Well I had shrimps along with the fish yesterday and if I have to admit to myself… they did taste a bit… raw!
So many dinners have been cancelled by mutual agreement that we thought Sunday brunch a good idea. I had a big oxheart tomato grown near the warm eastern AT border, so I cut it in half, hasselbacked each half, and stuffed it with slices of mozzarella di bufala. Dotted basil-hazelnut pesto dressing around, scattered the Lovely Ursula’s massive basil, and flung about some edible flowers (arugula, viola, sage, chamomile, dill, and calendula). It was a much better idea than dinner on a hot night, and I even managed to get it in focus!
5 Likes
Now you are putting me to shane.
Yes, but Huw much does it weigh?
Duuuh…! “Shame…!”
Last night we had Racks Of Lamb
with Potato Salad.
Forgot to take a picture, as usual.
I’m such a goof, what can I say …
Photo of the leftover lamb racks, fresh out of the fridge a day later:
Tonight’s plan is Couscous made by Milady accompanied by Chicken Wings (pre-seasoned by Coop) on the grill. I wonder who the poor lad will be who will bbq the chicken wings next to the glowing grill … 
Two racks of lamb, salted, peppered. One additionally with two cloves of garlic, a couple of twigs of thyme and a twig of rosemary, sous-vide at 58° C for ~2 hours.
(Original plan was to have one rack with thyme and one clove of garlic, and the other rack with rosemary and another one clove of garlic. After the first bag was vacuumed and sealed Goofy noticed that all the herbs were still on the kitchen counter … what can I say …)
Threw them sous-vide prepared racks onto the red slighty before the iron melting hot grill for about a minute each side before cutting the racks into chops.
(The rack with the herbs was tastier for me, for the record)
Prepped the potato salad the way I’ve been making it for more than 30 years because I didn’t print out the recipe of a better one I came across by Annemarie Wildeisen maybe about two years ago and now her website is gone (with that recipe – if anyone has a copy, please share – I believe the additional ingredients were just radish and an egg or so, but I’m afraid I do not remember for sure).
The recipe I used was the one in my first and original cook book printed in ca. 1981 that I got when voluntarily attending “cooking class” in my maybe 8th grade or so. The class was mandatory and during ordinary school hours for girls at the time and voluntary for boys at the time on the otherwise free Wednesday afternoons. Can you imagine this today? Anyway, I am still proud that all boys in my class signed up for the voluntary class.
Probably useful, with hindsight of 3+ decades, that it was just the boys in that (voluntary) class.
I don’t remember whether we ever prepped potato salad in class, but here’s the book cover and the recipe for anyone that might also go down this memory lane:
I’ve over the … ahem, decades … frivolously changed the recipe as follows:
- if you have Patatli available, use those (instead of just Schalenkartoffeln or festkochende Kartoffeln)
- ½ → 1 onion
- ½–1 dl → ½ l of broth, let it soak for ½ a day or even overnight
- remove not needed broth before adding the oil, mayo and cream mixture, add it back as necessary if it ever becomes too dry – I never needed to add back any
- “evtl. Kräuter” → ~6-7 stalks of chives, very finely sliced
- 2-3 Gewürzgurken → just 1-2 cornichons, finely minced.
Small young potatoes.
4 Likes
I would kill for that lamb!
2 Likes
An analogy: Crete has 3 main public universities, the Technical University of Crete is located in Chania, and is ~60-70% male. Rethymno houses the humanities schools of the University of Crete, which are 70% female. Guess which city’s students drive ~1h (each way) for night out 
That lamb looks off the charts…and the potato salad recipe looks too involved for a humble potato salad, means I need to try it!
