what's cooking?
Frank
2,370 Posts
Rep your last attempts at honing your culinary skills.
After not really having cooked anything for the 4 years I spent in NYC, ever since we moved to Costa Rica I got into spending time in the kitchen again. We're having friends over tonight and I just finished a trial run for the desert which will be avocado cheese cake on a fig-almond crust with a black- and blue-berry glaze:
Just brought this one over to the neighbors after having left in the fridge overnight to set and I just finished with the one that will be served tonight. The natural green color of the filling would have slowly turned into gray until this evening so I had to re-do the whole thing.
Appetizer will be a traditional Southern German onion-bacon tart with a side salad followed by a main of slow roasted oxtail ragout with home made sp??tzle and pan seared green asparagus in garlic butter.
I roasted the oxtail in olive oil with carrots, onions and celery until everything was nicely caramelized, put it in a casserole filled it up with a simple tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes and let it simmer at 260 Fahrenheit for 5 hours while slowly replacing the condensing water with an nice Argentinian Malbec. Then I allowed it to cool down, removed the oxtail from the sauce to de-bone it, fed the veggies and the bones to the dogs, strained the sauce through a sieve and reunited it with the oxtail meat that I had cut down to bite size chunks... let everything sit overnight to be slowly re-heated before dinner. Ragouts always taste better when re-heated. Looking good so far:
After not really having cooked anything for the 4 years I spent in NYC, ever since we moved to Costa Rica I got into spending time in the kitchen again. We're having friends over tonight and I just finished a trial run for the desert which will be avocado cheese cake on a fig-almond crust with a black- and blue-berry glaze:
Just brought this one over to the neighbors after having left in the fridge overnight to set and I just finished with the one that will be served tonight. The natural green color of the filling would have slowly turned into gray until this evening so I had to re-do the whole thing.
Appetizer will be a traditional Southern German onion-bacon tart with a side salad followed by a main of slow roasted oxtail ragout with home made sp??tzle and pan seared green asparagus in garlic butter.
I roasted the oxtail in olive oil with carrots, onions and celery until everything was nicely caramelized, put it in a casserole filled it up with a simple tomato sauce made from fresh tomatoes and let it simmer at 260 Fahrenheit for 5 hours while slowly replacing the condensing water with an nice Argentinian Malbec. Then I allowed it to cool down, removed the oxtail from the sauce to de-bone it, fed the veggies and the bones to the dogs, strained the sauce through a sieve and reunited it with the oxtail meat that I had cut down to bite size chunks... let everything sit overnight to be slowly re-heated before dinner. Ragouts always taste better when re-heated. Looking good so far:
Comments
No pics I'm afraid but it was delicious.
(Doing a lot with asparagus and rhubarb lately because it's the season.)
What makes the delicious sounding tart southern german?
Basically onion bacon and dough? God I miss real deutsch food.
The last thing I tried was new orleans bbq shrimp, basically sauteed shrimp in shit loads of butter and black and red pepper, then baked in even more butter.
Went ok, need to get better with the butter/shrimp ratio.
I also rocked the shit out of some grilled hanger steaks last night, marinated in dijon, garlic, rosemary, lemon juice/zest, crushed red pepper, and olive oil.
cooked this nice grey trout up today, caught last night. Olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper and straight on the grill. Fed 4 nicely, and she put up one hell of a fight bringing her in!
Here I am showing off my stiff peaks. (Note: Stiff peaks is not a sexual innuendo)
:feelin_it:
Man, I really need to get back into fishing.
