Roadside Meal - Chicheron - Crispy Pork Belly

There are a lot of things I do not understand. Well, that is only natural, because there are a lot of things that is going on on this planet and beyond and if I would be able to understand all that I would have an IQ of above 200. Hm ... interesting ... I haven't checked that lately though, but I don't want to give an hypothesis of how high my IQ actually is nor do I want to give any suggestions regarding that right now.
That wasn't going to be the subject anyway. We are trying food here and supposedly from around the world. Going back to the do not understand part. For example there is this scandal going on at the moment with eggs and a chemical called Fipronil. On the one hand they say you should through this eggs away or bring them back to the supermarket and on the other hand an adult could eat seven of those eggs in a day and it won't happen nothing. Who is eating seven eggs a day?
Anyway, how can they put prices in the supermarket and write it is a special offer, when it's in fact the same prize as always or even higher.
How does it come that our fridge is always empty again so quickly. Well, for that one there might be an explanation ... eh ... it seems we are drifting away from the subject. Just to give an idea of where we want to get here ...

... maybe the might help to focus. That is one crispy pork belly or as they would call it in the Dominican Republic: Chicheron.
There again we get to the point I originally wanted to talk about when I said 'do not understand'. Over there in the Dominican Republic for example you find shops that sell chic heron at the roadside. Here it comes ... the curious part ... in one spot there are for example four shops next to each other that sell Chicheron. Then in another place there are four shops together that sell fish and no shop of Chicheron. Or four shops that sell fruits and no shop of Chicheron or fish. Again I could go on for hours, but that's how it is.
Anyhow, the way I put it on the picture is not the way you have it locally it rather might look like this ...

You might just stop with your car, taste a bit of what you are interested and then buy a loadful of it and hit the road again or ...

... you might eat it on sight with some hot sauce and yuca and bananas on the side. Well that looks just like a little snack for me, you might think, but ... no I didn't eat it all.

Well, when you are blogging about food, you even might do some other things, when you are around, but those images might be too hard for some to see, so only read ahead when you are absolutely sure you can take it ...

Coffee Liqueur Chilli

Sometimes you wake up ... it's best to wake up every day ... and you already know what you want for dinner. I just had that a few weeks ago. And it was chilli that I wanted, some really hot chilli with some coffee in it. So I had to gather all the forces of hotness and have some chilli ...

I had to do quite some harvesting on my chilli plants to do this, but still I am lucky the plants continue to produce more chillies.
Here we go then for the Coffee Liqueur Chilli ...

Bills Sydney Food - Prawn and Chilli Linguine

I have a dream, again and again. I run through the jungle and someone or something is hunting me. I run and run as fast as I can, which is surprisingly fast in that dream. The thing nearly gets me, it's freaking close. Suddenly I come to the edge of the cliff, which is dropping quite a way down. I just jump and ... wake up.
Oops, no, really, I'm not having that dream. I'd rather say that is the beginning of Star Trek - Into Darkness.
My dream is slightly different. It's there since school and it has to do with Australia. I dream of moving there or at least visiting there once. The latter seems more realistic. 
Anyway, that's also why I tend to buy books about Australia, watch Australian movies or TV series and lately above that buy cookbooks.
One of the latest example is Bills Sydney Food by Bill Granger. After all it would be nice to visit Sydney. Here an example of what came from it ...

Hot Fusion - Hot Chilli Puff Pastry Tarte

Cold fusion: Hypothetical type of nuclear reaction that would occur at, or near room temperature. Usually you need millions of degrees for a fusion of nuclear kind of reaction. This is a controversial subject. The whole concept appears to defy the laws of physics. Some scientists believe cold fusion to be a real phenomenon and that it will be at one point in the future, however far far away, the basis for an abundant, cheap source of energy. Others say that cold fusion is impossible.

Well then, it's quite good, we are not dealing with cold fusion today, but with hot fusion. How do we come to this point?
As it happens to be I'm busy trying to grow my own chillies on the windowsill.

Having them is one part, but actually it's not for the sake of growing, but cooking. I need to do something with them. These are (were) my only two habanero chillies. Those are considered to be quite hot ... and so something else should be, too ... Yes, I'm referring to the weather. Some days it might work out.
Ahem ... what to do now with the habanero chilli? I just took the yellow one. The green one still needs some time. Fine, I could do a chilli, a real hot one ...