Today we had a leftovers day:
Dish 1
- thickish longway slices of eggplant, well salted, let to sit and then washed
- drizzle olive oil and Friday’s leftover tomato sauce on them, salt and pepper
- slices of feta on top, in the oven
Dish 2
- the eggplant that didn’t fit on my tray, cubed, in a deep pot with a very light drizzle of oil, high heat, periodically take the pot off the heat with the lid on and shake it around like a crazy person
- sauce #1: a few beefy beef heart tomatoes, grated, one small onion finely chopped, olive oil, paprika, chilly flakes, a bit of sugar, salt, cook until it all reduces
- sauce #2: yoghurt, spoon of olive oil, half a clove of garlic (raw garlic tends to give the missus indigestion lately so I keep it to a minimum, if it was me and I lived alone…I used garlic like Count Dracula is outside my house), squeeze of lemon, pinch of salt
“Dish” 3
- leftover gruyere, leftover pasta (from Friday!), few eggs, pepper (again, due to kids, not much pepper, personally I add pasta to my pepper, people think I am trolling by how much pepper I like on pasta, I like to make little mock volcanoes of pasta - picture the white pasta, red sauce in the middle, ground pepper all around), in the oven
“Dish” 4
- slices of stale bread, drizzle of olive oil, pinch of oregano, slices of feta, fresh tomato when out of the oven - bliss
Also meant to say, used about 500g of feta for these…the 200-250g packs in Swiss supermarkets are a joke. I’d think the typical Greek household goes through a kilo of feta per week, without exaggeration.
2 Likes
First hot dinner in days, because the cool has set in, with more rain. Pulled pork shoulder with bourbon barbeque sauce (see post #1286) in carrot tortillas with cheddar, cucumber, avocado, tomato, red onion.
6 Likes
Feta is my chosen evening TV cheese at the moment so the smaller packs keep me in check (I eat half one night and the other half one or two nights later). I’ve started cutting it into cubes with some nectarine. Top telly nibbles.
1 Like
After 80 days in Spain I really did long for an easy Swiss dish: the famous Wurscht-Chäs-Salat or Serbilasalat.
Easy dish, 2 Cervelats, Emmentaler cheese, onions, lattice and a nice sauce with oil, vinegar, white wine, cream, mustard and mayonaise… and of course a lot of Aromat!
5 Likes
Oh great…! I looked at that wurschtsalat and had to change my menu…
Went and bought the missing ingredients and now I am enjoying my own version.
No green salad, but boiled egg, tomato and most important a crusty bread. I am in heaven! Thx for the inspiration.
2 Likes
Actually my wife wanted to put Tomatoes, I did take it out. Too heavy a taste, does not fit somehow to the rest. We had the tomato today with burrata.
But looks delicious and egg is always a good idea.
Man … I don’t know what to say.
Gruyère is of course the only available choice of cheese
in this case.
Maybe you were exposed to a little too much sun in Spain?
(And where is the finely chopped cornichon???)
Yes … but your picture … never mind. Is this even proper bread?
All good, gentlemen, all recipe varieties work! (Mostly)
I apologize for my provocations. 
Goofy secretly adds the line “small piece of Emmental” to the household’s grocery list.
Except maybe some Wurst salads prepared with Lyoner (or worse), which turns out to be a Wurstsalat, but not at all the familiar Wurstsalat only true when made with Servilat!
Really? You’re not one of those bores are you?
There used to be one on here who was anally retentive in using the ‘right’ ingredients.
1 Like
Bore?
Although you mispelt boar I like your compliment!
Thanks, Tintin.
Since this is about photos and you didn’t provide one, let me help you out:
(this guy above is only a very distant cousin of mine)
Tonight’s salads:
-
Cauliflower with Coop’s Vermiceli
Recipe (free style made up).1 -
Plain old cucumber salad (prepped yesterday).
Recipegoofishlyreligiously followed Fooby: Gurkensalat - Rezepte | fooby.ch
I won’t do this dish again as all the recent Asian inspired Gurken salads were so much nicer.
This one tastes like one of the ones you would maybe pick for lunch when in a hurry picking up a prepped lunch at your local Coop.
1 Cut one (or two) cauliflowers into small pieces. When the weather is hot, pre-cook them: put them into a bowl, add a couple of spoons of water, maybe some salt on top, microwave for about 4-5 minutes on max power.
