What are you cooking today?

Ok so this is what I'm not cooking, but wish I was: silverside. Or corned beef. I have never seen this cut of meat in a supermarket here in Germany... Brisket I think the actual cut is called, in English. Sliced corned beef, liberally spashed with mum's home-cooked tomato sauce, sandwiched between toasted multigrain bread. Hmm, thinking about it makes me sad for home. So, can anyone tell me where it might be possible to find this boiling meat, and/or what it might be called in German?? Thanks in advance!!

Rinderbrust or Hohe Rippe and have it boned by your butcher. And I love it with plum sauce.

Generally, this is what I would have done (see Two-Crust Chicken Pie). But yesterday I used Klare Gemüsebrühe from Knorr.

Thanks for your reply Katrina - will visit the butcher! Never tried it with plum, but I'll take your word Incidently, I have noticed that plum sauce isn't a popular condi here...but I love it with chicken. Again, mum makes the best...

hey steph, Bj's Ma sometimes has corned beef/silverside in her fridge. I'm not a fan so i didnt really take notice - but she calls it "corner-ed beef", but then again, she calles quiche "kwitsch-ie". So the butcher/deli people might know what you mean if you say "corned beef" or "cornered beef".

Im cooking nothing because I have a real bad craving for a FEB



so Im going to go get one

Looks a bit messy for my liking. Too much overlapping going on.

fenugreek chicken curry, murg lentils with tomato and spinach, chana masala, rice and parathis. All cooked in a bit of a hurry but it worked out quite well. It was however a bit spicy for my dad, but everyone went back for seconds and thirds so it seems as though it did taste alright.

Just wolfed down on Kassler in Port and cream with sage and majoram, Shupfnudeln with cheese, nuked broccoli with sesame oil on a layer of grilled zucchini marinated in balsamic and Bärlauch (wtf it's called in English, by the Queen or her buddies overseas).

too be honest dinner was more like breakfast today, had fried egg, bacon and a roll
didnt had beans nor tomatoes no mushrooms or sausages but it was good nevertheless

Had a great home made modified saag gosht with beef instead of lamb for dinner (which was actually a veeery late lunch). It's supposed to be with lamb, but didn't have any so used beef.
Absolutely fantastic!

Mars bars on toast today! My really favourite plate especially with lots of pepper on.

Girabaldi, I'm having something very similir to your Mars bar on toast. Here's a pic of my famous Chocoburger that I've made for lunch today. Yummy, Yum, Yum!



P.S: I think it's quite appropriate an alien being like yourself would love Mars bars on toast . Btw, as you can see I didn't bleed to death when I got my wisdom teeth out.

LR, that's a cool burger. One after my own heart. Let's get together for lunch sometime.

Home made fish nuggets with home made garlic mayonnaise and hot chip salad. Trying not to feel guilty about the mars bar on toast breakfast I had this morning. The wife and kids are still lying in bed groaning under the weight of having to work,rest and play before 9.00.

I can't see. Post pictures of the toothless face.

Roast beef (rib roast) yorkshires, roast pots, peas & brussels.

take roast out of fridge couple of hours before cooking, season with salt, pepper & garlic, crank up oven really hot, pop in roast & turn down the oven straight away, cook roast for 40 mins, let stand for 20/30 mins before serving.

It was yesterday now, but it was still the first Spargel of the year. Spargelkartoffelauflauf mit Schinken. Yum.

andy M

Quice Lorraine with a salad.

Lamingtons and anzac biscuits for ANZAC day tomorrow... yum!

Homemade pasta carbonara.

My ANZACs are just about to come out of the oven - will be on the bus down to a touch rugby tournament in Vienna tomorrow so these are for group morale.
No Lamingtons, but as well as the biscuits, there's caramel slice, afghans and sausage rolls.
Might post the recipes tomorrow if they turn out ok.

Vegan chili. After being a guinea pig for pumpkin scones and caramel slices this weekend (stares pointedly at someone), a little moderation on the calorie front was in order...

Be glad you've avoided the Afghans, they are effectively chocolate buttercream with cornflakes added, but parading themselves as biscuits...
The new caramel slice has coconut in the base, surprised any made it into the tin as it was too delicious uncooked.

