Kouglof

The holiday weather in Switzerland hasn't been the best: rain, rain, cold, wind some more rain and so on. So, it has been nice to spend some time in kitchen making ginger beer, rhubarber sirup, tiramisu and yesterday a Kouglof. The recipe for the Kouglof I found in the tabloid Blick couple of years ago. Yes I know, I was sceptical too but it's a great recipe. The writer claims it to be a recipe of Paul Haeberlin. Well, I haven't confirmed that but the main thing is that it makes a really nice Kouglof.

Here's the recipe in German. I will translate it to English only when somebody wishes so.

Enjoy!

Summertime

Panna Cotta with berries

Recipe for 4-5 persons:

fresh berries

3 dl raspberry juice (I made it with Monin syrup because nothing better was available)

some sugar (if you want it sweet)

3 gelatine leaves

...

3 dl cream

2 dl milk

40 g sugar

vanilla

5 gelatin leaves

Place some berries into four or five glasses. Soak the gelatin leaves and add them to the hot raspberry juice. Pour the liquid over the berries so that they are just covered. The extra liquid you will need later for the top. Let the jelly set in the fridge.

Combine cream and sugar and heat it up with vanilla pod/seeds. Add the soaked gelatin leaves and mix well. Add the cold milk and pour the mix carefully over the berry jelly. Let the panna cotta set in the fridge.

Place berries on the top of the firm Panna Cotta. Warm up the leftover raspberry jelly until liquid and pour it carefully over the berries. Let set one more time.

Kitchen part 2

This is also a part of our kitchen. I just didn't want to take a picture earlier because the shelfs were missing which, after our trip to Ikea yesterday, is no more the case.

Dinner in Zürich

Holiday, celebrate :D We had made some plans to fly/drive somewhere nice like Barcelona for our holiday but due to couple of things our holiday was moved some weeks forward and we thought that we could as well stay in Switzerland and visit some nice restaurants...to use the money planned for hotel and flight tickets for restaurants around here. Yesterday my hubby had to pick up some chilies for his working place from Zürich and I also had to pay my working place a visit so we decided to combine this trip with a dinner in some nice place

I had dreamed about a warm and sunny summer day, drinks and a walk at the Zürich lake, maybe some tapas or sushi on a sunny terrace before heading for dinner at the lake. Na ja, it was not to be because the weather doesn't want to co-operate with us. They have actually promised some snow for tommorro. Crazy, isn't it?

So we changed our plan for a visit at the Globus (delicates store shopping) and pre dinner drinks at the bar of the Widder hotel. At the last minute I remembered that a friend of ours, who we hadn't seen forever, works at the bar in Four Points by Sheraton so we paid her a visit at the Urbano bar.

Pre dinner drinks at the Urbano bar

Restaurant Quai 61

As a dinner place for us we chose the Quai 61, which has actually had it's open only on the 11th of May. So a new place. The atmosphere in the restaurant was really nice, kind of 20s/30s ocean feeling. Service was polite and professional. The only real minus point was, that our waiter didn't remember the day's fish special.

As a aperitif we were recommended a Lillet Vive (Lillet Blanc, Tonic, cucumber, mint and strawberry) which was super good. I shall forget  about Aperol spriz and Hugo and go for Lillet this summer ;D While wating for the aperitifs a small basket of bread was brought to the table and service also poured some olive oil for the bread.

From the restaurant tables there is a lovely view of the Zürich lake. Take a note at the olive oil and salt on the table.

Food itself was really good. Nothing bad to say there. Specially the octopus was brilliant. All in all we paid 220 CHF for the dinner and I have to say that it was money well spend. The Quai 61 has also a really lovely looking terrace and we will definitely have to go back at some point when the weather lets you sit outside, sip some cocktails and admire the sunset :D This is what we ate:

As a starter:

Marinated octopus with spicy chorizo, celery and ciabatta with sun dried tomatos

Honey flavoured goat cheese with zucchini salat, mint and roasted almonds

As a main course:

Pan fried pike perch with ginger beurre blanc and carrot puree

Entrecote of Crand cru beef with caponata vegetables, port wine jus and fried potatos

As a dessert:

Warm chocolate cake with cherry soup and vanilla ice cream

Destroyed cheese cake: cream cheese espuma, mango ragout and crumble

After dessert:

Two espressos 

Starter with goat cheese

Starter with octopus and Chorizo-sausage

In the restaurant.

