Sorry, but I have a random pizza for you with potatoes and thyme

Do you know what I don't understand? Arabic. Eh ... honestly? Yes, I do understand a few words and phrases, but I really don't understand Khmer, not even a single word. Stop joking! I don't understand the way English movie or book titles are translated into German. Movies often have a completely different title, although it would be quite funny and understandable to simply translate it. However, the biggest mystery comes to my mind, when I think about a particular cookbook in my collection. It's the number 40 when you count it alphabetically. The book is from Ravinder Bhogal. Maybe you know it. The title is: Cook in Boots. Now I don't know whether you are fluent in German, but the title should be Kochen in Stiefeln. No big deal. You could do that, although it wouldn't sound too lovely. But, hey, now let's have a look at what they made of it. By the way, the book was published by a publishing house called 'Christian'. Fine, that was the reason, why I bought this book in the first place (you know, that's my name). Another reason was, the book was highly reduced. Anyway, originally we wanted to get to the German name of the book. Just repeat, the German name of the book. Wait, here it comes: Love to Cook. A little note on that. I didn't translate the name back into English, but that's the actual name of the book in ... wait ... German, although this is obviously English, too. So, I really don't understand things like that. I don't know, so I really feel more comfortable with the English language and all, although it should be different. I don't know what's wrong with me. Right, obviously a lot of things, but that's not the reason, why you endure reading all this ... eh ... stuff ... no ... things ... no ... ah, forget it, we should be concentrating more on food.
But it wasn't for no reason I mentioned this book. I already hinted to it, it's number 40 of my collection and if you have any idea about the food blogging world, this will connect you to the random recipes challenge from Dom over at Belleau Kitchen.

For the current challenge we have to go to page 40 of the book number 40. That is what we do and what is it that we get? Pizza sauce. So, what is it you have to do, when you get a recipe for pizza sauce? Sorry, I have no idea. Maybe choose another recipe?

Sorry again, I'm not 100 % sure what I did, but on page 41 there was a recipe for a pizza, too. Somehow I couldn't get all the ingredients for the sauce at that time, so I thought, if I do the pizza recipe on the following side, it will rectify everything and things will be good again for my karma. Ah, no such thing in my world. Fine, things will be good. I'm good!

So the next page had a recipe for pizza with potatoes and thyme. Before I get messed up in more details, I show you my uncut version.

Right, that is the pizza just before I cut it for eating. So, that is ... he he he ... indeed the uncut version. I don't know what you expected. 

Again sorry, but I am not sure anymore whether I was supposed to use the pizza sauce with this version of the pizza. I suppose not! However, I did it anyway. At least I used the slices of potatoes, which I blanched first and then mixed with olive oil, garlic anthem before I put it onto the pizza. The dough was just my standard home-made pizza dough.

Additionally to the potatoes with thyme there was some goat's cheese going to ... eh ... yes ... to go onto the pizza. Yes, yes, goat's cheese. Wonderful!

So, finally, standard pizza dough, tomato sauce, slices of potatoes mixed with olive oil, thyme and garlic and goat's cheese. Delicious! Oh, I had no choice, I had to add some mozzarella as well.

Now, here I give you the cut version ...

Apart from all this, I just want to let you know, I am having a Caipirinha right this moment while I write this down .... maybe I slightly confused the measurements of the cachaca and all this, but things will be fine. Oh, right, things will not be fine for Italy in the World Cup for they have missed their chance to be among the last 16. However, I don't want to miss my chance to add an Italian recipe to the Bloggers Around the World World Cup challenge. Accordingly, besides for adding this post to the random recipes challenge this as well goes to the Bloggers Around the World challenge. 

Well, you don't know exactly what I am doing here at this time of the day writing up a weird post for my blog, so neither do I. Therefore, before any major tragedy occurs, we finish it all here.

Read-Cook-Eat: Drei Männer im Schnee: Pasta with Beef

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. 

