jerusalem artichoke soup. a cosy recovery soup.

after a great fun night out today’s task is just to recover and relax. nothing to do, nobody to meet, just me and my love chillaxing all day long and trying to recover from last night 😉 after some hours on the balcony and a nice little nappie my food senses reawaken, too.. so why not make a nice soup for a cosy night at home? perfect for recovering and giving some energy back to our tired bodies. and it’s quick to do it!

on thursday i got some nice jerusalem artichoke from the veggie man. (at home we call it topinambur). it’s very tasty, has a fine special flavour and makes a great soup:
300g jerusalem artichokes
100g potatoes
onion, garlic
fresh parsley, celery greens
veggie stock, white wine, some milk/cream cheese

bad weather – nice dinner.

things never turn out the way you expect. 
yesterday we had big plans for a nice dinner with friends. bad weather – perfect conditions. the nice thing is that you have plenty of time for shopping as the supermarket which offers fresh fish as well, but as often in live things never turn out the way you expect. instead of figs and goat cheese, tuna in sesame crust, there was NO figs, NO goat cheese, NO tuna.

well.. ok! as open flexible people we changed our plans and made a nice ceasar salad with anchovies, capers and lots of fresh parmesan, fresh sea brass with crusty potatoes, fennel and tomatoes but at least the crumble with plums and mascarpone cream plan stayed as we wanted!

for more details check out the photo captions 🙂

crosscultural studies.

visiting my dearest sister p. in vienna we had some culinary experiments! she just moved into a new flat to another district of vienna which is very popular for turkish people. which is great as she has a wonderful market in front of her door, a turkish bakery just around the corner and apart from the nice people who fall in love with my little baby niece immediatly the food is really inspiring!
so we tried to cook a turkish dish…
stuffed aubergines with bulgur, tomatoe-pepper sauce and yoghurt-mint dip
for my sister’s hubby we did a little variation with minced beef and pepper.. it went really well – and it’s sooo healthy!

fresh from the tyrolean hut.

oh how i love tyrol in fall… everything is so colorful, the forests turn yellow, red and brown and when the weather is nice everything seems so clear in a special light you can only see in fall 🙂 luckily i caught one of these days on my trip to tyrol and made a little hike with my dear friend u., her two cute kids and my lovely mum. the nicest thing, which always attracts me most to hike is the food in the huts. my personal MUST: ‘kaaspressknödel’ (special kind of cheese dumplings) which can be either served with salad or in a beef soup… hhhmmmm… so nice!!!!

these delicious dumplings we enjoy int a lovely hut, called raitiser alm in beautiful tyrol, austria. you go up with the cable car and then it’s an easy, idyllic hike along nice paths along green fields where you might also meet some cows. i can really recommend it! also suitable for mums with prams 🙂

 

long time no see…

phew.. one business trip to austria and i’m off my blog for 2 weeks.. loads to catch up!

just before i left malta i was so suprised at smart supermarket: i finally found a shop where to buy topfen (austrian/bavarian version of curd cheese)! i have been trying to find this for so long and made a real classic, totally simply, healthy but sooo yummy! my grand grand ma used to make it and so did my mum and so do i… have a look

pellkartoffel (potatoes in the skin)

sweet stuff in portugese.

as we wouldn’t have eaten enough the last days, my friend p wanted to try out something new. inspired from our last visit at senhor vinho, our most favourite portogese place in vienna, we wanted to try pastéis de nata. little puff pastries with custard filling. and – despite the early hours and the lack of some ingredients – i’d say we were pretty successful!!
p.s. we had much of the filling left at the end.. so we just filled it in a dish and baked it in the oven. after some research i found out that you can also let it cool in the fridge like a crema catalana – maybe i’ll do that next time… or better: just get a second pack of puff pastry to get more pastéis de nata 😉 i’ll keep you posted…

pastéis de nata – how to make them:
*  puff pastry, (shop bought)
* 5 egg yolks, 1 whole egg
* 500 ml milk
* 275 g sugar
* 35 g flour
* 1 table spoon butter
* 1 pack of vanilla sugar (which i made myself with real vanilla)
* a bit of cinnamon

preheat oven to 225 C, fill muffin tins with puff pastry.
put milk in a saucepan and add flour, sugar, a hint of salt, stir and heat up. add the butter, cook, stir constantly, until mixture thickens. ad the vanilla and stirr again. take away from the heat. mix egg yolks and the agg in a bowl and slowly whisk it into the hot milk mixture. heat up again, stir constantly until thickened. fill the prepared muffin tins  with the mixture and bake in preheated oven until pastry is golden brown and filling is lightly browned on top. be careful: both pastry and filling expand a bit, so don’t make them too full. finally ad a hint of cinnamon and enjoy :-)))
bom apetite! (this shall be portugese!)

when a maltese friend cooks for you…

saturday night we were so lucky to be invited for dinner to our dear friend’s place. ing cooked us a delicious meal.. simple (at least she said so), quite light and accompanied by a wonderful, crisp white italian wine which you bet i will buy very soon and fill up my fridge with it!!

unfortunately i forgot to take a pic of the amazing starter: pasta with fresh mussles. hmmm.. with loads of garlic, tomatoes and fresh parsley.. gonna try it out soon, too! as a main we got lampuki! i was so happy as i wanted to try it for quite a while.. it’s a typical maltese fish which is only available in august and september. perfect with the grilled aubergines drizzled with aceto balsamico. hmmm.. thanks for a wonderful evening!!

fine friday night dining.

hoohoo. i was a bad girl. my friend p was here from vienna and i didn’t post anything for quite too long…  but still i couldn’t forget totally about the blog and at least took some pics of last week’s culinary events. and there were some of them!!

fine friday night dining @ tartarun in marsaxlokk

you would’nt really expect it in the small fishing village of marsaxlokk. hard to notice from outside, tartarun‘s inside offers a very stylish, modern and cool interior. even from the menu outside i could feel that this is a place i’m going to like. and we were not dissapointed. extra ordinary nice service (in comparison to maltese average), good recommendations the evening at tartarun was a wonderful experience. we liked the starters better than the main,  but this happens very often to me – as you can get more special flavours in a starter. we had a langustine with a lovely white sauce (very light and tasty), swordfish carpaccio with a wonderful lemon, olive oile and caper marinade accompanied by a fresh and just not too fruity cabernet sauvignon from new zealand. but even before the bread and the two sorts of butter (one flavoured with garlic) as well as the amuse gueule, little zucchini boats, were very nice and different from ofther places here in malta (mostly not existing). we even got a little try dish of the fresh calamari as we could take a decision for the mains :-)) as mains we had pasta with lobster (bit too mild for my taste) and octopus (super soft and tender). as a dessert my friend had the panna cotta and was in heaven. also the coffee was nice. at the end (10pm – as we came quite early) the place got really packed with locals (good sign!!!), therefor service got very busy and less attentive.
to sum it up: for this ambiente, this nice service and the price this restaurant is extraordinarily good! the main was a bit borining, but in total it’s a really cool place in a very nice little village. definitely to come back again!