Super Sun[WAS?]day Celery Soup

And than you think.....yes! Finally it’s Sunday....and you decide to go and visit a Jew Cemetery. You stay on a bus for almost 2 hours crossing two times the city, you seen places you never expected to find in Berlin...you arrive in the middle of nowhere, in the extreme north of the city....and the first thing you see once got off the bus is two neo-nazi on a Harley....and after a loong walk you reach the main entrance of the cemetery, which, exactly from that Sunday, decided to close an hour earlier than the usual...you think: “Ok.It could be worst....it could be raining” ....never do that....cats and dogs from the sky, and your umbrella is in the bag you left home....the one next to your desktop.... And than you think....but I am lucky! I can face all this...because I had a Super Sun[WAS?]day Celery Soup!

What do you need:

• 1 Kitchen
• 1 Casserole (obviously big enough)
• Knives 
• 1 Potato peeler (not absolutely necessary, but very useful)
• 1 cut board
• 1 wooden spoon
• 1 Blender

Ingredients:

• 1 Celery Root + some Celery leaves 
• 1 Carrot
• 1 Onion
• 3 Garlic cloves
• Some Vegetable or Chicken Stock, Boiling
• Salt - Pepper
• 2 Bay leaves
• 1 spoon of cream (just if you like it)
• Olive oil

1. Carefully peel the Celery Root. It is a very boring job, you especially need to be very careful to check that there is no more dirt in it.
2. Dice the Celery Root. An easiest way to do it is to slide it before dicing it.
3. Peel the carrot and dice it
4. Peel and slice / dice the onion, peel the Garlic cloves and chop finely
5. Wash the Celery Leaves and chop them.
6. Heath some olive oil in the casserole, and when it is hot enough add Onion and Garlic, toss for a couple of minutes. [Just a couple of minutes, the onion does not have to be brown....]
7. Add the carrot to the saucepan and toss for another couple of minutes
8. Add the Celery Root...and guess what? Toss for a couple of minutes.
9. Add the stock: do not add a Niagara Falls of it, it just need to cover the veggies....
10. Add the Celery Leaves, salt and pepper, bay leaves, and simmer for 30 minutes. 
11. Add the cream and blend it. And correct seasoning.

Serve Hot, with some fresh pepper.

Enjoy it, and...

Bis bald.

Kohlrabi? WTF???

Yeee! It's October again...or better....it's OKTOBER!!!!

Crap....yes, sorry...but, as we say in Italiand: quando ci vuole ci vuole! 
Rain, wind, rain, cold, wind and cold....

But, today is an important day! I have a new friend:
His name is Kohlrabi, I never had the chance to meet him before, but today is the protagonist of this blog entry!

I have found it today, standing alone in the shop, waiting for somebody to rescue him....and so, Kohlrabi carpaccio for dinner!

KOHLRABI CARPACCIO

what do you need:

• 1 Kitchen
• 1 Knife

Ingredients:

• 1 Kohlrabi, or more if you want...
• A pinch of salt
• A pinch of pepper
• A pinch of whatever you want
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar (or not...)

1. Remove the leaves from your Kohlrabi [I did not throw them away...maybe tomorrow they will become a nice soup!
2. Wash the kohlrabi, peel it and slice it as thinner as you can.
3. Season with salt and pepper and olive oil, balsamic vinegar and your fantasy!
4. Eat it.

Ok, it is a post which could be suitable for a "Cooking for Dummies" blog....

I hope you will enjoy it!

Bis bald,

M.

Bacon Dashi + Homosexual Chocolate Bundt

Once upon a time I had a blog!

I am back from my trip to the moon! I haven’t upload anything for ages to this blog....so, now it’s time to give life again to this beautiful medium!

What am I cooking today? I want to try to cook two new dishes: one is a very typical chocolate bundt, and the other is a very untypical ingredient for a soup....

First of all, don’t run and throw up....these two things are not supposed to be eaten together....but if you would like to try the bacon-chocolate experience I won’t stop you in doing that....but once you’ve done it, let me know what it tasted like!