One way or the other Red Hokkaido Squash Soup

From what I gather by looking around, it's time for squashes and pumpkins. Really? Yes, I would say so. What do we get out of it? For example, I bought a Red Hokkaido squash. Well, I didn't have to go that far and travel to Japan to get it. From it we can get vitamin A and vitamin C, calcium, potassium and iron to mention just a few. Furthermore it is low in calories and sodium. That is, if you are caring about nutrition facts and ... eh ... calories. However, I guess we have to mess around with the calories anyway. But at least you can say, the calories didn't come from the squash.
We are going to have some soup. One day I was invited by some friends ... eh ... just a moment, I invited myself and ... we had some pumpkin soup. Some time later I tried to recreate that soup without having the recipe. 

I may have gotten it slightly wrong, but I will give you some alternative ideas, too. So you can have it one way or the other ...

Encore français - aligot et bœuf bourguignon for #BloggersAroundTheWorld

The warm up is in the past. Now we are ready for the real thing. 
Some time ago I was invited by a friend, who actually is from France. According to him, a usual meal would consist of apéritif - not necessarily some alcohol to drink, although a pastis would work for me - then a salad or soup, followed by the main course. After that we would be ready for the cheese course and we can close with dessert, of course. Really? Maybe a calvados fits in to round everything up.
I don't need to mention, that baguette and red wine would be part of the deal as well, although the alcohol is not compulsory.
Now I would love to present you such a meal. 
Pastis - no big deal. Well, it doesn't have to be the apéritif, because we have aligot.
Many moons ago ... or month ... I read the book Encore Provence written by Peter Mayle. Maybe you have heard of him, or read something he wrote, or even saw a movie.
Whatsoever, in this very book, he mentioned something called aligot. This originates from the Latin word aliquid, that means something. The story behind it has something to do with monks, but I don't want to bore you with any more details.
This aligot contains two important things: garlic and cheese. In fact a large part in it is cheese. So ... naturellement ... I was destined to try it. In other words, the moment I read about it, I knew I would make it one day. So, apart from the garlic and the cheese you need tomatoes, sour cream or the like, salt and pepper, and patience.

To get a bit more detailed, I used the following:
400 g tinned tomatoes, chopped
250 g cheese (one that is a good melting kind)
100 g créme fraîche
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Salt and pepper

Let's do it, or at least have a try:
Before we start, just a brief note. The cheese that would be used in the original one is tome d'Aubrac, that is fresh cheese from the region where this dish comes from.
First of all cook the tomatoes. If you haven't chopped them properly, you can also puree them afterwards.
Once done, add the remaining ingredients and start stirring ... and keep stirring ... stirring ... stirring ... stirring ... stirring.
Hopefully, it will thicken at one point. However, if it gets so thick, you can't stir anymore or even get out the spoon, things went terribly wrong and according to Peter, you should have a glass of wine and start again.
However, I was on the safe side and ... lost patience ... and consequently had to be satisfied with a slightly thinner version.

That, in no way deminished the joy of this meal. To you give you a fuller picture ...

Already we feel a bit satisfied. Still, we need to think about the main course. That would be bœuf bourguignon.
In fact for that we have to go a few hours back in time, for you have to start this well in advance. At least that is what I heard. Before that day, I didn't cook it yet.
I had to enlist the aid of some cookbooks among which is the well known Mastering the Art of French cooking. I took that as a rough guide, combining it with other information I read. Anyway, I had to adjust to the amount of food I would need in the end or respectively on what I had in stock.
Here we go for the main course ...

Bœuf Bourguignon

• Melt 50 g of butter in a pan at a medium heat.
• Cut 100 g of bacon into stripes and fry them in the butter. 
• After that remove them to a casserole type dish.
• Have 500 g of beef, that is cut into about 2 cm sized chunks. Pat the meat dry with ... something.
• Then fry the meat in the pan, so it gets colour from all sides.
• Pre-heat your oven to 160°C.
• Remove the meat as well and ... have a guess ... yes, put it into the casserole type dish and reduce the heat for the pan
• Now you have two medium sized onions ready, which you more or less have chopped finely ... as fine as you like.
• Soften the onions in the pan.
• While that happens add a few tbs of flour to the casserole type dish to coat the meat and then put the dish into the oven for about ten minutes.

 

• Get the dish out and repeat the flour thingy.
• By now your onions should be ready. You can turn of the heat for the pan.

