Cuisine: Vegan

Pasta with cabbage

Congrats, you read this posts title and still clicked on it to read the recipe! Great!
I spent some time trying to come up with a better name for this recipe, because it is surprisingly tasty. Up until now I don’t have a good idea, if you have one, please let me know :-)

This dish is again a result of my organic delivery box (Bio Kiste in german, I don’t know how to translate properly, comes once a week with regional, organic fruit and vegetables).
I am always amazed about how much cabbage is in this box.
Even in summer. You would think, no one grows cabbage in summer, anything else grows in summer, no need to plant cabbage. But yeah, somebody does, and there it is, in my box.

I cannot recall how we first came up with the idea to pair pasta and cabbage, but when we did, we liked the result very much. It is the perfect office lunch. Only a few ingredients and quickly made.

Ingredients

  • 500 g spaghetti
  • 1/2 head white cabbage (if it is a small head, use the whole)
  • 200 ml cream (oat or spelt works nicely)
  • 200 ml white wine
  • 2 tbsp butter/margarine
  • nutmeg, salt & pepper
  • parmesam (optional)

WeisskohlPut a big pot with water on the stove and bring to a boil.
Halve the cabbage, and put the unused half in the fridge.
Remove the outer leaves and cut the cabbage again in halve or in quarters, depending on it’s size. Remove the stalk and slice the cabbage in approx. 1 cm slices.
Melt the butter/margarine in a pan, add the cabbage and steam for a couple of minutes. Season to taste with pepper, salt and the nutmeg.

Now the water should be boiling, add 1 tsp of salt and the pasta. Cook according to packet instructions.
Pour the cream and the white wine into the pan with the cabbage and mix well.
Take 1/2 cup of pasta boiling water an add to the cabbage, check the seasoning and let reduce a little bit. It is important, that the cabbage still has some bite, and is not overcooked.

Drain the pasta and arrange everything nicely on the plates. Sprinkle some parmesan on top if you like.

 

IMG_6413

 

Celeriac chestnut soup

Sellerie-Maronen-Suppe

I always like soup, but in winter, they are an especially great meal. Comforting, warm and the thicker and silkier, the better.

This soup is the result of me reading a lot of cookbooks and the leftovers in my fridge.
Inspired by a soup with celeriac and chestnuts from one of the river cafe cookbooks, but I can’t tell, which one it was.

Ingredients

  • 1 medium yellow onion
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 big potatoes
  • 2 big celeriac
  • 250 g chestnuts (cooked, peeled and vaccum packed)
  • 1-1,5 litre vegetable stock
  • 250 ml milk (if using non-diary, then go for something neutral in taste)
  • 250 ml cream (oat or soja works fine)
  • salt & pepper
  • 100 ml white wine
  • parmesam (optional)

Peel celeriac and potatoes and cut into 1 cm cubes. Peel and finely chop the onion, fry in the olive oil in a big pot for about 3 minutes. Then add celeriac and potatoes, give it a good stir. Let cook with the lid covered for about 8 min, stirring frequently.
Now top with the vegetable stock. Everything should be covered, add more liquid if necessary. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 15 min, or until the celeriac and potato cubes are nice and tender.
In a blender or with an immersion blender blend the soup until silky.
Add the cream, milk and white wine and season to taste with pepper and salt.

Crumble the chestnuts with your fingers in the soup and warm them through.
If you are better than me, then you can top your soup with some extra chestnut crumbles, a bit of chopped parsley and a splash of olive oil.
Sprinkle some parmesan over, if you want and you are ready to eat!

Sellerie-Maronen-Suppe

Orange marmelade

Bitterorangen

Do you like orange marmelade? Well, maybe, if you are english :-)
When I was a child, we spent a couple of summer holidays in ireland. Great (!!) country and very nice people.
We usually stayed at bed & breakfasts and for breakfast you get the „irish breakfast“.
I would say, it’s the same as english breakfast, but since I was in ireland before I spent time in england, irish breakfast it is for me …
With the cornflakes, orange juice, eggs, bacon, sausage and black & white pudding also came toast and orange marmelade. I hated the toast, because it was already really cold and therefore quite dried up, when it reached the table. Mostly they used a little rag to cool the toast, so it won’t get soggy, I guess, but it helped cooling the toast even more. Aargh. So there was cold, dry toast and marmelade. Great. Not really, what an eight year old would hope for. But I loved the sausage and fried egg, so I got over it.