Ratatouille

1/3 cup olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 large eggplants (2 pounds), peeled in strips and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
4 to 5 medium zucchini (2 pounds), cut into 1-inch cubes
Coarse salt and ground pepper
3 yellow or red bell peppers, ribs and seeds removed, cut into 3/4-inch cubes
1 can (28 ounces) diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon dried thyme
½ cup chopped fresh basil

EDIT: Sorry. forgot to put down how it's done.

In a pot heat oil over medium heat. Cook onions, stirring occasionally, until soft, about 5 minutes. Add garlic; cook until fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in eggplant and zucchini; season generously with salt and pepper.
Add 3/4 cup water; cover, and simmer until vegetables are beginning to soften, stirring once, about 5 minutes. Stir in bell peppers; simmer, covered, until softened, 5 minutes.
Stir in tomatoes and thyme; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Partially cover; simmer, stirring often, until vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove from heat. Before serving add basil.

There is a school of thought that suggest that each individual component in a ratatouille should be cooked separately, then later all combined. Does not seem to make alot of difference to me. Bloody great dish though.

Pub quiz info coming up:

Ratatouiller sorta translates to "mixed rations" in Frog. Touiller actually means "to stir", but interestingly, originates from a latin word "tudicula", which was a machine for bruising olives.

I once worked with a seriously, seriously awesome chef, who had done his time, worked in some great places, and even trained in one of the restaurants owned by the veritable Roux dynasty. He served a piece of cod on this semi-raw ratatouille style bed, with all the veg cut into super small pieces. Fantastic dish.

I'll be making paella this evening. I don't really follow a recipe per se. But, this is roughly how it goes

Saffron rice
1/2 onion, finely chopped
spicy sausage (both beef and pork)
shrimp
yellow and orange bell peppers (I usually omit these as I don't care for peppers)
and garlic to taste
cayenne pepper

The meat all gets cooked in one pan with the onions, garlic and peppers. Once the meat is cooked and the rice is done, you chuck it all into one pot, mix, and serve.

ribs w/ homemade sauce and cooked on the smoker (grill). probably some home made french fries and other stuff.

technically, i'm not cooking it. my dad is i'll be around and probably help with some of it though!

Lamb in Spicy Tomato Sauce with Chili Potatoes
Chili Potatoes
400g firm potatoes
30ml chili olive oil*
Salt from the mill

Spicy Tomato Sauce
2 firm tomatoes
1 small onion
2 cloves of garlic
small handful of fresh thyme
10ml olive oil
15g tomato paste
10g grated horseradish
pinch of salt

Lamb steaks
2 steaks from the leg
20ml olive oil
Pepper from the mill
Rosemary, either ground or fresh***

Peel and wash the potatoes, dice, put them in a shallow baking pan
Pour the olive oil over them, salt (from the mill)
Let them draw for app. 20 minutes, stirring occasionally
Put in oven pre-heated to 200°C
Roast app. 45 minutes, stirring occasionally

Peel the tomatoes**, remove seeds and pulp, chop
Mince the onion
Mince the garlic and thyme as finely as possible
Sautee the onion in the heated olive oil, add the garlic and thyme
Just as the garlic looks glazed add the tomatoes
When the tomatoes begin to fall apart add the tomato paste and horseradish
Reduce until most of the liquid has evaporated

Heat the olive oil in a griddle with raised ribs (ideally)
Pepper the lamb steaks
Season generously with ground rosemary

Preparation/cooking time app. 1 hour

*You can either mince some chili and mix it with the oil, or you have made your own chili olive oil by adding two to four slit chili pods to 1l of olive oil and letting it steep for three months in a dark, cool place

**Best method of peeling tomatoes: Bring water to a boil in a kettle, slit the end of the tomato opposite the stem crosswise, stick a fork in the stem end and hold the tomato in the boiling water for app. 1 minute, then immerse the tomato in a bowl of ice water for app. 30 seconds. The skin comes off like a charm.

***Or heat the sprigs of rosemary with the olive oil and leave them in the oil while frying the lamb

Sloppy Joes at Castle Sanwald tonight!

MMMMMMMMMM!

So, it's bank holiday monday*, weekend has been completely knackering, and you need to bang something together quickly for dinner. It's highly likely that some random family member will pop in, and suddenly you have to cook for them too, so I'm doing pasta, because its easy to stretch out a bit if people arrive out of the blue. I've got some asparagus, I've got a bit of ham, which go well, and I'm gonna whack it all together with some egg yolk and creamy nice stuff, to make a little pasta sauce. Massive amounts of calories, but actually gets away with tasting quite light. As Delia would probably say, "serve as a starter, or with a salad as a light lunch". I hate that phrase. Still, applies here.