Christine & Christian - Episode 5: Caramelised Bananas with Incredible Caramel Sauce

Things are still going on. I have been quite busy. After 9 days of cooking from Tasting India by Christine Manfield, I managed 16 recipes so far. Just this week, until now, I used up ... hm ... about 16 chillies: green ones, dried small ones, dried long ones, but so far no fresh red ones. Whatsoever, my supply is going down.
However, this week I also tried two recipes, where I didn't need any chillies at all. One of it were the carrot dosas I tried just this morning after leaving the batter at room temperature the whole night. The result was ... edible.
The other recipe is called in the book Sanjay's Caramel Bananas. Have a look ...

Well, um, eh ... it doesn't look so incredible now, but ... to me, in the end the TASTE counts.
The bananas are just rolled in sugar and then fries in butter.
What's important about the whole dessert is the caramel sauce. How to do caramel, you should know. Yes, you know ... sugar with a bit of water in a pan at high heat, no stirring, changing colour to brown and things like that. Whatever happens, don't be tempted to use a spoon to stir things up ... by no means.
As the colour changed to brown, add some cinnamon and also some chopped up ginger. Toss it in (don't stir), add cream and a few splashes of brown rum. Mix it, but don't stir.
Pour the sauce over the fried banana in the other pan and coat the banana with the incredible caramel sauce.
Whatever happens now ... just make sure you eat the bananas soon.
For sure I will make this again ... before I try all the other recipes from Tasting India. Even if I would stop cooking through Tasting India now (which I don't), that bananas with this caramel sauce was worth it. I have also been thinking about a version including chocolate. Hm, I will have to see about that.

What else did I cook. Here some further impressions:

That is curry-leaf chicken, which tastes great as well. The brownish bits are the fried curry-leaves. Sorry, I didn't have fresh curry leaves, but so far, I don't  have an idea were to get them. I would go for planting or sowing in my garden, if I get the chance. Ah, do you notice the long dried red chilli in the background as well?

A white dal, enjoyable, but not as good as the other dal I tried. There is a cinnamon stick to be seen here and ... have a guess ... there are three dried red chillies in it. For this dal it was necessary to prepare an onion paste. So far I have found out, that it is quite important to have these pastes, although I still need to find out, why exactly. I still have leftover dal and so I might end up using them to stuff some samosas, but I might eat it just as it is as well.

Here comes another lovely potato dish: sesame potatoes. Apart from the sesame and some ginger paste, there was the need for some ... yes, green chillies. It was also the first time ever, I used fenugreek seeds.
I guess, there are a lot more adventures to come. After all, next I have a whole weekend for that. Who knows!?!

If you want more pictures, just check out my Facebook page here.

Oscars Aftermath - Green Chilli and Chicken Pizza with Serrano Ham

Oh what a night!!!
Well, if I would know what happened, I could tell you ...
... right, I do know ... and ... it wasn't really that serious.
I'm going to tell you anyway. But where to start?!

Fine, my last post. Do you remember? I mentioned a few things about the 85th Academy Award in LA. No, I don't want to go over it all again. As the date for it was approaching, though and don't having anything to do at all the next day, I decided, I could have a try and watch it.
No big deal ... when you don't live too many time zones away from it. Therefore I had quite some time to kill before it would all start. Why not have some food? Still that would not suffice for all the time.
Nevertheless, I voted to go for homemade pizza ... again?! I had it already the week before.

Somehow, it seems to be a way to deal with leftovers ... just make some nice pizza dough and top it with whatever you have left from other meals. Really? No, not really, but kind of!

First of all to the pizza dough that I ended up with and keep on making again and again.

Ingredients (makes for more than one person can eat):
500 g flour (100-200 g semolina flour and 300-400 g strong baking flour)
Pinch of salt
300 ml warm water
7 g dried yeast
5 tbs olive oil
1 tbs honey

Method:
Put the flour and the salt into a large bowl, while you give all the other ingredients into a different bowl. Wait for about 10 minutes.
Then pour the yeast water bit by bit into the flour while you bring it all together with a fork. Once all the water is in, get yourself some flour on your hands and go and knead the dough.
Wash your hands with warm water and while you are at it soak a clean kitchen towel with water as well and put the cloth over the bowl with the dough. Let it rise for at least one hour.

That gives you enough time to devote to a tomato sauce.