• The onions go the well known casserole type dish. Together with the onions you add a few sprigs of rosemary and thyme, a bay leaf and two peeled and crushed cloves of garlic.

• Now we top that up with 300 ml of red wine and 300 ml of beef stock.

• Now cover your casserole type dish and put it into the oven for about three hours until the meat is really tender.
• Just before that time is over you could prepare some potatoes to eat together with your bœuf bourguignon.

• When you think your meat is ready ... it is not. Remove the cover from your dish and keep it for another 30 minutes in the oven.
• Then you are ready to plate up and eat the main course.

I hope you enjoy it! I did! It was very delicious. That would bring us then to our next course ...
If you feel you already had enough cheese at the beginning, this must be an illusion. For sure there is a little bit room for some Camembert, brie or another cheese ... Why not!
What's for pudding?
Well, I felt like I should have a chocolate souffle or some crêpes, but honestly? Yes, I didn't feel like preparing them or even eating some more food. I already had quite some share from the bœuf bourguignon. So I have to do a chocolate souffle at some other time.
Still, I hope you enjoyed this small (?) French meal for Bloggers Around the World.

If you haven't done so already, why not join us on this food trip around the world ...

I freak out or ... rather have some Puff Pastry Courgette Tarts

I had a beautiful day yesterday ... not!
Anyway, no need to complain. All settled! I came home kind of late-ish, moved around some furniture in the living room just for the wind of change, went to the kitchen to do some cooking for one hour or even more and ... had some chilli sin carne, but instead with about 10 hot chillies. Well, that should have settled things ...
But now there is another day and lots of time to do lovely things, digging a bit in memories and preparing some nice puff pastry courgette and bacon tarts.

Those are lovely as a snack or an entrée. Well, you will figure that out by yourself anyway.
Well, before we can start, I just like to mention something else.
Two other things lately happened in my life. I started reading a book about food photography and I found my old camera. I hope I will be able to work with that a bit.
Let's get the puff pastry and other things ready and start cooking or baking or ... ah ... just do it.

Ingredients:
250 g sour cream (yeah, we could call them Puff Pastry Sour Cream Courgette and Bacon Tarts, if you prefer that)
125 g cubes of bacon (or goats cheese for a vegetarian version)
Leaves of 3 sprigs of thyme
Pepper
1 small courgette, cut into small cubes
1 egg
275 g of puff pastry (or in whatever size they sell it)

Method:
The first step is very very simple. Just mix everything apart from the puff pastry together in an appropriate sized bowl.

Then roll out your puff pastry. Cut the pastry into squares and then cut angles in two opposite corners of the squares as you can hopefully see on the picture.
Yes, I forgot a few cuts before I made the picture. Found out later. No worries!

Place one tablespoon of filling on each square or in other words, divide the filling among those squares.
Now you can fold those cut corners towards the middle and stick them together somehow.
With having achieved that, they go into the oven for 30 minutes at 200°C. They should gain at least some colour.
After that you can enjoy your puff pastry courgette and bacon tarts.
If you can not enjoy them, because you don't want to eat bacon, simply do a vegetarian version with maybe some strong and tasty cheese. I would go for goats cheese. I can imagine that to be very lovely as well.

This is how the puff pastry tarts would have looked 6 months ago.
No, we can not sell it that way.

Maybe some decoration ... a sprig of parsley will do. A bit better. I'm not sure. We should do some more. Well, there is still a lot to learn and bit by bit things can be improved.

What about some background. Anyway, I look really look forward to read through that book. So far I haven't even finished the first chapter.
I hope you can't resist those puff pastry tarts and give them a shot. If, let me know, how you liked them.

La Soupe Aux Choux - Herby cabbage Soup

Space! The final frontier ... cut, cut ... stop this! We already had it.
What though about receiving visitors from outer space - having some aliens for dinner?
No, the aliens are not going to have you for dinner.
Well, let me get to it in a slightly different way. Just slightly. Do you connect some kinds of foods with movies? Or vice versa? What about cooking something you saw in a movie?
Let us come back to our aliens and move right away over to France. 
Sorry, if you got this wrong! It was not my intention, just put the words a bit of ... don't know. Anyway, you might know the famous French actor Louis de Funès. Right away, different movies come to my mind, that deal with food. One of it has the French title La Soupe Aux Choux.
That brings us straight away to France, as I said, and to the aliens, as I said as well. The main character receives a visitor from outer space, because of food, that is, a cabbage soup. Well, the movie contains also some ... well, eh ... just concentrate on the soup for now.

