Wrap it baby!

Wrap wrap wrappe de wrap!
It’s simple and yet fun to create. Here I show you one of the thousand possible variations.

Ingredients:

• Gyros
• a salad
• tomatoes and cucumber
• one onion
• mozzarella
• any sauces you like

First fry the Gyros (easiest and cheapest are frozen ones). Cut all the vegetables like the tomatoes, cucumber and onions into slices, as well the mozzarella. Wash the salad. Roast gently the cut onions in a pan and then you can heat up the Wraps in the oven. Now you can fill the Wrap with all your ingredients and some sauces.

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Flying Pancake

Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen!

That’s the way I like it. These popular thin and flat cakes are prepared in many variations and types. Just the many different notations are amazing:

• Eierkuchen (northern part of Germany)
• Pfannkuchen (southern part of Germany)
• Plinze (middle Germany)
• Palatschinken (Austria)
• Bliny (Russia)
• Crêpe (France)
• Pancake (USA)

This is one “Eierkuchen” served with applesauce. Yummi!

Eierkuchen

What type of pancake do you like? Which toppings should never ever be missing??

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Asian Coco Soup

Today a really delicious soup made with coconut milk, turkey  and spinach. Let’s start with the ingredients:

• 250 g spinach leaves
• salt
• a bunch of spring onions
• 2 red chili peppers
• 300 g of turkey breast (chicken as well possible)
• one tablespoon of oil
• one tablespoon of curry (powder)
• one can (400ml) of coconut milk
• one tablespoon of vegetable stock
• one lime
• 100 g of frozen peas
• pepper

Defrost the spinach in a pan at medium heat. Clean the spring onions and cut them into small stripes. Then cut the red pepper into halves, pit and hash it. Now wash the meat and cut it into small cubes. Heat oil in a pan and brown the meat. Add red pepper and spring onions to sear it shortly.

Dredge with the curry, again sear shortly. Add the coconut milk and 500 ml of water. Boil it up and then stir the vegetable stock. Now let it simmer for 5 minutes. Cut lime into small stripes and add it together with the spinach and the peas to the soup. Leave to stand for about 3 minutes. Season to taste with pepper and salt.

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Match beer with meal

Which beer fits for dinner?

No.	German	English
1)	Salat	salad
2)	Eintopf	hotpot
3)	gekochter Fisch	cooked fish
4)	gebratener Fisch	grilled fish
5)	Meeresfrüchte	seafood
6)	Geflügel	poultry
7)	Braten	roast
8 )	Steak	steak
9)	Wild	game
10)	milder Käse	mild cheese
11)	würziger Käase	spicy cheese
12)	süße Nachspeise	dessert

No.	German	English
A)	Pils	pils
B)	Alt	alt
C)	Kölsch	Koelsch
D)	helles Weizen	light wheat beer
E)	dkl. Weizen	dark wheat beer
F)	Export	export
G)	helles Lager	lager
H)	dkl. Lager	ale
I)	dkl. Bockbier	bock beer
J)	Schwarzbier	dark beer
K)	Malztrunk	malt beer

Enjoying the night off without a beer?? For Germans unthinkable! We Germans are known for drinking beer like others drinking water. It is indeed the favorite drink for a lot of Germans. So this table will perfectly show you what matches with your supper or dinner you prepared. You can actually always drink beer like suggested to sweet dessert with “Kölsch”, a dark bock beer or even malt beer.

German wheat beer

More facts to be impressed of German beer culture:

• about 5000 different beer types
• on average a German drinks 111 liter per year
• 1.place men: Saxons drink the most beer
• 1.place women:Thuringians like the most to drink beer
• Bavaria has the most breweries
• the German purity law for beer exists since April 23. 1516
• April 23 is the “Day of the German Beer”
• 3. place for Germany on the worldwide consumption of beer

  (after Czech Republic and Irland)

And finally one false prejudice about beer: Beer doesn’t cause putting on weight. 200 ml of a pils contain about 84 cal, which is actually less than the same amount of apple juice (98 cal) or coke (112 cal). We have to blame the mean pizza with extra cheese topping or the chips we eat after the affluent consumption of beer. The reason for that binge eating is the alcohol in the beer. It simply causes appetite.

a malt beer dessert

So why don’t we just prepare the beer in our meals. Then everything is combined and we don’t have to wait for the appetite.

