Die Hard with a Vengeance and ... a Zucchini Dream Salad

Yes, I'm still here, still healthy and alive. But then again, so you might have guessed. Right, I haven't been around here much, lately. However, it will be very hard to get rid of me completely. You never know, when I might pop up again.

While I am already here, we could also try to do something useful. I hope it doesn't feel like a vengeance to you. As I choose this for the title of this blog post, in fact, I'm not quite sure where we do have the vengeance here. After all, I'm not really the vengeful type.

Maybe the vengeance results from the other side. Me looking to much at food on the Internet and getting greedy about cooking more again, there had to be consequences. Alternatively, there might be some other explanation as to what happened to me. I will tell you in a jiffy ...

These days I have the custom of getting up early, like shortly after 5 am and even on the weekends I just make it to 6 am or a tiny bit more. Last night, though, sleep didn't like me that much. My brain - yes, there is one - was going back and forth, back and forth, back and ... I guess you get it. Where was it going? Exactly! Food! I kind of dreamt about what to have for breakfast. I wanted eggs and I wanted to do something with zucchini.

From this there resulted my zucchini dream salad ...

As the brain carefully had prepared everything during the night, it was a sure and quick thing to get the salad up and running and being eaten. Here some more details ...

Ingredients (for one person):

110 g shavings of zucchini

2 hard boiled eggs, quartered

6 black olives, cut into three pieces

4 brazil nuts, chopped up

A little bit of lemon juice and olive oil

Salt, pepper, chilli flakes

Grated parmesan

Method:

Yes, here we go. Use a potato peeler to get the shavings of the zucchini. If you like - and that is what I should have done, but didn't - shave off some more zucchini than mentioned in the ingredients.

In a bowl dress up the zucchini with salt, pepper, lemon juice and olive oil. Then arrange on a plate together with the eggs and the pieces of black olives. Sprinkle over the chopped up nuts for the crunch. In fact, use other nuts, if you want to.

To finish off, you can sprinkle over some extra olive oil. Grate over the parmesan and season with some chilli flakes.

Then ... dig in ...

As I mentioned in the outset, I had the salad for breakfast, but naturally, you can have it anytime. It has round about 500 kcal and has its good portion of protein and of course some good fats. So, no worries!

Did you have a similar experience before, like 'dreaming' about a dish that you wanted to cook. I hope you didn't loose too much sleep because of that. Anyway, it didn't do me anything bad. I still felt fine during the day and didn't have to fight fatigue.

I hope you liked my little zucchini dream salad. If you just toss all the ingredients together quickly you have a ... yes, right ... quick meal.

Do you have some recipes like that? What do you prefer for breakfast? Do you have salad for breakfast sometimes? Or strange things?

Thank you for stopping by and thank you for your precious time you invested for reading this little blog post right to this point.

Now I will go on and live free but not ...

Arroz a la Cubana

Why did I waste another two hours of my life? Do you know this feeling? Maybe you started watching a movie and thought you had to finish it only to recognise that it really wasn't worth it. In fact the movie was really stupid and not that entertaining as you hoped at the outset. It could be that it started out good, but then it has an absolutely unexpected useless end and you feel empty taking nothing away from this experience. I'm sure you know this feeling. Have you watched any really disappointing movies lately?

The feeling can even get worse when you apply it to watching series. You devote time to watch a few episodes or even an entire season. Maybe you even enjoy watching it only to be faced with the fact that they are going to cancel the series after the first season. Now you are never going to find out if they really will catch John or if they are going to safe the world or whatever ...

For that part, sadly, I have some experiences. Do you, too?

On the other hand, with watching food shows you are not so much in danger. They make you hungry, give you some inspiration and maybe even make you a bit adventurous. As to that, one of my favourite series is the show 'Somebody feed Phil' on Netflix. Do you have any favourite shows that involve food?

Besides that, I always love a good food and cooking movie. Thinking about it right now, I would say that my favourite one, right now, is 'Kiss the Cook', although ... thinking too much of it, right now, I want a cubano with this crispy bread, the meat filling, the cheese melting in your mouth and ... sadly that's not going to happen. 