STUFF YOU NEED TO BUY, OR ALREADY HAVE

Bunch of green asparagus - leftover cooked asparagus, even if its got some hollandaise sauce on it, would be fine

3 egg yolks

Shitload of grated parmesan

Some cooked ham from Aldi, Prosciutto cotto. Well, that's what I'm using, because I live near Aldi, but some good ham would be fine too. Cured ham would
also be wicked. Asparagus spears wrapped in prosciutto and roasted are ace, the flavours work, but cooked ham also goes well. Cannot go wrong with these flavours really. Asparagus, egg yolk, ham. sweeet.

Few tablespoons of creme fraiche, or a goog old glug of double cream, or even some carton of schlagsahne, from Aldi.

Pasta. I'm using penne, because I have some.

COOKING IT, WHICH IS WELL EASY

This is a bit like carbonara really, just with some asparagus chucked in. Basically, its just a case of cooking your asparagus, cutting them into 1 inch lengths and setting them aside. Mix up the egg yolks and creme fraiche, add the shitload of parmesan, and a bit os salt. Not alot, just a bit.
If you are using dried ham, cut into strips and fry in a pan for a minute until crisping up, then toss the asparagus in it to get some of that ham fat flavour. If using cooked ham, don't fry it, just cut into squares, and add to the egg/creme mix. Actually, chuck the asparagus in there too. If you have some parsley knocking about, chop it up, and toss into the sauce. Toss the parsley into the sauce that is. Don't just chop up the parsley, and then actually have a toss into the sauce, that'd be totally gross.

cook the pasta. drain it. Then dump your egg/creme/ham/asparagus into it, get stirring with a wooden spoon, and the residual heat will totally cook the eggs, and thicken the sauce. Job done. You can add more cheese to. Why not. Cheese is well nice.

SERVING SUGGESTION

I'm serving this up with a load of mixed salad leaves, and accompanying it with wiessbier drunk straight from the bottle to save on washing up one of those massive glasses, that don't fit properly in the dishwasher, and neither does your hand get to the bottom of them, so fuck it, glug from the bottle.

That post made my weekend. Thanks Don.

Black-eyes peas and Cornbread and Southern White Cornbread.. I could not find decent salt pork so I used american ( according to the package) bacon.. Yum yum... if only I could find Okra!

The recipe:
dried black eyed peas soaked over night then
cooked all day with garlic, salt pork or bacon- jalepenos and a onion.
served pored over white southern cornbread (aunt jemima white corn bread mix brought back from the usa)

Chicken Legs in a Sesame Crust (first attempt)
Dredge your chicken legs in flour
Dip in 1 egg mixed with whipping cream - You may have to scoop the slightly goopy mixture up and pour it over the chicken leg, press a bit to make it stick
Dip in sesame seeds - Same thing, press them onto the chicken leg so they stick
Heat oven to 180°C, cook for app. 45 minutes

Serve with salsa/chilli sauce/tzatziki

I intend to develop this by adding e.g. seasoning to the flour or chilli flakes to the sesame seed, or toasting it beforehand.

EDIT: See following post for now corrected errors.

Is 'dreg' some strange 'local' version of dredge - cos that does not seem very appealing to me.

Because I've been slightly worried about my eating habits, so have been trying to bring lunches and snacks to work. Have been doing pretty well so far and it means that the 5 a day is doable, rather than always playing catch up at night.

Today's lunch was half a cup of bulgur wheat, which instead of cooking in a pan, I just bunged it into a bowl, covered with boiling water, put a plate on top and left it for about 20 mins to fluff up. Into that went chopped fresh mint, parsley (frozen - Plus BioBio), a chopped roasted red pepper (from a jar from Penny - strangely better than any others including Waitrose and Käfer) and got mixed together. Then came a layer of roasted aubergine, red onion and zucchini/courgette (done last night in the oven in a big batch with a dash of olive oil and with rosemary and thyme - all from BioCorner/BioBasic). Finally a sliced griddled lamb filet (NZ, bought frozen from Aldi) which had been marinated in ral-el-hanout and harissa (both from Kaufhof) alongside a plum tomato which I cut up here.