Eventually I found out, that marmelade tastes very good on freshly baked, still warm scones with plenty of salted butter, and since then, I am always happy, to eat marmelade.
I do cook a lot of jams, because I have loads of different berries in my garden, but I never tried to make marmelade myself.
I started looking for recipes some time ago, and found out, that you should use bitter oranges or seville oranges. Well, that is a problem, because they are nowhere to be found here. If you have an idea, please let me know.
Finally I bought myself a little bitter orange tree, and surprisingly it grew a couple of oranges at once.
Today is the day, that I harvested them and now let’s make some marmelade!
This recipe is adapted from Nigella Lawsons book „How to eat“.

ingredients

  • 1 kg oranges, bitter or seville oranges preferred
  • 500 g preserving sugar 2:1
  • 3 Tbsp lemon juice
  • Wasser

Orangen für MarmeladeMy little tree only produed 550 g of oranges, so I topped it up with one gigantig organic orange.
Wash the oranges thoroughly and put them in a big pot with enough water to let them float.
Cook the oranges for 2 hours, I turned them from time to time, because I had the feeling, that they don’t do that themselves.
After two hours turn off the heat and remove the oranges from the water. As soon as they are cool enough to handle them, slice the oranges in half and remove the pips. Put the pips in a small pot wit a litte bit of the cooking water and let cook for 5 minutes.
Finely cut the orange peel into the smalles stripes possible or any other way as you like.
Put the fruit pulp, the peel and about 10 tablespoons of the cooking water in a pot. Add the water you cooked the pips in, but without the pips. Also add the preserving sugar and mix everything very well with a wooden spoon.
Put on the stovetop and bring carefully to a boil. Let simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly so nothing burns.
After 5 minutes the marmelade should be fine.
Fill in clean jars, close the lid and turn upside down for at least 10 minutes.

 

lamb’s lettuce with roasted squash

Feldsalat mit gebackenem Kürbis

At the moment I am really crazy for this salad, although it is no salad season at all. I mean, it is way to cold to eat something NOT warm. But a friend gave me a 1 litre bottle of the finest pumpkin seed oil. And since I opened it last week, I have to eat lamb’s lettuce with pumpkin seed oil dressing twice a week minimum.

With the roasted squash you’ll get a warm salad, but maybe you don’t have squash or you are to lazy to prepare it. No problem. You can throw this salad together with almost anything, e.g. borlotti beans, radishes, tomatoes, etc.

Ingredients roasted quash

  • 1 butternut squash (ca. 1,5–2  kg)
  • 1 tsp coriander seeds
  • 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
  • 2 tsp dried oregano
  • 1 tsp salt & pepper
  • 1–3 dried chilies
  • 1 garlic clove
  • 3 tbsp olive oil

gebackener KürbisPreheat the oven to 175°C. Wash the squash and cut into 2 cm pieces. Finely grind the spices in a pestle and mortar, then add the garlic clove and go on with the pestle and mortar until you get a paste. Mix in the olive oil.
Evenly spread the squash on a baking sheet, pour over the spiced oil and mix everything thoroughly.

Roast the squash in the oven for approximately 40 min, until soft and a little crisp on the edges. Turn over once.

 

 

 

Ingredients lamb’s lettuce

  • 3 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 3 tbsp balsamico
  • 8 tbsp pumpkin seed oil
  • 1 small shallot or onion, finely chopped
  • salt & pepper
  • 125 g lamb’s lettuce
  • 10 cremini mushrooms
  • pumpkin seeds, roasted

Roast the pumpkin seeds in a hot, dry pan, set aside.
For the dressing mix the chopped onion with the vinegars and salt and let infuse for a moment.
Then mix in the oil and pepper, check for seasoning. The dressing is quite sour, if you don’t like it, use more balsamico and less red wine vinegar and up the amount of the oil to taste. The amount of the dressing is also very generous, if you don’t want to use it all, you can keep it in the fridge for up to 5 days.

Wash the lamb’s lettuce very well, if it was grown on real soil, you might want to wash it three times. Cut the mushrooms into fine slices. Layer everything in a bown, top with the squash and pumpkin seed and pour over the dressing.
Mix well, tuck in. I hope you like it as much as I do, please let me know.
Feldsalat mit gebackenem Kürbis

Stollen

Stollen

A Stollen, also „Christstollen“ is a traditional german fruit cake, made for christmas. I’ve always enjoyed the stollen, made by my friend charlottes mother, so one day I asked for the recipe. And here it is. Last year I tried it for the first time, and it turned out very nice. The recipe isn’t very difficult, but you need some time and loads of raisins and butter/margarine.

