Lentils with vegetables - contingency meal planning

Ingredients
1 cup red lentils
1 onion
1 carrot
1 broccoli
1 tbsp white wine vinegar

Probably one of the biggest challenges of regularly cooking at home is planning ahead. You know from experience, if you wait for a sudden 6pm inspiration to decide what to make for dinner, you are as good as lost. I've tried the whole being spontaneous routine. It usually includes heading over to the supermarket crowded with other desperate after-work shoppers, frantically grabbing things (and it is a law of nature that I will not remember the milk for tomorrow's breakfast!) and getting into hyper stress mode in the endless check out line. Back home, I am already starving which translates into a level of grumpiness you don't even want to imagine...

On this very topic, I've read a useful blog entry over at Dinner a Love Story about planning ahead for your dinners, which I highly recommend having a look at by the way, detailing how to go about setting realistic goals and letting yourself off the hook from time to time with having your own frozen meals or eating out (and it includes a meal plan!) etc etc.

So far so good. In a perfect world, these strategies would be all you ever needed to have a perfectly planned week full of delightful dinners with your loved ones. However, I want to propose adding another strategy: contingency planning.

What to do on days when you come home and the key ingredient for the gourmet dinner you had in mind for that day has gone bad (or your dog looks innocently rueful)? What to do when you want to take out those carefully homemade frozen dinners, just to find an empty freezer and an innocently rueful looking husband? What to do when you simply don't feel like dragging yourself out to a restaurant? These, dear reader, are the days you need to have your contingency plan in place for.

My personal contingency plan are lentils. They are very easy to store in bulk, are filling enough to be the backbone of an entire meal and if you get the red ones, they cook up in 15 minutes. And they are so versatile that you can combine them with basically anything.

In my case, I was lucky to still have some onion and vegetables in my fridge. After sauteing the onions and carrots, I added the lentils until they were also mostly with the oil, then cooked them in water until nearly. Just before they were ready, I put in the broccoli and seasoned them with salt, pepper and vinegar (with lentils, it is important to season them at the end of the cooking process).

It may not produce the most delicious meal in the world. It is wonderful if you are so good a planner that the situation never arises to require falling back on this contingency plan. But on days when you are really desperate, this strategy will deliver a nutritious dinner.

Life is good!

Oeufs en Cocotte - Poached eggs in ramekins

Ingredients

1 large egg
3 tbsp strained tomatoes
grated goat cheese, feta


So here we are four weeks into the lenten fast - time flies by at the speed of light, doesn't it? Success so far:

Paying more attention to mindful cooking and eating has been a wonderful experience; the time consuming preparation of many of the dishes has given me the opportunity to calm down the carrousel of my thoughts, making me feel at peace with myself and the world - despite some days when cravings for candy and chocolate nearly drove me insane (and yes, I admit that there might have been some minor setbacks in the form of a teeny tiny piece of cake here and there...). I've re-discovered a lot of about lenten dishes and traditions, and took the time and effort to try some recipes I've had on my list for a while. And lent is far from being over yet, much more is to come, both in weeks of practicing restraint and recipes.

However, everyone needs a break sometimes. As much as I love cooking, I wanted a quick fix for a change.

One easy solution is fancily called oeufs en cocotte, or poached eggs in ramekins. The beauty of the dish is that it's not only prepared in mere minutes, but also as versatile as it gets. While I have made it as a quick dinner (inspired by a fellow blogger who also thinks that eggs for dinner are underrated), it also lends itself very well to a leisurely weekend brunch.

What you need is a base liquid to poach the egg in, one or two eggs and whatever sounds good to you, from all different kinds of cheeses, herbs, spices and veggies. Usually made with cream, I used strained tomatoes to keep the dish a little lighter, filling the ramekin by around a third. To make the tomato sauce more interesting, I put in a layer of Italian herbs and a tiny little bit of goat and feta cheese (most cheeses work, but I'd recommend something with a distinct flavor, such as feta, Gruyere, Parmesan or goat cheese).

