Last entry 2013 –
happy 2014!

Cooked a four course dinner for friends yesterday – smart and vegetarian.   

We started with little orange-goat cheese canapés, moved on to a carrot salad with menta, dill and sour cream. Afterwards we had a very fine scalloped fennel with dried toamatoes, fennel seeds, white wine  and raped parmesan. Main dish was a sorghum „risotto“ with aubergine, garlic, parsil and fresh tomatoe purée. We closed with a holy:-) princess dessert. Another friend of mine who lives in Brussels brought me a packet of pralines from my favourite Belgian Chocolatier: Marcolini. Wonderful tiny little delicacies with extremly fine flavours like orange and tyme – embedded in finest different chocolates from allover the world. Besides we had for desert the best cookies ever – baked from my mother who became 87 this year. Even if I have all the recipies, I never succeed in baking cookies as fine as she does. It still is her passion and she still is the unreached mistress in her domain of sweets and bakery.

I wish you all a very happy and inspiring new year! Let spring soon come in and never forget your portion of „dolce vita“ every day.:-)

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds

Baked vegetables with fresh
herb oil

The summer heat has gone and yesterday I found the first pumpkins in my nice organic grocery. Marvellous little white patisson pumpkins with a fine flavour and a very smooth texture. The follwing dish with a patisson pumpkin is easy to prepare and very tasty.

What you need

1 little pumpkin (patisson, hakaido etc.)

2 carrots

1 red bell pepper

4 spring onions

fresh parsley, basil, oregano and thyme

1 clove of garlic

2 dried tomato halfs

0,5 liter of a fine native olive oil

rough seasalt

fresh crushed black pepper

1 organic lemon

How to cook it 

Wash the vegetables, strip the carrots, clean the inside of the red bell pepper, cut off the little roots of the spring onions and cut everything into long medium stripes. The carrots have the longest cooking time so cut them a bit smaller than the other vegetables.

Take a baking tray and cover it with baking paper. Lay down all the vegetable pieces with distance. Flavour everything with sea salt and pepper, pour generously olive oil over the vegetables. Heat the oven round about 220 degree (electric) and bake the vegetables for approximately 40 minutes at a medium height.
Meanwhile wash the herbs and rip the leaves of the sticks. Peel the garlic and cut the dried tomatos into little pieces. Put everything together with 0,4 liter of olive oil and salt into a blender. Mix it until you get a smooth green herb oil. Pur this oil over the vegetables 10 minutes before you take them out of the oven. You can serve this dish without anything further or with a bit of fresh baguette and raw goat or sheep cheese. If you like, add a few dashes of lemon juices on the hot vegetables before you serve them.

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds

COOKONG WITH GAUMENPERLEN NO. 5:

STRAWBERRY CAKE

Strawberry season has just begun. Under the enormous choice of exsiting recipies  I tried to create one which is very fresh, simple and develops the intense full taste of the berries. 
Here it is:
The one and only gaumenperlen strawberry cake recipy 2013!

Ingredients

150 grams of ladyfingers
130 grams of butter
500 grams of fat (40%) cottage cheese (if you like better low fat then take it)
2 vanilla beans
3 soup spoons of gaumenperlen strawberry jam
agar-agar for 1 liter of liquid
sugar as you like (around 200 grams)
800 grams of fresh mature and flavourful strawberries.

You need a small high spring form and a big flat plate.
 

How to prepare

Take a bowl and pulverize the ladyfingers until there are only a few bigger pieces. Warm the butter evry slowly until it is liquid. Add it to the ladyfingers and mix it with a fork.


Out the border of the spirnform without! the bottom on your plate. Spread the buttered ladyfinger equally over the bottom and press it slighty with a soup spoon on the plate.

Wash, dry and cut 300 grams of strawberries into very small pieces. Put the cottage cheese in a bowl, add the gaumenperlen jam, the inner of the vanilla beans and round about 100 grams of sugar and agar-agar for 500 ml liquid in the end. Stir it carefully. Add the cut straberries and spread the cottage cheese mix on the ladyfinger-bottom.

Take the left over strawberries and puree them in a mixer with 100 grams of sugar. Add the appropriate amount of agar-agar and pour it out slowloy on the cottage cheese mix.

Put the cake into the fridge for minimum 3 hours. 

dolce vita ahoi !

monika ebert mobile minds

  
 

Lemon tarte: Summer on the tip of your tongue

Last friday i cooked for a very dear friend a 6 course dinner and for desert i baked a fantastic lemon tarte. We both thought that eating that cake summer has just have arrived in our bodies. 
There are hundreds of different recipies for lemon cakes and tartes. i read nearly 20 and combined two or three of them into a new one.
The best lemon tarte i ever ate was during a trip to Lisbon. Unbelievable taste of fresh lemon, found in a very small bakery looking more or less inconsiderable at first. When i entered the little shop i smelled it immediately: good dough:-) And there it was: a marvellous tarte, bright yellow and fondly decorated. I will never forget this refreshing, very intense taste sitting there outside in the sun with that tarte in my mouth.

Portugese lemon tarte   

The dough (normal shortcrust)
80 grams brown sugar
175 grams of flour
125 grams of butter
a pinch of salt
the inner of a half vanilla bean

Knead a normal shortcrust and let it rest about one hour in the fridge. Roll it into a round and fill it with a good border of 3 cm into a springform. Use a forn to make little holes all over the dough (otherwise you get a lot of bulbs).
Baking time round about 15 minutes at 175 degree, it should not be brown! Let it cool down for one hour.