Do you saute these little sparrows after they've cooked in the water, or do you serve them straightaway? I always wondered if there were regional variations of spaetzle?
this is my shit!
and now that you batches seen my shit its time you start to like us on facebook...ludwig.. merci
Sp??tzle are a very easy and fast to make type of pasta. The dough is wheat or durum flour or a mix of both. I prefer durum but can't find it here so I use wheat. Since they stay in great shape in the fridge for a few days I usually make more than I'd need for once and use up an entire 1kg pack of flour which I mix with a dozen eggs or more if they are small, there's also a saying that you put more eggs into the dough when they're feeling extra festive, and a bit of salt. While mixing the eggs with the flour you will get a mess of sturdy clumps and you slowly add a little bit of water so you get an even dough. I use a sturdy wooden spoon to beat the dough which should come out rather tough (hence the sturdy spoon a thin one would break). It's all about the consistency of the dough, I like the Sp??tzle to have some bite, others prefer them softer and prepare an almost runny dough. Add more flour or more water (or an extra egg) to get the desired consistency. No mater how tough or how thin, the dough needs to be very smooth and without any clumps so keep beating it until your arm hurts and then some more.
The main issue is which method you chose to prepare the Sp??tzle. There are three methods. The first one demands a thinner, rather runny dough:
This is the so called "Hobel" which doesn't produce real Sp??tzle in my opinion. The correct name for the end result would be "Kn??pfle"
This leaves us with two main methods to produce real Sp??tzle:
The more extreme conservative Swabian traditionalist would use the ancient method of hand scraping, again, here you need your dough to not be too tough and to still have some flow:
You need serious skills to do this. You have to be very fast so you get a decent amount of evenly cooked Sp??tzle and you will need years of experience to form Sp??tzle that are of an even diameter. There' nothing worse than an over ambitious home cook who doesn't know his limits and also since I'm no Swabian but a former native of the Baden part of Baden-W??rttemberg, this is my weapon of choice:
The so called Sp??tzlepresse works like this:
Press the dough into boiling salt water and wait ca. 2 minutes before getting them out with a skimmer and pressing in the next portion. Collect them in a sieve and when done give them a quick shower with cold water and loosen them up with your hands so they don't stick, serve right away. They're great with any type of Gulasch, Ragout or any braised dish with a heavy sauce. When serving pour some of the sauce on top of the Sp??tzle. The remaining Sp??tzle can be kept in the fridge (let them cool down covered up and at room temperature first) for several days and for re-heating I recommend sauteing them in a pan with a generous amount of butter and some onions that should be slowly caramelized before adding the Sp??tzle. A great dish made of Sp??tzle leftovers is K??sesp??tzle. I prepare them by sauteing some onion with a bit of garlic, adding a bit of heavy cream, chopped up parsley and grated cheese. Gruy??re is by far the best choice but a middle aged Gouda would also do. Mix with the Sp??tzle put everything in a casserole and bake in the oven. This is a dish in itself, way too heavy (and too delicious) for being served as a side a small green salad would be the prefect company for it along with a heavy red, lately we've been into Argentinian Malbec to go with this.
For the onion tart (Zwiebelkuchen) I prepare a tough, sturdy dough with wheat flour, fresh yeast, warm milk and melted butter. I usually prepare the dough a day ahead and put it in the fridge overnight. This allows to then roll it out really thin , then I put it on a baking sheet that's about an inch deep so it can rise a bit. I cut off the excess dough at the bottom because if you have the crust up to the rim it will be baked and start turning dark before the onion filling is perfectly caramelized. For the onion filling I put some fine cut smoked Speck (no industry bacon) into a pot together with a generous amount of butter and at medium heat wait for the bacon fat to render. Then I add the sliced onions and cook everything under constant stirring until the onions have turned translucent (they are not supposed to caramelize yet) then I add some heavy cream, sour cream, eggs and pressed garlic and season the mixture with salt and pepper. I then spread the mix onto the dough. I prefer my onion tart to be rather thin so no thicker than 1/2" on top of a 1/8" crust. If you like caraway seed then generously spread some on top along with a bit of ground sea salt (the mixture is already seasoned but while baking and slowly caramelizing, the onions will get sweeter and sweeter and absorb quite some salt. Bake at 350 F until perfectly golden brown.
Look up recipes online to get an idea of what ration you need for the ingredients.