Into this base, I very gently cracked the egg, careful to not break up the egg white and yolk, covering everything with more cheese. Depending on how runny you like your eggs, bake in the oven at 400 for 20 (still quite runny) to 30 minutes (very hard). Okay, the baking takes time but I can totally come to terms with that regarding the almost zero preparation time. And dipping a slice of crusty bread into the steaming ramekin, the creamy oeuf en cocotte is a delight.

Life is good!

Germknoedel (yeast dumplings) or lent heaven!

Ingredients

3/4 tbsp yeast
1/2 cups warm milk
2/3 plus 1/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tbsp melted butter
1 1/2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp vanilla sugar
2 egg yolks
3/4 cups powidl (black plum jam, can substitute with blueberry jam)

for the topping:
1/4 cup ground poppy seeds
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup confectioner's sugar


I'm one of the very lucky few who had a grandmother from Bohemia. Just a quick background to make you understand the significance of this: throughout the entire Austrian-Hungarian empire, whoever could afford it had a girl (or several) from Bohemia running their kitchens, whipping up the delicacies that later brought Austrian cuisine it's world renowned fame.

This means that for the first years of my life, I grew up feeding on Germknoedel, Plum dumplings, Powidltascherl and other Mehlspeisen (meatless sweet dishes based on flour, originally designed for fast days). Again and again, I would pass all the roasts and other superb dishes my grandmother prepared for her grown-up guests, and ask for the Mehlspeisen. Imagine the soft, golden dough, home-made preserves balancing a sour zing with sweetness, the rich earthiness of ground poppy seeds unified with melted butter... and she never let me down, my grandmother, no matter how much time and effort she had put into the grown up meal, she would always find a forgotten apricot dumpling in her freezer, have a yeast dough rest next to her radiator or whip up a batter for her Palatschinken.

So despite my resolution to eat less sugar during lent, I had to honor my heritage and resurrect one of my grandmother's most glorious dishes, Germknoedel. It's a yeast dumpling of the serene beauty of a benign volcano, filled with sticky purple-black plum jam and topped with butter, sugar and poppy seeds.

I am going to tell you right upfront that this dish nearly takes as much time as any roast or complicated meat dish you can think of, but once the result is steaming on your plate, I promise you won't regret it. If you have children or grandchildren, even better. Preparing Germknoedel for them will secure you immediate and eternal fame and glory.

You have to begin with mixing the yeast and the warm milk in a bowl, then let it rest in a warm place (e.g. next to a heater) covered with a wet kitchen towel for 15 minutes. Secondly, mix the melted butter with the sugar, vanilla sugar, egg yolks and a pinch of salt. Produce a dough by kneading together the yeast-milk mix, the butter-sugar mix and the flour. Divide the dough into 4 large balls and put them back into the bowl, cover with the wet kitchen towel and let them rest for another 40 minutes.

Then, knead each ball and press it into a flat shape, putting less than a tablespoon of Powidl in the middle and close the dough over it, forming a round dumpling. Once you have filled all 4 dumplings, let them rest for another 40 minutes covered by the towel. Finally, simmer the dumplings in water for around 18-20 minutes. Very gently remove them with a skimmer and put on 4 plates.

Meanwhile, melt the butter in a pan and mix the ground poppy seeds with the confectioner's sugar in a separate bowl. Cover each of the Germknoedel with butter and top generously with the poppy seed sugar mix.

Don't plan any major mental or physical activities for at least two hours after eating this. Instead, prepare yourself for some time on the couch, dosing in a sugar-butter-and-yeast-induced high. Welcome to lent heaven and time to be grateful for grandmothers, they are fabulous!

Do you have any favorite treat your grandmother used to make for you?

Life is good!