Ingredients (it might be even to much for that dough):
Splash of olive oil
3 cloves of garlic, slices
About 10 basil leaves
400 g tinned tomatoes
200 ml water
Salt, pepper
Splash of red wine vinegar

Method: 
Heat up the oil in a pan at low heat. Toss in the slices of garlic.
When you have the wonderful odour of garlic going all over your kitchen, toss in the basil leaves as well. Oh, that's even better.
Now pour in the tinned tomatoes and the water. Don't harm the tomatoes. Bring it to the boil and reduce to simmer again. Let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Then you can crush the tomatoes and if you don't want to put your sauce into a liquidizer afterwards, do it properly.
Leave simmering for a further 15 minutes and season with salt and pepper.
Finally turn off the heat and add the splash of red wine vinegar. Sauce is ready!

Pizza is not ready!
The dough should make for three reasonable sized pizzas.
Hm, as it seems, this all is a at least a bit of work. Well, the evening before I did just an easy thing: quick tapas ...

But back to the pizza now, although those tapas might not be totally unrelated. You will see at least three of the above food items again later on.
It's time to heat up the oven as much as possible. I managed about 250 °C.
One part of the pizza dough received some more kneading and then rolling up to a kind of round object.
We have to get to the pizza topping somehow. You might guess that the chicken and chickpeas will end up on the pizza. I thought about it ... yes, really ... but as you have seen I especially prepared a tomato sauce for it.
Therefore I just went for the chicken.
First of all, spread some of the tomato sauce on the blank pizza. Add some stripes of ready chicken breast. Some slices of green chillies (see above - tapas plate) on it, too. Don't bother with getting rid of the seeds from the chillies. We need some mozzarella as well and maybe some more basil leaves. Nice! OK, a few small splashes of olive oil might be even nicer.
16 more minutes and the pizza is ready ... that is if you don't forget to put it into the oven for the aforementioned 16 minutes ... delicious!

Fine, only four more hours to go until the start of the Oscar night ... well, that is of you like to watch people walking on the red carpet and hear some thoughts about fashion ... just hypothetical.
At a time then, when most, if not all of my neighbours finally had gone to bed, the actual show started ... after watching it, now I at least now, what movies I might still have a look at or ... which ones not. It was interesting to watch the show, while I have never done so before, because the constellation of circumstances hadn't been towards favourable the years past.

"At the end of the day you're another day older!"

I went to bed at a time I usually get up and ... had some more pizza for breakfast ...

Right, time wise that couldn't be classed as breakfast considering that it was lunch time by then. At this point it happened to be the case, I already had run out of mozzarella.
Of course, I would never allow it to run out of cheese completely. After all there was still some manchego left I didn't use for the tapas plate and while already at it, why not use some serrano ham on top of the pizza just as it was coming from the oven ...

I can only say so much ... it was even more delicious than the day before. 
As a conclusion I guess I won't be doing pizza again this week. In fact. So far I didn't feel like doing much cooking so far this week. Still, that won't be the last you have seen of that serrano ...

Neither here nor there ... Chicken on Chickpeas ... Randomly

And the Oscar goes to ...
How am I supposed to know. After all I have probably seen only two of the films that have anything to do with this years Academy Awards taking place in Hollywood, Los Angeles, U.S.A. I guess in a few more hours we will be richer of a bit more knowledge that won't be of any use for us.
No worries, in the end it will make all sense. It's like a puzzle. There are thousand pieces that relate someway to each other, but in the beginning you have no clue. However, as time goes on you put piece next to piece. First you get a frame and in the end you have a full picture.
Let's do it slightly different this time ... or not. Here you get a full picture at least.

Sometimes I do things and I don't do that on purpose, but somehow it all fits together.
Back to this years Oscars. Will an Australian playing a French person in a British movie win? Who knows?
For Best picture we find the nomination of Les Misérables. I already made a connection somehow in my last post.
At least this is one of the two movies I saw. It was only in between my last post and this post. Now I'm not all good as to these things as some might know from school like ... What was it that Shakespeare wanted to tell us with Macbeth apart from that he wanted to make some money and apart from "Fair is foul and foul is fair"?
I managed school anyway. Fine, don't mention what has become of me ...
Les Miserablés. Consequently I'm not filling you in to what was Victor Hugo's intend in that direction. Some people - either in the theater or in the cinema - go on crying most of the time. I find it easier to do so while watching an episode of MASH.
Well, some might claim, men have no feelings. I do not know nothing about such phrases or generalisations in general.
Anyway, most stories are fabricated in such a way, that the reader, listener, watcher etc. can identify with certain characters or at least relate to them in a certain way.
Now, as it comes to Les Miserablés it can get quite deep and complicated. I can relate to almost any of the characters portrayed.
Jean Valjean slaving most of his life and being on the run and not really finding peace in his life.
Fantine, her live going down the drain and seeing only misery.
The students crying out for justice.
Cosette being afraid to go alone in the dark into the wood to fetch some water.
The unrequited love of Eponine.
Finally also Javert, who sees his life not making any sense anymore, when all he was fighting for didn't work out in the end.
Marius sitting alone in the ABC cafe grieving all his friends that are gone now ...

