More bread for dinner

I should eat wheat-free at night. Like every other woman on this planet. At least according to Marie-Claire, Red, Elle, Cosmo and whatever else they are called. A wheat-free evening is the key to a speck-free life.
But there is the wheat-free dilemma: I think Scott could do with a bit more speck on his body and I could do with a little less. Carbs and wheat for him and no carbs for me. What to cook for dinner then?
Meat/fish with salad or veggie stir fry for me. So I try to feed Scott with extra rice or a pasta dish. But let's face it: Scott's having his 4th pasta dish this week - and it's only Friday: not much of a variety.
So why not a healthy burger for a change.

Turkey burger on rosemary bread with corn-on-the-cob
: 2 slices of rosemary bread
: 1.5 turkey escallops
: 1 fried egg
: cheddar
: butter
: ketchup
: pickled peppers or peppadews
: 1 cooked corn-on-the-cob

Lazy Sunday food

Q: How can a plate start off as seen in Picture 1 and end up looking like in picture 2?
A: Get yourself an English boyfriend.
As long as it isn't drenched in (preferrably tasteless tomato) sauce it ain't good. Or as Scott would say: it's bland.


My recipe for Prosciutto filled tortellini with artichoke, spinach and smoked cheddar, for 2
: 250g prosciutto filled tortellini
: 3-4 artichoke hearts in oil, thinly sliced
: 150g spinach, cut or torn in smaller pieces
: zest and juice of 1 lemon
: 75g mature smoked cheddar

Cook the pasta according to the instructions on the pack, drain, but leave some of the cooking water in the pot. Put pasta back into the pot, put on a gentle heat, add spinach and artichoke hearts. Add zest and juice of half a lemon and grate over some mature smoked cheddar.

Scott's recipe
as above plus
: 150ml sieved tomatoes
Warm up the tomatoes in a pot, do not add any olive oil, garlic, spices, pepper or salt. Pour over Romana's Prosciutto filled tortellini with artichoke, spinach and smoked cheddar.

Never judge a book by its cover...

... or a restaurant by its interior. English Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsey, who travels the continents to slag of aspiring chefs and malfunctioning restaurants on national TV, wouldn't be able to suppress his trademark "f**cking hell* when walking into The Drawing Room. This time, my holy grail of London's restaurant scene, toptable.co.uk, let me down big time. But it's partly down to my own superficiality of judging most/all things in life by their design.

Not that The Drawing Room looked super-trendy or Conran-stylish, but it looked interesting enough to book a table.
Half-decent pub food, that's the best I could say about this place. Or as Gordon Ramsey would say: when you serve f**cking pub food, charge for f**cking pub food. And serve it in a f**cking pub.
I have hardly ever left a restaurant being so stuffed. The portions could feed a whole family. And I mean one portion for all! The sea bass was monstrous, the pineapple that came with it tasteless, and although the crab meat salad was made of actual crab meat rather than surimi: one couldn't have cared less, it didn't have much taste anyways.

The fried goat's cheese was a nice idea for a 21st century take on of an 80ies classic. But again far too much, and just not 21st century enough.
So guys, go back to catering college, throw out the posh interior and give the local community what they really want: a cosy pub, decent food and ok prices.

The mother of all chocolate cakes

Ok, I borrowed the recipe from another blog... so what ;-) I have been searching for the perfect chocolate pud now for years. I have tried two Nigella recipes... not bad, but they couldn't live up to my expectations either and were not even nearly as good and chocolaty as the chocolate tarte recipe a former French housemate once gave me. His chocolate tarte was almost perfect, but again, just not gooey enough.
Who would have thought that another French would finally come up with the perfect chocolate cake (usually the English turn out to be unbeatable when it comes to gooeyness): Ein grosses Dankeschoen an die Chocolate & Zucchini Lady! Check out her recipe for the melt-in-your-mouth chocolate cake.

My version is very similar, just that I didn't have 200g of dark choc in my cupboard when the emergency of baking a cake arose. But 100g of 85% dark choc and a good quality dark truffle bar worked just as well.

Afternoon Tea at Yauatcha

Yauatcha is one of my favourite afternoon hang-outs in London. Ok, so the service is appalling. But the cocktails are great, although dubbed "cough medicine" by one of my friends. The food is delicious and the cakes are from heaven. Like our Blue Tea Cake we had last time. I still wouldn't think that the blue powder on the cake actually was 100% tea without added colouring, but who knows...
The cake was a perfect blend of rich tea cream and fruity blackberry jelly with a hint of sponge at the bottom.

I simply love to recreate food I eat at restaurants at home. It's one of life's challenges I aim to master.

But not much chance for the Blue Tea Cake to be produced in my kitchen though, too much work! And too much hassle and I would guess money to get hold of blue tea.

I discovered one dessert in the restaurant's cake display though which I will definitely put on the menu next time I have friends round: Matcha panna cotta topped with cranberry compote.

Birthday at Beauberry

Thank internet for toptable. Posh nosh at (sort of) dumping prices. www.toptable.co.uk comprises an almost endless list of exclusive London eateries that let us sample there exquisite creations for 'n Appel und 'n Ei. You can eat your way round London without forking out too much and if you are lucky you discover a real gem. Like Beauberry House.
Situated in the picturesque village of Dulwich it must be one of London's best kept secrets. Impressive from the outside, stylish from the inside. And food (and charming waiters) to die for!
We went there for Scott's 30st. The offer: 3 course dinner with a complimentary glass of wine for 17.50 pounds.
The set menu was great, but while browsing through the a la carte we discovered one dish we simply had to order as a wee extra: scallops on cauliflower puree with vanilla foam, topped with crispy bacon. Lecker!
The set menu and the free glass of wine were more than decent. In fact, the dessert was outstandingly yummy: panna cotta with coconut granite and banana tarte tartin.

