Recipe: Mackerel in Tomato sauce

Fishy Fishy, thats whats the month of August will be for me. I go fish mad, want to fish the Atlantic empty, try out every kind of recipe for fish I can find.

The other day this two lovely Mackerel jumped on me while I was on the pier. To make them different for a change i thought i combine them with something veggie.

Here my mackerel in tomato sauce recipe:

Catch a thin of tomato sauce at Lidl, open it op and poor it over 2 freshly gutted mackerel, add some garlic, herbs, salt and pepper (tobacco if you like it spicy), a bit of olive oil, and trow it into the oven at 180 degrees C for about 20 minutes.



Serve it hot with some potato on the side,
Enjoy

Kerry, or the silence of the lambs

Look at this lovely little lambs, little babies, which work the mountains in Country Kerry, giving this landscape its shape, and preventing the meadows from getting to wild.

Who would think in a moment like that, about lamb soup, a tajine made of a leg of lamb, etc. fore sure not a vegetarian.

I have to say, I considered it too, but (please don't take it wrong if you are a Veggie) I think it is against nature not to eat everything the nature provides us with. We are made that way, so why changing it. For a religious believe OK, but just because its a life style thing, i wouldn't.

I have seen however pictures of mass animal transporters, of "meat factories", etc. thats why I want to see where my food comes from.

Today its easy, with the labeling, or best with a butcher of your trust,
you have a choice, what to eat, and what not.

I enjoyed my lamb chop last weekend, fresh from the grill, surrounded by lambs, on a table build from stone. OK, it sounds maybe a bit awkward or macabre for somebody living in a big city never seen a animal in nature, buts thats just the way it is on the Country Side in Ireland. 

I hope that doesn't change.

 

Summer Refreshment / Clonlins Cocolate indulgence

Food, Food, Food,
seems like all I can think about is Food these days.
Since I did smoke 15 years, and finally quit some months back, i can just taste better, so i cant stop rediscovering old tastes or create new ones.

Mixing different kinds of chocolate 75% cocoa ones with milk chocolate is one of this experiments I do.

Together with strawberries, fresh from the garden,
whats better than that ?

Recipe: Irish Stew with an Austrian-German Approach

Living in Ireland 6 years now, it took me quiet a while until i tried the first time myself to make a Irish Stew.

Coming from a Country (Austria) which traditionally prepares the Goulash it took me some time to overcome the prejudice that Irish Stew isn't tasty.

So the best way to overcome that was to give it a try myself, and I had two good friends to help, So let me tell you about the Irish Stew with an Austrian-German Approach;

Ingredients:
800 gram neck of lamb, cubed
800 gram of potatoes, peeled and sliced
400 gram of carrots
400 gram of onions
3 pieces of garlic
dash of redwine
fresh thyme and cumin
1 liter lamb stock ( i used the stock i had left from cooking the bones from the Tajine i made the other day)
freshly ground pepper, salt to taste

Cut the garlic and onion, and fry it until golden brown,
add the diced lamb and fry until nice brown. Add spices and top up with the lamb stock.
add the carrots first, after the potato. Cook for one hour. Take one potato and grind it into the stew, giving the stew a nice consistency.

Enjoy

Heidi High performing

Do you remember my post when I reported the first eggs laid by my chicken ? They have been so small, I actually couldn't store them proper in my egg container, they had been smaller than the hole to hold them.

I said back than more motivation is needed. Look at that huge egg now on the left, compared to the first one before !  Say hello to the top motivation trainer !




 Now                                                                                                                           before

                                  

Recipe: Noodle (Fussili) Salad

In a previous post I described how you can easily make your own mayonnaise.
At the end of a month you might run out of ideas or money what to cook, so why not chopping up some veg's, cooks some fussili pasta, take a few  spoons of your self made mayonnaise add some salt and pepper, oil and vinegar, and there you go, your Pasta Salad is finished !
Enjoy !

Brotzeit

In German they say: "Da ist keine bessere Zeit als Brotzeit !"
Meaning, there is no better time than snack time.

So what is a Brotzeit ?
Its a plate with cold or warm snacks on it. Traditionally it includes bread (Brot), sausage,cheese,radish,butter,mustard...
You can even put a Schnitzel on it once its nice cut into pieces.




There is really now limitation on how you create your very own Brotzeit,

So enjoy, its a perfect snack in the summer !

Recipe: Coffee Cookies

Do you know the problem, you have recipes in which you need only to use the egg yolks, but the egg white is not used, and you wouldn't like to waste it ?

I had the issue the other day, and was looking all over the web for a ripe in which i can use the egg white only.

What i found, is the lovely recipe for coffee cookies / sweet cookies you can eat with coffee.


Ingredients:
4 Egg whites
125 grams sugar
125 grams icing sugar

Beat egg whites with granulated sugar until you have a nice mass, mix also the icing sugar into the mass.
Bring the mass into desired form on baking paper and put it into the oven on  50 degrees Celsius ideally overnight or for a few hours until its hard.
Enjoy !

Best bottles for beerbrewing

Its time again soon and I kick off with some beer brewing again.
The best bottles for that hobby are the Grolsch ones, since they got the easy snap on system to close the bottles.

Only issue, you cant really disinfect them in the oven, since the topic isn't ceramic anymore, its plastic and it would melt.

So what i do, i give it a good clean in the dishwasher, disinfect it again afterwards, and give it a good rinse before bottling the beer.

Also make sure not to fill up glass bottles to much, or to add too much sugar since the bottle might just explode and the liquid gold is gone :-(

How to make the perfect Sushi ? Help !

Has anyone out there a idea how to make the perfect Sushi ? I definitely don't.

It Cant be that difficult i thought, but it actually is. Well cooking the rice its the easy part, but how to roll that bloody damn thing ?
I used matt's i got from China, maybe thats the issue, Sushi is a Japanese dish, so what to heck i do with Chinese wooden matt's ? Well i thought its easier to roll the sushi than, but it isn't.

Having a bowl of water with vinegar nearby was a great tip I got from a cooking website, that way the rice isn't sticking too much on your fingers.

The rest sort of came naturally to me, get fresh fish, since I didn't catch anything I went to the shop.
A lovely sea drought was in and on my sushi.

It actually doesn't look as bad here, and didn't taste as bad at all than i wrote this blog entry, but serious, i need more practice and some good advises.

Anybody, HELP !