Recipe: Erdaepfelnidei

An other bit of Austrian cuisine is Erdäpfelnidei,
which is translated a potato dumpling.

Its a very old recipe, used to be cooked by farmers in Salzburg County / Austria.

Ingredients:
1 kg potatoes
2 eggs
250 gram flour
bit of salt
bit of muscat.

Side dish, Sauerkraut (or in Polish shops called Kapusta) with cubes of bacon and pepper corns.

Boil the potatoes until they nearly fall apart, so they need to be well done and it should be potatos with lots of starch.

After remove skin, and mash them while they are still hot, make a dough with the flour, egg and rest of ingredients and start forming little dumplings as shown on the picture straight away.  Don't let the dough rest !

If you would be Italian, and if you would be cooking Gnochi, you would throw them now in boiling salted water for 10 minutes and serve them after in cheese....
... But you are NOT Italian, you cook an Austrian dish so you throw them in boiling vegetable oil and fry them until golden brown !

I always let them drip of the oil afterwards, and you can keep them warm in the oven until you have fried them all.

Before you east them, so should salt them to taste, and I also serve Sauerkraut with them.

This dish is very filling, so if you have some left you can use them next day as a side to a different dish.

Enjoy !

Clonlin on Google Currents

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Thanks to Caschy to inform me about Google Current in his blog (German)

Recipe: Tagliatelle with Cream Spinach

Yummy,
what our  Au pair cooked last time, coming home stressed from the office this lovely dish waited for me.

Yet simple but very delicious Tagliatelle with cream spinach, a great and very healthy dish.

So instead of the odd spaghetti try this next time if you have not much time but want to have something tasty !

Recipe: Soy chicken

Cooking Chicken is actually not an art, well I had once a frozen chicken incident 5 years ago i will now not closer describe.

Anyway, so make sure if you want to make a chicken in the oven, its not frozen ! once you are over that stepping stone you should do OK.

I got last time a nice compliment for my Soy chicken,
but i actually didn't do much to it. I only made a sauce out of a bit of honey, dark soy sauce, mustard and salt/pepper and i cooked the chicken slowly in the oven for 2 hours.

I trick I learned from my father is to fry first the chicken from all sides in a pan, that way the juice stays in the chicken and it doesnt get dry.


I always let the chicken a bit a rest before serving as well, this gives me time to prepare the rest of the dish, f.e. sauces, etc.

Recipe: Scalops

I love seafood, I am sure i said that before.

But i really do !

Sometimes it can be so simple to prepare a quick seafood dish. Get out there to the market, buy some fresh scallops from the fishermen, wrap them in ham or leave them plain.

Add a dash of Soya or olive oil in a pan, give them a short fry and serve with a side dish of your choice.
Thats heaven !

Xmas Cooking: Vanille (a) Kipferl

For all those who want to enjoy a little Austrian Christ­mas atmo­sphere at home, here is the one  recipes for Vanilla crescents:
Ingredients:
200 gram of margarine (no salted butter please(
100 gram ground almonds
200 gram plain flour
50 gram white sugar
2 egg yolks
vanilla sugar for topping the Kipferl


For the amount of cookies and dough shown in this picture i used 4 time the above amount,
and it took 2 people about 2+ hours to prepare and than bake them.

Quickly mix all the ingredi­ents to a short-crust dough and leave it in a cool place for one hour.
Roll out the dough to a thick­ness of about 1 cm before cut­ting into small pieces meas­ur­ing about 2 cen­ti­meters and form­ing crescent-shaped cook­ies.

Place the cook­ies on an bak­ing tray with baking paper and bake at a mod­er­ate tem­per­at­ure (180°C) for about twenty minutes or until they turn a light brown color.
Straight after removing them from the oven sprinkle them with vanilla sugar.

Let them cool down and enjoy.
They can be kept 2-3 weeks easy, but normally wont survive that long, at least not with my wife :-)

Tip: if you cant get your hands on vanilla sugar, use a vanilla stick and normal white sugar, add the stick to the sugar and leave that in a glass for at least 2 weeks... here you go, vanilla sugar self made.....

This cookies are also a great self made gift !

Recipe: Faschierte Leibchen

Faschierte Leibchen, thats a Austrian dish and could be kind of translated into "burger, the Austrian style"

Its very tasting and a great way to precook food, f.e. for work, school, etc.

Ingredients:
500 gram minced meat
1 onion, fine sliced
1 egg
2 pieces of old (hard) bread, sliced into small cubes
Salt and pepper to taste, also f.e. other spices such as parsley can be added

mix all the ingredients as shown above in a bowl, add gently a bit of water until the mix and bread is soaked, and you can easily form little burgers as shown on the right picture. before cooking them in the pan, put them in breadcrumbs. This gives them a crispy outside.

Traditionally this dish is served with potatoes, or other veg,
also add a splash of self made Mayonnaise on the plate.

Enjoy !

(thanks to Papa for cooking it !)

Gift Idea: Self made spiced salt

Xmas is coming up and I was looking into a nice gift idea for my friends. 
The Idea came when I was visiting a friend and he used spiced salt for cooking. The idea to a gift was born, with ingredients i already had at home from the last holidays in France.
Sea salt, rosemary, lavender, pepper corn....

I mixed it as followed:
1 kg Salt, 2 soup spoon pepper, 4 spoon rosemary, 1 spoon lavender.


From the baby I got plenty little pots at home, and from a old curtain I cut round covers for the salt, so that also the wrapping of the gift looks nice, as soon in the picture.

I think its a great idea, and I hope my friends will like it.

After 2 weeks I smelled the glass contents, and have to say it smells and tastes fantastic !

Recipe: French Crepe

I love crepe, and i love my wife, since she makes the best crepe ever. Well its easy i say, since she is French, so who does know it better than the French how to make crepe ?


here her recipe:
190 gram flour

3 eggs

0.375 Liter of Milk

A little bit of slat

37.5 g of butter

Mix flour + eggs

Add the milk slowly and always mixing

Add salt and butter

Let it rest for one hour in the fridge, than give some in a very flat pan (crepe pan) and let it go golden brown. You can also add ham, a egg and cheese on top, or for a sweet version add hazelnut cream, etc.

Enjoy !

Review: Inside Stove from West Cork builders

The best investment since a long while was this inside stove, which I recently bought for 499,- at West Cork builders in Clonakilty.

Before most of the head from the wood and coal went out of the house through the chimney, and i had to use lots of coal to actually feel some heat at the sofa.

Now, after inserting the stove into the fireplace i use much less wood and coal, and the room is warm straight away, and keeps warm the whole night and even morning.

I was shopping around a bit, and had even a look in the city, but nowhere i could get a better deal, and nicer service than here. One more reason to shop locally !