I don’t know about Summer wherever you might be, but here it seems to have left….. Unexpectedly, it has rained more in the past few days in Switzerland than in my last month in London. With temperatures having dropped well below 20°C, it was time for a comforting hearty soup with a side of crunchy garlic bread to enjoy in front of a blazing fire :-).
So, as I previously mentioned, I have recently started taking one ingredient and basing a menu around it. Reasoning behind this new approach is an open house I attended one evening at Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School. It was amazing and inspired me to up my game until I maybe one day decide to rob a bank of £30’000 for LCB’s educational fees. Until then I shall follow my own syllabus and teach myself the basics of classical cuisine. Today’s choice: Hazelnut. Why? NUTELLA, obviously! The best ever invented chocolate spread is based on hazelnuts. So….. anything made with hazelnuts must be good, right? With that in mind, I took a recipe from LCB for the main and once again attempted to be all master-chefy 🙂
P.S. For all you Nutella freaks – check this article out for inspiration on some crazy things you can do with Nutella. I’m tempted to try the Nutella, peanut butter and bacon sandwich….nom!
taken from Le Cordon Bleu
WE DID IT!!! My friend and I successfully ran the Race for Life yesterday evening in Battersea Park. It was such a great event with an amazing atmosphere – over 3000 people had signed up to run, jog or walk the distance :-).
I managed the 5k in just over 25 minutes… not too bad for an awful long distance runner. Thank you to everyone for your generous donations, together you helped me raise a grand total of £1’711.00 in aid of Cancer Research UK!!!! If you have not yet donated but still wish to do so, the link below is active until early September:
http://www.justgiving.com/themedicalgourmet
Moving on to today’s recipe – recently I have started taking one ingredient and basing an entire menu around it. Today’s choice: Polenta. Polenta is great in cakes and breads (nothing beats chilli with cornbread) but also makes a great side to mushroomy dishes. It reminds me of my childhood holidays in the warm italian part of southern Switzerland. The reason behind my choice of polenta is a recent dinner invitation. They served a delicious polenta/lemon/almond cake for dessert. I had two helpings (despite a starter, a main and an exploding food belly). The minute I got home I tried to find a similar recipe, determined to re-create this heavenly lemony dessert. I don’t know if it’s exactly the same recipe, but it sure tasted just as good :-). The strawberry coulis is an addition of mine, I felt the dish needed some fresh fruity sauce to round it off.
adapted from Fast Food by Laurel Glen and Wildeisen
Time for a savoury dish. And a random life story: So, this past Lent I felt I had to cleanse my body of all accumulated badness and decided to give up 3 of my favourite things: alcohol, Nutella and red bull. As these 3 unhealthy items are so easily replaced with worse, I found myself eating more sweets and cakes than usual…… so much for the “cleansing”. Next Lent I should probably omit sweet things in general….. although, that would probably trigger a depression…. lucky I can prescribe medication (ha, kidding, note to self: do not self medicate!). Anyways, having survived Lent physically and psychologically undamaged, a celebration was in order. A friend had given up meat, so we thought MeatLiquor was the perfect venue. Starting with a cocktail called “Game Over” (of which they actually only serve a maximum of two per customer due to ridiculous amounts of alcohol) at 6pm, I already feared the worst for my liver (and brain). 2 burgers and surprisingly buzz-free from the oh so promising “game over” later, we decided to return to a more cost-effective drink: wine. One glass turned into two turned into lets go drink a bottle at yours turned into falling asleep before midnight and waking up the next day with a sudden epiphany of why I gave up alcohol in the first place.
Lucky for me, indian is the one cuisine I thoroughly enjoy without a glass of wine. It just doesn’t match. A cold beer, possibly, but fortunately for me and my Lent endeavours, I don’t like beer. With a craving for indian food and living too far away from any decent indian restaurants which don’t require 45 mins queueing, I decided to make an all time indian favourite – butter chicken – from scratch. Naturally I asked an indian friend if this recipe was somewhat legitimate before buying a zillion ingredients. She approved. I cooked. We (she) generously adjusted the spice levels. Then ate. Verdict: YUM.
