fish/ meat or can be eaten with a fork… or with some baked peppers. Or I have no idea, you can invent something too. :)))

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Ep. 70 – ice tea

For the destructive heat outside (or for the heat inside you). 😛

Well, what could be more refreshing than a cold drink with ice? 🙂 And as beer makes you fat and leads to diabetes, today we have a healthy, organic, gluten free, blablabla-free and super delicious version. Sour. 😛

Have a glass. Preferably a recycled Starbucks, to check the fancy part. It is filled with some tea (mixed herbs, picked with your little hand from the shelf, from the supermarket). Look for one without hibiscus and rosehips, to get a beautiful golden color. Prepared and cooled tea, of course. Add ice from the freezer, half a squeezed (bio) lemon and some fresh mint leaves, for the artistic impression.

If it came out sourer than me, you are allowed to add some (organic) honey to the glass.

Drink in the sun, quietly, for an addition of vitamin D. 🙂

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Ep. 69 – and even more beautiful veggie lasagna

For years, a picture of a box of German lasagna haunted me. Between the layers of pasta you could see the juicy vegetables, super artistically arranged and layers of nauseating bechamel sauce. 🙂 Luckily I became an adult and discovered that, well, the recipes exist to be changed. :)) Which is why I started making lasagna with vegetables often, very often and extremely often. 🙂

It is logical that it won’t be a disaster if you use a wide range of vegetables. 😀 In this case, carrots, celery, parsnips, eggplants and some peppers, cleaned, chopped, seasoned with salt, pepper, mint, basil, thyme. Put in the pan, on the fire, with oil and in addition a bit of water. Towards the end, add a box of tomatoes in the sauce (you can chop them or put them in a blender). The idea is to make the vegetables soft and to have enough sauce.

In a pan, put a little sauce, add the pasta sheets (I keep them a little in hot water before) and, alternatively, the vegetable sauce. For example 4 rows of pasta and 3 rows of vegetables. Mozzarella or grated cheese put on top (if you want, between layers too). Some extra tomato sauce on top.

In the hot oven for a maximum of half an hour.

If you haven’t eaten two servings at once, it means that your lasagna has gone bad and you have to start over. 😛

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