Main course: Pike perch

Main course: Entercote

Without the clouds you could probably see a lovely sunset

Dessert: Chocolate cake

Dessert: destroyed cheese cake

The place. By the way, you can see the kitchen on our arrival

Sirup & Co

Wann ist es endlich soweit? Kann es kaum noch erwarten...

..., dass der Holunder endlich blüht.

Nettle hummus and grandma's cucumbers

Grandma's cucumbers / Mummon kurkut in a bit different way as usual

In Finland there is an art of preparing cucumbers which we call grandma's cucumbers. I don't know if this term also exists somewhere else. For the basic recipe you should take 1 part of vinegar (e.g. apple or white wine vinegar), 2 parts of sugar and 3 parts of water. The cucumber for the this recipe is not the normal cucumber but some thing we call "open field cucumber" / avomaankurkku. Here in Switzerland I have always bought Gurke Nostrano which is more or less the same thing as avomaankurkku. 

So, if you are a grandma, you will mix the above mentioned ingredients, add the peeled and sliced cucumber. One thing is not to be forgotten: dill. To the traditional grandma's cucumbers you should always add some minced dill. When ready place the cucumbers in the fridge and let them stand over night for the good flavour. This cucumbers are a flavour from my childhood. My grandma would always in summer have some homegrown cucumbers prepared like this.

Well, I'm not a grandma :D so I made my cucumbers a bit differently. I heated up the water do dilute the sugar better. After removing the pot from the stove I added the vinegar, chili, mint, white pepper and ginger. I poured the liquid on the cucumbers in the jar and let it marinate over night. I find this type cucumbers great on a dark bread or served with smoked fish.

Nettle hummus and chili "puff pastry futes" / Blätterteig-Flûte

I wanted to make more experiments with nettles and the ravioli filling from last week gave me the idea of hummus with nettles. Now I luckily have a blender with more power than last time I made hummus. Last time the motor over heated and boom...smoke...no more blender. Now I'm using the KitchenAid blender, which so far has been the best out of all the "home" blenders I have tried. And the hummus...it became very delicious indeed and I served it with some chili flavoured puff pastry flutes. I had some puff pastry dough leftover from the strawberry slice used that for the flutes.

Nettle hummus:

nettles, blanced

chickpeas, cooked

lemon juice

cumin

coriander

salt, sugar

olive oil

(vegetable bouilloin (for thinning))

"Strawberry slice" aka Erdbeerschnitte and Saturday market

Nice summery dessert or a companion for a cup of coffee

For the strawberry filling:

135 g strawberry puree 

           (100 g berries, 35 g Sugar)

6 g gelatine leaf

215 g heavy cream, whipped

250 g quark

180 g strawberries in pieces

For the vanilla cream filling:

400 g heavy cream, whipped

7 g gelatine leaf

35 g sugar (vanilla sugar to your taste)

Also needed:

puff pastry dough

icing sugar

I got the idea for this dessert from the Hotellerie et Gastronomie Zeitung, which is a newspaper published by Hotel and Gastro union in Switzerland. In the last number there was a recipe for millefeuilles aux fraises. I used that recipe as the ground recipe but did some changes to it: e.g. replacing some of the cream with quark.

I don't have a proper rectangle cake form so I used a 26 cm x 11 cm bread form which is not ideal because it's widens from the bottom to the top. Puff pastry dough I bought ready so I only needed to measure the desired rectangular size x 3 and bake the plates. After the they were done I sprinkled them with icing sugar and caramelized them in about 220 C in oven. When they were ready I brushed them with some coconut butter. I read that this should help to keep them crispy.