Fine, what to say? For a change it was possible to go and see a movie in the right language. At times I really feel like being in the wrong place. Then again I don't want to be neither here nor there. In the end it will make all sense. But then again, who knows?

 

Let us go towards a subject we know a little bit more about: food!
This month, in Belleau Kitchen's Random Recipe challenge, the theme is 'the choice is yours'. 

At least a little bit of choice. Was it really a choice? Well, I simply took the book without thinking too much. This as well implies that I didn't make it all up, but in the end it makes all sense.
I'm not sure, though, whether that would be the place to be, but as the book I choose Jamie's America. Now the random part of this challenge brought me to the recipe Chicken on Chickpeas as you have seen on the picture above already.
Funny enough, the recipe is under the section Los Angeles. Some years ago I checked out this place myself and had a look at the Hollywood sign as well.
A friend of mine was driving the car and I had the duty to read the map. He was only a bit afraid we could end up dead if we take a wrong turn. So I better be reading the map properly. Obviously I did just that or ... it isn't that bad to end up in the wrong neighbourhood.
Chicken on chickpeas then is what we are having this time. Can we go wrong with that?
Pieces of chicken marinated in garlic, parsley, lemon and olive oil.
Chickpeas stewed up with onions, yet more garlic, peppers, tomatoes and green chillies. Just look at them going ...

I was supposed to put in red any yellow tomatoes, but I didn't bother to visit more than one shop. 
At least I had plenty of green chillies.
As to the chicken pieces, I didn't bother putting them into the oven, but just fried and cooked them in my special pot and it turned out fine and juicy and not dry and everything.
With the chicken arranged on the chickpea stew and finished off with some fresh basil leaves, it was just beautiful and delicious.
Taken everything together it didn't even take one hour and I still have some food for tomorrow. How good is that!?
Once more it has been a pleasure to take part in random recipes, although I know that the day will come when luck evades me in this department as well and I will end up with a totally painful cooking and eating experience.
However, not today, not yet. But why worry about the things not here, when there is plenty to do with worrying about the things already being present.

Little did I know that the 85th Academy Awards will be taking place in February 2013 while I was having the Bloggers Around the World challenge making a stop in the U.S.A. 
Why not then kill two birds with one stone and make this stop in Los Angeles and have this Chicken on Chickpeas for Bloggers Around the World as well.

Finally, remember one thing: "Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise." ... but where? Neither here nor there?

Or simply dig in ... and don't relate the food now to Les Misérables and the 'Master of the House' part!

Time for Chutney - Apple-Onion-Chilli-Chutney

Sometimes my mind is playing tricks on me. There was this blog challenge over at A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate ... It dealt with chutneys, pickles, piccalillis, jams, curds and marmalades.
Somehow, I had in mind this challenge would end today, but in fact it was one week earlier. So, while I thought I still had plenty of time, I didn't. I blew it!
I love piccalilli and jams and things like that. I did a piccalilli once and I liked it very much. That's an internal reminder for me to do it again.
Now, I've never made a chutney and that was what I wanted to try now. Since I still had quite a few apples left, it had to be something with apple. After getting some more information on that subject I was ready to go ... to make an Apple-Onion-Chilli-Chutney.

What we need:
2 tbs butter
2 red onions, finely chopped
500 g apple, peeled, cored, and cut into small pieces
2 tsp ginger, in very tiny pieces
2 small fresh red chillies, finely chopped (I left the seeds in)
250 g brown sugar
250 ml apple vinegar

What I did:
After having done all the preparation with cutting things into bit's an pieces the butter went melting in the pot.
Then I added the onions and started softening them.
With that said and done, it was time for the apple pieces to join and to season everything with ginger and chillies.