Why I am doing these two antithetical dishes together? The answer will shortly come.....read the recipe/s:

A homosexual chocolate bundt + Bacon dashi!

What you need:

A kitchen

1 mixer

A bunch of bowls

A saucepan

A pink bundt pan (if it’s not pink you will loose the homosexual part of this recipe)

Spoons and knives

A preheated oven (180°C)

Soup Ingredients:

2 L of water

2 15x7 pieces of Konbu

250g of smoked bacon

HCB (Homosexual Chocolate Bundt) Ingredients:

2 eggs

Pinch of salt

Vanilla flavor

Rum flavor jafd (just a few drops)

Bitter Almond flavor jafd

Lemon flavor jafd

240 All purpose flour

90g Butter

150g Sugar

A glass of milk

Baking powder

Chocolate drops

1. Wash the Konbu with fresh water and put it into the saucepan with 2 L of fresh water. Bring it to simmer, turn off the heat and leave there for 10 minutes.
2. While you are waiting 10 minutes, you can start preparing the ingredients for the HCB: Divide the eggs, beat the egg whites with the mixer until they form a thick foam.
3. Mix the butter and sugar until they become a smooth paste
4. Go back to your dashi: remove the konbu from the pan, and put the bacon into the water, bring it to boil and simmer it for 30 minutes.
5. Add the egg yolks to the butter-sugar paste, with the flavor drops. 
6. Add the egg whites, milk, salt and the flour mixed with the baking powder. Mix it very carefully, you do not want the egg-white foam to become just egg whites again!
7. Add the chocolate drops. Pour the mixture into the pink-bundt pan; if the mixture is too thick, use a spoon to create the bundt (please, don’t leave a number of mountains into the pan!). Bake it for 45 minutes, or until it looks ready and firm.
8. When the dashi is cold, refrigerate it and remove the thick fat paste which will be floating in the saucepan. Use the rest.

I have decide to bake this bundt because I still had some chocolate lasting from Easter....and I needed room in my tiny fridge! So, if you feel heartless enough for smashing a cute and sweet chocolate Easter bunny with a hammer, be my guest, do what I just did and enjoy the feeling!!!!!

Quotation of the day:

Oh, thank you! What is this? It’s a bundt! A bunch? A Bundt! A Punch? A BUndt! A Butt? A BUNdt! A Buns? A BUNDt! A Buch? A BUNDT A BUNDT A BUNDT!!!! Einei tarti Morì! Ah, it’s a kek!!!!! Thankiu Thankiu very much! There’s a hole in this kek!


Source: For the Bacon Dashi

Carrot leaves Frittata

I think I can take a little pause from my everyday exhausting work of pretending to write as a non moron....

I went to buy some carrots, and they came with a beautiful bunch of green leaves....I used to throw them away....but these were too cute not to be eaten....so....here we are!

What do you need
1 Kitchen
1 Casserole
Spoons + Knives

Ingredients

1 Onion
4 Eggs
A bunch of carrot leaves
Salt pepper
Olive Oil

1. Wash and trim the carrot leaves
2. Dice the onion
3. Heat the olive oil in the casserole, add the onion and cook until gold
4. Add the carrot leaves and cook for a couple of minutes
5. Over a high heath pour the eggs, season with salt and pepper and scramble them. Working from the outside toward the center of the pan, stir the mixture until it becomes firm and cook for a couple of minutes
6. Turn the frittata and cook for a couple of more minutes. 

Easy enough?

The counter-diet Chocolate cake with Bay Leaf Syrup

I woke up this morning and everything outside was candid white. We passed from an almost spring day of yesterday to total white snowy winter again! Now it is raining...
After the snow I’ve received the first refusal for a job application which would have changed my poor-as-Greece situation, with no apparent reasons . . . Shit happens.....even when you are gasping in it....it continues to happen!
No more room for sadness in this blog! I promise!
So, what can transform a shitty day in a “still brown but from a different material” day? A chocolate cake! I’ve decided to look up for a new recipe in a cooking book I’ve bought in October which is a collection of really interesting recipes taken from the New York TImes! It is as far as it could be from a diet-range nutrition, but It is in the oven right now...and it smells fantastic!