Traditionally, Zwiebelkuchen is served with "Suser", "Federwei??er" or "Neuer Wein" which basically is partially fermented grape juice that you can buy in Germany, Switzerland and Northern Italy during wine harvest season: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federweisser
Since this stuff is impossible to find outside of the mentioned region I recommend a young, fresh white with a lot of fruit. Lately we've always had our Zwiebelkuchen with a Chilean Viognier.
PS: none of the above pictures were made by me, they're all random image search results.
Shout out to Pok Pok in Portland OR for the inspiration for my snack. I tweaked their wing sauce recipe to coat my calamari
Great set up!
What's up with your Brezels, they look a bit pale, don't you use brine?
I recently baked my first batch ever and I used a brine made with 2 L water and 6 table spoons of Kaiser Natron:
Tried this wine for the first time, too. It was delicious.
Danke!
No, Pasta would be "Nudeln" in German while Sp??tzle is the word for the above described specific type of Pasta or "Nudel".
The dish you are talking about would be Gr??nkohl which can be cooked with or without (smoked) pork and is most commonly served with (smoked) sausage. With the sausage it would be called "Gr??nkohl mit Pinkel" This is exactly the type of food that caused me to put on 20+ pounds within a few weeks last time I moved back to Germany. Good, traditional German food is all so heavy and if it's done right, it is so deeply satisfying that you just have to stuff yourself with repeat servings over and over again. Needless to mention this food demands to be washed down with vast amounts of beer and followed by a couple of Obstlers:
(not my picture)
These are the greens as you buy them in the store:
Bittesch??n!
Yes! Mein Gott that looks fucking delicious.
Please to post proper kartoffelsalat(sp?) recipe.
I'm going to try my moms catfish sauce piquant recipe this weekend.
I've only ever sauteed fish, ready to expand into stews.
Never. Use. Mayonnaise.
Get a type of potatoes that remains firm after cooking and doesn't crumble too much, boil them and let them cool down. Peel them and cut them in half before slicing them into a bowl, add chopped onion, parsley and chives (and some speck if you like). Douse with boiling, slightly reduced beef broth (ratio ca. half a pint of broth for two pounds of potato). Add white wine vinegar, a spoonful of Dijon mustard and your vegetable oil of choice. Final touch would be a hint of nutmeg.
Please post this!
last couple weeks I did this twice, fresh scallops with a bacon marmalade... sounds extravagant but is wilde easy. Chopped up some nice niman ranch applewood smoked, carmelized some onions in the bacon fat with brown sugar... blended some blanched carrots and harissa with a bit of milk and butter... then threw it all in together over low flame for a while. flashed the scallops for a couple minutes each side in a hot pan with olive oil, topped with the marmalade. banging.
last night we roasted a whole chicken, simple salt/pepper/olive oil rub while it came up to room temp... roasted potatoes and broccoli on the tray below tossed in salt/pepper/olive oil. that's our sunday dinner more often than not, sometimes make a soup with the remains although not in this weather.
I've been buying fresh pizza dough a lot... bring to room temp, brush with olive oil, crushed garlic and grated parmesan... fresh mozzarella, that imported crushed tomato sauce with the lady on the can, red onions, maybe some sausage and kalamata olives, fresh basil... 10-12 min on 500, I will eat the whole thing in one sitting. Did a white pie with spinach and ricotta the other day too.
Yep, Gr??nkohl is my shit and it's as northern as northern can be. At best it has Pinkel-Sausage and smoked meat (Kassler) or smoked sausage (Mettenden). I only have to object Franks choice of spirit to wash it all down. Obstler is impossible. Aquavit (Caraway Schnapps) is the way to go, but I'm from up north.
He's 100% right about the potato salad. Mayonaise is disgusting. One variation that I love to serve with fried or grilled fish is really, really simple but you need top end products, like with all the really simple meals. Cook some firm potatos that don't crumble with their peel, than peel them off while they're hot (if the peel is really thin, this isn't even necessary), cut them in slices and put them in pre-heated bowl. Just add sea salt and a tiny bit of white wine vinegar or lemon juice but it should be only a hint. The salad shouldn't get sour. Now add a lot more of some very high quality Virgin Olive Oil and chopped chives. Mix everything gently and serve while still warm. If all the used products are HQ it's perfect.
