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 :)