That leaves me with my memories of our last trip to the US where we had some cubanos. Strangely I'm just finding out that I didn't take any photos of them, although we had some even at the day of the cubano in New York. Sometimes, this world is really strange.

That could easily lead us to whip up a cubano and write about it right here and right now, but that is not going to happen either. It's not that I didn't try it before or that I will not try it again. However, that would be another story.

Today's story is more simple, although it still has Cuba in it: Arroz a la cubana, something like rice Cuban style. 

Well, you don't really have to call it like that. You could just call it rice with fried eggs, just that simple. But what's the fun in that. You could make a beef stew and call it beef stew, but it just sounds better if you call it bœuf bourguignon. Another example, you could whip up a salad and call it mixed salad or ... for the fun of it ... call it anti-rabbit salad with honey mustard dressing.

I guess you get the idea. That being said, let's get cooking.

Ingredients

Cooked rice

Fried eggs

2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

2 medium red onions, finely chopped

1 green bell pepper, finely chopped

4 medium tomatoes, finely chopped

Olive oil

Coriander or parsley (optional)

Method

As the list of ingredients suggests we are not going hardcore here. Just cook the rice at your gusto and fry the eggs like you fancy them.

Then we just concentrate on the tomato sauce. Get some olive oil going in your pan. Toss in the onions and the garlic and let them catch some colour. Can you smell it? Do you love the smell of garlic being slowly fried in the pan? I do.

Then add the bell pepper and the tomatoes and let it all come together. The tomatoes should have enough liquid for the sauce. In case not, just add a tiny bit of water. 

If you want or have or like, you can add some chopped up coriander or parsley. Around here coriander is not always easy to get your hands on, sadly. But if I have it I would always add it.

Once all is finished you can plate up, although this is a bit of useless thing to say, more or less. Why would you plate up, if you haven't finished?!

Again, if you want or have or like, you can place some avocado on the side or some cooked or fried plantains. Just as you fancy.

In fact, this dish is something you can plate up anytime as an emergency. Here you have a lot of things you usually have in stock at home ... well I do. You could also use tinned tomatoes instead of fresh tomatoes. 

Here we have come to the end of this post and I hope you don't have to say at the end of reading this post: Why did I waste this time? Well, at least it didn't take you two hours reading it.

On the other hand, if you think, oh what a shame it's already over again. Just stay a little bit longer. Leave a comment. Tell us what your favourite food movie or series is. Do you have an emergency meal? Maybe you have some more examples of dishes getting fancy names or ... as you want.

Thank you for being here and spending some time visiting this humble blog!

See you when I see you!

Travelling to St. Louis and Gooey Butter Cake

Now that went well, did it? Rather not! Or did it? Anyway, a lot depends on your attitude. As to that I rather have a negative one, although I am trying my best  to get rid of it. On that thought, as long as you are still alive and well, you should be happy and consider things to be well.
As to the global picture ... well, this isn't the place nor the time to expound this. After all, this blog isn't called "Problems Around the World", but rather "Cooking Around the World". For that, right here, right now, I am not available for talking about what is going on in this crazy world ... and I don't mean good crazy.
Talking about good crazy would bring us a bit closer to the style of this blog. You haven't read anything good crazy lately around here. Well, that's not my fault, is it?
That won't get us anywhere, looking for the guilty one, who's fault it is. Rather we want to look ahead and concentrate on getting out something positive.
On that note, let me ask about your opinion regarding butter. Do you like it? How would you care for extensive use of it in a cake and then ... call it gooey butter cake?
I don't know about you, but for my ears this has a quite positive ring to it
Now it seems that the US city of St. Louis, Missouri, seems to be a bit famous for its gooey butter cake. Well, there is only one way to find out about it. Does this already sound like bullwhip and fedora hat again to you?
So come along as we not only cook (or rather bake) around the world, but as we actually travel around the world ...

A Day out, Flowers, Caribbean and Dominican Tortilla

Finally we got the sunny weather. If you combine this with a day off and time to spare this makes for a good opportunity to have a day out. Accordingly we decided to take the train to Hannover, Germany, and look around of what is to see, buy some special food items and eat something special.