I let that go for a while for the apples to go a bit softer as well. My apples though were not the fastest or easiest to turn soft. Not the right type for a fast one.
After I was tired of waiting any longer I added the brown sugar and the apple vinegar and left it going until it looked like this ...

This may take a while. About 50-60 minutes. In fact, I decided to let it go a bit further than shown in the picture. 
Once I was satisfied I put the apple-onion-chilli-chutney into sterilised jars. I sterilised them standing for a while in hot water. That should do.
The chutney just filled one and a half jar. The full jar I turned upside down, after closing, of course. Otherwise it would have been quite messy and ... stupid. That should create some kind of vacuum helping it to seal properly to keep longer.
I like to eat it on bread with cheese. The chilies just give a very subtle burn at the end. So it's not too strong. If you want it stronger, just add a few more chillies. 

Well, I didn't make it for the blog challenge, but anyway it was nice to finally try my own apple chutney. 
That would have been the challenge.

Merguez and the Pasta Salad of Doom

नमस्ते (speak: na-mas-té) - just for starters and saying hello.

Well, it is not Sanskrit, but if I'm right (might be the case) the script is the same. Anyway, does it matter at this point? Maybe! Who knows?

As the second Indiana Jones movie was set mostly in India and at one point Indy read a few passages Sanskrit. However, my Sanskrit is not quite so good, and most of my Hindi as faded into dust.

Still, we are getting closer to were we want.

After two weeks of adventure (mostly) outside it's time to ... RETURN TO THE KITCHEN!!! (By the way, did you recognize that my last few posts were written before my holiday?)

However, before we go on whipping things up in the kitchen, I like to share a few scenes from the weeks past.

My first day was like pouring down rain - like from buckets - and wind blowing, but stupid me had to be outside and walking ... I don't know like 20 miles or so.

After that, though, the rain was gone and the sun was out for the remaining days. Was that good? Hm, the blushing colour has gone now and is being replaced by some healthier looking tone.

Looking back!

Do you know this place?

Made it up here!

Yes, had to get up there, too

At times it really was an up and down (like life itself), but always it goes forward.

Not only that, there were 'wild' animals as well.

Had to use all my cattle drover skills, but finally I got past.

Is it size that matters? When looking at the next picture, take into consideration I didn't use the zoom on my camera.

Can you guess what this little fellow did?

Yet again, there are other dangers.

Whatsoever all this is now in the past and has, of course, nothing to do with what I want to write about next. But wait ... I mentioned adventures.

So we are coming back to our intricately woven thread and whip up a pasta salad. Let's get my gear ready and put things into action. On top of it, if we are fast enough, it will make a WARM pasta salad.

Yes, this bowl looks quite empty. In fact ... it is. That is to be changed. 

There happened to be some Merguez sausages (I told you once ...) in the fridge. Get the meat out of it (I used two sausages) and fry some nice small meat balls in a splash of lovely olive oil.

That's not quite enough. What else do we have on stock. Oh, yes, of course, ther are the courgettes on the kitchen counter. One of them will suffice, although they of the rather smaller kind. After all this should be for just one person ... or maybe two.

Slices ... and fried!

As you see (or not?) there were still some other things to be found. A jar with black olives was hiding somewhere in the depths of the fridge, too. However, no matter how hard it tried, I found it anyway and a small handfull of black olives (no, I didn't asked a child to help me, but simply didn't fill my large hand completely) went in as well.

What's in the freezer section of the fridge (no I haven't stocked up the real freezer again after the sudden demise of it's content)? Well, there is a small bag with (obviously) frozen herbs. What can it be?

Ponder ... ponder ... ponder ... yes, coriander. Fine, I take it and chop it as good as possible. If you dare to replicate this later, you can of course use fresh coriander and add it later.

Satisfied? No, we need more. Ah ... how lovely (really?) my chillie plants have really ... done a lot of work. So I add one finely chopped chilli as well, not bothering about removing the seeds (could this be the above mentioned doom?).

Knucklehead, if you are not doing something about the pasta, we will not even have a pasta salad.

Oh, yes! There must be some pasta up here. Some fusilli would be nice or tagliatelle or ... eh ... even some farfalle.

OK, let's use bucatini (no, not bugattini, although a ride in a Bugatti Veyron would be nice now). Have the package (250 g) will do. After all the other half was already used at another time.

Cooked according to package instruction (good I still had the package). Otherwise you might be just clever enough to know the appropiate time for having the pasta al dente.

Did I forget something? You know, "I'm making this up as I go."

