do something new every day

i bought this steamer on sale a few months ago and i never had the nerve to really cook something in it. who knew that it was THAT easy and quick!






of course, ainsley harriott does it much better and if you want the exact recipe you probably should stick to his segment of the series "gourmet express"

to go

the new semester starts today, it might be my last. honestly, i can hardly wait to be done with university, i am getting a little too old at (almost) thirty four! but there is one thing i still need to take advantage of: apparently i could get funding from university if i wanted to spend some time abroad doing research for e.g. a master's thesis.

hey wait a minute: I WANT TO DO THAT!

i spent a week in london recently, it was my second trip to this fabulous city in 2009. as i mentioned on this blog before i've lived in london for a year when i was younger ... and i think i need to go there again. it would feel right to spend some more time in london, and though i have absolutely no plan how to finance this, where to work, where to live ... i think a good start would be to do research for my master's thesis there and at least get a little funding!

one thing i absolutely adore about london is the vast variety of food you can get there. every borough offers its specialities and the various ethnicities just make london a neverending buffet for me! there is always something new to discover and i have to admit that i pretty much munched my way through hammersmith, shepherds bush and china town recently.

boy oh boy, and how much do i love the "to go"-mentality! street vendors even sell you soup, can you imagine that? i loved that. since i am pretty stubborn now when it comes to organic, local and healthy and i just can't get a big variety "to go" here in linz (or at university) i decided to make my own soup today and fill it in my thermos. woah, it was sooo good to have something hearty and warm! fellow students ogled at me jealously!

this recipe is loosely based on a creamy tomato soup recipe i once saw on a gary rhodes program. i think this soup can be as freestyle as you like, but since i haven't added a recipe in a while i'll just give you the exact measurements on my version:


1 tbsp sunflower oil
35 g leek
100 g diced celery
200 g grated carrots
50 g grated parsnips
50 g grated carrots, yellow
500 g diced tomatoes
parsley
1 liter of water
cream or cream cheese
pepper to taste

in a large pot, fry the leek in the sunflower oil over medium heat. add the diced celery and the grated vegetables and turn up the heat.

add one liter of plain water and add the tomatoes. throw in a good handfull of parsley and don't be shy here: it will all be blizzed later, so just cut up the stalks and add them to your soup as they are full of flavour and it would be a total waste to throw them away! let the soup simmer for at least half an hour.


now get out your kitchen gear and blizz the soup - if you want to add more creaminess you could add cream - i only had cream cheese in my fridge so i added a good tablespoon full of that.


a good overdose of pepper :D and the soup is ready for my thermos!

i think my two basils made love to each other! how naughty!

you can totally see that the green one now has blossoms like the purple one has and the leaves of the purple one are speckled green!





they totally made out!

they even hold hands most of the time.
well, leaves.

now, will this even work?

okay. this was an impulse purchase. i was at this little indian shop near my home and i bought about everything that looked good to me. but how do i open a bloody coconut?

no idea!


yes, i will get my hammer. that is never a mistake.


i better make a few holes and drain the liquid.
it will be messy anyway but it might be a little less messy if i bash in an empty coconut.


okay, this worked quite well.
i might even succeed with my coconut project!


how do i proceed now?!
aber "wie öffnet man eine kokosnuss?"
thank god for google!

after a few strikes i have a breakthrough!
a little less than 2 minutes!
it is a little skewed, i grant, but i am absolutely amazed!
that was so easy!


all in all it took me less than 5 minutes to tackle my first coconut!

some people are taken aback by the taste because a coconut is not as sweet as your regular bounty bar, but still - i should embark upon such culinary adventures more often!


i am very proud of myself for even buying such a little monstrosity ... bring on the plantain now!

is there even such a thing as fancy traditional fast food?

we finally have a fine summer day here in austria after weeks of chilly weather, rain and even flooding. it almost felt like autumn already, so it wasn't all that strange for me to think of warming stew when i found cute little miniature cabbage in my organic delivery last week.

but how do i use those adorable tiny cabbages before summer hits us big time and all i want to eat is ice cream and stuff my bra with those fish fillets from my freezer?

i will go for classic bohemian utilization, krautfleckerl. i like them even better when they are cold, but that is just one of my gastronomical quirks. those mini cabbages will give me more than enough for lunch and dinner! krautfleckerl usually consist of classic head cabbage, onions and pasta called fleckerl. you could compare fleckerl to the italian quadrucci or farfalle.

but i need to improvise once again and use up my penne, my garlic and those three adorable bundles instead of the classic ingredients fleckerl, onion and cabbage. so technically this dish might not be krautfleckerl anymore ... let's call it an interpretation! lets call it ...

penne with braised baby cabbage

i cooked a good hand full of penne. in the same pot, i later fried 4 cloves of garlic in sunflower oil. i roughly cut those baby cabbage heads, all in all they where about 250 grams in the end. i added that to the pot.




then i added 100 ml of water, popped on a lid and let the cabbage simmer over medium heat for 20 minutes. the water had dissappeared by then and all that was left to do was adding the pasta and the seasoning. i am not supposed to eat too much salt because my bood pressure is going through the roof, so i only added fresly groud black pepper. i am sure caraway seeds would also fit perfectly (they are mandatory in regular krautfleckerl!) or you could even use vegetable stock instead of water.

maybe i should give my improvisations a little more thought, because caraway seeds would have been a great thing in there! but there you go. i spiced up something i've known and liked all my life and that is nothing special at all, just everyday food. i could cook krautfleckerl if you woke me up in the middle of the night :)