Kuss-kuss (couscous)

Of all the holidays in the year, Thanksgiving is my favorite. It does neither have to do with politics nor religion, and on top of that, it gives my husband a chance to use his Weber grill in November. He did a very fine job (love you honey!) and we feasted on a bird weighing 15 pounds twice. Saturday we were six people, including one vegetarian, and the day after we had the same turkey, holiday style, again with different sides. Sad but true, I will never have the time to blog all this. What is left of the big feast is another 2 pounds of finest turkey meat, with a slight BBQ flavor, and now the question is, what to do with it.

When it comes to leftovers, my all time favorite is couscous, which is so easy to prepare and can be combined with almost anything. In my (carnivore) view it goes especially well with little pieces of poultry. Here is the basic recipe:

1. In a bowl (that can also be used for serving) pour one cup of couscous, and two cups of boiling water, with a little bit of salt. 
2. Wait for approx 10 mins, until the couscous is soaked up with water. 
3. Allow another 30 mins. to cool completly. 
4. Meanwile, prepare whatever you want to combine with the couscous and marinate with two table spoons of lemon juice and 6 table spoons of olive oil, add salt and pepper to taste.

 And here is today's recipe for step no. 4:
Steam one cup on peas, and allow time to cool (about 30 min)
Combine peas with half a cup of dried cranberries and half a cup of salted pumpkin seeds (or cashew nuts). Add the lemon juice/olive oil mixture as described above and enjoy!

Oh, and by the way: This couscous is excellent when paired with a salad of red beet, which leads me directly to  my next post...c u soon!

Crunchy Muesli

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Leopold, three years old, and his favourite meal was risotto (which is remarkable for a three year old, don't you think so?). His mother made a lot of effort to feed him well, and used to make porridge for him every morning. One day he stopped eating what his mother lovingly prepared for him, and instead he poured some milk into a bowl, threw his oats in and munched away on them. Leopold, listen: If you want to try something different for your breakfast, you may be interested in my DIY chrunchy muesli, which was inspired by this recipe and it goes like this:

1. Preheat oven to 150°

2.
In a bowl, mix
300 g oats (small ones) with
100 g shredded coconut.

3. In a small pan, mix
100 ml honey with
3 table spoons of vegetable oil
over slow heat until the mixture is really fluid.

4. Combine the oats/coconut with the honey/oil mixture in the bowl and give it a good stir.

5. Spread everything on a baking tray and put in the oven for, in total, 30 minutes or until golden. After 15 minutes, open the oven (taking in a heavenly scent of honey) and give the mixture another stir to make sure that all oats are toasted really well.

6.Let cool completely on the tray and add
200g nuts (chopped into pieces, although the photo shows whole nuts) and, if mummy agrees,
100g small chunks of chocolate

And then do the usual thing: throw some of this in a bowl, add some milk, cold or warm, and
enjoy your breakfast! And: Happy Namenstag Leopold!

Pumpkin Curry a la Plachutta

For those of you who have never heard of the Austrian 'king of Tafelspitz' Plachutta: This man is not only famous for, well, Tafelspitz (boiled beef with various side dishes, an integral part of Austrian cuisine) but also author of several cookbooks. I refer to them for all the classic Austrian dishes, like Rindsrouladen, Schweinebraten and so forth. But leafing through the book I found this interesting type of ' Pumpkin Curry' which may even be paired with Tafelspitz, if you dare, but is a perfect vegetarian main course if you serve it with chestnuts and/or walnuts to polish up the protein balance. If there is one thing missing here, is that my camera does not love it....so sorry about the photo. Okay, here is the recipe:

1 onion, peeled and chopped into little squares
3 pieces of garlic, peeled and chopped
800 g pumpkin (peeled, shredded)
3 apples, peeld and chopped into little pieces
100 g dried prunes, chopped into halves
150 g peeled tomatoes
100 ml olive oil
100 g walnuts
2 tablespoons of honey
250 ml apple juice
salt, pepper, curry powder
fresh ginger (peeled and chopped into tiny pieces)

Heat oil in a large pan or casserole and roast onions lightly. Add the garlic and stirr, then add  pumpkin, prunes, nuts and honey.
Add some curry powder and apple juice, cook pumpkin until tender. Then add the tomatoes and ginger and season to taste with salt and pepper, tomatoes and ginger.

