Bento: Pancakes and Glazed Carrots

This is one of the bentos I've recently made.

It's a Pancake Bento:

Pancakes, Glazed Carrots, Blueberries, Radishes and Chili-Cheese-Balls (frozen product). The little bottle contains maple syrup.

For the pancakes you can just use a pancake mix! I use the German brand "Mondamin". Of course pancakes aren't a very healthy lunch for everyday. But you can't have rice as daily basis ... you get bored sooner or later. So sometimes you should mix it up with different karbohydrate dishes like noodles, bread or pastries like pancakes, wraps or milkbread.
If you want a cuter bento, try to cut the pancakes in shapes ... teddy bears, cars, flowers ... a big cookie cutter works best for clear edges. Chocolate sauce is perfect for decoration like faces etc.

Glazed Carrots are a great alternative for picky eaters. You underline the carrot's sweetness with sugar, but it's still healthy.

Glazed Carrots:

6 mini carrots or 2 normal carrots
1 Tbsp Sugar
1Tbsp Butter

1. Peel carrots. Put carrots in a small saucepan and add just enough water to cover the carrots. Bring to boil.
2. Add sugar and butter and reduce heat. Cook until the liquid is gone.
3. Check if the carrots are tender.

That's it!

Glasierte Karotten:

6 Minikarotten oder 2 normale Karotten
1TL Zucker
1TL Butter

1. Karotten schälen. In eine kleine Saucenpfanne geben und mit Wasser gerade bedecken. Kochen.
2. Zucker und Butter hinzufügen und Hitze reduzieren. Solange kochen bis die Flüssigkeit verschwunden.
3. Jetzt nur noch überprüfen, ob die Karotten weich sind!

Fertig!

Itadakimasu!

Bento: Beef And Pepper Stir Fry

Beef And Pepper Stir Fry is a good way to combine meat with lots of vegetables.

For 2 Bento portions:

70g beef
1 green bell pepper
1 small carrot
1 tsp oyster sauce
1tsp rice wine
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp starch
1 clove garlic, minced
oil for frying

1. Cut beef into thin slices and dust with starch. Cut pepper and carrot the same way. Combine oyster sauce, rice wine and soy sauce in a bowl.
2. Heat oil and minced garlic in a frying pan. When the garlic releases aroma, add beef and stir-fry until heated through. Remove from the pan.
3. Add vegetables to the pan and fry for 3-5 minutes with lit on, so the carrots get tender. Put back beef and add combined seasonings. Stir until the sauce is absorbed.

Rindfleisch Paprika Pfannengerührtes

Für 2 Bento Portionen

70g Rindfleisch
1 grüne Paprika
1 Karotte
1TL Austernsauce
1TL Reiswein
1TL Soyasauce
1TL Stärkemehl
1 feingehackte Knoblauchzehe
Öl zum Braten

1. Rindfleisch in feine Streifen schneiden und mit Stärke bestäuben. Paprika und Karotte genauso schneiden. Austernsauce, Sojasauce und Reiswein in einer Schüssel vermischen.
2. Öl und Knoblauch in einer Pfanne erhitzen. Wenn der Knoblauch sein Aroma freigibt, das Fleisch hinzugeben und so lange braten, bis es durcherhitzt ist. Fleisch aus der Pfanne nehmen.
3. Gemüse in die Pfanne geben und ungefähr 3-5 Minuten zugedeckt braten, bis die Karotten weicher werden. Das Fleisch zurück in die Pfanne geben und die Sauce dazu geben. Solange rühren, bis die Sauce absorbiert wurde.

Bon Appetit!

Casserole-sautéed Pork Chops

Yesterday was another dish from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" - quelle surprise. It's just so delicious, I want to have lunch out of this cook book every week!

I made Côtes de Porc Poêlées.

Pork chops and steaks are best, we think, when they are cut thick, browned on each side, then cooked in a covered casserole or skillet like the preceding casserole roasts of pork.

