Christmas Sauerkraut Cream

Sauerkraut Cream was, is and always will be serve as a Christmas Eve lunch at 12:00. Of course it is no dogma to be serve anytime during the year – it is very simple and very tasty lunch. Just for explanation of my own nomenclature – I do differentiate two different kind of soup containing sauerkraut: 1) Sauerkraut Cream (today’s recipe) – is white, creamy consistency, very simple to make and very tasty and 2) Wallachia Style of Sauerkraut Soup – is red, contains paprika, smoked pork and sausage – very tasty as well and my recipe will be published soon on my blog too.
I would like to wish you all Merry Christmas and thank you for all your nice e-mails, wishes and comments. Have a great Holiday!

Ingredients:

2 cups sauerkraut (with juice)
1 hard boiled small potato
2 cups cream
1 tbsp flour
1 hard boiled egg

Directions:

1. Bring sauerkraut to boil. I do usually use the one in jar. The raw one will need some more time – depending on your preferences of crunchiness.

2. Add hard boiled potato (cut into cubes) and mix four with cream and pour over. Cook for couple of minutes.

3. Serve with hard boiled egg, add some salt and event. black pepper (but it is not necessary).

Home made Head Cheese

The time before Christmas was, is and always will remind me holidays and time spent with my grandparents. My grandma is celebrating today her 80th birthday and though we can’t be physically together right now, we are very close each other. My grandpa was butcher and with grandma they taught me lot of tricks and cooking and baking skills.
My grandpa taught me slaughtering and how to process meat from beginning till end with lot of interesting home made specialities. I’m very thankful for this skills. Unfortunately I do not have enough time and space to create all his recipes but some of them I can present with simple kitchen stuff too.
In the honour of them both I would like to present my grandpa Mojmír his classical Head Cheese. The taste and smell going from basement to the roof of my Canadian house totally remind me the time of my childhood in small village of Lukavice, The Czech Republic.

Ingredients:

1 pork head
1kg pork shoulder
1 pork knuckle
1/2kg pork side
1 pork tongue
10 bigger garlic cloves
10l water
1/2 cup salt
1 handful ground black pepper
1 handful marjoram

Directions:

1. Clean head and other meat put into a large pot with cold water with salt and cook for at least 4 hours until all meat is soft.

2. Take all meat out of broth and let partially cool down, then cut the lean pieces into cubes.

3. All other remaining parts and shapeless meat (incl. fat, skin and garlic) pass through meat grinder direct to the broth. Add some salt, pepper and marjoram. Make sure the taste of the broth is slightly over salted (meat will take the salt by cooling and the taste will be optimal. I kept just about a half of the broth to make white pudding “jitrnicový prejt” (see next recipe).

4. In this stage I needed to make an experiment. In Czech you would go to the store and buy a special sleeve to fill head cheese into, but I didn’t find a source here. So the improvisation went ok with empty 2l PET bottles from soda water. Fill about the half of the bottle volume with meat cubes, fill the remaining of volume with the broth, apply closures and let cool down (best outside or in the fridge) over night. Turn the bottles regularly so the content won’t sediment.

5. Serve with bread or with onion rings and sprinkle of vinegar.

Lutika from Mikulov

Mikulov is beautiful small town in the south of Moravia (founded in 12.century – check this: http://www.mikulov.cz/photogallery/photo-album/?contentId=84387) on the border with Austria where live part of my family and which I always love to visit on my ways to Europe. Thanks to my relatives Jarka and Vasek taste Mikulov for me as well like “Lutika”.
To describe Lutika is quite easy – it taste like Mexican salsa with touch of Czech. Uncle Vasek always used to say: “… it is so good you can eat it by its own – because it taste so mild, or like a side-dish as mustard or on your fresh made toast – because the end is piquant”.
I would like to present you today the recipe for Lutika. It is very easy and the result is great! It is quite seasonal recipe of late summer or fall, but you can make couple of jars anytime during the year – as I did too on my birthday…

Ingredients:

2kg tomatoes
5 hot peppers
1kg red mild peppers (can be green or yellow too)
1/2kg onion
8 cloves garlic
120g sugar
300ml vegetable oil
200ml vinegar
2 tbsp salt

Directions:

1. Prepare all vegetables, clean, cut in pieces.

2. Ground everything on a meat grinder.
 
3. Put vegetable into deeper pan and cook for about 30 minutes. Then add sugar, oil, vinegar and salt and cook for another 90 minutes until the volume shrink on about half.

4. Let cool over night and serve or put into small jars. You can eat it immediately or sterile.

Ginger Beef (Geung Ngao Yuk)

Of course it does exist many variations on Ginger Beef recipes and according to Wikipedia Ginger beef was a common menu item in Chinese restaurants in the San Francisco Bay area as early as the 1960s. In modern times it has become quite popular in the western Canadian province of Alberta. Calgary-style Ginger Beef was invented in between the late 1970's to early 1980's by Peter Mang, a chef in Calgary's Yum Yum Tree.
The ingredients can depend on where it is featured, but generally consists of deep fried strips of beef coated in a dark sweet sauce that is reminiscent of other Asian sauces based on vinegar and sugar (e.g., the Japanese teriyaki). It also contains flavours of ginger, garlic and hot peppers.