I didn't know a lot of these words so I translated them for other people who might not be bilingual.
Sorry if I used too many italian words. So thanks for translating. Only salsicca is a fresh sausage with a mixture of greasy and lean porkmeat (coarsely ground) and a differing mixture of spices, depending on the italian region where it's made. No liver involved.
Showed my wife a strut cooking thread a while ago, and she marveled at all the gourmet ingredients and asked it the posters were guys.
My garden is producing ridiculous amounts of lettuce.
I am trying to eat 2 big salads a day.
Also snap peas and cilantro (fresh coriander leaves).
The last few I have done like this:
Lettuce in one bowl.
In separate bowl
Cut up peas and cilantro
dress with
feta
oil
vinegar or lemon juice
garlic
avacado
Give the the peas a few minutes to marinate then pour over the salad and eat.
The high quality of my lettuce and peas are going to make a good salad no matter what you do to them.
Some people will want to use the best quality ingredients, always a good idea.
For me the Israeli feta from Trader Joes, the big bottle of olive oil you get for about $9 at TJs and TJs best balsamic are good enough.
I just run the garlic through a press.
B/w
Thanks Che
Without the brine you won't get the color, crust texture and taste of a "real" Brezel or Pretzel.
There are two options, one is true, OG baker's lye with a 3-4% Sodium Hydroxide solution. For this you need Sodium Hydroxide pellets which I'm not sure you can buy at a US drugstore just like that. This stuff is a bit hazardous and the way I researched it, you have to slowly add the water to the pellets and not throw the pellets into the water which can cause a hefty chemical reaction resulting in splatter. The solution is corrosive and should not get on your skin or into your eyes so latex gloves and goggles should be used. Purists say that only with this stuff will you get the real Brezel experience. I want to start experimenting with this soon but I'm having trouble locating the stuff here in Costa Rica. From the US you can even order from Amazon at a ridiculously reduced price: http://www.amazon.com/Grade-Sodium-Hydroxide-Micro-Beads/dp/B001EDBEZM From what information I found you use 5 ounces of the pellets for one gallon of (cold) water. You submerge the (unbaked) pretzels for a few seconds into the cold solution. I read that this solution you can re-use several times. If you're running a professional bake shop, this method should be the long term goal. This way you will also be able to produce perfect lye croissants etc... during baking the lye will react with the carbon monoxide in the air and with the components of the dough and after baking only the Sodium will remain in the crust so have no fear.
Then there's the non-hazardous option to just use baking soda (Sodium Bicarbonate or more commonly Sodium Bicarbonate). This is the method I used for the Pretzels in my picture. Purists won't agree but in my opinion this gives you a close enough (although not perfect) end product as far as taste, color and texture. As I said, not perfect but close enough. This is also very easy to do: Dissolve 3-4 ounces of baking soda in half a gallon water and bring it to a boil. Keep the water boiling and submerge the readily formed, unbaked Pretzels into the solution for ca. 20 seconds each. You can throw in 2-3 at a time but I would recommend starting with one at a time until you get a hang of it. During the coking process they become a bit fragile. A skimmer like this would be the necessary tool to get them safely in and out of their bath:
Then put them on a baking sheet (do not use aluminum since it might react with the baking soda) and grind some coarse sea salt over them which will now stick nicely. Let them sit for ca. 20 minutes and then bake them at ca. 400 F until the color has reached the deep brown of a real Brezel which will take around 20 minutes. The taste and the incredible crust will instantly make you a believer.
It's not salt but lye. But yeah it will be easy to get in the Netherlands and especially in Germany. And you are right, there's no better company to beer than a Laugenbrezel:
Not my pic but that's how I want to make them once I get to use the lye.
I made your potato salad last night and it was tasty, yet I found myself
missing the real vinegar-y bite I associate with the real deal.