Just recently I have been to a book flea market and got some old books. Among this was the book Drei Männer im Schnee (Three Men in the Snow) by German writer Erich Kästner. He was born in 1899. The most popular ones of his books are children books, like Emil and the Detectives, which has been translated at least 21 languages. Some of the books were also adapted into films. Maybe you also know the movie The Parent Trap.
Whatsoever, we are not talking about any of the children books, but Three Men in the Snow, which was written in 1934.
Basically it is about a millionaire, who participates in a contest under a false name, wins the second price - a stay in an exquisite hotel. However, he goes there in disguise as a poor person, because he wants to see how they would treat him.
His daughter secretly calls the hotel to 'warn' them, but a mix-up occurs and they take the first winner of the contest as the millionaire and treat him very good and the real millionaire rather bad. Anyway, it's a funny book.
Well, we are not going to concentrate too much more on the book, but rather get cooking. The favourite dish of the millionaire is Nudeln mit Rindfleisch (Pasta with beef). There are not given any details in the book as to what it's like, but it reminded me of a dish my mom used to cook in my youth. So I took that as a guide and added the things I felt needed to be in there. It's nothing to fancy, but it tasted delicious.
Ingredients:
500 g pasta (Fussilli)
500 g beef, cut into cubes
Some flour
Some oil
250 g mushrooms (whatever you can get), sliced
500 ml beef stock
2 tsp. sweet paprika
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
A knob or two of butter (or more)
A few sprigs of thyme
Salt and pepper
Method:
Really, you can cut the beef in the size you like. Lightly coat the meat with the flour and start browning it in a hot pan with some oil. While you are at it, season with salt, pepper and the sweet paprika. Once the beef is sufficiently browned remove it to a bowl.
Get some more oil into the pan and throw in the mushrooms together with the garlic and start softening them. When you are feeling you are getting there - you already have the lovely smell of garlic - add the leaves of the thyme and a good knob of butter. When the mushrooms are soft and shining lovely remove them from the pan and add them to he bowl with the beef.
Reduce the heat of the pan, add some more oil and another knob of butter into it. Time for the onion to go into the pan and to be softened. After that you can put the beef and the mushrooms back into the pan.
Then add the beef stock and bring everything to the boil. It's time to let things simmer and reduce. You can give it 30 minutes or more. In the end it should be ready together with the pasta.
Do as you wish, mix the pasta with the beef or simply serve the pasta on a plate and add a few ladle full of the beef and mushroom sauce. It's up to you. I thought a salad on the side would be lovely.
By the way, this time I took the photos in the front room instead of in the kitchen. I wanted to see, how things look there. Of course, this is only possible, when the light is right.
I hope you liked the dish. I did. Now let me tell you, why I came to this idea in the first place ...
The lovely Galina from Chez Maximka asked me whether I liked to do a joint reading-cooking challenge with her. What a wonderful idea! So we teamed up this month to go for it and you can join us in this reading and cooking feast.
The idea is to choose a novel, classic or modern, and find a quote about a meal or a dish and then let yourself be inspired by this and recreate this meal or dish in a blog recipe. It would also be very nice, when your post tells us a bit about the book you had in mind and maybe you could even do a quote from the book.
My first idea was something by Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes, but I couldn't find anything about a meal that could be used. Fine, next idea was Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, but here the ingredients for the dishes were a bit too exotic for me. However, some other novels from Jules Verne would do just fine. Then there were also more than one ideas from Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
However, there are endless opportunities, depending of course on what kind of books you read ... and obviously I am not referring to cook books.
I promise you, this will be a totally new experience of your favourite novel to taste and smell the food the characters are having. Well, somehow it's like 3D for books or even better 4D.
We hope, we can count you in. When you do join in, please use the above badge in your post and link back to Galina and me, and either use the link-up tool below or add the url of your post as a comment. Another option would be to email either of us with the link to your post (Galina's email is sasha1703 at yahoo dot com and mine is cookingatworld at yahoo dot co dot uk).
The challenge is on and will come to an end on 30 April 2014.
Galina will Pin all blogs posts taking part in this challenge, as well as RT and Google+. Of course I will RT and Google+ all posts that don't escape my notice.
"Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get." Do you remember the 1994 movie Forrest Gump with Tom Hanks?
Let me tell right away, there are no similarities between Forrest's life and mine, nor are there any parallels in personality. Nevertheless, life is really like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. I for sure didn't expect at the beginning of the week to get this ...
I don't know how many kilograms of plums that are, but it must be about nine million plums. He, he, nine million plums in my home. Well, I'm not 100 % sure of that, but there must be at list nine million plums in Beijing I suppose. However, about that you could ask Katie next month, if you were anywhere near London then.
Anyway, I take up the challenge to use up all those plums before they turn bad. Right, "stupid is as stupid does". Really? We will see about that ...
What do you make of this?
Any clue? What about this?
Is that already better? Do you know any movies, in which Robert Redford, Dan Aykroyd, River Phoenix and Ben Kingsley played a role?
If so, that might take you to one of my favourite films. It was released in 1992. Got it? Yes, the film is called "Sneakers". It has a bit to do with hacking into computer systems. There are not too many effects and bloodshed, but rather cleverly made.
What, though, does it have to do with us and cooking and this blog?
No, I'm not a hacker, although ...
Well, simply move on with another picture ...
Lovely Manu from Cooking Manu came up with a brilliant idea for this month: "L'ingrediente Segreto/The Secret Ingredient". That's were we get to the 'secret'. Two participants were kind of randomly assigned to each other to send over a secret ingredient to prepare something with.
Therefore ... 'no more secrets' ... the ingredient I received was: Latte intero concentrato zuccherato ... that is: sweetened condensed milk.
What to do with it?
I had only one answer: Dulce de Leche. How to do this without blowing up your kitchen or making a real mess, you get some instructions here.
Whatsoever, simply doing this wouldn't suffice ...
... so I combined it with some Cappuccino Muffins.
Let's have a look on how to do that.
Cappucino Muffins with Dulce de Leche
Ingredients:
50 g chopped hazelnuts
100 g sugar
200 g flour (I used wholegrain wheat flour)
2 tsp baking powder
2 tbs instant cappuccino powder
Pinch of salt
2 tsp vanilla extract (or one vanilla pod)
200 ml milk
50 ml oil
1 egg
180 ml dulce de leche
Some chocolate sprinkles, if you care
Method:
We assume that you have your dulce de leche ready. I had just prepared mine in 90 minutes.
Right then, combine the dry ingredients, that is the hazelnuts, sugar, flour, baking powder, cappuccino powder, and salt. Shuffle it through.
Then to the liquidish ingredients in another bowl: the vanilla extract, milk, oil, and egg. Combine it as well, give it a good whisk.
Afterwards, join the dry and the liquidish in one of the bowls and make the muffin batter.
Preheat your oven to 180°C.
Divide your batter for the muffins between 12 muffin 'molds' - whatever you favour to use.
Bake it for about 25 minutes - you know when they are ready.
Allow the muffins to cool down a bit after you removed them from the oven and before you spread on them the dulce de leche.
Finish them with some chocolate sprinkles, if you care.
That's it! No more secrets! I don't know what else you expected in this post ..., whatever secrets to be revealed. Well, honestly? It's not going to happen. It's not the time to reveal any further secrets ... not yet, not yet!