Strawberry filling: I used fresh strawberrys to make the puree and added the gelatin to the puree. This I then mixed with the whipped cream and quark. At the end I added the strawberry pieces

Vanilla cream: Super easy. Whip the cream and add the sugar. Small part of the sugar should be vanilla sugar and I just added some after my flavour...about 2 tsp I think. After soking the gelatin leaves I added them to an about 1/2 dl hot cream and mixed with the vanilla cream.

 I prepared the form with a piece of  baking parchment. When all the components were ready, I buildt the schnitte together: plate - strawberry cream - plate - vanilla cream - plate. When ready, I placed the whole thing to the freezer and next day I took it out to cut the desired size pieces. The nice thing with the Erdbeerschitte is that you can slice the desired amount of pieces and the rest you can place back in the  freezer for later days. I had some filling left over. That I just filled in two glasses with some fresh strawberries and that was our dessert for the evening.

Here are some impressions from today's Saturday market and winzerapero:

Winzerapero, a chance to taste some local wines

Saturday market

Saturday market

Cat picture of the day

No diet!!!

Kleiner Buchtipp für alle, die nicht nur gerne kochen, sondern auch essen.

Kitchen

I'm a litte bit better off with my "profikitchen" ;D

Malt bread (Mallasleipä)

I like to bake most of my dark bread with a sourdough without any added yeast. In Finland we call the sourdough juuri which translates root. I find the Finnish name perfect because that's what it is: a root of a bread. In Finland the root traditionally is/was passed from mother to daughter and therefore in some old families the root can be some hundreds of years old. We use the root mainly for making dark, specially ryebread and using it for whiter bread is not so well know. 

The best way to store the root would be to use a wooden bowl (the traditional bowl in Finland: taikinatiinu) and after taking the dough out leave some of it around the edges to dry out. As dried the root can be kept good even years. I don't have a family root (should ask my granny, if she has one) so I started my own root some years ago. I keep my root always in a fridge. It would also be possible to freeze the root. I did that once but didn't like it, because then the root always needs a bit time to wake up. Couple of times I almost forgot to take a piece of the dough and my root was almost lost but luckily I remembered it when putting the bread into the oven and could still snatch a piece.

The spread on the bread is the rest of filling for the nettle raviolis

1 l water

2 tbsp sour dough

3 dl rye flour (Roggenschrotmehl)

2 dl (rye)malt (mämmi- ja leipämallas)

...

1 dl molasses (Melasse)

100 g butter

1 tbsp anis seeds

1 tbsp fenchel seeds

salt

about 9 dl wheat flour

Mix the ingredients of the first part and let the dough sour over night (or as long as needed) in warm place until it clearly makes bubbles and has a sour taste. I usually place the bowl on to a bath room floor due to floor heating. Add the molasses, melted butter and spices (crushed with mortar). At this point place the bowl to the stand mixer and add the flour while mixing. The dough won't get super thick and you can't form it with your hands. Place the dough in two forms and let rise. Bake in 175 C for about 1 hour.

Die Profiküche 2.0

Der Wirkungsbereich eines Profis. Vielleicht wird jetzt klar,warum noch keine kreativen Beiträge meinerseits veröffentlicht werden.

Korean style barbecue short ribs

Our starter yesterday: Self made pappardelle with morel cream sauce. The rosmarin flowers are from our garden. On the toast there is some nettle spread.

First smoking and then barbecue...

Oh my god! My second post inside such a short time. It's all thanks to the holiday. In the future, when working, there won't be so many things to blog about. This post is about our dinner yesterday. We didn't need all of the the pasta dough for the raviolis so we made some pappardelle with the rest. Those we left to dry over night and the next day we prepared a starter with it: Pappardelle with morel cream sauce. Don't undertsand me wrong...We do not always eat so fancy. It's just that we happened to have some left overs.  By the way, here, you can take a look at pasta names.

