recipes | Death by Martini

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Semolina Pudding

Rarely, I’m in the mood for something sweet. Since I’m a lazy bum, it has to be quick and easy. Enter semolina pudding.

It works like this: heat half a litre of milk, then add two tsp. of sugar and four tsp. of semolina. Semolina, despite its funky name, is something you can buy at every grocery store. Sugar, not as exotically named but still one hell of a great ingredient, too.

Bring it to a boil, but don’t forget to stir while doing so. You wouldn’t want your milk to burn. Once it’s started boiling, very drastically reduce heat, until it’s on a very, very, very low boil. Stir and wait for about five to ten minutes, until it’s thick but not too thick. If I were hard-pressed I’d say: make sure it’s somewhere between thick and too thick.

Pour it into a bowl, sprinkle it with a mixture of sugar and cinnamon and you’re done. This is literally the easiest pudding ever, but it tastes like a thick slice of heaven. Pudding-heaven, that is.

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Viennese Beef Soup

This is Viennese Beef soup. It’s a great kind of soup for whenever you’re in the mood for some beef. And soup. It’s easy to make, requires only an onion, a few carrots, celery, leek, parsley, a few bones and some beef. To top it off, chives.

Cut the onion in half, place it in a large, heated pot, face down, until it’s dark. Very dark. Then add rinsed beef, bones and copious amounts of cold water. Bring it to a boil, in the course of which you’ll want to skim the brown froth collecting at the top. When no froth is collecting anymore, add the carrots, celery and some peppercorns. Then let this thing boil at low heat for a while. And by while I mean about three to four hours. If you’re like me, you can also add a couple of soup cubes. Just to make sure, you know.

Half an hour before serving, add leek and parsley, remove the bones, cut the beef in easy pieces and throw it back in. Add whatever you want for substance (I use Vermicelli), sprinkle with fresh chives when serving.

And that, my friends, is it.

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Foodporn at Gojee

Usually I’m too much of a self-centered bastard to write about anything else than myself and what I ate, but sometimes I soften up and tell you about things like Gojee. The website with the funny name does similar things I do here: post pictures and recipes, but in a strikingly beautiful manner. Which, by the way, does two things for me: make me jealous and hungry. An interesting combination, let me tell you that.

Anyway, go check it out. For additional pleasure I’ve added an image of traditional Austrian dumpling-like things which I’ll be writing about in the near future.

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Roast pork – if you don’t like it, you’re not human

In which I will explain how to make delicious pork roast. In detail.

The poached eggs compendium

Even though I'm still terrified of the stringy poached eggs I've last produced, I will be adventurous tonight and try a poached eggs salad I found a recipe for on the Intarwebs.

Loyal reader and man about town Daniel pointed me to a fantastic collection of poached egg success and failure stories which you absolutely need to check out! HERE.(click the link, that's why I wrote it all in caps).

Do come back tomorrow to find out whether I've been beaten into a bloody pulp by the beast named "poached egg" yet again or whether I'll have kicked it's metaphorical ass at last.

A party of three

Judging from the euphoric reactions to my last posting about that awesome rice pudding, I will not hesitate to detail what I put into my head this morning. With a lump of mozzarella left over from a previous dinner and a tomato sitting idly on the counter next to the fridge, it wouldn’t have taken a man with my IQ to concoct the following.

I cut the tomato to pieces, threw it on a plate, ripped apart the mozzarella and introduced it to the cut up tomatoe. They seemed to hit it off from the start, but being aware of the old saying “the more the merrier”, I decided on a threesome by adding a bunch of fresh basil leaves to the party. And since all parties need at least some sort of liquid, I lavishly poured some olive-oil onto the bunch. I used the ensuing hilarity to take this fantastic party-shot. It’s SFW, don’t worry:

As the ice had apparently been broken, I decided on another drink for the bunch: some apple-balsamic vinegar. And even though you’re taught early on that nothing good can come of mixing drinks, they all seemed more than happy with my decision. Being a good host I threw in some snacks as well: salt and pepper were well received by all involved in this late-morning shindig.

I let them enjoy it all for a few minutes before breaking up the merry get-together by sending them down my hungry gullet. That’s one hang-over they’ll probably never forget.