Mahlzeit!

Rice Rice Baby - 5 Elements Coconut Rice w/ Cardamon

For a long time I thought rice is just too boring to cook with. It turned out that I simply never had tasted really good rice before I found this recipe in a five elements cookbook by Barbara Temelie http://www.barbaratemelie.de/Bucher.html, which has lots of interesting food pairings if you are into traditional chinese medicine (and cooking, which is more or less the same in TCM).

The trick is that Basmati rice is cooked with cardamon and ginger, and then further aromatized in a pan with shredded coconut, raisins and nuts. For all you rice-lovers, enjoy! and the anti-rice folks: just give it this one try, you may change your mind....

This rice goes extremly well with any oriental vegetarian dish, and with another recipe I posted recently: Pumkin curry a la Plachutta /blogger.g?blogID=544044521224737309#editor/target=post;postID=4749492252549865921

Luxury please - Beluga Lentil Salad with Oyster Mushrooms

Recently I came across a recipe for lentilsalad with mushrooms and spinach by Sasha Walleczek, who is THE Austrian nutrition coach http://www.walleczek.at/. It had two keywords in there which caught me: 1) Beluga lentils. and 2) freshly ground cumin for seasoning. My palates thought this might work, so I adapted the recipe along the things I found sitting in the fridge, and it turned out to be a really beautiful and tasty salad for the fall, with a little taste of luxury to it.

My recipe is as follows (for 2 pax)
Cook 1 cup of Beluga lentils in plenty of water, with a big chunk of ginger, takes about 30 mins.
Clean and cut oyster mushrooms into pieces and roast or grill them in a pan with a little bit of olive oil. Put aside to cool.
Put lentils in a bowl and combine with carrots and red beets, cooked and cut a la Julienne (both available as convenience products, but if you have the time cook the veggies right there and then, thats great).
Add some fresh leek, chopped into tiny pieces.
Finally combine the mushrooms with the rest and season to taste (the fresh leek comes out pretty strong, leave it out if you don't like that).
For the seasoning, combine about 4 tablespoons of olive oil with 2 tablespoons of Balsamico vinegar, and, here it comes, 2 tablespoons of cumin. In my vies, the cumin is essential here, but if oriental is not your taste, just leave it out and try a traditional salt/pepper, possibly garlic or dijon mustard dressing. Another thing that goes well with lentils is some grilled bacon or, for the vegetarian option, smoked tofu instead
To decorate, use some capers, olives and balsamico cream.
Enjoy!

Pumpkin(g) Jelly - His Royal Sweetness

I came across this probably a little extraordinary jelly when a dear friend had been to Portugal and gave a jar of bright-orange jelly to me, which I found extremly tasty but could not define until it was almost gone. Since then, I make pumpkin jelly (repeat: pumpkin jelly) every year at the peak of pumpkin season. My classic version is with lots of vanilla, but this year I made a special coconut edition on the side, which turned out to be pretty good too. If you want some sunshine on your October breakfast table, try this out, it is really easy (provided you're using a kitchen machine). Oh, and one last thing: I am all for reducing sugar, but this recipe needs all the sugar you can get (no 1:2 or 1:3 jelly sugar please, the pumpkin(g) needs all the sweetness he can get)

• Shred 1 kg/2lbs of Hokkaido pumpkin through the kitchen machine and mix it with 1 kg of jelly sugar. 
• Wait until the mixture produces enough fluid (allow up to 3 hours) 
• In the meantime, boil jelly jars and lids in hot water, careful, and leave them turned upside down on clean kitchen paper to dry. 
• In a next step, cook up the sugar and shredded pumpkin and, after 5 - 10 minutes of briskly boiling, puree with a stick blender. 
• Add plenty of vanillia sugar (the good one with brown spots) and put some jelly on a cold plate to see if it gets the right texture. Fill into jars and turn upside down on a tray to cool.

• For the coconut verstion, add one cup of coconut milk before the boiling part, and some shredded coconut after the pureeing. The photo below shows the special coconut edition.

• Enjoy with bread and butter, cream cheese or a young camembert.