The stuffing
3 yolks
3 eggs
180 grams of white sugar
180 ml frehsly pressed lemon juice
Peel of two lemons in very small pieces
185 grams of butter


Put all the ingredients in a casserole and heat it up very slowly stirring constantly. After a while the stuffing becomes a texture like a pudding.

Fill it into the dough bed and decorate it with very fine lemon peel cests and very thin lemon slices.

Out it in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours. Serve it with a strong hot or cold black tee.

 

dolce vita ahoi

monika ebert mobile minds

Cooking spring-to-come-soul food with gaumenperlen – No.4

Porridge with peach-vanilla-cranberry jam

Everybody is talking about the weather....and seeking desperately spring. The woman in my favourite organic food store, a farm owner, says, she does not remember such a long winter for years... . The only thing that really helps in such situations is to keep hope:-) and feed your freezing mind and soul carefully to get in a better mood. The best way to hit this target: cook real soul food!
Soul food is a very personal thing. It often consits out of mixed recipies that remind me on scenes out of my childhood. Or it evokes special moments I never forget - be there on special trips or even in very common situations.
I have a very long list of real personal soul food. One of my favourite dishes when i really feel cold and I am not completly happy with my day is a special kind of porridge out of oat big flakes.

You need 
1/2 liter fresh fat milk
150 grammes of porridge oat flakes (big)
1 tea spoon of butter
1 tea spoon of brown sugar
2 soop spoons of gaumenperlen italian peach jam with vanilla and cranberries

Put all ingredients in a little pot and heat it very slowly until you have a light porridge texture. Turn the heat off and add the gaumenperlen peach jam, stir it slowly. Put the lid on and let the porridge rest for 5 minutes. Than serve it with a few cranberries in a bowl or on a soup plate.
Eating that porridge I become immediately very sure inside, that spring will start tomorrow:-)

dolce vita ahoi

monika ebert mobile minds

Cooking with 

gaumenperlen No3:

Red lentil

 coconut soup with

gaumenperlen peach chutney

Spring seams not to come up that easy this year. The "symphony in grey" how my friends call the current wheather is interuppted by glimpses of sunlight very rarely. Therefore soups are still "en vogue".

I´ll have a few guests in my kitchen later on today and I will cook a red lentil coconut soup as starter - refined with the hot gaumneperlen peach chutney.

The ingredients for 4 bowls

300 gramms of red lentils

bunch of spring onions

a can of coconut milk

one red hot chili pepper

30 grammes of fresh raped ginger

1 litre of vegetable broth;
best however is fresh and self made:-)

1 clove of garlic
1 apple, pealed and cut into small slices (boskop, cox orange)

3 spoons of sesame oil

sea salt

black pepper
2 tea spoons of mild sweet curry

2 soup spoons of gaumenperlen peach chutney
2 tea spoons of fresh pressed lime juice

fresh chopped coriander

For the vegetable broth

a bunch of greens for soups
1 clove of garlic
1 onion sliced into half
one leave of laurel
4 pealrs of pimento
1 red hot chili
sea salt
crushed black pepper

How to cook it

The broth
First fo all cook a fine vegetable broth. Put all the organic ingredients in a pot with approximately 1,25 liter of water and cook it for 45 minutes very slowly. Then pour the broth through a sieve. Broth is ready:-)

The Soup itsself
Roast the garlic, the chopped spring onions, the sliced apple, the ginger, the chili, salt, pepper, curry in a big pot with sesame oil. First turn the high heat on round about 7 minutes, then add 1/4 liter of the vegetable broth and turn it down to very low heat - lid on - for about 10 minutes.
Add the washed lentils and the rest of the broth and let it steam for another 20 minutes until the lentils are very smooth. Taste it and add salt and pepper as you like. Take out the red hot chili before you purée it with a mixer. Add the coconut milk and the lime juice and serve it with chopped koriander and a drop of gaumenperlen peach chutney. If you like you could offer a bit of roasted garlic bread besides. Enjoy your soup!

dolce vita ahoi

monika ebert mobile minds

2013 new recipies cooked with gaumenperlen

The new year has just begun and for me it offered a very relaxed and nice starter-package:-)
Good intentions and New Years resolutions are always around, so I decided to start blogging right away. 13 new recipies cooked with gaumenperlen will be my task for the weeks.
One of my favourite products is the gaumenperlen plum chutney with rosemary, chili and garlic. In 2012 I produced a hughe amount of glasses. The reason? Last year it was totally sold out and we all missed it for the barbecue season. This won´t happen in 2013 for sure.-) So all the people who missed the tasting event in December 2012 can still place their orders.
This strong and at the same time smooth chutney cooked with mellow, tasty plums is also an ideal ingredient to transform a simple gravy into a formidable sauce with fine texture and taste. You need nothing else than the gravy of an organic good piece of dark meet and 3 or 4 soup spoons of plum chutney. If you like you can add an extra spoon of a very old and mild balsamico (minimum 12 years). To refine your piece of meat after roasting it you can use fleur de sel and black cubeban pepper.
This was my first of 13 recipies cooked with gaumenperlen. See you soon with the second one. Have a good start this week in your new year!

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds