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​Last Bulmers recipe of this week, "the main dish”. This is one of my favourite recipes. When you think of a Fricassee, you would probably think of that Fricassee de Poulet a L’Ancienne… a very French comfort food between a saute and a stew. But in my case I think of a warm English homemade food. You might be thinking I got it all wrong and I am a bit crazy. So I may have to explain a little bit:

When I was a kid, I spend a lot of time at my grandparents home. My grandmothers family is French and my granddads, English. So a mix in the cuisine was for sure in every meal. Fricassee is made with dry white wine, but if you have some cider lovers around, (some with a sweet tooth) it will be made with cider. Cider is originally from England (after the romans brought it when they colonised) and as apples grow very fast there, it was the perfect setting for the beginning of production of this golden drink. So you can now do the math: Grandpa’s love for cider and Grandmas fricassee. The perfect English French love child.

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken (2kg) fresh or unfrosted
3 tbsp unsalted butter
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper
1 yellow onion, diced.
1 big carrot, diced
2 celery stalks, diced
250gr brown mushrooms
3 tbsp potato starch (glutenfree)
1 1/4 cup Bulmers Pear Cider
1 liter chicken fond
Fresh thyme
Fresh parsley
5 bay leafs
3 egg yolks
125ml heavy cream (30% fat or more)
fresh lime juice.

​Divide Chicken into 10 pieces: Legs, thighs, wings and 4 breast pieces. Season the chicken on both sides with salt and pepper. Use a Dutch oven if you have one. If not, use a large pot. Add the oil and 2 tbsp butter and fry the chicken skin side down until golden and turn. Don’t crowd your pot! Just fry your chicken and set aside and add more chicken until you are done. Leave the chicken on the side.

Reduce heat and add the diced vegetables. let them there until they are golden and a bit transparent… about 10 minutes in a Dutch oven. 

Bulmers Pear cider aka Perry is made from fermented apples but with pear flavour. Either way, it is a Pear elixir you can use instead of wine for the preparation of many desserts or savory meals.

​Add the mushrooms and let them get darker. They will release some water. Add the starch and stir until all the starch is incorporated. Pour the cider while whisking.. it will get thick very fast. Add the broth and keep stirring. Return the chicken and its juices back to the pot. 

Why I chose Bulmers Pear cider? I wish I had invented the chicken-pear match in heaven, but this was made loooong time ago as it compliments the white meats with its fruit subtlety. You can go hours in google reading all the great recipes using this two ingredients, from salads and stews to terrines and pattées. So Bulmers Pear cider was my weapon of choice.

​Tie your herbs with a natural twine and bring the fricassee to boil and reduce to simmer. Cover the half of the pot with a lid and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. If you have a thermometer, check that the inside of the chicken is at 70C. Remove chicken again. And let it boil for 10 more minutes.

​Now let´s make this baby thick and creamy! In a bowl, whisk the yolks and cream. Keep whisking and add slowly the cooking liquid from the pot. half a cup. And then add this mix with the yolks and cream back to the pot. Return the chicken to the pot, add a tbsp of butter and add some lime juice.

​Put this single pot fricassee on the middle of the table as well as rice. That silky sauce it’s a killer combined with a well cooked grainy rice. Get some glasses, add some ice cubes and pour some pear cider on them. Fricassee is hot hot hot and Bulmers Pear will refresh you.

​Use tall glasses or wine glasses. Cut one of your apples in 8 pieces and wet the glass rim with a slice and dip the glass into the cinnamon sugar.

Berlin is hot, hot, super hot at the moment. Having a toddler 24/7 and this heat makes me so unproductive and lazy. But as I need to get some things done, I decided to go pick up my new WMF pots in West Berlin with the help of a friend. (He is tall enough to carry the big boxes)

But on our way back, we got a bit hungry, so I thought why not make a quick Gazpacho? It was pretty late so my kitchen was kind of dark but still wanted to share this with you.

The main thing about Gazpacho is the ingredients. As they won't be cooked, you have to be sure that you have good quality veggies and your tomatoes should be as ripe as possible. 
​
Ingredients:

8 Ripe Tomatoes or 2 cans of 400 gr of shredded tomatoes 
a handful of cherry tomatoes
1/2 Cucumber
1/2 Paprika or 5 small ones (like in the picture)
2 garlic cloves
1 Shalott
50 ml white wine Vinegar
2 tbsp Olive oil
Salt & Pepper
Fresh Chives or any other herb

Now it is chopping time. We will be cutting 2 different things: Soup and Topping. Start chopping 1/4 of your cucumber in thin slices and then cut the slices in 4. Do the same with your paprika, cut 1/4 of your paprika in thin stripes and last but not least, cut about the half of your cherry tomatoes in half. Put all these ingredients in a small bowl and sprinkle some oil to it and let it rest..