The stollen has to sit for a few weeks, so now really is the time to bake it. Traditionally are raisins, currants, candied lemon and orange peel and almond slivers used in the dough, but you can exchange parts of the dried fruit for dried cranberries, aronia or dates. I didn’t have any currants, so I used dates instead.

The recipe is for one (giant) stollen, but charlottes mother already wrote in her recipe, that she divides the dough in two parts for two „normal“ sized stollen.

Ingredients

  • 500 g raisins
  • 125 g currants
  • 250 g almond slivers
  • 100 g candied lemon peel
  • 100 g candied orange peel
  • 1 lemon, grated peel and juice
  • 2 small glasses rum (ca. 200 ml)
  • 1 kg flour
  • 120 g fresh yeast or 6 packets dried yeast
  • 175 g sugar
  • 1/4 litre lukewarm milk (I used spelt-almond)
  • 750 g butter/margarine
  • confectioners’/icing sugar

Früchte-Mandel-MischungThe day before, mix the dried fruit with the almond slivers, add the grated lemon peel. Pour the rum and lemon juice over the mixture and stir. Soak covered overnight, stirring a few times.

The next day sieve the flour in a big bowl (usually I skip the sieving part, … don’t know weather it makes a difference). Make a well in the center. Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm milk with one tbsp sugar, pour it in the well, and carefully mix some of the flour in the yeast-milk mixture with a fork. Cover with a clean towel and let rise in a warm place for 15 min.

Now work all of the ingredients in the bowl very well together, until you get an elastic dough. Mix in the fruit-almond-mix and knead until everything is evenly mixed, cover and let rise again for 30 min. I did it in my kitchen aid, the bowl was really full, but it worked.

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Halve the dough and shape into stollen. The recipe describes it as follows:“roll out quite thick, press the rolling pin into the pin to form a longish cavity and fold one half over the other.“

Stollen mit ManschettePut every stollen on a greased, floured baking sheet and wrap with a collar, made out of folded aluminium foil. Let it rise covered for the last time for 15 min. Bake in the oven one after the other for 90 min. Check after 30 min, if the top browns too fast. Cover with aluminium foil if it does.
Check for hte first time after 60 min with a wooden skewer, inserted into the stollen. If it comes out clean, the stollen is done. If there are crumbs on the skewer, check again after 15 min until done.

 

 

 

Stollen-GlasurRemove from the oven and spread with butter/margarine and sieve loads of icing sugar on top. Repeat after 15 min. This will make a kind of glazing.

Cool the stollen completely, then wrap it in aluminium foil and store it for at least two weeks. Mine ary waiting in the cupboard right now :-)

 

 

 

 

Stollen

 

 

 

pound cake with saffron quinces

Sandkuchen mir Safran-Quitten

I baked this cake already twice in the last few weeks, because it is so delicious. The first time I added a little bit too much milk, so the cake was moist, and the quinces went all the way down to the bottom, but it was still very delicious.
It is very surprising to me, that the combination of saffron and quince is so exquisite.
As always you have to cook the quince first, but the rest is kind of a regular pound cake, so very easy, I would say.

Ingredients

  • 2 quinces, peeled, cored and cut into 1 cm cubes
  • 150 g sugar
  • 150 ml water
  • 1 big pinch saffron strands
  • 250 g butter/margarine, melted and cooled a little bit
  • 50–75 g sugar
  • 3 eggs/egg replacer
  • 200 g flour
  • 200 g corn starch
  • 1 packet baking powder
  • a little bit of milk (diary/non-diary)
  • 1 pinch of salt

IMG_5646First peel, core and cut the quinces. Put them with the 150 g sugar, the water and the big pinch of saffron in a small pan. Bring to a boil and let simmer for 8 min or until the quinces are soft. I think medium to low heat should do the job. You don’t want the quinces to fall apart. Put to the side and let cool down, while you proceed with the rest.
Melt the butter/margarine, preheat the oven to 175°C.
Fot the batter, whip the butter/margarine with 50 g of the remaining sugar until foamy and pale, add the eggs, one after the other or the prepared egg replacer.
Then add the flour, baking powder, salt and starch. Now you will have a quite firm batter. The sugar sirop of the quinces should be cool enough by now, to add it to the batter without „cooking“ the eggs. So add the sirop while stirring. If the batter needs more liquid, add milk until you get a smooth, gooey batter. Check for sweetness, if you think it needs more sugar, add again 25 g sugar.

