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Mebos must be some kind of chicken nugget amongst snacks. We believe them to be healthy, but actually, they are worse for you then a Big Mac.
When I went to South Africa some time last year, I came across those compact fruit rolls in a wee road side shop. The first bite is a bit of a shock to the system… very sour and salty. But the more you nibble on it, the better they get.
They are very high in salt and sugar content, but hey, at least they are 100% fat free. And they keep for months!
It is a recipe for summer since you will need to dry them in the full sun for a few hours. So not much chance that I will make my own this year!
Apricot Mebos
: sweet, ripe apricots
: 250g or more sugar per 500g mebos
: 1kg salt to 8 litres water
Soak the apricots in salted water for 12 hours, then drain them and remove the skins. Leave the whole apricots out in the sun for 12 hours, then squeeze gently to force out their stones. Press the apricots into round flat shapes and spread them out on racks to dry for a few days. Keep on shaping and pressing them (dip your hands in a mixture of 25ml salt and 2 litres water) occasionally during drying. Pack the mebos neatly into small boxes and cover them with sugar. If you layer them, make sure to put a good layer of sugar between them. Store in a dark place.
I don't like ice cream. In fact, I do find it rather disturbing that every single dessert in some of London's top restaurants is served with ice cream.
When I grew up, our cakes did not come with a compulsory blob of ice cream on the side. We would have our cakes and Strudel on their own, at the very most with some whipped cream on the side. The concept of pouring cold liquid unwhipped cream over my cakes - like they do here in the UK - is one of the things that still seem very strange to me.
I try to accustom though and integrate cream or ice cream into my desserts. Preferrably ice cream on its own though. Like my frozen yoghurt and raspberry shots (inspired by La Tartine Gourmande's Rhubarb and raspberry yoghurt ice pops: they make my guest happy and although I wouldn't eat them myself I am happy to put them on the menu as they are no effort at all.
Frozen yoghurt shots, for 10 shots
: 1 egg
: 60g icing sugar
: 300g yoghurt
: 200g raspberries
: 1-2 tbsp caster sugar
Simmer 100g raspberries and some caster sugar over a low heat until the fruits start to liquidise. Drain off the fruits and set the liquid aside.
Beat the egg with the icing sugar until creamy, then mix in the yoghurt. Pour 1/3 of the yoghurt mixture into a separate bowl and mix with half of the cooked fruits. Roughly chop the remaining uncooked fruits and fold into the main yoghurt mix. Blend the other half of the cooked raspberries with the raspberry syrup.
Spoon the yoghurt mix containing the roughly copped fruits into the shot glasses (fill them up to 1/2 or 2/3 with the mixture). Place them in the freezer for 30 mins, then add 2-3 tablespoons of the syrup to each glass. Freeze again for 30 mins. Finally fill th glasses with the remaining yoghurt/cooked fruits mixture and place in the fridge for another 20-30mins beforte inserting wooden or plastic sticks to make the lollies. Keep in freezer until entirely frozen.
Loosen the frozen yoghurt from the shot glasses by placing the glasses in a bowl of hot water for around 30 sec. Serve in shot glasses.
I defrosted my freezer a few days before I had my BBQ. I came across the duck liver which I had left over from my last party. Just a few small livers, not enough to feed a party of 15-20 with a nice paté for starters. Still, I wanted to use it up and out of the blue I had the idea of duck liver filled paté.
I sort of didn't think any further (I do like experimenting with my patés by adding herbs, alcohols etc.), so when the time came to actually make the paté I wasn't prepared for any special flavours. While going through my fridge looking for potential paté enhancers I remembered the chocolate-balsamic glaze on the top shelf: also a leftover from my last dinner party. Brushed on top of the choux pastry it would make my little savouries look like the real chocolate eclairs. So Japanese fusion filling then. I had some pickled sushi ginger and fresh lemongrass. That's all I really needed.
Mini duck liver paté eclairs with chocolate-balsamic icing, for 10-15 small eclairs
For the duck liver paté: 150g duck liver
: 1/2 stalk of fresh lemongrass
: 1 tbsp of pickled sushi ginger
: 100g butter
: soy sauce
: sesame oil
For the chocolate-balsamic glaze
: 100g caster sugar
: 50ml balsamic vinegar
: 50ml cider vinegar
: 30g good quality grated dark chocolate
Prepare the eclairs/choux pastry shells.
Wash the duck livers and quickly fry them on a very hot griddle until slightly pink in the middle. Add some sesame oil and a good splash of soy sauce.
Remove the outer leaves from the lemongrass stalk and chop finely.
Place the liver together with the lemongrass, sushi and butter in a food processor to make a smooth and creamy paté.
To make the glazing, gently heat the vinegar and the sugar until the sugar has dissolved and simmer over a medium heat for a further 5 mins. Take off the heat and whisk in the chocolate.
Slice the eclairs in half and using a piping bag, fill them with paté and brush some of the chocolate-balsamic laze on top.