I can proudly say, this was NOT the first time I made pork chops! I really like cooking pork, because it's inexpensive, everywhere available and it usually tastes good with only a tiny effort. Too bad it's actually a disguised very tasty killer, that comes with cholesterol instead of bullets.
Since my dad has too high cholesterol, which makes us all drink meadow flavoured soymilk now ... everyday ... I can't cook a lot meat anymore, so I'm REALLY enjoying the thursdays.
The chops were really good. I used dry vermouth for the sauce, which was so delicious, I want to bath in it ... I want my future children to bath in it! Best sauce ever!!

As always, the meal did not look very appealing, but it was very good and easy! Only thing is ... Julia says, you can cook the potatoes with the meat. Maybe I just didn't get it right, but it didn't work out! Potatoes were still a little too hard inside. The red cabbage came out of a jar, because I forgot to buy sauerkraut!

Roast Chicken With Whole Baked Tomatoes And Chicken Breast With Paprika

Poulet Rôti With Tomates Grillées Au Four And Suprêmes de Volaille Archiduc

Last week had three recipes from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" but none from 1000 recipes. Actually I've had the idea to make scalloped chicory on Saturday, but my mum decided it was her time to cook. So I only had Thursday and Sunday.

Thursday was 'roast chicken with whole baked tomatoes' and potatoes. I know, I'm saying this quite a lot, but I've never made a whole chicken! Chicken breast and thighs ... but a whole chicken?! They look like babies!
I really had some problems with handling the looks of this chicken. First of all, I bought it for like maybe 3.50 Dollars (2,99 Euro) and everything was fine, because it looked not scary at all, very well packaged and frozen as it was. But then it's defrosting, you remove the plastic wrap and there it is ... a little creature, with human like skin and arms and legs and I felt very terrible.
Now that I think about it, I've made a whole chicken once with a former friend. We even called Bob back then... what were we thinking?!
So I was thinking all about little Bob while rubbing the chicken from the outside AND the inside with salt and butter. Then came the sewing. Julia shows several simple pictures of how to truss a chicken and everything looks so easy. Well, it's not. Or maybe it was just me, handling a way to small needle and white twine, which got bloody in an instant.

Julia says: "While it does not require years of training to produce a juicy, brown, buttery, crisp-skinned, heavenly bird, it does entail such a greed for perfection that one is under compulsion to hover over the bird, listen to it, above all see that it is continually basted, and that it is done just to the proper turn."
What can I say? I mean anything else but "HELLOOOO-HO?!" It might not need years of training to make a good chicken, but maybe at least one year?! My chicken wasn't brown or juicy or crisp-skinned or anything else but sad!

The tomatoes in contrast were great and I'll be having them again, soon! The sauce was great, too. The pictures sucks...

Sunday was "Chicken Breat With Paprika and Onions". At least sort of...
We had lunch at my grandma's and she had turkey escalopes, which usually turn out really dry. Perfect grandchild, that I am, I offered her help and decided to make Suprêmes de Volaille Archiduc with turkey instead. I have to say, it didn't look very nicely, but the taste was great! Sadly I have no pictures of it, because I forget to bring my camera.

This week I'll be making Côtes de Porc Poêlées!

Julia Child: Bifteck Sauté Au Beurre With Petits Pois á l'Anglaise

Pan-Broiled Steak With Buttered Peas

Pan-broiled steak is very French and also a very nice method for cooking small steaks.