Ingredients:

2 beef steaks
2 rhizomes ginger
4 tbsp dark soya sauce
1 clove garlic
2 eggs
4 tbsp rice or potatoes starch
1 large carrot
1 daikon
1 green onion
2 cups vegetable oil
2 tbsp white vinegar
2 tbsp sugar
4 tbsp water
1/2 tsp crushed hot peppers

Directions:

1. Cut the steaks into a strips.

2. Peel and shred one ginger, press the juice direct on the meat strips.

3. Mix well with mashed garlic and 3 tbsp soya sauce. Marinate for couple of hours or over night in the fridge. 
 
4. When the marinate time is over, beat eggs with starch and pour over the meat strips and mix well.

5. Deep-fry in parts in Wok or in a suitable frying pan, let the oil drip on paper-towel.

6. In a mean time prepare vegetable: carrot and daikon peel and with peeler slice into very thin long slices; green onion cut into thin rings and the second ginger peel and shred.

7. Sir-fry.
 
8. Add the sauce prepared with 2 tbsp white vinegar, 1 tbsp dark soya sauce, 2 tbsp sugar, 1/2 tsp crushed hot peppers and 4 tbsp water.
  
9. Add the fried beef strips and stir-fry shortly.

10. Serve with rice.

Orange Duck Breast

Winter has begun… and of course new tasks, duties and rituals too. The cooking and culinary activity didn’t stop and I’m still taking pictures and preparing recipes, but I have to admit that between my evening and morning runs behind the snowblower I didn’t have publication’s power any more. Of course I will continue and I would love to present you my well-tried recipes.
For today’s first Advent Sunday Lunch I prepared Orange Duck Breast.

Ingredients:

1 pack of duck breast (defrost before processing)
pitch of salt
pitch of caraway seeds
juice from 3 oranges
1/2 cube chicken broth
3 tbsp vegetable oil
1 small head cabbage
1 rhizome ginger
200g chicken liver
handful raisins
1 tbsp honey

Directions:

1. Cut skin on duck breast across, add salt and caraway seeds.

2. Roast (best direct in cast iron pot or roast pan) the skin side first on some vegetable oil (approx. 12 minutes on medium heat), turn over and roast for another 12 minutes. 

3. In the mean time squeeze 3 oranges and add the juice into the frying pan with 1/2 cube of chicken broth and peel form 1/2 orange. Cook for approx. 12 minutes.

4. After this time remove the peel form liquid (but keep it for final decoration) and on the medium heat evaporate remaining liquid to the jam consistency (for the next 12 minutes).

5. Shred (or cut into thin slices) cabbage.

6. Peel ginger and shred it on a fine screen.

7. Take the roasted breast from the pot and leave it on the plate aside. Put in chicken liver (chopped into small cubes or pieces). Roast for approx. 5 minutes.

8. Mix cabbage, ginger, raisins and honey with roasted liver, cook shortly.

9. Cut the roasted breast into two halves and put it on the top of vegetables. Cover and bake for 20 minutes in pre-heated oven (180°C/350°F).

10. Serve on the plate with vegetables, cover roasted duck breast with the orange glaze and decor with a strip of cooked orange peel.

Wild Mushroom Goulash

I think, that for this year is the wild mushroom season by the end. At least here in the Kootenays… Thanks god the fall is this year quite nice and we still didn’t get any frost and snow. I have to say, that I’m very much thanks full for every day without snow. Will see, what kind of surprises we will get this season with El-Ňiňa.
Anyway – my last 10 minutes trip to the forest around my house was quite successful and I decided to make from my last crop of this season wild mushroom goulash. On the Czech version of my blog we had some discussion about recommendation and the best goulash ever recipes, so I’m quite excited about your comments and about your experiences too.

Ingredients:

5-10 wild mushrooms
1 bigger onion (chopped)
3 strips bacon (chopped)
3 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp paprika
1 tsp ground caraway seeds
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 cube vegetable broth
1L water
1 tbsp Maggi soup liquid seasoning
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp marjoram leaves
2 cloves garlic

Directions:

1. Cut wild mushrooms into a cubes.

2. In a casserole roast bacon cubes follow by onion until slight brown. Then add the cubes of mushroom.

3. Roast until approx. 1/2 of the liquid evaporate.

4. Add paprika and just slightly roast (do not over burn), add water, caraway seeds and cube of vegetable broth.

5. Cook shortly (10 minutes), add some salt, pepper and liquid Maggi soup seasoning. Mix flour with some water and pour the mixture into the goulash. Cook shortly. In the end add some marjoram leaves and mushed garlic.