Tortellini a la casa - female bonding over pasta fillings

Ingredients

For the dough and how to roll it out, see my ravioli recipe, doubled

Fillings
Arugula-ricotta filling
1/2 cup arugula
1/4 cup ricotta
0.7 ounces pecorino
pinch of nutmeg
Pear-pecorino filling
1/2 pear (not too juicy)
3 tbsp pecorino
1 tbsp ricotta
Gorgonzola-walnut filling
1/4 cup gorgonzola (or other blue cheese)
1/4 cup ricotta
1/4 cup walnuts, cut into pea-sized pieces
Dried-tomato ricotta filling
1/4 cup dried tomatoes
1/4 cup ricotta

I love cooking with friends. Even the most tedious, time consuming task becomes fun when done together (such as filling and folding dozens of tortellini by hand). Nothing compares to the camaraderie of sharing a sore back after rolling out the dough for 4 types of tortellini with a wine bottle for a lack of a proper rolling pin. And the rush of endorphins once the operation is finished induces immediate female bonding.

So a friend and I decided to make - as you might have guessed by now - tortellini. The idea quickly turned into a whole project in itself. Days of brainstorming led to more confusion, introducing us to the endless universe of pasta fillings. Tough decisions had to be made, realism had to tame our imagination and direct it into setting attainable expectations. Finally, we both committed to the ambitious but achievable goal of two types of fillings each. Had we been guys, this would have turned into a competition, but instead, we wanted to compose the right mix out of all the possible options, choosing fillings that were different enough to keep things interesting (red! green! pears! nuts!) and yet had some overall theme in common (ricotta!).

After days of anticipation, the morning of the big day had come. We were prepared (except for the rolling pin) and we were ready, skipping the usual niceties and cutting right to the chase. We pushed the food processor towards overheating, producing one filling after the other, throwing ingredients together and chopping them into fine pastes (with the exception of the walnuts). We kneaded dough until our knuckles hurt. We rolled it out with said wine bottle in the sweat of our faces. Once thin enough, we cut the dough plates into dozens of squares, filling them with a little less than a teaspoon of filling, and we folded, and folded and folded... (a very good instruction can be found here), gluing them together with a little bit of water and a lot of hope that they would not fall apart.

When the last tortellini had closed its arms to hold its precious cargo, the sun had already begun to set. Every muscle in our arms and backs might have been hurting, our arms might have been covered in dough, and pieces of cheese and nuts might have been stuck in our hair. But the pile of pretty pasta we each got to carry home to our husbands that night with the pride of the successful huntress had been oh so worth it.

Life is good!

Vegetable fried rice - a delicious way to mindfully reduce food waste

Ingredients

1 cup brown rice, boiled with 1 star anise
2 stalks lemongrass, finely chopped
1 leek, finely chopped
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 red bell pepper
1 cup sugar snap peas
1 1/2 cups bean sprouts
5 shiitake mushrooms (soaked according to package instructions)
soy and Sriracha sauce to taste

No, the Life is good kitchen has not converted to being a specialty food blog about Asian cuisine (I wish!). However, as my latest culinary excursion into the world of Vietnamese Pho noodle soup had included a trip to an Asian supermarket and left me with all kinds of exotic perishables in my fridge that needed to be used up quickly. For the sakes of economy and ecology, it would have broken my heart to throw it all away, but what to do with the lemongrass, the beansprouts, the sugar snap peas and the shiitake mushrooms?

There's been quite some media coverage lately regarding the waste and throwing away of food, and in my opinion, thinking about how to reduce the amount of wasted food is also part of the concept of mindfulness. Once sensitized to this topic, I noticed that my mom's old cookbooks from the 60s and 70s featured whole chapters with suggestions on how to turn leftovers into whole new dishes - a consideration that is, sadly, completely missing today.

But back to my splurge in the Asian supermarket! Luckily, what stew is for the Western cook, using up all the leftovers and transforming them into something delightful by itself, is fried rice in (wanna-be) Asian cuisine. The more the merrier!