This might be true but in addition to its Frenchyness and easyness, it was also the very first time I made steak. In fact I've had never eaten a steak until last year's summer, when I went to the Dominician Republic for vacation. They had 3 speciality restaurants and one was a steak house. I used to not like beef at all, but I've learned it's very delicious when medium.
Unfortunately beef is very expensive in Germany, so I only bought two steaks for 4 people which doesn't make me cheap but economical! The steaks were quite big, too so it was absolutely enough.
The weird thing is, you have to broil them in oil AND butter and the same time. Now I already know about Julia's affection for butter but having it when already using oil is blocking my arteries just by looking at it.
But since I've never made steak before I stuck to the recipes. I have to admit, it's SO GOOD. And it got perfectly medium! Ever heard the trick, that medium meat has to feel like your thenar? Well I have no idea what that means, but after Julia you can just look at the red juice, pouring out. It totally works!
The sauce was redwine and butter .... lots of butter ... tons of butter and I only took half!

Anyone who has eaten a plateful of small, tender, fresh, green peas in Italy or France in the springtime is not likely to forget the experience.

I never had peas in France or Italy although I've been to both countries. The peas were very simple and really delicious! All you add is some seasoning and -guessed right- butter.

And yeah, I know I promised garlic mashed potatoes ... but to recipes seemed enough and I wasn't sure how to time everything, so I made normal mashed potatoes. It was still very good.

The good thing is, when you have Julia's meals for lunch, you're stuffed like a turkye and don't need dinner. I've already lost 4 pounds!

Tomorrow I'll be cooking clams for the very first time!

Cookbook Mix

After thinking and thinking, I've decided to try recipes out of both books, since I couldn't pick the best one.

I think I'll still go with cooking myself throught "1000 recipes to try before you die" although "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" sounds better and more classic. But no way, it has a whole chapter on brains ... in times before BSE reached the world it might have been just disgusting but no I can't think of eating brain with out thinking "Damn it, NO!" Zombies can have my share.
So I'm skipping the brains, livers, kidneys and whatever they had ... I can live with eating liver and anything but I don't need to cook several recipes with it.

"1000 recipes to try before you die" has just a few disgusting dishes I might wanna try when really spicy or I'm terribly drunk. Snails, anyone?
Plus, it's not ordered by type, but country, which might come in handy!

So, tomorrow I'll start cooking with the very first recipe from Julia Child's cookbook: Potage Parmentier and I'm going to make a picutre of the result!

Saturday, I'll be making the first dish from 1000 recipes ... the book starts off with Belgique. I've checked some recipes and not everything is really typical ... so I might change some ingredients from time to time.

The Art of Cooking ... and Cookbooks

Being a cooking genius is not easy. It's actually not the cooking itself, it's everything that's involved. You gotta be charmin, relaxed, fast, clean and good looking. You have to be the Greta Garbo of filleting, the Audrey Hepburn of poaching and a roux queen. Then you're a real genius and I'm respectfully tipping my hat to you.

I'm not a genius. I've learned to cook, because basically I like to eat. And I'm really good at it! Eating ... Only one woman in my family cooks, which is my grandmother, and with my mom never really interested in anything stove related, I had to do the work myself. My granny likes German cuisine and she's passed 80 a few years ago, so she's not interested in trying new stuff. I love new stuff! I don't care if it turns out to be a desaster, at least I've tried! Despite the fact I'm German and quite satisfied with it, I don't like our food. When it comes to knuckles, I'm the one, who rather takes to my heels.

So I've decided, I need a project. A cooking project, something, that keeps my mind off the clouds. I've bought two cookbooks:
Julia Child - Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which would be a challenge, since it is in English only and has no pictures (oh come on!) in it:

But it has been done. Most of you know about, read the blog, the book or watched the movie. So I guess it's not the one, but I still want to try something out ... that boeuf bourginon seems to be it!

And 1000 Recipes To Try Before You Die

It's big, it's international, I think it might be the book. Too bad, it's not classy and fancy and glamorous or anything special to the world! Plus it's actually a 1000 recipes! With one each day, it would take like 3 years and yeah, I'm honest, I'd be loosing track very quickly.

I don't know a lot of older, international famous cookbooks ... I wish I would. Google just tells me about books from the 18th century, which is ...with all necessary respect ... just TOO old.