Tag Archives: recipes

Turning a siri mistake into lovely mashed sweet potatoes

food, thoughts for food, , , , ,

So recently I had some friends over for dinner and I was having a vegetarian week, since I’ve been to Alsace with my dad and there we had enough meat for a month. But that’s a story for another time.
My plan for the dinner was this:

  • My Coriander-Tomato salsa along with some nachos
  • Pimentos de Patron – those lovely mini peppers that you get in Spanish or Portuguese tapas bars
  • Filled bell peppers à la Chakall – grilled and filled with dried onion, usually some bacon pieces (which I left out this time obviously), an egg and some cheese on top
  • Sweet potatoes, half cooked in a pressure cooker, then sliced up, seasoned, put on the grill and then set them on fire with some whiskey etc
  • A nice salad with some vegetables of the current season

So all went good, my friends were enjoying the salsa when I asked my friend ‘Hey man can you set a timer for 10 minute please?’ ’Sure, I’ll let Siri know.’ Then he had a quick chat with Siri but I didn’t really pay attention any more since I was preparing the salad.
Fast-forward 10-15 (or 20?) minutes, I ask my friend ‘Hey what’s left on the timer’ ‘Ehhmm.. Siri how much time is left on the timer?’ ‘You don’t have a timer running at the moment.’
Darn.
Okay so I take the pressure cooker off the heat, put it on the floor to cool down but think already that they might be well too much cooked through, so no chance of slicing or grilling or setting them on fire.
Once the pressure was gone and I opened the pot, my fears were confirmed: you basically could use your hands to mash the sweet potatoes.
What now?!
Ok I can easily make mashed potatoes.
Spices? Oof, maybe some maple sirup? Salt, pepper? Ah I still have those ‘long pepper’ thingies… why not. And hell, I’m even gonna set this freaking mash on fire! Got some cheap old (not aged, just an old bottle) of scotch. And I set it on fire.
And the result? My friends loved it. The girl said something along the lines of ‘Wow!!!! I need the recipe! And the whisky really added some nice touch to it!!’
Here we go – first sweet potatoes mash of my life.
Cheers!

Steak pie and not-really-mushy peas

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Did some cooking after a looooong time… Perfect winter dish for me and reminds me of Scotland: steak pie

Inspirational video from Jamie Oliver, some internet research and some given spices and cheese leftovers got me to this variant.

  1. 2 onions
  2. 300 g rump steak
  3. 4 carrots
  4. 200 g mushrooms
  5. 330ml guiness
  6. 1 tblsp Tomato paste
  7. 2 tblsp Flour
  8. Ready made puff pastry
  9. Spices: long pepper, black pepper, salt, Worcester sauce, chili
  10. Peas: lemon cest, lemon juice, salt&pepper, fine cut mint, butter

Pizza Potluck Party #2

expat life, food, grunt grunt, Uncategorized, what can you do in the desert?, , , , , ,

Pizza Potluck Party – what the heck is that all about? 4 things:

  • I prepare pizza dough
  • I prepare tomato sauce
  • I have some cheese
  • you bring whatever you want or cannot imagine to work as a piza topping

We’ve done that in the past where we created one sri-lankan-german pizza with combining a sausage crust, lingus and pineapple on a pizza… mmmh still mouth-watering when I just write about it.

This time one amazingly awesoe person started to prepare an 18hour apple-wood smoked pork shoulder to have some pulled pork for the pizza. I mean: some people (including me) would already die for ONLY the 18 hour smoked pulled pork. But coming back to the pizzas – here are some of the creations from that evening:

  • Lingus (raw lingus but also fried lingus, chilies, onions), pineapple, corn and red birdseye chilies
    DSC_1151
    DSC_1154
  • Meat lovers 18 hour smoked pulled pork pizza: the friend lingus combination, pulled pork (only to be added at the very end or last 2 minutes in the oven!), some birds eye chili or orange habanero
    DSC_1144
  • Pulled-pork at its best: mango, coriander leaves, orange habanero and pulled pork
    DSC_1140
  • For salmon lovers: corn, mango, a mixture of joghurt (better results expected with creme cheese) with salt, long pepper and slightly smoked salmon (to be added at the very end, once the pizza is out of the oven already for 2-3 mins)
    DSC_1148

Other hints for pizza stuff: I use the dough recipe from Jamie Oliver who combines e.g.

  • 400gr of wheat flower (ideally italian typo 00 but any bread flower will do)
  • 100gr of semolina
  • dried yeast (1 pack)
  • 1 tblsp brown sugar
  • 1 tblsp fine sea salt

And you HAVE TO buy a stone for making pizzas. Just try it once and you will never want non-stone pizza again. The thing is: pre-heat your oven with the stone to the highest temperature your oven can do for 45 mins and then your pizzas will be ready in max 8-10mins.

Buon appetit.