Arriving at the train station gives you the chance to have a snack right away, so we are having roasted pork in a bun. There is a place as well, that sells roasted pork in a bun nearby where we live, but that isn't half as good as the one at the train station of Hannover with soft onions on top of the meat. You could easily fill up on that, but ... I think it's better to leave some space for more.
For me, visiting Hannover means to go and see the Herrenhäuser Gärten. The gardens are really beautiful and you can enjoy them a lot. On this day it was quite quiet, if you don't count the workers. There are some days they have special events there and you can see a lot more. For the time being we enjoyed this quiet time, although it was that quiet, that they even turned off the water. If you want to see the grand fountain of water, which can shoot up the water even over 60 metres you have to be there before high noon or after 3 p.m.

Originally we only wanted to see the great garden, but the ticket came as a package with the mountain garden and the greenhouses as well. It's worth a visit as well. I would really enjoy to have some of those plants at home, too, but ...

Good there wasn't even a tiny cloud in the sky that day. So we could enjoy the gardens to the full ... with some bottles full of water.

So far regarding the cultural part. Of course you could do a lot more, but if you are walking around all the time and want to do a wee bit of shopping as well, the options are limited.
After walking around all day and buying a lot of chillies, platanos (plantains) and guandules (pigeon peas), it was time for more than a snack ... We set out for a place called Boca Chica. It's named after a place in the Dominican Republic. As we don't have the chance to fly every year to the Caribbean, this was the best we could do for now. The weather was right and they had a nice terrace where to enjoy the meal outside. We started with a mixed plate of starters ...

There was a lot going on on the plate: tostones (fried plantain), boquerones, aubergine salsa, plantain salad, yucca salad, mango, chicken, calamari and Dominican tortilla.
The Dominican tortilla is a bit like the Spanish tortilla, but instead of potatoes you use rice. This is a very good opportunity to use up leftover rice. Simple mix it with some eggs and if you like to get a bit more taste out of it add shopped up coriander or peppers. Then just fry it as small cakes. 
Next up the main dish with some fish ...

I decided to go for parrot fish as I never had it before. Seems quite healthy to me, but I still have to work a bit on my tastebuds regarding seafood. Well, that's not so easy around here as we don't have the chance to have it too often as no sea is nearby.
The rice had some guandules (pigeon peas) and that was something I had for the first time as well.
Something I didn't have for the first time was postre (dessert) ...

I have to try this one as home myself, if we ever get hands on ripe plantains around here. Well, it's not too fancy, but it makes for a solid dessert.
Anyway, it was a luvly day out we enjoyed very much. I hope I get my hands on some good and delicious cooking again soon.

Millenium Falcon Salted Caramel Cake

May the fourth be with you!

Again another year has rolled passed. While I don’t care much about any kind of holiday and special cooking and baking for it, I like May the 4th – Star Wars Day, well I like the pun on the phrase “May the force be with you!” Fine, I liked the movies, too.

But that’s it. Ah, well, when I have the chance I bake something … and I reckon, I will go to the cinema to watch episode VIII in December.

However, I am not going to send a model of a spacecraft into space in order to get some attention. Hm …!?! Maybe I could sent a cake of a spacecraft into space …

Anyway, during the weekend I was talking to a friend and he suggested I could maybe make a Death Star cake. Nah, that would be too much work. What about some cupcakes. We arranged some batter and added green food colouring. After baking, the idea was to add some marzipan to make them look like Yoda heads. Well, the cupcakes didn’t turn out that green and the homemade marzipan not that good for modelling, although it tasted very yummy due to the addition of Amaretto.

Then I got an idea for May the 4th …

A rough sketch of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars that would help me the next day to build a Millennium Falcon cake.

We would need a sponge and some sort of filling or topping. I did some more pondering and researching …

I wanted something with caramel and cream cheese. A quick look at the basics again for achieving it and we are off to shopping. Maybe a marzipan cover would be lovely.