Chop the rest of the ingredients in small dices and add vinegar, oil, salt and pepper and let it rest in the fridge for 15 minutes or more (if you have time). Make sure that you mix it well so all the flavours will combine.

For serving, add a spoon-full of the topping mix and serve the soup over it. I have this vintage hen jar that I had for many many years and I love how it looks when I serve soups from it.  With a spoon serve some more topping in the middle and sprinkle olive oil over it. Do not spare on oil! It just makes your soup taste better! 

Cut and sprinkle some chives or fresh herbs over your Gazpacho, it gives it a great aroma. Toast some bread and enjoy with Cold Grüner Veltliner or a dry Rosé if you are a fan of Rosé.

All Pictures were Made by Christian Mentzel... I tortured him as art director to see the picture outcome. It was really hard not to be the one making the pictures though ;)

​Once it has cooled down, Mix the cookies, nuts and condensed milk. It will give you a very sticky dough.

I am not vegan, but many of my close friends are. I love the challenge when cooking vegan. Most of the food I see in restaurants aren't that creative or even resemble the "regular" food. 

I was asked by Bordeaux Wines to make a whole Christmas dinner and I was very excited about making this dinner with a Twist. (You can see the dinner here). I had loads of messages asking me for the recipe of the loaf. I have to accept I have been busy like a hive of bees, but tomorrow is the last day the shops are open, so if you have vegan guests for Xmas or you are vegan yourself, run to the closest Whole Foods Store/Bio Markt and make this Loaf.

Ingredients:

Loaf:
1 can of white beans drained (you can use chickpeas, jack beans or pinto beans)
2 cloves garlic
1 cooked beet
1/2 cups vegetable broth
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp olive oil
200 grms Wheat gluten
Mushrooms
2 tbsp ground mushrooms
1 tsp sweet paprika or regular
a pinch of salt
Pepper

Stuffing:
4 Soya bratwurst or any vegan white sausage
1 medium white onion
2tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp fresh parsley
4 slices of bread
a bit of nut milk or oat milk
Oil

We start with the loaf. Turn on your oven, 180 C. Add the beans food processor or blender, until the are mashed. Add the garlic and beet. Throw the canned mushrooms, dried mushrooms, paprika, salt & pepper and broth. The mushrooms will give your "meat" that umami taste. Regular meat has an umami taste to it as well as mushrooms, so we are cheating here.

Soak the bread in the milk. This will give some "body" to the stuffing. If you like salty food, soak it in broth instead of milk.

In a bowl knead the bean mix with the wheat gluten. The beet gives this dough the meat color. It is scary how close to ground meat this looks like. Once it is all mixed. let it rest while making the stuffing.

Dice your sausage and onion. Fry both until the onion is transparent, add the nutmeg and parsley. Add some salt to it. Add the drained bread and taste again, you can add more salt to it. Let is cool down for about 10 minutes. We don't want the gluten mix to react to the warmth of the stuffing.

On a tray with alu foil, press the gluten mix flat and add the stuffing. Roll it. and shove it to the over for one hour.

Remove the foil and turn it around carefully. Be very careful removing the foil. you don't want the stuffing to come off. Brush some oil all over and let it grill for 10 more minutes. Let ist cool before cutting.

Serve with mashed potatoes with skin, gravy and Brussel sprouts. All your vegan friends will be jumping on one foot. I am really sure about that! Merry Vegan Xmas! If you want to try my turkey Xmas recipe, Check it here

I try to reduce my dairy intake as much as i can, I love ice cream and that can be a problem. I thought vegan ice couldn't be as good as regular one until I went with Ailine to the new vegan ice cream place in Kollwitzkiez called Tribeca, and they convinced me. I had a lucuma quinoa ice cream and I loved it.

I thought maybe I can recreate that at home and it wasnt so easy. After 4 batches, I finally got the perfect ingredients and amounts. I have no churn at home, so that was the tricky part. Be creamy without having that machine. (And don't taste like coconut) So at the end, I decided on Cashews for the base of it.

Ingredients
​
150 gr raw cashews 
500 ml Soy milk
3 tbsp Vegetable Shortening or fat
4 tbsp Lucuma powder
1/2 cup  agave nectar 
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch sea salt
A hanfull of quinoa pops

First of all, soak the cashews for a night or a day. Drain them and then you can start. Simmer the milk until it has reduced to the half and let it cool. Add cashews, milk, melted fat, agave syrup, vanilla, lucuma powder and sea salt to a high speed blender and blend until creamy and smooth, you want it to be completely creamy and blended.