All this could be quite dry. So we are having some extra vergine olive oil and balsamic vinegar on it. I even have this mango balsamic vinegar here. That will give the whole thing a slight fruity kind of twist.

If you care (I cared) season with salt an pepper. Hopefully you manage to mix it trough well. This mixing thing, though, would have worked more advantageaously with arranging the ingredients in reverse order (I guess).

At this point, we should have it all ready to eat (if I wouldn't been taking photos, it would have been a warmer pasta salad). Then why not do it and eat.

I, though, would fancy pudding. Maybe some blackforest gateaux thingy or tiramisu or even some brownies. But once more luck was not on my side. Neither of the aforementioned was at hand nor at reach nor was there any way of getting a decent dessert to satisfy my palate. Sady, then, I went without.

A Good Start of the Day with Shakshouka

While browsing through blogger world, I found a post about a visit in Melbourne In it a certain dish was mentioned and shown: Shakshouka. I had never heard of it before, but it sounded and looked so lovely that it made me want to try it.

While I would have even loved to eat it at the same place and travelling to Melbourne, I had to pass this time. As for now this is out of reach. Impossible as well would be finding a place that has it on the menu.

Therefore once more, it is time for action on my part, trying to do it myself.

Although you get some information from the description and the photo, some more research is necessary.

The belief is that Shakshouka originates from Tunisia. Further research revealed what usually goes in it and how it can be prepared. 

Now a tiny bit adjustment to my possibilities and circumstances and we are ready for action.

Ingredients as I used them:

1 splash of olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 yellow pepper, cut into small pieces

1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

250 g tomatoes, sliced into small bits

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 tbs tomato paste

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp coriander seeds, freshly ground

salt and pepper according to taste

3 eggs

100 g feta cheese (I used one that was seasoned with garlic and chilli)

a few leaves of basil (more authentic would be flat-leaved parsley)

How I went about:

Heat up the oil in your pan and gently fry your onions until soft, but not browned.

Then add the yellow pepper and red chilli and cook for about 8 minutes. I already like the looks of it with the bright yellow colour.

After that put in the tomatoes, the garlic and the tomato paste. Season with cumin and coriander ... and salt and pepper as you like.

Let things work together for a couple of minutes more.

Now you can move the vegetables around a bit, so you get three free spaces or holes. There you put an egg each. Scatter the feta cheese all over the pan.

Cover the pan and leave for five minutes until the eggs have started to set. If you do everything right, the egg yolks will still be runny.

Once this is done, sprinkle the basil (or parsley) leaves over it.

When everything is finished, get yourself some crispy bread and dig in!

If you haven't tried it yet, I can only recommend Shakshouka. Just think about it: can a day start any better than having this for breakfast?

Bookmarked Recipes: Asian Dressed Aubergine

Every day, thousands of bloggers worldwide write down thousands of lovely recipes, which are in turn are read by ... well ... it would be nice if by thousands as well ... each.

However, a wonderful thing is to get to know that actually some likes your recipe and has tried it as well. Considering this, I would say Ruth from Ruth's Kitchen Experiments had a brilliant idea, the Bookmarked Recipes blog challenge.

 

This month it is hosted by Jacqueline from Tinned Tomatoes. Thank you, you two, for that!

There is a long list of bookmarks on my Internet browser. So I am glad to try one and share my experiences with you.

For this I have chosen to try a recipe from Jacqueline (don't get confused here) from How to be a Gourmand. It is: Asian Dressed Aubergine (I guess you have gathered that already from the title of that post). 

There were these aubergines that fell into my hands. Well, I bought them to be honest. No miracles involved here. I would love to grow my own, but things do not always work out.

The recipe is not too complicated. It promises some nice Asian flavours to which I was looking forward to. After all I was in the mood for that kind of flavours.

Most of the ingredients I already had in stock. Only the aubergines had to be bought (I told you). Right, I could have bought some sweet basil and coriander. As I know, though, this is not an easy matter around here and since all this was very spontaneous after those aubergines were seen by me, I somehow had to do without those. Why not use normal basil and rocket? I don't know, we will see later, although under normal circumstances I would urgently suggest that you really use coriander (that is, if you like the taste).

My coriander on the windowsill was far from being ready to be used. And I didn't want to wait for that.

The aubergines were easy victims.

Coating them was also no big deal, although of course the marinade was slightly adjusted. Off they went to be grilled. Patiently I was checking again and again, whether the colour would be right.