It's a very cold summer here in the UK. Shops seem to have given up on this year's summer. When I went to Asda's the other day to get some charcoal for my BBQ, I found myself in front of empty Sale shelves. The supermarket chain has decided to sell off all their BBQ stuff that has been sitting on the shelves for ages and to not re-order any more this year.
Luckily I did finally manage to get some charcoal from another place and we spent a very nice afternoon with friends and neighbours in our backgarden munching on tuna burgers, chopped steak burgers, sausages and salads.
My favourite salad was the peach, mozarella and walnut salad. Jamie Oliver did something similar once if I remember well. I guess that's where I got the idea from.
I cannot remember what exactly went into Jamie's salad, but mine goes like this:
Peach, walnut and mozzarella salad with maple syrup, for 6
: 5-6 ripe peaches, cut into chunks or wedges
: 2 mozzarella
: 150g walnuts
: 250g baby spinach
: 100g rocket
: maple syrup
: extra virgin olive oil
: lemon juice
: Maldon sea salt
Cover a large serving plate with the spinach leaves. With your hands, tear the mozzarella balls into bit size chunks and arrange on top of the spinach together with the peaches. Add the rocket and sprinkle over the walnuts. Drizzle over some maple syrup, the juice of half a lemon and a few tablespoons of olive oil. Season with Maldon sea salt.
It's a big hype in South and Central Europe, in the UK however it hasn't had much success among the bar crowd yet: Aperol. In London, you only find it in the most Italian of all Italian cafes, bars and shops.
The bitterness of this orange liquor reminds of Cinzano and Campari. Two drinks that haven't made it big on the British Isles either.I came across it last time in Austria where literally everyone sitting outside in a beer garden is sipping on an Aperol Spritzer: white wine, soda and a splash of Aperol. The perfect refreshment on a hot summer's day.
Which could explain the lack of enthusiasm about it in the UK: so far, we haven't had a summer yet.
Still, I was excited to see that my favourite Italian Deli had a dusty bottle of Aperol tucked away in the corner of the drinks section. The shop owner was delighted when I asked for it. It brought me one step closer to being Mrs Shop Owner one day (he IS cute ;-).When I served prosecco with a glugg of Aperol to my guests recently, I got basically two kinds of reaction: content faces from the Southern/Central Europeans and the request for a spoon of sugar in it from the rest. I like it. Prost!
You are being told by every cookery program on TV, read it in every cook book and hear it from every chef: get yourself a decent (and expensive) knife. I spent most of my cooking days using the cheapest, crappiest knives and survived quite well. So I thought!
Recently I stocked up on good WMF and Zwilling knives for up to £60 each and now I wonder how I ever survived in the kitchen using old, broken and almost poundshop worthy knives.
Now that I know the difference between good and bad knives I might also stock up on good pans. I did have difficulties last time when boiling my sugar syrup up to hard ball temperature. My little Berndes pot had to endure a biggest-flames-ever-in-my-kitchen treatment in order to bring the syrup up to temperature. It took forever, we almost didn’t make it and just when I was about to give up it reached the desired degrees. It was like driving an overcrowded London bus up a hill. But Berndes cookware is not even the worst you can get though. It is not heavy bottomed enough though.
When I went to Selfridges last weekend I fell in love with a £150 Fissler stock pot. Still a bargain when you compare it to the gold pot with diamonds by Fissler which sells for a mere £100.000.
Anyway, coming back to the knife: go out and get a good knife before even trying your luck with fennel or indeed any other kind of non-potato crisps (lime crisps for example).
The fennel crisps were initially not intended to go in the raspberry cream, but then, I made them (just for fun; I do the strangest things for fun it seems), so I needed to use them. And although fennel and raspberries do not seem like the happiest of all marriages: it did work rather well.
Raspberry cream filled wafer cones with fennel crisps, for 4
: 1 egg
: 40-50g icing sugar
: 150ml whipping cream
: 100g raspberries
: 4 ice cream cones
: 1 fennel bulb
: Suze
To make the crisps, cut the fennel into very thin slices. Prepare a light caramel: first lightly borwn the sugar in a pan, then add a splash of Suze or any other herbal alcohol and a splash of water. Add the fennel and let it soak for about a minute. When removing the fennel from the pan, try to shake off as much of the sugar liquid as possible.
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Line a baking tray with lightly oiled parchment paper. Lay the fennel flat on the tray, cover with another sheet of parchment paper and place a second baking tray on top. Leave in oven for around 10 minutes, then remove the second baking tray and parchment paper. Cool down the oven to approx 100 degree Celsius and leave the fennel in it to dry for about 30 minutes.
In the meantime, whisk the egg together with the sugar until creamy using an electric hand mixer. In a separate bowl, whip the cream. Still using the hand mixer, whisk together the cream and the egg mixture and finally add the raspberries, whisk for another 20 seconds or until the raspberries are blended in well with the cream (still keeping their texture).
Using a piping bag or small spoon, fill the cones with the raspberry cream and top with a fennel crisp.