The recipe itself was pretty straightforward and a nice break from the long and elaborate recipes I'd tried during lent. First, I boiled the brown rice with a star anise to give it an extra of flavor. In a large pan (see, if this was turning into a food blog about Asian food, I should at least own a wok!), I began with sauteing the finely chopped lemongrass and spring onions in a little bit of oil. One after the other, I then added the leek, bell pepper, sugar snap peas, mushrooms, the bhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifean sprouts and last but not least the rice. Finally, I seasoned the mix with salt, pepper and the now ubiquitous soy and Sriracha sauce.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
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It may only be tiny baby steps, but enjoying my bowl of fried rice that night is a small contribution to the goal to reduce by half the amount food thrown away in Germany and my personal goal of being more mindful. And if you're a fellow blogger, consider linking to Love_Food_Hate_Waste.

Life is good!

Griesknoedel - semolina dumplings with vegetarian goulash for a carb overload!

Ingredients

Dumplings:
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup semolina flour
2 eggs
2 tbsp sour cream
1 pinch caraway
salt
nutmeg
chives

Vegetarian goulash:
1 onion
1 red bell pepper
1/2 cup strained tomatoes
5 tbsp sweet paprika
1 tbsp caraway seeds

Having ranted on and on about my giving up sugar lent resolution, in case you've been wondering about my second resolution - less meat - I've been doing pretty well in that respect. Although I do love meat, there is such a great variety of vegetarian dishes to dip into, and most meals, I don't even miss meat.

It's also a wonderful opportunity to do a little bit of research into historical lent dishes and resurrecting old recipes. As people have been fasting during lent for centuries, there is so much tradition out there to be (re)discovered!

One of these recipes is semolina dumplings (griesknoedel). Some of you may know the small semolina dumplings served in broth, but these here are different, bigger, rounder, more dense and less fluffy, enabling them to be graduate from being an add on to taking the center stage of a very filling (and utterly satisfying! carbs, anyone?) meal. A quick and easy vegetarian goulash is just the perfect companion to provide sauce and extra flavor.

Making the dough is pretty straightforward, just mixing all the ingredients together for a rather dense and sticky texture. When preparing the dumplings, you need to keep in mind that the dough has to rest in the fridge for approximately 30 minutes before you can proceed, so it's important to plan accordingly. Then form little golf-ball sized balls (if the dough is too sticky, it helps to dip your hands in cold water from time to time), bring salted water to a boil and let the dumplings cook just below the boiling point for ca. 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the onion and bell pepper in big chunks and saute in oil or butter for five minutes. Add in the sweet paprika and caraway seeds and saute for another five minutes, then pour in the strained tomatoes and let simmer for 15 minutes, adding water as needed for the desired thickness of the sauce (you will need a lot of sauce!) and season with salt and pepper.

Once the dumplings are ready, fish them out of the water, garnish with chives and serve with the goulash. Soaked with the earthy paprika of the goulash, these dumplings will melt in your mouth... should fasting be this delicious?

Life is good!

Scrambled eggs with chives and feta cheese

Ingredients

2 eggs
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp milk
feta cheese
chives

The weekend was kind of rough. This whole lent thing is starting to get to me and the cravings for sugar are taking on new and scary forms. To give you a quick overview, I've been nursing a growing addiction to dried dates, pushed my drinking towards the upper end of social (yes, you have to see the movie "Rum Diaries"!) because I read that beer is converted into sugar by your body, artfully painted (aka disfigured) numerous Easter eggs to keep busy and have been incredibly cranky the rest of the time. Combined with the seemingly endless wait for this allegedly incredible feeling of lightness once weaned off sugar that has been promised left and right, I clearly am in dire need for some endorphins.

So I downloaded some new music and went for my first run of the year! The good news is that regarding the fact that it was the first run of the year, I'm still in pretty good shape and was able to keep up my slow jog for nearly 45 minutes (the bright sunshine and singing birds helped a lot!). What counts for me right now is that besides having some exercise, the run bought me a full 45 careless chocolate-chip-cake-candy-craving-less minutes!

