Dinner for Cook da Books

Last December it was my turn to cook dinner for my book and cooking club 'Cook da Books'. We had read and were going to discuss a book called 'We have always lived in the castle' by Shirley Jackson. The story is about two sisters and an uncle living together in a big house outcast by their village. The rest of the family is dead. They were killed with arsenic mixed into the sugar on the berries that were the dessert of a big Sunday roast lunch.
I based the dinner menu on the Sunday roast lunch menu from the book. In the book it's a Spring menu. I adapted it to Christmas time.

The Menu

 

A Deadly Dinner

Prosecco with Cranberry

Kale Crisps

Salad with Herbs

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crushed New Potatoes and  Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

 Kale Chips

Kale is my new favourite winter  vegetable, whether blanched and sauteed with onion, olive oil, lemon juice and salt or, like in this recipe, baked in the oven until crispy. A very simple way to create a wonderful snack. I got the recipe on a blog called Roost, which I highly recommend for healthy recipes: http://www.roostblog.com/roost/tuscan-kale-chips.html

Salad with Herbs

A simple salad with any herbs I can find and finely sliced radishes. I like flat leaf parsley, chives, coriander and chervil. For the dressing I use olive oil, salt, pepper and either lemon juice or white wine herb vinegar.

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crusched New Potatoes and  Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

For the lamb shoulder  I used a Jamie Oliver recipe, which I will definitely cook many times in future! It is so simple and so delicious! It's easily prepared in advance and needs little attention while in the oven so it's perfect for when you have people coming round for dinner: www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/incredible-roasted-shoulder-of-lamb-with

For the vegetables I used lots of different coloured carrots - white, orange, dark red, almost purplish, some orange with a purple boarder.

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

For the Eton Mess I made a Pavlova rather than smaller meringues. I love it when there's a lot of gooey meringue in the Eton Mess. 

For the berries I had to use frozen ones. Along side the Eton Mess I served a bowel of sugar. With a pinch of Arsenic of course!


As I always I forget to take pictures of the finished food and the dinner itself. Here a couple of shots including the aftermath...

Spring is in the air...

... and on my plate.
Today I passed by the market in the Viadukt and was very happy to see all the wonderful spring vegetables at the stall of Käsers Schloss. I couldn't resist and bought all these wonderful green things for dinner.

Artichokes, barba di frate, fresh peas, watercress, mint, parsley and chervil

www.kaesers-schloss.ch

www.im-viadukt.ch

Dinner for two friends using three favorite ingredients...

... artichoke, trout and barba di frate.

Last week two friends came by to help me hang some art works in my flat. I cooked us some dinner with lovely produce I bought at the market.

- Barba di Frate: Blanch in boiling water for a couple of minutes. Dress with lemon juice, good olive oil, salt and pepper.
- Artichokes: Boil in water until stem can easily be pierced with sharp knife. Make a vinaigrette using mustard, salt, pepper, lemon zest, lemon juice, lots of mixed, chopped herbs, white wine vinegar and good olive. It's easiest to put all components in a container with a lid and shake.

- Trout: Rinse the trout and pat dry. Lightly flour both sides and stuff inside with herbs. I used flat leaf parsley, dill and chervil. Fry in lots of butter, approx. 5 min each side. I added lots of sage to the pan and fried it until crispy.

Voilà dinner is served.

My new favourite vegetable

I can't get enough of Barba di Frate / Moenchsbart at the moment. Eating it every day!

Just boil it in salted water for two minutes, dribble good olive oil over the still hot Barba di Frate (I love the smell of the olive oil becoming warm), squeeze some lemon juice over it, salt and pepper - done. Enjoy!

Thanksgiving III: a 10kg turkey and a whole lot of other stuff...

In preparations of our Thanksgiving Dinner Garrett and I spent the entire day in his kitchen, chopping, cooking, baking while chatting, listening to music and drinking Champagne... Pretty much a perfect day in my books...