I love a fry up. Occasionally. A generous helping of organic streaky smoked Bacon, baked beans, fried egg and buttered soda bread will fill my belly for an entire day.
Only thing I simply cannot stomach about an English breakfast or Ulster fry are British sausages. Even the supposed-to-be good ones (those that actually contain proper meat) can’t compete with a proper German or Austrian sausage. Kaesekrainer, Nuerenberger Bratwurst, Weisswurst… whatever their names, they are haute cuisine compared to British bangers. My all-time favourite will have to be the Kaesekrainer, followed by Berner Wuerstl (according to a Swiss friend, this kind of sausage is totally unknown in Bern and every other part of Switzerland though).
Bacon and cheese sausage (Berner Wuerstl): 1 Frankfurter, Viennese or Hot Dog sausage: 1 slice of Emmenthal cheese: 1-2 slices of pancetta or Hamburger speckSlice the sausage open lengthways (make sure to not totally slice the sausage in half, leave the skin on one side in tact). Fill with cheese (fold/break thes cheese so that it fits) and wrap tightly with the pancetta. You can secure the Berner Wuerstl with tooth picks if necessary. Fry in a lightly oiled pan. Serve with chips (Pommes frites) and ketchup.
Ever since I read in a newspaper about James Martin having a can of diet coke and a chocolate bar for brekkie, I have fallen big time for this guy. My ideal and regularly consumed breakfast is diet coke with a slice of - as I call it - “black forest toast”: lightly toasted bread with a generous helping of Nutella and a dollop of cherry jam on top. I could however easily swap my black forest toast for a Mars bar if James Martin wanted me to ;-)
What I like about him is his down-to-earth approach to food. 90% of chefs would never admit that they eat or god forbid like any other chocolate than Valrhona chocolate. We all know that high quality dark chocolate is a good thing, but let’s be honest: a Mars bar, Bounty or Milky Way now and then can have its charm too. A sticky, gooey, high calorific charm… Yummy.
I had my last Mars bar 3 years ago. I love the stuff, but hardly ever eat any other choc bar other than a Milky Way Crispy Roll or Duplo when I am back in Austria: Not quite as satisfying, but less calorific.
Nevertheless, I love James Martin’s unpretentiousness. Which is reflected in most of his food as well. Simple, easy to recreate and very, very delicious. Like his raspberry marshmallows.
Damn, they are good! And as long as you have a sugar thermometer at home and manage to get hold of some liquid glucose, they are fairly simple to make as well. But don’t try to improvise and do stick to what the good man has to say: the sugar syrup’s temperature has to reach 127 degrees Celsius and you do have to beat the egg white/sugar mixture for about 10 mins. When you do that, success is guaranteed. I promise! And once you have tasted a homemade marshmallow, you will never go out and buy another pack of food colouring and E-numbers again.
When I was a child, there were no fruits I loved more than the gooseberries from my grandmother’s garden. While my sister would go and pick the sweet raspberries, I would eat myself sick on the not-so-sweet gooseberries. Don’t forget, I wasn’t mad keen in sweet stuff when I was younger. Apart from granny’s garden, there weren’t many places where you could get gooseberries. You would occasionally be lucky enough to find them on some farmer’s markets, but not in huge amounts.
So when I first visited the UK I was all excited about finding tinned gooseberries on the supermarket shelves. I am even more excited now to see that they've started selling fresh gooseberries.
I decided the give the classic gooseberry crumble a shot. My crumbles are usually just ok, but either the crumble gets to soggy or to hard… not much crumbliness going on. So no more sticking to a recipe but just following my intuition. I just mixed and crumbled the ingredients together until it looked ok. And it was. It was more than ok, it was the best crumble I have ever made. Actually, the best crumble I have ever had! 
Gooseberry crumble, for 2
: 350-400g fresh gooseberries
: 40g butter
: caster sugar
: Demerara sugar
: flour
: ground almonds
Simmer the gooseberries with 2-3 tbsp caster sugar until soft. In the meantime, mix together the butter, Demerara sugar and flour and almonds (ratio 2:1) until you get a crumbly texture.
Start off adding 2 tbsp Demerara sugar, 2 tbsp flour and 1 tbsp ground almonds. Taste the mixture and add more sugar until sweet enough. Finally add more flour and almonds until you get the right, crumbly texture. Make sure the crumble is rather fine and you don’t have lumps of dough in your mixture.
Spoon the gooseberry compote into a small, ovenproof dish. Top with the crumble and finally sprinkle with one tbsp Demerara sugar. Bake at 180 degrees for around 30 minutes.
Pour over some cold single or double cream and serve immediately.
Newest culinary invention using pumpkinseed oil is pumpkinseed pesto. It isn't that different in the making from Pesto Genovese. Use pumpkinseeds instead of pine nuts and pumpkinseed oil instead of olive oil. Or take some ready made pumpkinseed oil pesto with you on your next trip to Austria just like I do! 
Aubergine and zucchini salad with beans and pumpkinseed oil pesto, for 6