As soon as that was the case I could do the rest. As Jacqueline mentioned in the recipe it would be optional to add some red chillies. That is what I did. after all I have a more or less large collection of plants on my windowsills.

When I harvested a few of the chillies the first time I thought, well, that is not like chilli, not really hot. It tastes rather like normal peppers. 

However ... things have changed ...

What do you think? Does this look nice? I simply had the aubergine without anything to it. After a long day most of the time just sitting around that would be fine. It tasted really nice, despite the few adjustments and ... of course the chillies did really burn ... and it took a while afterwards to let my mouth cool down.

Nevertheless it was nice. I wasn't disappointed. Therefore I can only recommend to try it for yourselves, making sure about the chillies before you use them, though.

Since you are finished reading here, why not read the original blog post.

Scotty, beam me up ... frustration or pizza

Space: The final frontier. These are the voyages of ... To boldly go where no man has gone before ... (Just play the video in the background to get the proper atmosphere!)

... well, not quite. How about the following?

Food: The final frontier. These are the voyages of Cooking Around the World ... To boldly cook what no one has cooked before.

Facing the facts, though, it can be quite challenging to cook something that no one has cooked before. A lot of people are cooking a lot of wonderful things around the world and many a thing has be done before ... mainly.

No worries, though! I didn't really plan to do anything like that. In fact, very often I just prepare things I have done before (and others of course). Maybe there is just a slight change of amounts or ingredients or something else.

Well, that line of thought is not getting to far.

It was time for pizza again. The main things were ready to go. I wanted to have half semolina and half strong baking flour for the dough amounting to 500 g of flour combined with 300 ml of water and 7 g of dried yeast, a bit of olive oil, sugar and salt.

OK, clear this up a bit. The flour goes into a bowl with a pinch of salt. The 300 ml of water get the dried yeast, oil and sugar. So far so good. Well, I didn't have 250 g of semolina left. No worries, just take a bit more of the other flour. Salt, and ready!

Now pour the water with the yeast to the flour and ... have a real wet dough, nearly swimming. What's wrong? I always use 300 ml of warm water. Hm, mixed it up and filled water until the 300 marker for flour ... so it must have been about 600 ml of water. A bit confused today, aren't we?

So, simply add flour until the dough gets fine ... yes, and well, some more yeast. Fine, we saved that, time for the dough to rise and to get the thoughts on the sauce for the pizza.

We start off with frying some sliced garlic in olive oil and throw in some basil leaves later. Then only a 400 ml tin of tomatoes and some extra water, bring to the boil and then simmer for some time.

Why not use the time for a change and bring down some rubbish. Said and done. Oh, let's get a new bag for rubbish. There we have a new roll of bags. Get one. Hm, strange, the bag has to openings ... useless! What about the next? Two openings! The next? Two openings ... all of them. Great!

Oh, what is that over there? Why is it that the door of the freezer is slightly open? Oh, oh! That was not on purpose. Let's think ... it must be like that for three days now. Have a closer look. It seems like the meat must be defrosted ... for some time now ... and all the other things. To cut things at least a bit shorter ... most of it for the bin and mopping up some water and cleaning up the freezer.

I decided only three small chocolate cakes could be saved and the thing I had put in three days ago ... (oh, that's how it happened ...). Scotty, beam me up! It gets to frustrating down here! So after working some time on that ... yes, the tomato sauce was still going and reducing itself towards nothingness or worse. Save! Turn it off and remove it from the heat.

Take a few breaths. We just wanted to have some pizza. So let's get on with it. The dough had enough time. Roll it out and top it with some lovely things. We have here this sauce ... kind of. We put some slices of chorizo and mozzarella on it. There on the windowsill are also these nice chillies. Some already have turned red. Get some of those. Taste check! Hm, just taste like normal peppers, not really hot. Put them on anyway. By the way, the sauce couldn't be finished properly and so I discovered, before it was too late, that it could need some seasoning. Done!

Finish the pizza with some olive oil and dried oregano and bake it at highest heat possible for 15 minutes. At least that worked with no further incidents. 

Now there is some dough left (the water and flour thing). What do we do with it? Do some bread. 

As we see it, life is not always smooth sailing. However, it's not the cards you get that matters, but how you manage to play with them. Well, I managed to write that up here ... somehow. I only hope there are no further surprises for me in the coming days ... Well, then: "May you live long and prosper!"