Shopping ready! Now, let’s go for it …

Ingredients:
Sponge:
225 g butter
225 g sugar
4 eggs
225 g (self-rising) flour
1 tsp baking powder
Vanilla extract
Pinch of salt
Salted Caramel Sauce:
200 g brown sugar
85 g butter
120 ml cream
Vanilla extract
1 tsp fleur de sel (or sea salt)
Buttercream:
225 g butter
115 g cream cheese
Vanilla extract
The salted caramel sauce
400 g icing sugar

Method:
Don’t worry, the sponge is just a standard sponge as you might use for a Victoria Sponge cake as well. So, if you don’t feel like Star Wars, have a normal round one, but …

We feel like Star Wars now. After all, John Williams is assisting us through the whole process. So turn up the volume of your speakers. Yes, it would be best this post comes with a soundtrack,but if you want to hear anything, you have to put on the music yourself.

Fine, “Bake we must!”

Take a bowl, add the butter and the sugar for the sponge and get whisking … until it’s fluffy.

Yeah, I don’t know whether that is fluffy, but that’s the way I’m gonna use it. Crack one egg into it. Beat it. Crack another egg. Beat it again. Next egg. More beating. Last egg. Finish beating. Add the vanilla extract.

Now sift in the flour and the baking powder. Don’t forget a pinch of salt. Incorporate everything to get a smooth batter.

For the baking the oven is heated up to 180 °C.

Line a baking tray with baking parchment and spread the batter on it …

Like this it goes into the oven for 25 minutes.

At this point you could be tempted to start the salted caramel sauce. Don’t do it! see where you can tidy up things while the sponge is baking.

Remove the sponge from the oven and give it time to cool down.

Now you can feel free to start the salted caramel sauce. Get yourself a saucepan and add the brown sugar and cover it all with water. Place the remaining ingredients for the sauce nearby …

Put on the heat … full power … energise!

The sauce seems a bit tricky. Obviously, you can’t see when the sugar starts to get an amber colour, for it already has such. Hear it is, where you need to use the force, you need to feel it. Well, you don’t have to close your eyes for the next step, but if you want it, go for it.

Reach out with your senses and feel the caramel getting ready as the liquid is bubbling away. You will sense a change in the bubbling or a tremor in the force …

When that happens, reduce the heat from full to medium, get a wooden spoon into your right hand … eh … or left hand, if you prefer that. Start stirring.

Throw in the butter. Stir and watch it melt away.

Pour in the cream and watch it distribute, stirring all the time.

Add the vanilla extract and the fleur de sell (sea salt), while you continue stirring.

At this point, I turned off the heat and continued stirring with the remaining heat until the caramel sauce stopped bubbling. Then set it aside for cooling.

Back to the sponge. I cut it into half and placed one piece above the other to follow my Millennium Falcon blueprint to cut it out of the sponge.

Hm … it looked … okay …

That will do. In order to be able to proceed here, we need the buttercream ready.

Another bowl, some more whisking and we are ready …

Add the butter and the cream cheese to the bowl and whisk it together. There goes another bit of vanilla extract.

The salted caramel sauce isn’t that hot anymore, so we can spoon it into the bowl as well and mix it in thoroughly.

Bit by bit we add the 400 g icing sugar. That sounds like awful a lot. No worries! Combine it all well. Ah, that looks like awful a lot of buttercream. Fine, we are going to use it all up anyway.

Spread a layer of … let’s say one third of it … on the bottom sponge …

Carefully place the top sponge … eh … on top of it. No big deal, huh?

Use some of the sponge cuttings to create a satellite dish, a round object placed on a wedge.

It’s time to use up that remaining buttercream and cover the whole cake in it. Give it your best to get the cream on. If you have any cream in undesired places, I’m afraid you have to remove it and eat it up. Well, that’s what I did.

Hm, you get an idea of the Millennium Falcon at this point, but we still can do better with some chocolate buttons and a bit chocolate from a decorating pen …

That’s it. In order for my cake decorating skills to improve, I reckon I have to do a few more cakes. Well … if I get any ideas, that is.

When I was younger … much younger … I never had a Millennium Falcon model, but now I have a Millennium Falcon cake and … the only thing can do with it, is eat it up. However, considering the over 500 g of sugar and the amount of sugar in it, I guess, I have to enlist the help of others to deal with the cake. Otherwise I’ll have a BIG problem.