Like this dessert: malt beer – strawberry soup with vanilla ice

The German site Brauer-Bund provides loads of recipes involving beer in your meat. I still don’t know if I want to try one of them. Until then: Prost!

Bon Appetit, Katleen

 

The Ultimate Seduction

Last time I showed you the perfect, well, delicious German Cheesecake. Now two more pictures to seduce you even more with a treat! I know this is mean for those who are looking for the perfect tight-summer-bikini-body.

Tarte au chocolat

cake with apple-pudding stuffing on green fruit jelly with vanilla sauce

Do you see what I meant?

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Best German Cheesecake

It’s summer. Of course, we have to talk about sweet deserts and one cake should never be missing: It’s the German Cheesecake. A lot of people love this cake. There are hundreds of recipes and variations, but I surely want to show you one that I have myself tried out. Let’s start:

ingredients for a cheesecake

Ingredients:

1. 200 g of flour
2. 245 g of sugar
3. 6 eggs
4. 65 g of butter
5. 1 tablespoon of a lemon juice
   1 tablespoon of the paring of lemon
6. 3 tablespoons of milk
7. 1000 g of curd cheese
8. pinch of Salt
9. 1 pack of vanilla sugar

First part for the cheesecake will be the short pastry. Give flour, a pinch of salt and 65 g of sugar into a bowl. Add the cold butter as flakes and one egg and knead the ingredients with a dough hook. At last form the dough to a ball and let it repose for 30 minutes in the fridge.

Preheat your oven at 160°C. Now give the curd cheese into a bowl. Separate 5 eggs into 2 bowls. Mix the yellow of the eggs with the curd cheese. Add the vanillas sugar, 180 g of sugar, the milk, 2 tablespoons of flour and one tablespoon of the rubbed paring of the citron to the curd cheese. Knead the dough until smooth.

The white egg needs to be whisked stiff with the dough hook and the tablespoon of lemon juice can be added as well. Fold in the stiff white egg to the curd cheese dough. Don’t stir too much, otherwise it would easily collapse back upon itself.

Now roll the dough out as a circle at a floured space. Should be a little larger then your spring form pan. Insert the short pastry into your pan and form as well a border. After that you can apply the curd dough on the short pastry. Ready to bake it for 1 hour and 20 minutes.
The cake will strongly rise during its time in the oven. After baking time, turn off the oven and let cool off the cake for 5 minutes by leaving open the oven door. Then take the cake out and still let it repose in its pan for about 5 minutes. You will notice that the cake will collapse a little.

After being cooled, the German cheesecake is ready to eat!

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Where do you Brunch?

In the last post, I wrote about a really nice Mexican Restaurant, where you can dinner for fairly prices and as well have a relaxed Sunday brunch.

Now I want to know from You:

a Polish and Russian brunch

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Let’s Brunch

Brunch here, brunch there, brunch everywhere. Almost every restaurant offers today a Sunday brunch. It works. People are streaming out to pig out which satiates for hours. This is actually a great deal. You usually can choose from a great diverse buffet, you can eat as much as your stomach allows you and at the end you don’t have to worry about supper, because you can’t even think of food for the next two days.

Tulum Restaurant

Buffet

That’s what I experienced last Sunday at the Mexican restaurant Tulum in Berlin Wilmersdorf.

address: Am Volkspark 85, 10715 Berlin

located near the S-Bahn station: Bundesplatz

Price for Brunch: 5,90€

Besides the salutatory orange juice, you have a broad option of breakfast and as well traditional Mexican food. Naturally, nachos with several dips weren’t missing.

What I especially liked:

• Croissants (and other types of bread)
• Salmon
• fresh salads
• Burritos
• chicken with pineapple, curry and unknown spices (the best)
• fruit salad

The ordinary menu offers Tacos, Burritos, Fajitas and Enchiladas which are typical  Mexican meals. Remarkable is the chicken in chocolate and peanuts sauce. Additionally they also offer American food like Rips, Sandwiches, Burgers, and Chicken Wings.

All in all, I can recommend this restaurant for a Sunday Brunch, but as well to go out eating for an ordinary dinner. Now if your appetite is whetted, you can make your own tortillas with this recipe. If you still can’t get enough and want to try out even more Enchiladas or Burritos, check out these Mexican appetizers.