How many epic birthday parties did you have as a child? They were the event of the year with endless cake, balloons, magicians, games and most importantly presents. Did your parents also go overboard with the motto: the more the merrier? Not only was the entire class usually invited, but also family friends with children of a similar age. Now calculate how many presents and cake that results in? A LOT! Aside from the obligatory goody bags, one of the best parts of these parties were the games: musical chairs, water balloons, the knife and fork chocolate game (secretly I actually want to play this again… maybe tipsy…. that might increase the entertainment factor), hopscotch, hide and seek, jump rope, capture the flag and pass the parcel. The latter was great. Despite the small probability of actually having the parcel in your hands when only one layer of wrapping paper was left between you and the prize, adrenalin was still pumping every time it was your turn to unwrap. Unwrapping parcels, presents and posted packages remains exciting to this day, even if you think you know what to find inside. I’m sure you have even all wrapped up a present for yourself and placed it under the Christmas tree at least once in your life…. or maybe that’s just my brother. But it proves the point. Things in parcels are exciting. So why not serve food in parcels as well? Not only is it a great way to develop the flavour while cooking, but it also almost always impresses the guests. Here is my latest attempt:
adapted from Bbcgoodfood and Wildeisen Continue reading
I am sure most people have heard of the 24-hour restaurant close to Liverpool Street Station, running under this name. The view of this city by night from the 40th floor is breathtaking. If you add some good wine and excellent food, such as crispy pigs ears, to the equation, the experience becomes unique. There are some quite innovative dishes on the menu, but whilst quickly glancing over it, one dish in particular caught my eye. I had to try it. It was amazing.
An interesting combination of ingredients for the most random dish I have ever come across whilst dining out…..
Sitting in my living room at the end of a hectic day’s work, looking out over the rooftops of London, enjoying the blue sky and the tiny outline of the London Eye in the distance, I could finally put my feet up and relax. In that moment it hit me: I live in London!!! Admittedly one of my favorite cities. Moving to a city of this caliber has been more tiring than I initially thought. The amount of people out and about each day is fascinating, yet exhausting. Even on sundays the streets are bubbling with life (back home your lucky to find an open supermarket within 20 minutes). Some evenings you need a break from the buzz going on around you, a quick, tasty home made meal, a glass of wine and time to switch off your brain. These moments are rare. Enjoy them!! This recipe is the result of my most recent one.
A quick note about the word salmon for all our swiss/german readers: the “l” is silent, no joke. Please engrave this newly won knowledge into your mind. Thank you.
As for the recipe: it is a Jamie Oliver inspired simple salmon dish prepared within minutes. Perfect if you don’t want to invest a lot of time, but still feel like a satisfying your taste buds. Considering its based on one of Jamie’s recipes, I thought I’d stick to his art of cooking and go with my gut feeling regarding the amount of ingredients.
Continue reading Very recently, 1234cook crew marked the end of an era: the four of us have recently all upped sticks and left our lovely little town in Switzerland and moved en masse to London. It turns out moving is hard work, and we’ve been busy little bees getting all settled in.
Before we left Basel for the big city, though, we thought we’d go out with a bang and mark our departure by splashing out on one of our favourite local dishes: Zürcher Geschnetzeltes with Rösti. We were feeling a bit fancy that day, so we also made some traditional Käsekuchen, and had ourselves a proper Goodbye Switzerland feast.
Zürcher Geschnetzeltes is made with veal, which sort of ruptured our bank accounts, and almost an insane amount of white wine. You could use a meat other than veal, but it wouldn’t be as yummy. The recipe we used was a slight modification of one we found via Coop. Pre-warning: we used ready-made Rösti. If you really want to go for it and make your own Rösti (essentially fancy potato hash), find a recipe alllllll the way at the bottom of the page of this Guardian article. (Pro-tip: add bacon bits for extra yum.)
Have you ever studied for finals for half a year (for your sake I hope not)? Towards the end, all you’re looking forward to is that one day, the first day of freedom in which your brain can just turn into a sponge. And then once it’s arrived, within a few hours after having cleaned up all of the papers, books, empty bowls and coffee mugs that accumulated around your desk and in the whole apartment over the past months, you can finally sit down and relax. Well, that would be the idea. But seriously, who can go from 110% to 0% within a day? I can’t. I start getting fidgety and feel like you should be doing something.
Because my brain wasn’t quite at the “let’s go read yet another book, but this time for fun” stage yet and also wasn’t in the mood to drink my state of agitation away (although a few days later my brain came to it’s senses and decided to excessively drink itself into a relaxed/somnolent state…. man 6 months of almost complete abstinence kills your tolerance :-P), I channeled my energy into the kitchen (where else…?). Based upon a tub of mascarpone left in the fridge, I decided to attempt a classic italian dinner. Bruschetta, risotto, saltimbocca and a lemony tiramisu. Buon appetito!
This post is dedicated to the pervert person that landed on the blog 1234cook after Google-searching “half handful tits”. First of all, why stop at half a handful? Why not go all the way? The second shout-out goes to the cannibal searching for “boiled cooked tits”…. WHAT?? And as for Mr. (or Ms.) “Resistance Orgasm”… NSA must be having a blast with your search history.
As part of the dedication, with this post, I wish to simplify their future searches:
With the moist weather gone at last, we decided to thrust ourselves lustfully into the art of barbecuing. We simply rubbed some succulent ribs and caressed some meaty wings with glistening sauce and smacked them onto the grill: the result was juicy, tender and bursting with exotic flavor – a carnal experience that titillates the senses and left us gasping for more.
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