Rinse the microwaved cauliflower of any water, dry them additionally on a baking sheet, pour them into a large enough bowl, add some neutral oil (maybe sunflower, rap seed), toss, add additional salt if necessary, bake in the pre-heated Umluft oven at maybe 200-220° C for about 5-8 minutes (I ended up baking for about 15 minutes), let cool.
Rinse any water again. Add the vermiceli rice noodles (prepped as instructed), add the sauce (see below), toss, chill in the fridge some more. Maybe sprinke some chopped peanuts on top as well (I did not have any).
The sauce:
- 3 parts soy sauce
- 2 parts acid (use any of lime juice or rice vinegar) I used a mix
- 1 part sesame oil (the roasted one)
- ½ part of something sweet, e.g. honey – I used acorn syrup
- 1 part peanut butter or tahin (I used the latter now that it is part of my storage)
- additonally: fresh ginger and garlic (I omitted both)
Finally toss black sesame seeds on top, mainly for visual effects.
4 Likes
Various Asian flavours in an udon stir fry with prawns. Julienne of scallion, red capsicum, brussels sprouts, and carrot quickly cooked. Udon boiled and drained, tossed with a bit of sesame oil. Prawns prepped and butterflied. Sauce consisting of 1/4 cup peanut butter mixed with 1 tablespoon each of: lime juice, dark soy, kecap manis, rice vinegar, ginger juice, hoisin, sriracha, toasted sesame oil, plus a clove of garlic. The whole thing comes together in minutes. Top with coriander/cilantro, scallion, chopped peanuts, and lime wedges.
3 Likes
Classic (in our household) dish prepped by Milady: zucchini with onions, garlic, fresh parsley, basil, oregano and rosemary + salt and just a little bit of freshly ground black pepper.
We had it with leftover lamb chops from 5 days ago (post #1544).
Since I goofed up again and forgot to take a picture of the dish on the table, here’s a pic of just the leftover courgette.
The three yellow zucchini for this dish were grown in our very own garden and were harvested last night. I was somewhat – ok, very – surprised how the texture had so much more bite than the same dish with green zucchini. The latter (zucchini) – prepared the exactly same way – usually turn out much softer (watery, Goofy one might say) than the yellow ones.
The yellow ones also featured a tad of bitter flavor which added to the overall taste in a nice way.
Preview
Tonight’s dinner plans: Servilatsalat inspired by posts above by @cubanpete and @Baselbieter. 
I bought the best1 Cervelats I can procure within a short bicycle distance from our local Bachsermärt. Also got Gruyère and – hear, hear! – 18 month aged Emmentaler at the same place even if it always tests my patience to get anything from their cheese counter. Will certainly add a very thinly sliced red onion and one finely chopped cornichon (I prefer Hugo to Chirat even though I love Chirat otherwise).
Not yet decided on whether to add an egg and a tomato as well – changes the dish from more originally tasting to spoiled by a wannabe chef.
Will be accompanied by home baked sourdough bread (a variant of this one), not freshly baked though, as it’s still too warm. Maybe this Sunday for a next batch. Instead, frozen slices of bread taken out of the freezer maybe an hour before eating. For extra flavor, they may even be toasted.
I asked Milady why no Thyme? She said it’s prepped with “only mediterranean” herbs. Goofy blinked and swallowed his comment. Never question the cook.
1 Better options exist, but they’re not available nearby. Second place nearby – virtually about 200m from mentioned Bachsermärt would be Metzgerei Künzli. While they’re also better than your standard Migros or Coop (or Bell) Cerveralat, they still don’t cut the gold standard, most recently set – in my book – by Doggwiler.
Very nice are also the Cervelats (near or even above the Uelihof standard are the one produced by the Metzgerei Keller and by the Eichenberger Metzgerei. Neither are withing that 5 minutes bicycle distance, though.
If you also shop at Bachsermärt, you’re in the know. If not, I prefert not to vent.
2 Likes