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

 

Anti-Aging Diet

Recently I read an interesting article about a special diet. But this time it is not how you can somehow trim your body. Its about aging and how food can influence this process of slowing down or even regenerating our skin.

Good to know:

3 factors determine how young we are looking:

1. Sun light
2. Nicotine consumption
3. Diet (nutrition)

We can influence all three of them. Especially for some groceries we can look for more  potential ones that keep us “youngish” and avoid those which are aging to us. In particular food loads of precious active ingredients are contained, which can be labeled as “young” refresher.

And here are 5 examples of a list with 100 groceries that counteract aging processes and 5 examples of a list with 50 groceries that support the aging process.

Food	plus points	Amount per week	Total
Apple	20
Dark chocolate, a bar	10
Strawberries, 6 pieces	20
Milk, 0,1l	10
Chicken breast, 100 g	35

Food	minus points	Amount per week	Total
Honeydew melon	10
White rice, 1 serving	15
Cornflakes, 1 serving	20
Sugar, 1 tsp	10
Coffee(more than 3 cups)	10

Within the “good” fruits are grapefruits which guarantee a botox-like effect. The bittern regulates the cell metabolism and delays the aging process directly in the cells.

Whereas orange juice offends not only the tooth enamel, but as well it weakens the connective tissue which causes early wrinkle formation.

Gummy bears are also often underestimated: ten gummy bears contain 10 grams of sugar. In our blood, sugar reacts with protein to complexes which cause age spots.

So how does this diet work?

With the full seize of the table with 100 positive and 50 negative groceries, you document every food you consume in one week in the table. At the end you count everything together and draw a balance. If you have more than 1500 plus points, you coddle your body well enough. The more plus factors you receive, the greater the anti-aging effect.

This table underlines again, how important it is to eat balanced and healthy food. Not only to stay in a good condition, but as well to slow down our aging as long as possible.

Bon Appetit,
Katleen

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This post was inspired by the article “Die Anti-Aging Diät” by C.S. Schönemann of the magazine “TV Hören und Sehen”, published May 2009

 

Pasta with a simple tomato sauce

I want to use the recommendation of one of my course fellow to post a recipe with the help of a lot of pictures. So let’s start with a simple noodle recipes, a lot in my family  like to cook when thinking about a tomato sauce.

Ingredients:

1. noodles – whatever kind you like
2. ca. 40 g of flour – for the sauce
3. 50 g of butter – for the sauce
4. 300 g of ham sausage
5. some ketchup – if necessary
6. 3 tablespoons of tomato puree
7. 50g of whipped cream – optionally
8. 1 onion
9. a handful of basil
10. 500 g of tomatoes
11. spices like salt, pepper and other herbs
12. 500 ml of water

(note: g stands for grams; ml for milliliter)

Cut the onion and the ham sausage into small slices. Now slit slightly a cross into tomatoes. Always use the under part of the tomato, where it is plain. Prepare a cooking pot with boiled water (e.g. heat some water in the water boiler to save time). Then blanch the tomatoes by putting them into the boiled water. Wait 1 minute and take them out again. Peel the blanched tomatoes and cut them into 4 parts. Heat a pan with some oil and sauté (or sweat) the onions first.

When the onions are soft and clear, add the sliced ham sausage until they are gently roasted. Put the done ham sausage with the onions aside. Now we get to the sauce (or first roux): heat a pot at medium level. Then add the butter.

Let the butter slowly melt until it received a brownish color. Now blend the flour and stir everything. You should see little chunks. The darker the chunks, the darker your sauce is going to be. The water is mixed in when chunks have a light brown color. The thickness of the sauce will unfold about a minute. You can always add more water if you don’t like the texture. Let the roux simmer about 5 minutes. Prepare now the noodles by heating water in a pan.

Take the sliced tomatoes and put them back into a pan. They have to simmer at a medium level of heat to get a soft texture. Letting the tomatoes simmer, you can add then the roasted sausage and onion into the roux, as well as the tomato puree. When the tomatoes have a sauce like texture, put them as well to the sauce. Now season to taste with the spices, some ketchup and the basil. Finally you can mix in the whipped cream to get a richer taste of the sauce.

Bon Appetit,
Katleen