present

i am currently baking a prototype for a couple of christmas presents. i am giving away do-it-yourself-food this year :)

what's up?

maybe i can resuscitate this blog by joining a foodblog event, just like in the old days?

but where should i start?

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 :)

precision work

the opening of my exhibition was yesterday.
it was just wonderful!
perfect!!

i also had a live stream running and it is now archived, if you want to check it out.
but honestly: you just had to be there!

and i'm still overwhelmed by the responses i got! usually i am pretty humble when it comes to me being an artist and i cant even imagine that people take an interest in what i do. though i am loudmouthed, i don't really have *balls* :D yesterday was the perfect mixture of the artsy-fartsy i want to be sometimes and the authenticity i stand for, generally. it was so great to see my friends there and my family too. my mama even made her delicious potato spread for the buffet, everyone loved it! it was a nice culinary experience, as i got a pot of meat from the local kebap vendor too. i want people to come together over food!

i can't even begin to describe how i loved that evening yesterday!

exhibitionist!

*
now that food blogging has become very trendy and many of the bloggers out there are having book deals and all i am very proud to announce that i will have something pretty special coming up too!

i will be showing 40 of my food pictures in a gallery.

i am very proud that i have the opportunity to show my work in a friend's art gallery. though i am not a high-profile food blogger at all dinner for one has had a good run so far, don't you think? and i am in my 5th year already, can you believe this?

granted, i am not as active as i was in the early years, but i am sure i will not put dinner for one asleep just yet. somehow i think there are a few more years of munching ahead!

* i don't want to show you the pictures just yet, my friend! i'll post them here once they are up in the gallery, because i guess most of you will not be able to drop by in person :) so be patient!

the perfect egg. 4 minutes. timed.

it is firm on the outside and still soft in the middle - who cares if there is a dent in it?

my life is upside down right now. but i will be back.

help yourself to some fabulous hasselback potatoes in the meantime!

gründonnerstag

maudy what?!

i *never* eat beef

i mostly cook vegetarian now, sometimes even vegan. i don't really miss meat and going vegetarian/vegan is about as close as i will ever get to these special diets that would probably be a good idea for an ms-patient like me. i've made quite a few adjustments to my diet anyway since the diagnosis and i continue to do so, but i am not (yet) cut out for the strict regime that's necessary when you follow those specific diets. there are several diets too, which makes it even harder to find one that suits me.

ah, what the hell.

i never hesitate to eat meat when i feel like eating meat! i'm like "hey, my body wants it, my body probably needs it!" when i have that craving i always buy poultry. i haven't bought red meat in years, even before the diagnosis.

when i stumbled upon the amazing recipe for mongolian beef over at "the crepes of wrath" i not only licked my laptop screen, i also instantly wanted to try it.

well, i did. and i did not substitute the red meat with white meat on my first try. though the dish itself tasted incredibly hearty and savoury i wasn't too satisfied with my choice of the red meat.

since the recipe itself is pretty awesome and tasty i was willing to give the dish another try - this time with turkey (virtually the only kind of meat i eat these days).

so here is my (metric) approach to the recipe along with some pictures.

dice two turkey schnitzel and cover the cubes with two heaped spoons full of cornstarch. make sure to shake off any excess starch because it can make your sauce too gooey. set the meat aside while you prepare the sauce.



fry one tablespoon of grated ginger and six cloves of minced garlic in three teaspoons of sunflower oil.


now mix 150 ml water and 150 ml soy sauce with two generous table spoons of sugar and add to the pan [the original recipe calls for brown sugar, but i still have to get rid of a couple of sachets of plain old white sugar. so i used those].


now remove the sauce from the pan. fry the meat until it starts to turn brown.



now pour the sauce back in the pan and let it simmer over medium heat until the sauce has your desired consistency.


cook your favorite rice for this dish! i am totally into brown rice these days ...


garnish with a nice touch of a little green when you arrange the dish. you could use spring onions or salad or even swiss chard, as i did.


while i am all for experiencing new things and tastes i guess i'll resort to white meat in the future. turkey is just "my thing", i like it a lot and it looks like i just can't cook red meat anyway - it is never tender and yummie, it always has the consistency of the sole of a shoe. clearly, i am doing something wrong! i probably can't handle beef! [and i manage to screw up dishes with pork now too.]


what a fantastic dish! even the leftovers look delicious! [since i made enough to have dinner tonight and lunch tomorrow, technically those are not leftovers. this is my lunch for tomorrow!]

rosmarinus officinalis

since it looks like my rosemary wants to go the way of all earthly things i have to act quickly: before the last green *leaf* of this baby conifer drops to the ground i'll stuff a couple of those *leafs* in a nice bottle and marinate my sunflower oil.

that should work, don't you think?