So, if you are i the neighbourhood anytime soon …

Well, I had a model of a TIE-fighter once. I already thought of making some TIE-fighters with cookies and marzipan or even a marzipan X-Wing, but … that would have been a lot harder.

Speaking of marzipan, there was no room for a marzipan cover here, so I definitely have to make some more cake involving that soon.

For the time being, though, I wish you a lovely day and … if you feel like it … share some of your Star Wars Day creations in below in the comment section.

Otherwise, have a delicious Salted Caramel cake …

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Dinner with Bills

Here we go with another part in the bill-series before the month of May comes to its end. It was long due anyway. While I have had at least one more dinner dish from Bills Sydney Food before I already wrote about it under different circumstances. There was for example the dish: Prawn and Chilli Linguine …

Well, if you follow the link, of course you find the old post. However, we like to go on with something more current, although it is pasta again.

The dish is called Fresh Tomato Pasta. The aim was to get as much taste out of the tomatoes as possible. So best it would be to have as best tomatoes as you can get.

There is not much fuss about it. Apart from the tomatoes and the pasta, you have just some sea salt, olive oil, red wine vinegar, juice and zest of a lemon, red chilli, black pepper and some basil leaves. It tasted fresh indeed.

For sure I will make that one again … well, I have all the ingredients at home most of the time, although the tomatoes could be a bit better, since they are not in full swing yet.

The other dinner dish I tried is not for the main course, but rather for pudding: Pavlova. I will not start this background discussion regarding the origin of pavlova again. After all, that is not what this is about.

Well, that looks already lovely and … was not that difficult to accomplish. However, it still has to go into the oven. The challenge is to have it over one hour in the oven at 120 °C, get it firm on the outside and don’t let it brown. Hm, eh, well, judge for yourself …

That was the best I could do. Maybe you can notice the colour difference in comparison with the whipped cream. Whatever the case, it tasted delicious with the pulp of the passionfruit.

Now that was the dinner part I tried so far, now I could start again with breakfast thing. Besides that, I should get cooking again.

If I remember it right, I kind of challenged myself to try as many recipes from Bills Sydney Food as possible. Eh, that doesn’t sound like a challenge at all. Ah, no worries, I don’t need a challenge, it’s just about having a bit of fun …

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Spinach and Feta Tart

I am really feeling great. Life is beautiful, and so is my lovely wife. Surely I am feeling wonderful and in part it is also because I stick to the three pillars of healthy living: regular exercise, health diet and sufficient sleep.

Sometimes we tend not to belief in simple advice, but … usually there is only one way to find out: try it!

Accordingly, in order to find out, whether you like my dish for today, you simply have to try it: Spinach and Feta Tart. 

Well, there was some kind of pondering going on in my head, whether I should call it Spinach and Feta Tart or Feta and Spinach Tart. Looking at the ingredients, there would have been other options, too, like Spinach, Feta and Pine-nut Tart. Continuing from that one, yet more options would have been possible: Feta, Spinach and Pine-nut Tart or Pine-nut, Spinach and Feta Tart or Pine-nut, Feta and Spinach Tart. Then there is the option of abbreviating things: SF-Tart, FS-Tart, FSP-Tart, PSF-Tart, PFS-Tart, SFP-Tart or SPF-Tart … and we haven’t even mentioned there is garlic involved as well, nor is there any hint towards the kind of pastry used.

Nothing of that doesn’t really matter, so we stick with Spinach and Feta Tart. After all those are the main heroes. Here we go with the recipe …

Ingredients:
400 g puff pastry
Knob of butter
1 onion
2 cloves of garlic
500 g spinach
1 tsp. nutmeg
200 ml cream
200 g feta
80 g pine-nuts
2 eggs
Salt and pepper

Method:Lightly oil your tart tin. I just rub it all over with butter, fine only the inside of course. Then line it with the puff pastry. It could look somewhat like this …

In a large pan, melt the knob of butter and then add the finely chopped onion and garlic. Fry them until translucent. Get your fresh spinach ready and wilt it down in the pan, even bit by bit when your pan can’t hold it at the same time. Season with nutmeg.