My intention is not to conjure up some extra terrestrial life. No! I simply like to reproduce such a soup and ... use up my leftover cabbage in the kitchen. 
By the way, this is not going to be fast food. We are taking some time to do this herby cabbage soup.

After slaughtering the cabbage we can get into things (Hey, who said, we could do this without hurting something ... ah, no worries. Things will be fine!). Good! I used cabbage already in my last post. I got a comment, that 'cabbage is hugely underrated as a vegetable'. We don't want this to be, do we? Besides that, if you take a closer look, you find more cabbage recipes out here on my blog. Hm, well, at least one more.
Let's work then: Herby cabbage soup. Plan about two hours, to be generous. Remember? No fast food! On top of it, it's all made from scratch.

Ingredients (as they go in):
A large knob of butter
One onion, chopped in rings (that's also a reason, why I cry so much lately)
One small white (to be specific) cabbage, roughly cut (use your imagination)
One large carrot, cut into cuby pieces
1,5 l water
Bouquet of herbs (rosemary, oregano, thyme, lavender)
600 g potatoes, cut roughly into cubelike shapes (don't be too fussy, unless ...)
4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped (yes, this is all going to be very rough)
Fleur de sel (or use other salt, if you must)
Pepper

Method (as time goes by):
Well, a lot of the above mentioned things (cutting) you can do as we go. At least this is the way I prefer to do it.
Therefore, whilst heating the butter in a large pot, you concentrate on the crying (onion) and then add them to the pot to let them start to soften a bit.
Now you devote your attention to the cabbage and then to the carrot. Obviously, the result of that leads to more vegetable in the pot.
It would be quite helpful to put the kettle on to get the water boiling. Why not take some more water. That way you can treat yourself to a nice cuppa of tea. We are in no hurry (you can do this at other times, if you insist). The water you are not using for your tea goes into the pot. The cabbage should be covered. If not, you used too much water for your tea.

The bouquet of herbs, to which I also like to refer to as a bouquet garni, goes into the pot as well just before you put the lid on and bring all to the boil.
After that is done, we have plenty of time for tea and for the potatoes and garlic. Should it be in boiling mode, we reduce the temperature and let it simmer for an hour.
Depending on your skills, though, you could also manage to do some other things during that time ... you think of something for yourself.
I'm not going to tell you, what I did.
No!
Forget it!
Back in the kitchen, right in front of our soup, yes, after one hour has passed, we throw in the potatoes and garlic. Season the soup with fleur de sel and pepper. I like to use fleur de sel (hand-harvested sea salt), because traditional fleur de sel is collected off the coast of Brittany - just to give a bit more of a French touch to it.
Having come that far, we are nearly through. Just another half an hour to simmer and then we are ready. What to do again?
Maybe set the table? I'm planning on having a candlelight dinner. Oh, well, yes ... I put a candle on the table and light it.

If it is according to your desire, you might open the meal with a small glass of pastis - as also seen in La Soupe Aux Choux. As you see on the picture as well, you have a nice baguette ready to go with the herby cabbage soup, too.
Before I forget, the bowl for the soup is also from France. What you can't see here is, that it has a picture in it with a famous place in Normandy, which has also something to do with a place in Cornwall. I just mention it, so you get a rough (yes, again) idea.
Should you have anything of the baguette left, you could finish your meal with some cheese. Yep! I did it!
Let us now come to the side effects of the soup. If you remember the movie La Soupe Aux Choux, you know what I mean. Up to this point, where I am writing this done, nothing happened ... and no, I didn't get any visitors from outer space. I might get a few visitors, though, reading this post or even trying this recipe.
Is everything said now? No, not yet, not yet!
Since we used our lovely bouquet garni, I decided to enter this post into Lavender and Lovage's Herbs on Saturday challenge, even though, it's Wednesday.