And afterwards, inspired by Green Thyme, I rewarded myself with some scrambled eggs and lots of bread (carbs are also converted into sugar by the body...). I have to admit I like them with butter instead of regular cooking oil. Also, I don't really scramble them but once the butter has melted, I crack the eggs into the pan and kind of fold them into each other with the milk (which makes them more fluffy). Finally, season them with a little salt and pepper and add as much chives and feta cheese (or whatever cheese and herbs you have at hand), and enjoy!

Life is good!

Cabbage stew - the healthiest dish so far and a fun beer surprise!

Ingredients

½ head of cabbage, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic
½ onion
¼ cup lentils
¼ cup brown rice
½ cup parsley
1 teaspoon caraway
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1-2 teaspoons red wine vinegar
pinch of nutmeg

One of my favorite vegetables is cabbage. As with cauliflower, or maybe even worse, it has been underestimated and ignored, its loyal fans have been ridiculed and finally, the cabbage seems almost forgotten by the world, except in its form as sauerkraut on a Reuben sandwich.

To begin with, cabbage goes extremely well with beer. As you may have realized if you've read my blog so far, I love reviving traditions, and - counter-intuitively - beer has been one of the traditional staples during lent. The pope himself decreed it a suitably horrible drink in times of fasting (he might have forgotten to consider that beer looses a lot of its appeal after an unrefrigerated transport across the alps!). Especially doppelbock, a very strong, malty beer that it also called liquid bread, has nourished generations during lent and mercifully eased the pains of an empty stomach (and maybe my sugar cravings? was very close to a moment of weakness last night, but so far have prevailed!).

Returning to the praises of cabbage, besides being a wonderful companion to beer, even the New York Times rightfully reinstated the glories of this cheap, incredibly versatile and utterly delicious vegetable, and trying to stick to my resolution to eat less meat, I have decided to make a conscious effort to eat more of this vegetable, trying old recipes handed down from my grandmother, and experimenting with new ones that might take us to a whole new level.

This cabbage dish, a vegetarian spring stew, falls into the former category, putting the flavor of the cabbage on a gentle background of caraway and paprika, creating a very simple yet delectable and light combination. And it might be the healthiest dish on this blog so far, combining the vitamins of the cabbage with brown rice and the protein of the lentils. So beware, you might actually start falling for healthy food!

In a Dutch Oven, start with browning the onion and garlic in a little bit of butter. After around 5 minutes, add in the lentils and rice until they are covered with butter, then cover with water and bring to a boil. Once it has boiled, reduce the temperature and put in the spices and parsley, and also the cabbage. Simmer for about 30 minutes, adding more water as needed and to reach the desired liquidity. Finally, season with salt and pepper and 1-2 teaspoons of vinegar, depending on your taste.

So pour yourself a nice stein of doppelbock and enjoy. If you've made too much, it will taste even better on the second day.

Life is good!

Kasnudeln or Carinthian cheese pasta

Ingredients

For the dough, see my recipe for ravioli

For the Filling

1/2 potato (ca. 1/4 cup), put through ricer
1/2 cup curd cheese (if not available, ricotta or cottage cheese work too)
1 tbsp butter
2 tbsp fresh herbs, chopped (e.g. parsley, chervil, mint, chives)
1 tbsp sour cream
1 egg
salt & pepper


This is a very old and traditional dish from the Carinthian region in Austria and was traditionally eaten on Fridays or during Lent, thanks to the absence of meat. If you are lucky enough to live in an area where spring has already stopped by for a visit, this recipe yearns for a generous serving of the first fresh herbs. But even if you have to make do with dried or frozen herbs, just the freshness and greenness are going to give you taste of springtime!