Get yourself a large bowl and mix the crumbled feta, cream, pine-nuts and the two eggs. Once the spinach is ready, incorporate the contents of the pan in the bowl as well. Season with salt and pepper.

All that goes now onto the puff pastry and then into the pre-heated oven at 180 °C for about 30 minutes. Honestly, I always try every dishes at 180 °C for 30 minutes. That’s my favourite baking temperature and time. In between I check, though, if it’s necessary to reduce or extend the time. Once the Spinach and Feta Tart got some nice colour to it, I reckon, we are ready to remove it from the oven.

It already has been a while since I did it and I nearly lost the recipe since I forgot to take notes, but since I have been rejuvenated recently, it worked well with my brain.

At this point, you just need to slice up the tart, serve it and enjoy it.

That should be possible. I don’t know what you think, but the combination of spinach and feta somehow sounds Greek to me. Just a feeling. If you like to give it a more Greek touch, you should use a few sheets of filo pastry instead of just normal puff pastry. Optionally you could also drink an Ouzo or two while preparing it. It’s entirely up to you, though.

Anyway, dig in …

See you another time then. I only need to watch now, how this rejuvenation thing is working out, how far it will take me back and, whether, it will result even in doing some stupid things …

Bacon and Asparagus Carbonara

Yes, it’s really happening again. I go through the shop and see vegetables and fruits and other ingredients and I get already ideas what to do with them. Wonderful!

However, when you go after every idea you end up in buying more than you can manage to eat in a reasonable amount or amount of time.

Anyway, this time it was asparagus and mushrooms. As for the mushrooms they still have to wait until tomorrow. Maybe, they go for the breakfast, for even as I am writing now another idea comes up for the other half of the asparagus.

Therefore we are having bacon and asparagus carbonara, for we all know that asparagus and bacon go well together. Yes, originally I wanted to have asparagus wrapped in bacon, but … hey … why not try something different.

As bacon, cream, egg and cheese make a good carbonara, why not toss everything together and go for it.

Here we go …

Ingredients:
A bit of olive oil
200 g green asparagus
100 g stripes of streaky bacon
A few leaves of sage
Salt and pepper
200 g crème fraîche
2 eggs
Hand full of grated Parmesan
Pasta

Method:
Cut the asparagus into smaller, bit sized pieces and the bacon into smaller stripes.

Heat up a pan with a bit of olive oil and throw in the asparagus and bacon. Let it all get some colour. Later you can add the finely chopped sage and a bit of pepper.

Meanwhile you cook your pasta according to the instructions on the package or … as you have done your own fresh pasta … as long as they need.

Still meanwhile you get yourself a bowl to mix in the crème fraîche, the eggs, the Parmesan and some salt and pepper.

Pasta ready? Get a bit of cooking water into the pan and rinse away the remaining cooking water. Toss the pasta with the asparagus and bacon and take the pan from the heat.

Mix the egg mixture with the pasta and serve your meal …

Grate over some extra Parmesan and maybe sprinkle a bit of olive oil over it.

Enjoy!

It was very delicious. I was pleased with the end result and for sure will have some more of it.

Panko Fried Brie with Lavender Mushrooms

While the weather is not as it’s best these days, we already had some quite pleasant days.

It’s best not to expect perfection all the time, because you are only going to be disappointed. For sure, you don’t want that. Rather concentrate on the small things of beauty always around you, appreciate that.

Then you can find enjoyment more often …

… like in a quick and simple meal with not much fuss about it. Among the simple things I enjoy is cheese. I wouldn’t want to imagine a life without cheese. If I would have to choose between cheese and meat – which one to go without, I would select the meat to go without rather than the cheese.

But, I don’t have to choose. However, for the following meal I have chosen to go without meat and with cheese … with Brie to be more precise. So we are having Panko Fried Brie with Lavender Mushrooms …

Somehow I like lavender, so I try to look for new ways to carefully introduce it into cooking. See, whether it works today.