Garrett was responsible for the 10kg turkey he had bought from an organic farm in Germany the day before. To keep it moist he stuffed fresh cranberries under its skin. It worked! Personally I find turkey a bit boring and it tends to be a bit dry. But this one was amazing! We also filled it with stuffing I made inspired by a recipe I found on Epicurious (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chestnut-Prune-and-Pancetta-Stuffing-236422). The recipe uses chestnuts, prunes and pancetta. I also added some sausage meat. It was so good we couldn't stop picking it straight out of the turkey...

Garrett's 10kg Turkey

Stuffing

We couldn't quite decide what side dishes to make we had so many ideas, so we just made them all...
Gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans with fried onions, mashed potatoes, mashed butternut squash, sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, kale with pinenuts...

Brussel sprouts

For the Brussels sprouts we friend onions, garlic,  bacon and parsley. The sprouts we cleaned and halved, mixed them with the onions, garlic,  bacon and parsley, put everything in oven proof dishes, poured some cream over everything and sprinkled Gruyere cheese on top. Then we baked the Brussel sprouts at 180 degrees until soft.

Sweet potato wedges

As the oven was occupied by a huge turkey we had to figure out a way to make other things without using it. So we cut the sweet potatoes in wedges and then briefly boiled them. We then fried them sprinkling brown sugar and drizzling honey on them.

Yorkshire Puddings

Finally we made Yorkshire Puddings, my favorite to go with roast dinners. And so easy to make - mix 500 ml milks with 3 eggs, 150 gr of flour and a pinch of salt. Leave to rest for half an hour. In the meantime pour a bit of oil in all the holes of a muffin tin and heat in the oven until piping hot. Pour a bit of batter into each hole of the muffin tin - not too much otherwise you'll get small, dense and uneatable puddings. Put back in the oven and don't open for 15 minutes - they should be big and fluffy and perfect.

I'm looking forward to next year's Thanksgiving! Until then I'll be cooking many a Sunday Lunch Roast!

Pickled cucumbers

A friend mine recently gave me a glass of home made pickled cucumbers. They were so good I had to have the recipe. I've made them a few times since and they're a huge hit! I eat them with everything: ham or cheese toast, burgers, cottage cheese...

Unfortunately I don't know which book the recipe is from, I just have a photocopy of the page:

 1) Slice cucumbers and onions into thin slices, layer adding sea salt to every layer. Cover and leave for a few hours. Drain liquid and rinse cucumbers.

2) Bring vinegar to the boil along with sugar, mustard seeds, clove, turmeric and salt. The recipe says to use malt vinegar. I can never find it in Swiss supermarkets so I use a mixture of apple vinegar and white wine vinegar instead.

3) Add the cucumbers and onions to the vinegar mixture.

4) Sterilise pickle jars in boiling water.

5) Put cucumbers into jars using a slotted spoon. Bring the rest of the liquid back to the boil and let it reduce a bit. Add it to the jars.

Et voilà, enjoy!

Ketchup - red, green and yellow

The other day I went to the market where I found the most beautiful local tomatoes - green ones, yellow ones, red ones, in all shapes and sizes. I really wanted to use them for something so I decided to try making ketchup.

I followed Jamie Oliver's recipe (Natürlich Jamie, p 314).

 

First I fried onions, garlic, chilli, cloves, ginger, celery, fennel, coriander seeds, chopped basil stalks, salt and pepper until soft.

I split this mixture into 3 deep pans.  To the first I added a good half kilo of different kinds of red tomatoes plus half a kilo of tinned plum tomatoes.

To the other two I added green and yellow tomatoes.

I added 350 ml to all three pots and brought them to the boil to let the liquid reduce.

After the liquid reduced by half I puréed each mixture in a blender and then strained it through a sieve twice - this part was the most time consuming. To all three I added some basil, to the green tomatoes the most and also some parsley.

The resulting liquids went back into pots and on the stove. To each I added sugar and vinegar - I reccomend using less than in the recipe, maybe 2/3 and adding more after tasting. To the yellow sauce I added a bit of tumeric for extra colour.

While everything reduced again until it had the consistency of ketchup I sterilised the preserving jars.

And then filled the sauces into the jars while still very hot.

The red ketchup turned out quite hot and spicy, the yellow quite sweet and you can really taste the herbs in the green one. I'm not going back to bottled ketchup - this is too good! Now I'm hoping for lots of bbqs...