Duvel

Brought the little one home after his week at the grandparents ... so of course back to our weekly routine of Pizza & Movie night on Sunday ! The all-time favourite mushrooms & salami variety (two were prepared and consumed) ... Gyros (recycling Thursdays pork neck roast) with zaziki ... ... enjoyed together with Lupin the 3rd, an early Studio Ghibli classic.

This is Fleischsalat (literally “meat salad”). Recipe see below ... Absolutely. I think every butcher in Germany has his own slight tweak on the recipe, but it is very simple and I made it here, in HK, in Japan, in Spain. It will turn out always a bit different, but delicious anyway. And for my German version I use Japanese mayo, so ... Fleischsalat (all in weight%): 50% emulsified sausage (here, a product called “Lyoner” is used, which is derived from Italian Mortadella. The latter is fine, and Bologna (Polony) is perfectly acceptable. You want something soft, processed, with a high flavor factor). 25% pickled cucumbers (not the sweet pickle variety. Cornichons are great. The pickles bring acidity and flavor, so you can tune your salad with this). 25% mayo (full fat, no Miracle Whip. Use the one you like best - I use Kewpie). Get the sausage in thin slices, stack them and cut into fine threads. Cut the pickles into the same shape. Squeeze your pickle threads by hand to remove excess moisture (reserve the liquid). Add sausage and sqeezed pickles to the mayo and give it an good stir. Let it mingle for some hours in the fridge. Enjoy ! Options to fine tune (pick 0 to all, experiment!): finely cut herbs (parsley, dill, ...). A tiny bit of mustard (sweet or sharp). A bit of reserved pickling liquid (or vinegar of your choice) to add acidity. A dash of fish sauce (yes. Umami). A finely smashed hard boiled egg yolk (for a tiny bit stiffer consistency). There is no added salt in the recipe, but feel free to augment here as well ...

At my parents place - German Abendbrot. Rye bread with oats & sunflower seeds, rye rolls with mixed seeds. A couple of cold cuts and cheeses. For me the most important one being these: aged Schwartenwurst, aged Kopfwurst, fresh Schwartenwurst and Fleischsalat. Rye, a generous helping of butter and traditional sausage. Plus beer. That’s home 🤗

I drove up to my parents home to pick up my little one, who stayed there for one week vacation (home schooling be praised). It is a leisurely 300 km drive and you might be aware that there is no general speed limit on German highways, so the travel time is practically up to you. I arrived 30 min early. Which gave me the opportunity to visit my favorite Döner shop in the nearby city ... unfortunately, due to Corona you can’t eat neither there nor on the street (masks have to be worn at all times in the city center). So I sat in my car, stopping at the side of the road, hazard warning lights on and ate that lovely spicy Döner like an animal. Still, soooooo good !

Thanks, then the spasms make sense to me !

Nicely put 😉 But this intrigues me a little bit - I’d assume the deep frying would properly cook the flesh. I am not aware that denatured proteins still allow intramuscular ion flow (to cause the contractions) nor that they allow for the actual contraction to take place. As I am not familiar with these movements: Is it a reversible thing, e.g. opening and closing of the mouth or is it a movement into a final fixed position (which could be the result of a last heat-induced contraction of the jaw muscles, cause by carry-over from the frying process) ?

Long day at work ... and not a successful one. Felt to lazy to cook and dropped in at Aldi on the way home to find something quick to make. They had „Greek weeks“ - so ... Meze plate: Spanakopita, dolmades, braised chickpeas, olives, pita bread, cucumber, fried aubergine, Gyros and battered squid rings. Plus a lot of zaziki. And some Ouzo. Remember: rough day 😉

Yes ... the is essential the muscles strands on one side of the spine.

Butcher had pork neck on offer ... got a nice 2 kg piece to play with. Cut it open to make a roulade, filled with a mash of salt, garlic, anchovies and rosemary. Rolled up, rubbed with fish sauce and roasted to a core temperature of 62 oC ... Served with roasted potatoes (same pan) and a sauce made from roasted onions (still same pan, pan juices and two tablespoons of Boursin). Yummy !

I can echo the praise for the Fallot mustards. My favorite is the gingerbread variety - mellow, but with a superb flavor and a great base for sauces accompanying game and fowl ...

Not sure what Ruffles are, but these crisps are quite good (and my wife’s choice). Plus an excellent excuse for a third highball 🤗

For the beginning of lent a “triology of fish sandwiches”: Heringssalat, Fischfrikadelle & Matjes ... (served with a small highball to slowly wean the liver off that stuff ...) (followed by a second one. Fish needs to swim ...)

Sorry, it wasn’t meant like that. Just “rabbit with chocolate” sounded so familiar 😉

That specific recipe or the combination ... as in:

This is what happens if Valentine’s day collides with family traditions ... Pizza in an auspicious shape ... And a regular shaped one (in which I slipped some tongue - corned beef tongue, that is ...) ... And “When Marnie was there ...”

With the Hobbit feet in the picture, I think it’s pronounced Lembas Bread ...

That‘s a great idea and a wonderful execution 🤗

You can skip the entire box - just give me a plate of that uni (and some sake) !!!

I had never heard of neither the brand nor the product before, but one day the delivery service of our supermarket in Hong Kong dropped off a wrong delivery and our domestic helper went bananas over the two bottles of syrup that it contained. Literally half of the first quart bottle was consumed before I came home. I paid for the two bottles at the store (and am sure the clerk never forwarded the money to the shop) and let our helper keep the bottles. That stuff was so incredibly popular with her and her friends - me and the little one were not as impressed ...

Sounds Chinese ...

Sure. When on offer, rabbit is around 10 €/kg (last week 10.49 €/kg) for the whole animal, including head, lungs, heart, kidneys & liver. Regular price is about 15 €/kg for the whole bunny, and 25 €/kg and up for selected parts (e.g. front or hind legs, saddle). The rabbits offered in the two major supermarkets here is imported from nearby France (Alsace).

And now ... let’s cook them 😉

I remember having that combination once. A quick check through my collection gave at least one more instance of using mustard in a Beijing style dish (from a series of regional cookbooks, published by Wei-Chuan, Taiwan) ...

Tonight another attempt to use up the rabbit dishes of this week: Banh Mi, featuring the rabbit terrine from Sunday, with Kewpie, fried egg, quick pickled carrot and cucumber, plenty of cilantro, fried onions and Vietnamese hoisin sauce. Accompanied by a fruity Hop House lager ...

The conill amb xocolata described above suffered from a lingering bitterness of the sauce. Today I used the leftovers to prepare rabbit tacos. The basic flavor profile of the dish lend itself already to be used in a Mexican dish, and I used additional soaked ancho peppers and cumin/cinnamon/coriander to smoothen out the sauce ... So, refried pulled rabbit served on wheat tortillas with goat cheese cream, the chocolate-ancho salsa, quick-pickled red cabbage, some fried bread/almond/pine nut crunch and cilantro ... no complaints 🤗