Grease your springform tin (23cm diameter), I usually do this by using a butter/margarine paper. There is always left enough grease for the cake tin. Sometimes I need two papers. Since my mother showed me this trick, I always stash my butter/margarine papers in the fridge.
Fill in the batter, sprinkle the quince cubes on top and put the cake in the oven for 60 min.
If your oven doesn’t heat evenly it might help to rotate the cake after 30 min for 180°.
Check after 50 min with a wooden skewer, if the cake is already done. If no crumbs or batter stick on the cake you can get it out of the oven.

Sandkuchen mit Quitten

red lentils with quince

rote Linsen mit Quitten

You might call this recipe a stew, it is a lot of frangrant food in one bowl for sure. You can eat it with basmati rice or maybe some fried sweet potato cubes, but usually I eat it all by itself.

Zutaten

  • 2–3 quinces, peeled and cored
  • 2 Tbsp soft brown sugar
  • 2 Tbsp coconut oil or neutral oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 garlic clove, chopped
  • 250 g canned tomatoes (pureed or chunky)
  • 300 g red lentils
  • 500 ml vegetable broth
  • 2 kaffir lime leaves
  • 1 star-anise
  • 400 ml coconut milk (1 can)
  • 2 fresh chillies, chopped
  • 1 small handful coriander, stems and roots (if available) finely chopped
  • 1 small handful thai basilic (optional)
  • salt & pepper

IMG_5573Chop the quinces in bite-sized chunks and simmer them with the sugar and some water until soft. This shouldn’t take longer than 5 minutes.
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and steam the onions until soft. Now add the garlic, chillies, star-anise, lime leaves and the coriander stems and roots. Simmer everything for a couple of minutes, stirring frequently.
Pour in the lentils, broth, coconut milk and the tomatoes and mix very well. Cook until the lentils are soft, around 15 min., then add the quinces and their cooking liquid.
Check seasoning and add salt, pepper and maybe some more brown sugar to taste.
Serve sprinkled with the coriander leaves and thai basilikum (if using).

rote Linsen mit Quitten

quince and plum chutney

Quitten-Pflaumen Chutney

Today I go on with my quince special.
This time I offer you something spicy, a chutney.
To be honest, I was never a chutney person. Actually I didn’t know, how to combine it, so some chutneys, I recieved as presents, still wait quite dusty in my cupboard. I am sorry.
But after cooking my first chutney, I had to taste it, so I tried it with basmati rice and some joghurt. That is the only way I enjoy my chutney until today, so if you have ideas, what to do with it, I’d be pleased to know!!

Ingredients

  • about 1 kg quince fruit
  • 500 g fresh plums
  • 150 g soft brown sugar
  • 180 ml apple cider vinegar ot white wine vinegar
  • 2 tbsp neutral oil
  • 1 shallot
  • 1–3 fresh chillies, depending, on how spicy you like it
  • salt & pepper

Peel and core your quince fruits and chop into 1 cm chunks. Halve and pit the plums.
In a non-reactive pot heat the oil and gently fry the shallot until soft. Add the quince, cover and let cook on low heat for a couple of minutes. Now add all the other ingredients and let simmer for 20 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
Fill in clean glasses up to the rim, close and turn bottom up for at least 20 min.

That’s it.
And here is a photo (I know it is horrible) of my dinner with persian saffron rice, chutney and soy-joghurt. But it was very tasty.

Abendessen

quince cheese (Dulce de membrillo), basic recipe no 2

quittenbrot

Quitten_01Here we are for part 2 of the quince basic recipes. Assuming you have already cooked your quince fruit and want to use them for the quince cheese, we start directly. If you have raw uncooked quince fruit, please read the post about the quince jelly and use the fruit pieces you do not need for this recipe.