Alle Jahre wieder...

This year, it was the 33. And as always, I celebrated the occasion with a little party at home. Alright, so we are in the UK: English people would expect to arrive to a party full of sausage rolls, crisps, beer. But then... hey, luckily I do not know many English people ;-)
So I can be a bit more adventurous when it comes to party food.
I decided to go for finger food only this year. Makes the tidying up after the party so much easier!
To find finger food that exceeds the usual canapes, puff pastry thingies, chicken skewers etc proved to be a rather difficult task! But after some online research I think I came up with a pretty good mix.
Drinks though always prove to be a challenge: exciting, yet simple. After all, I do not want to be the bartender for the rest of the night.
I do quite like G&T. In Cocoon in London they serve it in a tumbler with a slice of cucumber. Tried and tested at home: Looks good and tastes great. Still, I opted for a not quite so simple version of G&T for drinks: El Bulli inspired Jellied Gin & Tonic on lime crisps. Shame, somehow everyone forgot to take a picture of it :-( Plus, we had Dawa, an African Caipirinha... lime, brown sugar, vodka, crushed ice and a dowel stick dripping of honey.
The food: Cumin laced parmesan cones with horseradish ice cream, sweet and spicy broccoli cake, mini potatoes with wasabi sour cream and caviar, cream cheese filled wan tan cones, feta-mint parcels, buckwheat crackers with venison pate and rose wine jelly, almond gazpacho.

And of course, the cake: mini Sachertorte with peppery chocolate ganache. Yes, I do like my peppery chocolates ;-) Strictly speaking, it wasn't a Sachertorte: a real Viennese chocolate cake would be filled with apricot jam. However, apricots and peppery ganache on top? Nahh... raspberry jam works so much better. Step1: nick your daughter's Barbie cake tin or get yourself a mini sort-of-muffin tin.
Step2: "glue" 2mini cakes together with some raspberry jam (smoothen the jam by adding some raspberry schnaps or vodka while warming it slightly up - on a very low flame).
Step3: make a quick ganache with double cream, min 70% chocolate, butter and egg yolks.
Step4: cover the top of the cakes with ganache and sprinkle over some crushed pink peppercorns.
Step5: eat!

The unloved one...

Even I have my dislikes when it comes to food. Celery and yes, aubergine. With celery, it is the taste, with aubergine, it is the texture.
But in the attempt to live healthy and eat a wide range of vegetables and I decided to welcome the aubergine into my life. I still wouldn't go out and buy one, but I get a weekly organic delivery of seasonal vegetables and it seems that aubergines are always in season: at least there is always at least one aubergine in my box!
... and now? Well, I remember the times when I really didn't like kohlrabi: Kohlrabi-Erbsen-Sauce... OMG, one of my childhood traumas! Dice some kohlrabi, place it in a saucepan together with frozen peas and some water and boil them until the kolrabi is soggy and the peas totally shapeless, thicken with flour, spoon a plate, heap on some potatoes mash and serve to your children.
Years later my guinea pigs showed me that raw, crunchy kohlrabi can almost be a delight.
And luckily a friend once showed me how to make an aubergine dip. Put the whole aubergines under the grill until they collapse, spoon out the soft flesh, add feta cheese, garlic, olive oil and pepper and mix to a smooth paste. But to make it into a real delicacy, try to add some salty capers as well! Lovely on freshly baked sundried tomato bread; or spread the aubergine dip on tortillas, roll them up and voila...

Silky chocolate pots with crushed pink peppercorns

One of those days: it would be nice to prepare something impressive for dessert. After all, you have guests round and don't want to present them with something out of the sumermarket's deepfreezer. But then, you cannot really be bothered with making a Michelin-star worthy dessert either.
So how to creating something easy and quick which still looks like hours and hours of hard work?

Well, the inital idea was to recreate
the Pink Peppercorn Encrusted Flourless Chocolate Cake. But slowly the cannot-be-bothered mood built up... Followed by a strike of genius: why not just have the cake topping with pink peppercorns! Or in nicer words: Silky Chocolate Pots with Crushed Pink Peppercorns. It worked out beautifully and looked beautiful.
The ganache will sit on my hips forever, but so what?! These pots are worth the extra hour in the gym!

Berlin

How did I manage to stay in Berlin for four days without having Currywurst?! ... but then, I shouldn't complain. The reason for not having the opportunity to grab a Currywurst was simply the sheer amount of lovely Bohemian style cafes with their good value meals and breakfast buffets.

But there is more to Berlin than cafes. In the area in and around Prenzlauer Berg you can find practically everything your stomach could ever ask for. Especially Asian treats. We popped into a tiny sushi place one night. Three tables and one Lebanese sushi chef. It was the first time I tasted deep fried sushi. Ok, admittedly, it wasn't served with 24-carat gold leaves like the one on the pic... but even the less posh version was very satisfying. For us and our purses.

It was freezing cold in Berlin, so we welcomed the idea of going to _the_ Vietnamese restaurant in the capital, Monsieur Vuong, for some soup and lecker tea. And how lecker it was. Freshly squeezed lime juice and lime peel - plenty of - muddled with big pieces of ginger, shreds of Kaffir lime leaves, some lemongrass and cane sugar.

Newly hooked on Vietnamese cuisine we went for a second helping the day after. Well, actually we wanted more fried sushi, but the passionate and apparently moody chef Gingi refused to serve customers that day. So we went for beef broth in a lovely environment instead.

And as for the Currywurst... We will just have them back here in the UK. After all, KaDeWe sells about every kind of sausage there is. Anyway, all an ordinary Bratwurst needs to be transformed into a Currywurst is a generous splash of curried ketchup and a little bit of curry powder sprinkled over it.