Was bloody lovely as a filling lunch, very transportable and, if you look at the sources, pretty cheap too.
The tabbouleh/bulgur wheat salad also went well with felafel earlier in the week and I'm looking forward to roasted veg and hummus pitas tomorrow lunch. Hummus, tatziki and babaganoush was been my accompaniments to veggies sticks in the afternoon.

Don't know why I go all North African/Arabic when it comes to upping my veg intake, know that it works though.

Sounds very tasty, that lot! I have some of the Aldi lamb fillet lurking in my freezer - is it OK?
Edit: Stupidity disclaimer: Of course I don't want Katrina to tell me whether the lamb in MY freezer is OK, but just give me a lowdown on the quality of the Aldi lamb in general. Just in case anyone comes over all smart-arsey.

Have only used the lamb filets leicht gesalzen, couldn't tell you if the marinated ones are good or not. Each pouch contains two 100g pieces of lamb filet and there are 2 pouches to a pack.
Not recommended for a microwave defrost, I bunged the pouch into cold water instead. Used my ridged griddle with a spray of oil after the spice rub, high heat to seal and then reduced the heat to cook through. Not stringy at all, in fact really quite tasty. Just rest it a bit before you cut/serve (but you know this anyway) and go for a pink centred result. Not a great deal of marbling as it is filet and well trimmed.
The venison in the same range was also good - it's Australian, strangely enough, was expecting that to be NZ as so much farmed venison is exported from there to Germany.

I think I've had that before and it was good (as is the ostrich by the way, I think it's right next to the lamb in the freezer section at Aldi!). But I am German and we all have no taste and like Aldi food. So you may want to wait until someone un-German tells you it's okay.

I must be gone native then

Aldi lamb fillets are edible enough, if you are into lamb fillet - like Katrina, I've not risked the marinated ones. The ostrich is also OK, if you like ultra-lean meat. They'll both dry out super quickly if you overcook them though.

I like the Aldi ostrich and the marinated lamb steaks are fine too, but the fillet is new and I hadn't tried it yet. Thanks K and M, sounds like tomorrow's dinner is sorted.

And if it's good enough for don_riina, it's good enough for me.

How is ostrich typically prepared and served? I've never tried it but am curious.

My mom puts it in the oven and grills it for a while (covered with aluminum, if you want to know the exact time, I'd have to ask her, can't remember), and last Christmas we ate it with potatoes and beans. Like this:
http://flickr.com/photos/faithhopelove/213...57603534829496/

@crusoe: I think it might have been the steak then that I've had before. Seeing as it has at least been 10 months or so that I had it (before I moved to Spain).

Gordon Ramsay was talking about Ostrich recently. Supposed to be very healthy and is of course free range. One bird produces a huge amout of meat, so you almost feel that if an animal must die to feed us, why not 1 big honkie Ostrich (that can literally feed 100 people), than 50 chickens?

I sear it then bung it in a medium oven in tinfoil with a handful of herbs and/or a gloop of herb oil (or chili oil, or garlic oil...). Takes longer than you think to cook, being quite a thick chunk.

I suppose you bury it in hot sand

As a rule of thumb, most people will say treat it like fillet of beef - it is almost without any fat atall, and has a really soft texture so does not need a long cooking time to break any fibres down. Unlike chicken, you can eat ostrich quite rare, but it is best done to a medium/medium rare finish. Not much flavour to it really, so you can use quite strong flavours with it.

If you're a first timer, just go with something simple and classic where you'd normally use beef fillet - green peppercorn sauce maybe. Season the ostrich well, rub in a bit of oil, and sear in a hot pan. Wrap in foil with a squirt of lemon juice, put into a warm oven. Empty any excess oil from the pan, chuck in a knob of butter and some green peppercorns, toss it about for a few seconds, then chuck in a goooood glug of brandy, scrape up any pan residue, then set it alight to burn off the alcohol, and your eyebrows. Finish with a load of cream, and another knob of butter if the sauce looks a bit thin. Check for seasoning, then pour over the steaks.

I wanna see places selling ostrich eggs. That would be awesome. Omelette for 50 people.

I am cooking haggis. Unfortunately without neeps.

Thanks Don and everyone else for your ostrich instructions. I'm intrigued now -- will have to give it a go and report back.