Yummy, lovely glaze

For the main course I give all the credit for my husband. He is the grilling and smoking master. He found a nice recipe from one our books, which I think we bought in South Africa: Korean style barbecue short ribs. The recipe will be in one of the following pictures. The ribs were lovely. Now we still have some of the glaze left and we are planning to use it to cook some pork in vacuum with it...I will let you know how that turns out if we ever manage to make it. With the main course we ate the artichokes I made the day before. They were good, not great, but good :)

Served with those marinated artichokes.

Here is the recipe. I think my hubby followed it more or less with a couple of fine tunings

The recipe is from this book

Honestly!!! I so want to be a cat in my next life ;D

Home made pasta

With what should I start my "food blogger" live? Well, as it turns out, with something time consuming: self made nettle and morchel raviolis. I'm between jobs at the moment. The old one has finnished and the new one starts only in June so I have time to do some experiments . I have, of course, made pasta before but that was back in cooking school so it's about a time to give it try.

I saw this first...

All started with nettles. I wanted to make something with them and the first idea was a soup or crepes. But hey, that's boring! I wanted to try something new and thus I came to the idea of pasta, nettles and shrimps. Well, this idea developped a bit further and I thought that I should finally give that pasta a try and do some nettle filled raviolis. 

...and when I looked further many, many more and not just these in the pictures.

What's with the morchels? Well they weren't part of my plan until yesterday when I disccovered that my garden is full of them :D So naturally they had to be included to the master plan. Therefore at the end of the day nettle ravioli (the round ones), morchel ravioli (the square ones) and those earlier mentioned shrimps found their way onto my plate.

I collected some for our needs and the rest I left standing...maybe my neighbour also wants some.

I hope they get good

Before my pasta experiments I cooked some artichokes (once again a thing that I last time did in school) and placed them into marrinade for the next day

Stock for cooking the artichockes:

water

spring onions

thymian, rosmarin, garlic

vegetable bouillon

Marinade:

some of the cooking stock

Sherry vinegar

olive oli

garlic, thymian and rosmarin

Artichokes in the marinade. Will be testing them later today.

The first thing I had to go to do was to buy a pasta maschine. I was weighting a decision between buying a part for the kitchen aid or getting the had usable one. The last mentioned won because that's what I had been using in the school as well. I bought it in Manor for about 90 CHF and the brand is called Marcato.

I used the following recipe for the pasta:

150 g  Wheat flour (weissmehl)

150 g Durum flour (Knöplfimehl/Hartweitzenmehl)

3 eggs

little water

My new pasta maschine

 For the nettle filling I sauteed the nettles with spring onion and garlic. Added a little cream and vegetable bouillon and pureed in mixer with a little bit dried bread for thicker consitancy. At the end I added some salt, pepper and parmesan.

The filling with morchels followed the same pattern but I didn't need any bread because the thickness was good and I left the parmesan away.

Raviolis in making

Hier is finally the ready product

My hubby prepared the shrimps on pan with garlic added some cream and spices and the raviolis we threw streight from the pot to the pan, quick mix and voilà: Ready to enjoy! As a wine we had Pinot blanc (weissburgunder)  2011 from Weingut Klumpp, Baden-Württemberg.

Yammy

The start

Everything has a beginning and the beginning of this blog was motivatied by an ending. Two persons (kitchen profis I think), one from Finland and the other one from Germany, had found their way to Switzerland where their roads crossed. After two years of working together the road now takes a new turn and they continue their separate ways with a wish to still keep in touch to share the food in their life.

This blog will be about the love for food. We don't want to set strict borders but instead let the blog live its own live wether it will be experiments in home/work, recipes, restaurants visited or maybe interesting links around the food theme. The language we want to limit to English and German because, well to be honest, there ain't too many Finnish speakers in the world, right? And that way we will both be able to understand each other. 

So, let us see what the ride will bring: a project dead from the beginning or a start for a Finnish-German food co-operation :D 

PS. Cat fotos and themes are allowed due to the love of cats which the both writers share ;D