Duvel

By popular request (from both our little one and his grandparents): (Marcella Hazan‘s) Ragù alla Bolognese with maccheroni ! Plus a pinot gris ...

I think you had Flädlesuppe ... We usually eat it in beef broth, but a strong chicken soup should be equally delicious. You can find the proportions for the dough here (German), and for making crepes out of that you are already more than qualified 😉

You sell them in Canada as sausages ...

After visiting my mom for her 70th birthday last week the little one stayed a week at his grandparents. Today (after the obligatory bilateral negative Covid testing) my parents brought him back and will stay for three days. For tonight they requested “Nur Abendbrot”, or just the “evening bread”, which is the correct German term for dinner. Bread with cold cuts. Both of them love corned tongue, so I made some ahead this week and prepared some tongue Reuben sandwiches ... Had a wee dram while prepping ... Freshly made rye (with caraway and pickle juice) Corned tongue, pressure cooked ... TRS ... Of course my parents brought my hometowns Mett 🤗 For dessert some caraway-scented Schnapps for my dad and me ... A good way to start the weekend !

I got another rainbow trout today. Unfortunately, my filleting skills are ... somewhat rudimentary. Which is still a euphemism. Soooo ... I made fishcakes 🤗 Served with Swabian potato salad, (commercial) remoulade and a quick cucumber salad. And a Bavarian “Helles” !

My apologies - should have merged the two posts. The full recipe is a few posts before ...

I got a large rainbow trout from my fishmonger (850 g), that I roasted in the oven and served with pinenut/bacon/cream sauce and spinach. I took a picture, but for reasons beyond me it’s blurry ... Enjoyed the skin (celery-salted and recrisped) as dessert with a Somontano rosé ...

Leberkäse, as described here ...

Most welcome - and thanks to you I made a batch for lunch 😉 Before ... It takes a heavy beating ... ”Stringy” - notice the color change ! Baked until 75 oC (more or less). Sliced up and ready to eat ! Important: when you buy that fresh at the butchers, you get it in a bread roll, which in turn is wrapped in paper to take away. This steams the roll a bit and makes it soft, but chewy. I microwaved the roll - same effect. The beer is optional, but works well. Consider it alcoholfree 🤫 Yummy !

Sure. In Germany you can buy ready made curing salt (“Nitritpökelsalz”, very often abbreviated as NPS). It contains 0.5% sodium nitrite. You can mix this from the pink salt available in the US and regular salt. For the Leberkäse: 800 g fatty minced pork 200 g soda water 30 g starch 21 g NPS (curing salt, see above) Spice mixture for 1.05 kg mixture as above (I make a lot of that; you can use it for sausages, meatballs etc. - it is very good. Think “Bologna” spice) 3 g white pepper 0,25 g cardamom 0,5 g coriander 0,25 g ground ginger 0,75 g macis plus later 5 g baking powder with phosphate (this helps to bind the water) Have the meat, the soda water and the mixing bowl ice cold (see also my linked post above). Start mixing the meat vigorously. Add the salt and the spices. Mix the soda water with the starch and add slowly in portions. The meat will turn from a healthy reddish colour to a pink emulsion over the next minutes. Temperature should not exceed 10 oC. Once pink and “stringy” (you’ll notice, no worries) put into a oiled single loaf tin. It will act like a dough. Press down, you may make a criss cross pattern if you like. Bake in a 130 oC oven until internal temperature reaches 75 oC (about 1 h). It will slightly expand. If you like you can also ramp up the oven to full once internal temp reaches 70 oC and brown the exterior a bit more. Let cool down, enjoy warm right away, put on a griddle an brown or let cool and turn into a cold cut or into wurstsalat. Enjoy !

Yeah ... pretty much 😜 I use pure pork. No beef, no cured meat (because you put curing salt anyway) and definitely no liver. But everything suffer a sea change when removed from its home turf ...

A fair warning ...

Eggs Benedict (and other assorted items) as part of a birthday brunch ...