Lucuma is a peruvian super food. It is my favorite one. sadly I dont think you can eat it raw, so mostly it is use for desserts, smoothies, ice creams... you name it. It contains beta carotene, iron, zinc, vitamin B3, calcium, and protein. Its maple-like taste makes it a sweet addition without increasing your blood sugar levels, unlike many sweeteners that offer empty calories.

Besides all that, it keeps you young, Ladies! Lucuma has an anti-inflammatory, anti-aging and skin-repair effects on human skin! So just order a bag at amazon and lets start the lucuma eating bonanza.

Returning to the recipe, put the creamy mixture into a bowl and cover it with plastic foil. Freeze it for one or 2 hours. Take it out of the freezer and mix it in a kitchen machine for 15 minutes on high speed. It will be hard but creamy. What we are trying to do here is to break the ice pieces so it stays creamy instead of hard and ice-y.

Add a piece of parchment in a freezer friendly form. And like a lasagna, alternate ice cream mix and quinoa pops. If you can find them, here is how you can make them. Freeze for a couple of hours or until it is hard. 

As any ice cream, before eating, take it out of the freezer some minutes before eating. But with this ice cream, make it for longer time. about 15 to 20 minutes. That is the only "con" of my recipe. 

Using an ice crem scoop, or a tablespoon, serve it in a waffle cone, waffle, brownie... you name it! and enjoy!

Some days I get super homesick. Instagram doesnt help when I see all those peruvian accounts showing my favorite food. Most ingredients are hard to find, like the over 200 kinds of potatoes. But one kind of potato can be found here: Old potatoes.

Yes! old potatoes. You know them! when they start getting dry and growing stumps all over. Normal european people toss the away, but in Peru, they are the best potatoes to make "Papa Rellena" what means literally stuffed potato.

i bought some potatoes and let them dry behind a door in my kitchen. 2 weeks! yeah! you can wait until 4 weeks for better results. The drier and weird the look, the better! they should look gross but not have any moss on them or any fluids either.

Ingredients: (for 4)

7 medium size old potatoes
200 grams ground beef or 1 diced aubergine for the vegan version.
​1 white onion
1 carrot or as much as you onion amount
3 garlic cloves
16 black olives
2 tbsp tomato paste
​1/2 cup broth
Oregano
Salt & pepper
Paprika Powder
Olive Oil
Flour or Rice Flour

Lets get stuffed. Sometimes a person gives you are really hard time, but there is always a bright side on every bad situation. The mom of my ex hated me, but gave the greatest tip: Do not boil your potatoes, steam them! Yes, steamed potatoes are way better in texture and flavour, not to mention that they never break as they do in water.

Steam the potatoes for 35 minutes!. Once they are tender peel and press with a fork. I use a potato press, works wonders as I dot have to peel the crap out of them.

In a pan, fry the diced onions, garlic and carrots until they are transparent and tender. Add the meat or diced aubergine, paprika powder and tomato paste. When the meat is cooked, add the broth and olives and let it simmer until the liquids are all gone. Add salt and pepper to the meat mix and the potatoes and let them cool down.

Now we start building them. Take a quarter of the potato with your hand (full with flour) and press the potato to an oval flat form. Add a big spoon of the filling and roll the potato over it until you made a cocoon. Feel free to add as much flour as you need. It gets sticky, so use a lot of flour.

Add a lot of rice flour to a dish and place them using baking paper to separate them. In my house they used to put them in the freezer for an hour to make them a bit more "solid". Then In a hot pan with a lot of olive oil, fry the potatoes until they are golden. You can use a deep fryer as well.

Serve with some rocoto sauce or sriracha mayo and some salsa if you want it even more spicy! ​I used 1 spoon vegan mayo and half spoon of peruvian chili paste.

Suddenly for a couple days, the summer is gone. And when I feel winter coming, I can only think of melted cheese. I remembered about zucchini boats while talking with my pal Philipp (that doesnt like zucchini, say whaaaat?) and I told him about the baked boats my mom used to make on winter days and how they feel like a love child between lasagna and mini pizzas. This recipe shouldn't take more than 45 minutes to make and there is a vegan variation at the end of the recipe. So lets get all cheesy now, melted cheesy!

Ingredients:

3 whole zucchini
6 Prawns
1 slice of bread (I used gluten free bread)
1/2 cup of milk (I used almond milk)
1 small white onion
3 garlic cloves (1 if you aren't much into garlic)
1/2 cup of grated cheese
Fresh parsley
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper

First, warm up your oven to 180C. Dunk that bread in milk and let it soak. Meanwhile, boil the zucchini for about 15 minutes in water with salt. If your zucchini are a bit bigger, you can always test if they are tender with a fork. They should be firm but you should be able to stick that fork in! Once they are done, cut them in halves and let them rest. They will leak some zucchini water, so leave them over paper towels or regular kitchen cloths.