Ingredients:
Olive oil
200 g mushrooms
2 cloves of garlic
Salt, chilli
Juice of half a lemon
1 tsp. lavender buds
Knob of butter
1 Brie (200 g)
1 egg
Panko (or other breadcrumbs)
Rosemary

Method:
Use two pans to get both elements ready at the same time. I used a griddle pan for the Brie.

Well then, how do we go about?

Heat up some olive oil for the mushrooms.

Prepare the brie by tossing it around in the whisked up egg. Next you have the panko ready together with some salt and finely chopped rosemary. Try as best as you can to coat the Brie with it.

The mushrooms start rolling in the pan. Season them with salt and a bit of chilli if you like.

The Brie is in the other pan. You turn it, when you think the time is right after a few minutes. If it starts oozing away in your pan, you’ve lost and evidently waited too long.

Add the lemon juice and the lavender to the mushrooms and let them continue in the heat. Finish it off with a knob of butter.

When you have done everything right, both the Brie and the mushrooms are finished at about the same time. So, serve it up …

Have some bread on the side and … whatever makes you happy. Fine, here we have another use of lavender in cooking. As I felt, the taste was good and I enjoyed it.

Do you enjoy going for a walk. I hope to walk … eh … well, a lot this year. 

Anyway, have a lovely day! Keep smiling!

F-Game Toad in a Hole

Lately, around here I am not giving my a-game. I’m not sure, what it would be like, though. No worries!

Anyway, life is like this: sometimes you loose and sometimes the others win. Nah, it's not that bad. Sometimes you simply have other things to do.

Therefore we go right away into food, for at least here we know, that it will go to a meal. Leftovers! There were those pork sausages in my fridge, those tiny ones. Here they are called Nürnberger. I used some of them for my English breakfast some time ago, but what to do with the rest of them.

Now I know, why I put all those knowledge into my head. At some point a bell will ring and I know what to do. So, toad in the hole. I never had. Therefore I never made it before. I now, it involves sausages and … something else.

Now I give you my F-game Toad in the Hole …

 Well, the F-game in this recipe doesn’t refer to it being rubbish. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even think about putting it up here.

No! It’s time for Lord Feta to strike back …

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 tsp mustard powder
120 g flour
100 ml milk
Some parsley, finely chopped
Some sage, finely chopped
Salt, pepper
100 g bacon, preferably 10 slices
10 small pork sausages
200g feta

Method:Heat up your oven to 180 °C.

Get yourself an ovenproof dish, 20 x 20 cm will do for this amount of ingredients. Put it aside.

Now get a bowl and mix in it the eggs, mustard powder, flour, milk, parsley and sage. Season with salt and pepper. Pour that mixture into the ovenproof dish.

What a coincidence, the amount of bacon was just enough for the number of sausages I had left. Go for it and wrap one slice of bacon around one little sausages and arrange in the batter in the ovenproof dish.

All done? Proceed with the feta. You can either crumble it into the ovenproof dish or cut it into cubes and scatter them over the sausages in the dish.

Anyhow, put into the oven for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, you have sufficient time to whip up your onion gravy and get whatever vegetables you want to put on the side ready.

For sure, you have a good recipe for onion gravy and know quite perfectly well how to do it. No?

I took a pan and melted some butter at low heat, tossed in the onion rings of a large onion and let things go until the toad in the hole is almost finish.

To complete the sauce, season with salt and pepper, add a tablespoon of flour and a generous splash of sherry. Briefly cook so the sauce thickens.

The finished dish from the oven could look somewhat like that or when you have a closer look, it will look a bit like this …

Ah, that wasn’t really that much closer. Anyway, plate up. With the right amount of vegetables you could even manage to satisfy four people with that, but than you can’t be as generous with the onion gravy as I have …

However, that was only, because I wanted to have fresh gravy for the leftovers another day and maybe enhance the gravy with some mushrooms then.

If, though, you don’t have four people for tea and decide to have a second go, you can have less or no gravy at all …

You could always have some more peas, though.

Whatsoever, I enjoyed it very much. If you want to have a more traditional version of toad in the hole, I guess, you just have to omit the feta.

In case you want to have a vegetarian version, you could omit the bacon and use veggie sausages or use something completely different, but then again, you might get a totally different dish here. So, why then, not cook something completely different.