It is not very difficult to make, even if it has a number of passages....

What do you need:
1 Kitchen
1 Electric Mixer
2 Bowls
2 Small Saucepans
1 Baking pan
Spoons - Knives

Ingredients:
For the Syrup:

1 Cup sugar (approx. 240g)
12 Bay leaves (in the recipe they are fresh....I’m in Berlin, and it is February, I think that’s a good excuse for using dry ones)
1 Cup of water
1 Vanilla bean

For the Chocolate Cake

180g Butter (...that’s the counter-diet element . . .)
400g Chocolate (see below)
6 Eggs, separated
200g Sugar
150g Almond flour [which I’ve found in the small-mini-I have barely nothing-supermarket close to my home....so...I assume it i not something impossible to be found]

1. In a small saucepan combine sugar and water
2. Split the vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds and add both to the syrup
3. Add the bay leaves, bring to boil and simmer until the liquid is reduced and it becomes sticky
4. Cool, strain and set aside
5. Heat the oven to 200°C, grease the baking pan with some butter.
6. Melt butter and chocolate or with the help of a double boiler [or being extremely careful not to burn everything over the heat.
7. Beat the egg yolks with half of the sugar until they become light yellow and foamy, add the melted chocolate, mix well.
8. Fold the almond flour to the eggs yolk + chocolate mixture.
9. Beat the white yolks with the remaining sugar until firm and fold into the egg yolk + chocolate + almond mixture [critical point: when folding be careful not to stir the batch, but mixing vertically: from the bottom to the top]
10. Pour the batch into the baking pan and bake for 25 - 30 minutes [or until it feel firm to the touch]

At this point the recipe has also some whipped cream [with a spoon of the syrup in the whipping process] . . .

Pour some Bay leaf syrup on the plate before serving the cake. [Add whipped cream, if you feel pig enough to do so]

Have fun

Bis bald

M.

Oldies, Venice, Summer

I have been busy....the snow....the Opera....still cooking, but still experimenting some Indian recipes....a cake to bake for Monday....three papers to write...an enormous amount of books to read....but....in the meantime some old-Venetian-pics!

Bis bald....

Yellow + Green __________Grilled Turnips + Fresh Coriander Pesto

No, don’t worry! I am not getting converted to the fresh coriander religion [...?], and I am not gonna cook only with this herb, but, you know, when you go to the green grocery shop and  you need fresh coriander, it comes in little bunches [mine was more a bush than a bunch], and it resists a few days only in the fridge, so you try to put it everywhere [with your coffee in the morning, in your tee in the afternoon...].

I also had a turnip in line to be cooked [this particular one spent half of her life in my balcony waiting to be prepared] so, now you have the combination.

What do you need:
1 Kitchen
1 Knife
1 Blender
1 Grill

Ingredients:
1/2 Turnip [if you want a whole turnip, go ahead...it doesn’t matter]
1 Garlic Clove
5 Tbs Olive Oil
Salt + Pepper
Fresh Coriander
1 Tsp Balsamic Vinegar

. Peel the turnip, wash it and slice it into 1cm-thick slices [during this process it is very important to cut very similar slices in order to have the same cooking-time for eery single slice-----don’t do that face, it’s the only thing I’m asking you to do....]
. Grill the turnip slices over a medium heat [medium....ok? Not hell!] for 5 minutes, turn and grill them for other 5 minutes.

. Blend the fresh coriander [I had approx. 5 stalks of it] with the olive oil [you don’t need to use all the five tbs, maybe you will need more, or if you’d prefer so, you can also use half olive oil and half water...it’s up to you], salt, pepper and Balsamic Vinegar until they become a smooth green pesto
. Pour the pesto over the grilled Turnips and leave there for 5 minutes [at least].

According to my tastes,the combination worked very well; let me know what do you think about it!

P.s. If for the day after you are planning to have a Job Interview, a first date, a first kiss, an important speech to attend, don’t eat it: the garlic in the pesto will remain in your mouth for approx. 48 hours....so....

Enjoy it.

Bis Bald