Thanks again for all your input - we had a great birthday brunch and my mom enjoyed a lot ... for documentation purpose this is how it went: The full table - everyone ignoring the cook asking for a clean shot 🤭 Foie Gras Cappuccino - no picture, as I was a bit in a hurry. Stock based on dried ceps and death trumpets, cream, foie gras; all pureed and topped with milk foam. Liquid umami ... Eggs Benedict Graved Salmon w/ red beets & freshly made bagels Belgian crab croquettes - kitchen shot, as they didn’t last long enough on the table (took a bite for quality control after frying) ... Asparagus quiche Fresh walnut bread, raisin bread. Various cheeses and cold cuts. Individual strawberry cheesecakes w/ fresh strawberries: thanks to @Shelby for the recipe - it worked great. I cooked them in waterbath in the oven to 75 oC, then added a strawberry coulis and a strawberry when cool. Very light texture and good taste ... Champagne, fresh juices, coffee Mom was happy (but I can tell my father enjoyed the brunch even more) ... and so I am happy as well 🤗

Leberkäse !

After a Covid test run yesterday afternoon for the whole family (better safe than sorry) we headed north today for a relaxed Easter Sunday night and my mom’s 70th birthday tomorrow. Tonight a lazy evening - I got some nice cheeses and good wine and we called it dinner ... Made some walnut rye bread (with a shot of Maille nut vinegar in the dough) ... Wines: I am partial to a good Amarone, my wife wanted ÃN/2 and my father, who doesn’t care for red got a decent Sauternes ... Some meat for balance ... Plus 11 cheeses altogether 🥰 From the top left: Fresh goat cream, Tete de Moine, Iberico, Bergbauernkäse, Morbier, Epoisses, St. Maure, Langres, Corse sheep cheese with herbs, Le Rustique and very ripe Gogonzola. A little “Easter” digestive ... Happy faces !

That looks very yummy - I’d happily join ! A fun fact is that Germans never have sauerkraut on a Bratwurst roll, even though it is a tasty idea ...

Come to think of it - if you hard boil an egg (~10 min rolling boil), there is no residual salmonella anymore present 🤔 So that alone would not diminish the shelf life of the product to 2h at RT ...

Thanks, that is very helpful. Is there any data on how prevalent the salmonella infestation is amongst the chicken populations ? Eggs here are sold outside the fridge, and contain each an individual printed-on shelf life date for storage at RT, typically ~3 weeks in the future.

I understand that aspect, and for professional operations it certainly makes sense to follow (and document adherence to) very strict hygienic standards. But we are talking here home cooking. I hope that sueing family members over food issues is not common, even in a litigation-probe society ...

It seems that the general outlook on the bacterial load of eggs is vastly different between the US and Germany. I cannot judge whether this reflects the reality or not. From my personal viewpoint, the USDA rules of 2h out side the fridge is not comprehensible. Even the most conservative article I could find (and which I still would not fully subscribe to) assigns a minimum shelf life of 2.5 days at room temperature in summer for hard boiled eggs. If that were the case for the eggs sold in Germany, I’d assume larger areas of Germany would be unpopulated. Maybe the risk perception is a different one here, but I will consume our dyed eggs happily next week ...

A hard boiled egg, with no damages to the shell and that has cooled down naturally (not shocked in cold water) positively keeps for days, if not 2-3 weeks outside the fridge. As long as the dyeing process does not impart the structural integrity of the shell, it doesn’t shorten the shelf life.

You’ve got to be kidding, no ?

No worries - it’s “non-fattening” ... Think of it as a rite of passage 🤭

“Anybody hungry ?” ”Nooo ... we had so much for lunch. Maybe later. Or we skip today.” About 2 minutes later ... ”Maybe we can have something small and light ...” About 5 minutes later ... ”Papa, can we have Spaghetti Carbonara ?” 🙄 Luckily, I am a teamplayer (with Bucatini at hand) ... (Lesson learnt: Everyone likes light dinners - got to do them more often ...)