Finally, after everything has been said, I'm not keeping my mouth shut, although that will be the case very soon.
Think again! What comes to your mind, when pondering food and movies? What movies pop up in your head and/or what foods? Let me know!

Seven at one blow - Mediterranean Feta and Tomato Bake

Do you know the Brothers Grimm? Yes, those German fairy tale guys. One of their tales is called “The Valiant Little Tailor” or “The Brave Little Tailor”. No! This post will not be about “The Valiant Little Cook” or “The Brave Little Cook”.

As the title suggests, the main character of this fairy tale is … fanfare … a tailor. The only link to food from this tale I like to tell you is more or less the beginning of that story. Well, this tailor is preparing to eat some jam as some flies settle on him. He kills seven of those nasty flies with one blow. He later then makes a belt describing the deed “Seven at one blow”. Quite satisfied and inspired, he sets out into the world to seek his fortune. In the course of this story, he is mistaken as a war hero, because of this inscription “Seven at one blow”, people thinking he killed seven men with one blow. The rest of the story you have to imagine for yourself or find it somewhere so you can read it.

Again no! This blog post is not about violence, not even in connection with killing flies in my kitchen, although I might have to do it once in a while for self-defence.

I rather like to concentrate on the “Seven at one blow” in a different sense. But first of all let us prepare some Mediterranean Feta and Tomato Bake.

The main characters of this food story (in order of appearance):

An unsuspecting 20 x 20 cm casserole dish

200 g of heroic feta cheese (sheep and goat will do)

Three sturdy shining tomatoes

Some harmless looking salt

Some fiery pepper

Olive oil – always on the run

Three sneaky cloves of garlic

One not quite so gigantic onion

Lots and lots of tiny little leaves of thyme

More olive oil

Some bread for cleaning up

Read on as the story unfolds:

Once upon a time (not thyme – not now – oh, that would have sounded great, though) an unsuspecting casserole dish was resting quietly in the kitchen as 100 g of sliced heroic feta cheese was making it’s way to conquer it. Along came one and a half sturdy shining tomatoes, which had just been sliced as well. As those were meeting up in the casserole dish some harmless looking salt and some fiery pepper was raining from above. Things even seemed to be pouring as olive oil was running into the dish.

Just a while later the brethren of the aforemention feta and tomatoes joined in. And as if things were not already been bad enough, three sneaky cloves of garlic entered the scene and … sneaked into the dish.

Around the corner one not quite so gigantic onion met her fate by a knife, which turned it into tiny little bits. Off they went into the casserole dish.

Instead of laughing at this tragedy, lots and lots of tiny little leaves of time stepped in to console the onion.

Once more salt and pepper and olive oil was raining.

Meanwhile, not far away from the scene, an oven was being heated up to 180°C to accommodate the casserole dish for 30 minutes.

After coming back to the light the dish directly went to the kitchen table to be cleaned up by some bread.

And they lived happily ever after … for sure NOT! You may have some leftovers, but normally all should be gone!

Now back to were we began: “Seven at one blow”!

1.     After some time (again not thyme) I met again my friend Daniel. We enjoyed a nice evening together with some good food and conversation. He provided me with the idea for this dish.

2.     I like cheese – you know about that.

3.     This recipe perfectly fits to the "One ingredient" challenge.

4.     I have quite a lot of thyme in my garden, which tries to take over everything. BUT … I fight back! No, it’s not that bad. It’s not a real fight. You should take it as a blessing and use it as good as possible.

5.     I just mentioned thyme. So this then qualifies this recipe for the Blog challenge “Herbs on Saturday” from “Lavender and Lovage”, which is hosted this month by Vanesther from “Bangers & Mash”.

 

7. It’s always great to have something nice to dunk your bread into.

Oops! You got me here. I skipped the number 6. Sorry, couldn’t think about anything particular. Well, no worries …

6. After a long day at work it is always good to have some nice and simple food, without having to much trouble in the kitchen.

That’s all folks! See thee! Toodle-oo! Eat happily ever after …