In a food processor, add the raw onion, garlic, cheese (leave 2 spoons to sprinkle the boats later), parsley, the soaked bread (be sure you squeeze it a bit before) and the zucchini "meat" and chop chop until it is all homogeneous. If you are wondering how to get the zucchini "meat", just use a spoon to dig the inside of the zucchini out, leaving them looking like boats. Add salt until it tastes good for you.

Sauteé the prawns for 1 minute in a hot pan. Spoon the cheese mix inside the zucchini boats, place a prawn and sprinkle the cheese that was left. Drizzle some olive oil, add pepper and slide these babies in the oven.

Bake them for 15 or until they are golden. Sprinkle some fresh parsley and enjoy! In Peru with eat this with a side of rice, but alone it as tastes awesome as well. 

For the vegan option, just change the prawn for half mushroom and change the grated cheese for vegan grated cheese.

There are over 15 different kinds of basil. We mostly know the green rounded one, known as Sweet Basil. But sometimes in the supermarket you will find purple basil or Dark Opal basil. This beautiful basil taste very similar to genovese or sweet basil but a bit sharper. 

Pesto has been my favorite dish since I was a kid. In Peru, it is made out of spinach and genovese basil with fresh cheese and no nuts. While walking through the whole foods supermarket I found this basil and I thought about making pesto, purple pesto. As the Dark Opal is more nutty than the regular basil, I went for Pecans so the nut taste wont disappear with this stronger basil (and they looked beautiful with this new napkins I got at Home Go Lucky)

Ingredients:

2 cups purple basil 
1/2 cup pecan nuts
3 cloves of garlic
​1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 cup olive oil 
a squeeze of fresh lime
Salt & pepper 

Blanching is a very important thing when you want to use basil. Basil tends to change color to brown when you cook it. But blanching helps keep its color. Same goes with purple basil. Prepare a bowl of ice water. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put the basil in a sieve and plunge it into the boiling water, pushing the leaves down into the water and stirring them so they blanch evenly. Blanch for 15 seconds, then plunge the herbs into the ice water to stop the cooking.

Once the basil is blanched, combine it with garlic, pecan nuts and Parmesan in the bowl of a food processor; season with salt and pepper, to taste. With the motor running, add olive oil in a slow stream until emulsified. 

Boil 3/4 cup of pasta per person, (I used gluten free Fusilli from Barilla) and add a spoonful of pesto. Stir well and add some parmesan cheese and a squeeze of lime. And then, Enjoy!

Ceviche as the world know it, is fish or seafood cooked with lime acid instead of heat/fire. It is a peruvian dish that has taken the world in a storm the last years. When I was a kid, I remember we had different kinds of ceviche without anything that lived in the ocean. Like chicken ceviche and mushrooms ceviche.

​Ceviche is not just about the taste, but the consistency of the "meat". Button mushrooms have a very fish-y consistency once they are cooked and the umami flavour creates a very believable plant-based ceviche.  I am not vegan, but I am trying to cut down on eating meat.

Ingredients (2 pax)

4 big button mushrooms (shiitake, portobello or crimini will work)
4 limes (check that they are juicy and big)
1 red onion, Use a yellow one if you preffer a milder taste
2 garlic cloves
1/2 Avocado
1 tbsp chili paste (I use this peruvian chili)
Salt, Pepper and Cumin
Scallions or Koriander
1 big sweet potato
Salad leafs
1 corn
A handful of peruvian popcorn - optional
Vegetable oil

First, start popping those babies! in a pan with oil, add the peruvian popcorn and put a lid over it. Stir a bit until all are popped. Sprinkle some salt and let them cool. Boil or steam the sweet potato and once is tender, let it cool as well.

Cut the mushrooms in slices or dices. I always go for slices as they feel more like eating fish. Put them in a bowl, Add the onion in julienne, garlic in dices or crushed, chili paste, chili, salt, pepper and cumin.

Now squeeze those limes! take ALL the juice! Dont forget to wash them first. because you want to avoid the bitterness of the skin. Pour the juice over the mushrooms and mix well. Add some scallions or coriander over the mix and let it macerate for at least 40 minutes. Test one mushroom and it should be tender and not crunchy. Add more salt or chili paste if needed.

While the ceviche is "cooking" make a puree out of the sweet potatoes, cook the corn and cut the avocado in slices. Stir the ceviche mix occasionally so all the ingredients cook evenly.

Now its time to plate. Start with a bed of salad. Add the ceviche over it as well as the corn, popcorn, sweet potato and avocado. Pour over some of the lime juice and drizzle some scallions or coriander at the top. Now ENJOY this plant-based umami heaven!

If you want to try the fish variation of it Check this recipe!