Ingredients

  • cooked quince pieces
  • sugar

First you have to strain (pass?) the quince pieces, to get a fine pulp. I use my Kitchen Aid with the strainer attachment, but you use, whatever you have. A stainless steel strainer should do the job. And you will have a nice arm workout while passing the quince through the strainer.
Now weigh the pulp and mix thoroughly with the same amount of sugar. Put everything in a non-reactive pot on the stove and heat up. Do this quite cautious, because of the great amount of sugar the pulp will burn quite fast.
Let simmer for about an hour, stirring as often as possible. But be careful, because the mass will act like lava and bubble and  burns like hell, when you get hit.
You know, that the quince cheese has cooked enough, when it has thickend and starts to come off the walls of your pot. This may take more than one hour.
Prepare a heat proof container, like a glass baking dish, that you won’t need for some time. Pour the hot quince paste in the container and spread out evenly. Let cool, and cover with baking paper or sandwich paper and store ideally somewhere nice and warm, like close to your heating or in your boiler room. I guess you can also store it in a dry cupboard. Leave it there for about one week or maybe longer. The time the quince cheese needs to set depends on the amount of time you cooked it, as well as on how thick it is in the container.
To check, if it’s ready, you can pull a little bit on the edges, if it comes off the walls easy and has a completely firm jelly-like texture, it is ready to eat. Don’t be irritated if it hasn’t set after a week. I usually let it stand for 3 weeks, because it keeps forever. In my fridge is still some quince cheese from last year, tasting perfectly well.

Enjoy with cheese, like jam on bread or use it in your pastries.

quittenbrot

 

Quince Jelly (with raspberries), basic recipe no 1

Quitten_01

I love quince, they smell great, they look very nice, and they are one of the rare things you can only get, when they are in season.
This is why I am going to have a quince-special here on my blog!

One of the first things I did, when I got my garden, was to plant a quince tree. So my quince fruits are in season now, and I am having a hard time to use them fast enough, before they go off.
This is one minor problem wih quince, you always have to cook them, you can’t eat them raw.

First thing I do when the quince fruits are ripe, I cook quince jelly and with the remaining fruit pulp, I make quince cheese (dulce de membrillo). This is a natural pairing, because for the jelly you only need the juice and I could never bear it to throw away the complete fruit pieces, so I use them for the quince cheese.

Ingredients

  • 5–6 quince fruits
  • raspberries (optional)
  • water
  • jam sugar 2:1 (gelling sugar)
  • lemon juice or citric acid

The exact amounts of water, sugar and the rest depend on the quantity of juice you get after cooking the quince, so I cannot give you more details in the ingredients list.
First you have to rub the fuzz off hte quince, I usually do this over the sink, simply by using my hands. But you can also use a kitchen towel. Then wash them thoroughly.
Now comes the heavx part: cut the quince fruits in about 2–2,5 cm pieces. Use the biggest, sharpest knife you can find in your kitchen, but please be careful with your fingers. The quince fruits are very hard, and you may need to use a lot of weight on the knife to cut then. Do not remove any pits or the skin. They help with the gelling process later.
Quitten_02Put everythin in a big, non-reactive pot (stainless steel or enamel), cover with water and bring to a boil.
As soon as everything starts to boil, I reduce the heat to minimum and let them simmer for about 20 min. This should be enough to soften the quince and release their juices to the water.

To cook jelly, you usually need cold juice, so just leave the pot with everything on the stove to cool down and proceed the following day or whenever it is cool enough.

To start with the jelly strain the quince pieces through a fine mesh colander, but keep the juice, because this is, what we need first. Put the quince pieces in a plastic container in the fridge and leave it there until you got enough time to cook the quince cheese. Or maybe you already have other plans for them? They will keep for about one week.

Quitten_03Measure your cold quince juice and put it in a non-reactive pot. If you want to use raspberries as well, weigh them and put them in the pot as well. For jelly you have to use a bit more than 50% of the weight of your juice, usually it is 700 ml juice and 500g jam sugar 2:1. Also add the amount you need for your raspberries.
If you have a lemon at hand or some citric acid, you can add it too. I think, this is not necessary to taste better, but it keeps the colour fresh :-)

Mix very well with a wooden spoon and bring to a boil. As soon as it boils reduce to a simmer and let cook for a minimum of 4 minutes.

Prepare your glasses and fill with the jelly as soon as it is ready. Fill the glasses up to the rim, but make sure to keep the rim clean. Close the glasses and turn them bottom up,  allow to stand for at least 10 minutes.

Quitten_04