As most pasta dishes, this one also requires time, patience and physical labor, hence making it perfect to develop my mindfulness (as long as I am not diverted by carving for candy!). Not being used to physical labor, it does feel good to produce something with the strength of my hands, to coercing random ingredients into a dough and force it to stretch at the will of my rolling pin (does the sugar detox make me aggressive?). And it feels good not to think for a moment, but to do.

Mix all the ingredients for the filling in a bowl and prepare the pasta dough. Once you have rolled the dough out, cut out rounds (ca. 4.5 inches diameter) with a cookie cutter or jar. On each round, put ca. 1 tbsp of the filling, then fold them in half and press them together to seal.

In a large pot, bring water to a boil, and let the pasta cook gently for 15 minutes (depending on the thickness of the dough, it might even take a little longer, it's best to check with a fork or try one). Finally, brown some butter in a pan and pour over the kasnudeln once they are ready. Sprinkle with as much chives (or other herbs) as you like and enjoy!

Life is good!

Oyster mushroom and pepper sugo - like a vegetarian Bolognese

Ingredients:

1/2 red bell pepper
1 red hot chili pepper
1/3 cup sliced onions
2 large cloves of garlic
1/2 cup strained tomatoes
2 tsp pasta water
1 cup oyster mushrooms
salt and pepper


To follow up on my resolution, here is my first vegetarian dish. While medieval monks circumvented the meat restriction by simply baptizing pigs with the name 'fish', I took a more conventional route and began with a pasta dish featuring roasted bell pepper and oyster mushrooms. As you will see, in the spirit of mindfulness, some of the recipes prepared during my lent series might take a little longer to prepare, thus providing the opportunity for looking inside.

The first preparation was putting the bell pepper and the red hot chilli pepper in the oven for about twenty minutes to roast with the skin facing up. The sweet fruitiness of the roasted bell pepper would provide the perfect contrast to the heat of the chilli and garlic, as well as the crispy mushrooms.

In the meantime, I chopped the onion and the garlic and sauteed them over very low heat. Once the peppers were tender and soft, I added them to the pan with the strained tomatoes and pureed everything. Depending how thick you like your sauce, you can also put in a little bit of the pasta water, letting the sugo simmer over low heat.

If you're not a big fan or oyster mushrooms or as a variation of regular tomato sauce, you can stop here and add the pasta. To add more texture to the dish, I fried the oyster mushrooms in a second pan in good olive oil until crispy and then transferred them to the sauce to season it with salt and pepper.

Served with my all time pasta favorite, spaghetti, what a delicious beginning of my lent resolutions!

Life is good!

Lenten fast: sugar detox, mindful eating and less meat

Today, lenten season has begun, and with it my annual fast. Although not fasting for purely religious reasons, over the years, lent has proven to be an excellent opportunity to rethink my eating habits and make an extra effort to be more healthy and mindful.

This year, I am going to tackle two things: first, reading so much about the toxicity of sugar, I am going to cut out sweets from my diet (we'll see how long I am going to last!); and secondly, for the next forty days I am going to try to reduce the amount of meat and instead focus on more vegetarian dishes.

Here are my rules:

1. Sugar detox
No chocolate, gummi bears, candy, cookies, cake, pastries, dessert, ice cream, sweetened drinks;
Exceptions: yogurt (aiming for yogurts with less sugar), occasional traditional flour-based lenten dishes (aiming at using as little sugar as possible, replacing industrial sugar with honey etc. as often as possible).

2. Less meat
At least two meat-free meals a day, aiming at three completely vegetarian days a week.

Right now, I am thinking part 1 is going to be more difficult for me, and if sugar is really addictive, it will be interesting to see how I am going to react to the sweets withdrawal. Luckily, the Santoku master is in it with me, hopefully making things easier! And who knows, maybe I am going to be surprised by strong cravings for meat instead...

As we move towards Easter, I will keep you updated about my progress (and fall backs). And for motivational purposes, here's a link to an article by someone who already succeeded in 40 days and 40 nights without sugar.

Anyone else in to give something up and what is your resolution?

Life is good!