Asia meets Bavaria

Nicole came over to help me preparing the following menu:

Starter: Wan Tan soup
Main course: Mandarin chicken with rice
Dessert: Bavarian Cream

We started preparing the dessert first as the cream needs to chill for some hours in the freezer. For Bavarian cream you take the content of a vanilla bean and cook it with milk. Then you mix egg yolks with sugar. Put half the milk to it and stir till it is smooth. Mix it with the rest of milk and put it back on the stove at medium heat, it should not get warmer than 85°C or the egg will flocculate. That happened to us on the first try, so we started all over again. In the second run the mix was so hot after the mixing that we did not dare to put it back on the stove. Next step is to pour it through a sieve and add gelatin. Now let it cool over ice water, but before it is firmed you need to stir some whipped cream under the mixture. Then put it in the fridge for several hours.

In the meantime, we took care of the soup and main course which was less difficult. We put the chicken broth on the stove. Cut the chicken breast, Mu-Err mushrooms and spring onion. Mixed it with oil, soy sauce, salt, sugar, pepper and cornstarch. Last night I already got the Wan Tan dough plates out of the freezer, so we now just had to place a teaspoon of the mixture on them. Moisten the edges, fold triangles and press the edges together. Five minutes before serving the soup, we put in the Wan Tans, sliced mushrooms and seasoned the soup with soy sauce. We served the hot soup with some green from the spring onion.

The main course involved some slice and dice: chicken breast, mushrooms, bell peppers, sugar snaps. Marinated the meat in some mandarin juice mixed with soy sauce, oil, cognac, garlic, salt, pepper. Then cook water for the rice and put it in. Fry the meat in a hot pan, then add vegetables and the rest of the marinade and saute them. When the rice was ready, we added it together with the mandarins to the pan and seasoned all with salt, pepper, lemongrass powder and soy sauce. It was delicious.

Also the dessert served with hot raspberries was good, even though some more training would do no harm. So maybe I will try it this week again and then, there will also be pictures for you to see.

For further insight to the recipes have a look on

http://cook-fairy.blogspot.com/

Next week, we will cook at Nicole's place - Lasagne and maybe some more Italian stuff.

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2010 ... here I come

First three weeks of the new year are gone and so far it treated me not too well. I caught a bad cold at the end of the old year and I'm still not through with it.

In business, the crisis is still affecting MAN and we will do some further 60 days of short work. So the money for trips around the globe is quite short but nonetheless I made some plans.

- In March, I will go with some friends skiing in the Italian Alps.
- Every ten years, Oberammergau (small Alpine village) hosts the Passion Play, so I got some tickets for May.
- Another goal for this year is to reach the highest place in Germany. On foot. So yes, I wanna climb on the Zugspitze - 2962 m. Ok, it's not the highest mountain in the world or the Alps, and even I was higher when I climbed with my brother and dad on the Aletschhorn (4.195 m) in 90ies.
- The summer, I will take all my six weeks holidays and go to Nepal and India on the search of some real high mountains, relaxing backwaters, great tea and new places.

Inspired by Julie Powell's book "Julie/ Julia - my year of cooking dangerously", I will spend the rest of the time cooking myself around the culinary globe - so stay tuned for some delicious recipes, cooking misfortunes and increasing waist line, or maybe the contrary - we will see.


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The end of 2009

I've been absent from writing for more than four months and those who know me good know I could not stay all this time at home. So here a short abstract what happened in that time:

September
Another October Fest was coming along and I made it again three times.
One of my special guests was Lena, at whose place I lived in Donetsk (Ukraine) and Moscow (Russia). One of the other days, we drove to the South of Bavaria on the Romantic Road taking a good look at a pilgrimage roccoco church - Wieskirche - and the Neuschwanstein Castle. We could make some really nice pittoresque pictures.

November
One weekend I spent in Cologne for an AIESEC Alumni event. We visited the German Aerospace Centre - which was very interesting to see some of there projects in space as well as their testing on earth. And finished the day off with a real good lounge party in a Gothic vault.
Another weekend I spent learning about video editing and cutting - so the first short movie about India is ready - more to come sooner or later.

December
Travelling all over Germany to visit the lovely Christmas market and eating the special food available only that time of year:
- only in Leipzig: lovely waffles with delicious vanilla cream
- Munich: garlic bread with sour cream
- Düsseldorf: crepes with Nutella and banana
- Münster: can't remember
- Quedlingburg: funnel cake (Kräppelchen)

In Düsseldorf, I lived again at Lena's place only in a different city. She has a wonderful apartment at the river with real good view.

Mid December, Victor and me went to Innsbruck/ Axamer Lizum for the first skiing in the new season. Our equipment was ready but my condition was not too good and the weather showed us its ugly face: wind, ice, snow and cold.
At least the second morning was starting quite good and I did not feel stiff and aching as expected. So it was a good start.

Christmas and New Year's Eve, I spent with the family in Dachau and visiting my grandparents and dad. So this was it.