I believe every real german my age knows the clay pot “Römertopf” from the seventies and early eighties – if not from his Mom, then at least from his Grandma. It was very widespread then and everyone I know can remember that thing. Nowadays it became somewhat forgotten compared to it’s former popularity, but it’s still present enough that I got one for a reasonable price these days and of course had to give it a try.
Homemade Butter: How To
I read about this in my doctor’s waiting room in – I shit you not – a women’s magazine. Mediterranean/French style easy homemade butter! They adressed several different seasonings and further uses in the article, but the basic procedure is always the same. All you need is a food processor and half a liter of heavy cream (get the real enchilada: 30% fat). After having my TBE shot, I knew what I had to do…
How to: Prepare Sauerkraut…
… the traditional german way – or not?
Sauerkraut is so german it even gave us our name 🙂 , it’s very widespread in the nation, very regionally diverse and versatile. It is part of the traditional german cuisine, mostly eaten as a side dish but also as a full meal when made with the appropriate ingredients. It’ very healthy – for example for it’s contents of vitamin C which even increases when cooked.
There’s what feels like a gazillion ways of preparing (especially homemade) Sauerkraut in germany alone (and I bet there are even more recipes all over the world). To condense these down to some kind of a standard formula that everything else can be built upon, here’s my way. BTW: We’re talking fresh and unprocessed Sauerkraut here, not the pre-cooked, canned version from the supermarket.
Basic Pizza Dough Recipe
(This recipe is so far authentically italian, as an italian person that I know confirmed to me.)
What you need (3 small-sized pizzas):
1/2 cube fresh yeast
1/2 tsp. sugar
500 g flour (ideally, italian “Tipo 00”, alternatively all purpose flour)
4 tbsp. olive oil
1 tsp. salt
300 ml lukewarm water
Skooma Taste Test
Now that the Skooma from august has abundantly matured, we did the taste test:
It has a luscious golden golden color and it smells amazing. Made from mostly vodka, apricots and sugar, it is very sweet, a fruity liqueur with the apricots clearly tasteable. I think this is best sipped in small portions and only one glass after dinner. What really stands out is the cardamom aroma – unusual and very delicious.
9/10 would do it again with a little less sugar.
Miso Spaghetti
This miso spaghetti recipe is both easy and delicious. Give it a try!
Slow Cooker Garlic and Herbs Beef Shanks
Muaaaahhhh… delicious! I could literally bathe in that stuff 😀 . As with most slow cooker dishes, this is a very low stress and very high reward endeavour. The image looks shit but the meal was great. Here’s how:
Ingredients (for 2):
2 large beef shanks
2 cups beef broth
4 garlic cloves, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. onion powder
2 tbsp. dried herbs (rosemary, thyme, parsley, oregano… whatever)
liberal amount of salt and pepper (to taste)
Home Made Sauerkraut Tutorial
Update october 2020: New sauerkraut, substantially more information added 🙂
Since I happen to be a “Kraut” by birth, I decided to home-make my own Sauerkraut. Fermentation using wild lactobacillus is an ages-old and easy way of preserving almost every reasonably hard/crunchy vegetable (read more here and here) you like. It’s easy and for our grandparent’s generation it was a perfectly common thing to do.
So what is this “fermentation thing” all about? In short: Fermentation is latin and means the decomposing of carbohydrates in foods by various bacteria or yeasts with no oxygen around. Besides improving digestability, this produces a wide variety of distinct aromatics and other substances, the most important one being acid (lactic acid in this case). Harmful bacteria cannot thrive in an oxygen-free, acidic environment, thus, our food becomes preserved.