1st course: “Strudel” filled with figs, pear, walnuts and dates. Served with mint yogourt.
2nd course: Thai coconut soup (sorry, no photo)
3rd course: Various dishes with an oriental touch
Chicken stew with plums, raisins and oranges
Spicy broccoli-esparragos
Pumpkin with onions and almonds
Crunchy almond rice
Dessert: Banana slices with chili-honey topped with kaymak, havla flakes and camel chocolate
Cut beef (ideally fillet) into cubes. Prepare a seasoning of olive oil, salt, pepper, chilli and honey and let the cubes sit in the seasoning for 15 minutes to 2 hours.
Take the cubes and put on each beef cube two sage leaves, a dried apricot and stick a toothpick through the pile.
Fry the tapas for 2-3 minutes on high fire and then put it in the oven for about 10-15 minutes at 150-200 degrees celcius.
Enjoy it medium rare 🙂
wild boar leg (3kg incl. bone)
thyme
laurel leaves
1 fresh chilli
Olive oil
Salt & pepper
100g butter & flour (for the gravy)
put the herbs and spices in a large bowl and add olive oil, then turn the roast in the mixture a let it rest there for 1-2 hours 
Put the roast on a bed of carrots, saddlery, and onions. Add some 500ml of broth. Then put the roast pan it into the oven for 7-8h at 80 degrees celsius. If your roast is smaller, leave it for only 6-7h in the oven. The slow cooking technique makes the meat juicy and tender at the same time. Every 1-2 hours put a little broth over the roast to add liquid to keep the roast juicy and have enough liquid for the gravy.
Take out the roast pan, put the roast on a plate and cover it with aluminium foil to keep it warm. Pass the vegetables & liquid through a sieve and only keep the liquid. Melt the butter in a pot, and add 30-50g flour. Heat until the mixture is golden and then add the liquid from the roast. Stir the gravy until it is has the texture you like.
Cut your roast and serve it with a pear topped with lingonberry jelly and the vegetables you favour ( this time I took caramelised potatoes and broccoli)
After the launch enthusiasm I finally found the time to write another post. Yesterday we did one of my favorites: Tapas night and everyone brings ingredients and we cook together…:-)
Here is how we do it: Everyone brings ingredients for 1-2 dishes or brings them prepared. You don’t coordinate who brings what but there is a rule that you can’t bring tapas standard dishes – otherwise you end up with 10 tortillas;-)
To inspire you here is a selection of what we had on the table:
Kalamata olives
Green garlic olives
Chop a Courgette and bake it in the oven, then add the cheese and ham. Easy & delicious!
Courgette with goat cheese & ham
Fry shrimps in a pan with olive oil and rosemary (and garlic if you feel like it), then finish with a bit of Wodka
Wodka shrimps
Let the chicken soak in milk for a few hours. The roll it in a mix of sugared cornflakes and sesame seeds. Bake it in the oven for 10-15 minutes. Yummy!
Crispy cornflakes chicken
Make 5 mm thick beetroot slices and put them on a baking tray. Prepare a sauce of honey, chili and ginger and put it on the beetroot. Bake for 30 min. at 200 degrees in the oven. Remove from oven and add grenade seeds & rosemary.
Hot-sweet beetroot topped with grenade apple seeds
Cut a pumpkin into slices and make a sauce of olive oil, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, pepper and salt. Bake it in the oven for 24-35 minutes at about 200 degrees.
Spicy pumpkin
Fry pear slices and dried figs in a pan for 10-15 minutes. At the end add goat cheese and let it cook for 2-3 minutes. Serve straight away or later.
Pear-fig- salad with goat cheese
Pear-fig- salad with goat cheese
By different coloured small tomatoes (on the Isemarkt in Hamburg there is a specialized shop, that even sells black tomatoes). Take some green salad of you choice and add morzarella balls, feta cubes and dried tomatoes. For the dressing I suggest some olive oil, salt, pepper and aceto balsamico.
1000 tomatoes salad
The classic spiced up with goat cheese, no need to say more…;-)
figs & goat cheese wrapped in bacon
Stay tuned and keep on cooking!
For the blog launch dinner we had an amazing feast with 10 friends:
Here is the menue:
(Klick on the different meals written in red to get the recipe – I have not written all yet…;-))
1st course
Fried giant shrimp with wasabi-foam and green salad
2nd course
Slow cooked deer leg with spinach-orange-risotto and sugar-snap peas
3rd course
Iles flotantes
(I forgot to take an image…:-/)
Ingredients:
deer leg 2-3 kg (serves 6-10 people)
500g big onions
500g carrots
Bunch celery
2 bottles of red wine
Juniper berry
Laurel leaves
Salt, pepper
1st
Heat oil in a (roasting) pan. Then fry the deer leg at high heat from all sides. This important for the “roast flavor“. Also add quite a lot of salt and pepper. Then put it in a roaster.
2nd
Put olive oil in a pan and when the oil is hot add cut onions, a table spoon of sugar and salt & pepper. Fry onions until the are golden and put them onto of the roast.
3rd
Again heat olive oil in a pan and than add copped carrots and celery. After 5 minutes add one bottle of red wine juniper berry, laurel leaves, salt, pepper and/or the spices you like. When the wine is boiling, put the mixture on top of the roast.
 
4th
Then put the roast in the oven and let it sit there for about 4 hours at 120 degree celsius. You can also do 7h at about 80 degree
5th
15 min. before the roast is done, remove it from the oven put liquid (and vegetables) in a bowl and put the broast back into the oven. Put the oven on „grill-mode“ and set the heat on 200-250 degree for 10 min. in order to get a crunchy crust.
6th
The liquid from the roast you can use to make a sauce. The easiest way to make the sauce is to melt butter in a pot and add flour once the butter is melted. Add the roast-liquid when the butter-flower-mix is golden. Add salt/pepper if needed and let it boil for a minute. You should get a nice tasting thick sauce (if the sauce is too liquid you need more flour)
For 6 people
For this tasty and beautiful dessert you need 3 things:
Ingredients:
4 eggs
80g sugar
1 vanilla pod
500ml milk
1/2 tee spoon black pepper
1st
Separate egg white and egg yolk and mix the egg yolk and the sugar (keep the egg white for later).
2nd
Extract the vanilla seeds from the vanilla pod. The but the milk in a pot, add vanilla seeds and pod and boil the milk.
3rd
Remove the vanilla pod and add then the milk slowly to the egg-yolk-sugar mix while stirring the mixture all the time.
4th
Put the mix in a clean pot and heat it at low temperature under constant stirring until the sauce is thick (5-10 minutes). Make sure the liquid does not boil or get too hot, then the egg „gets hard“.
5th
Put the sauce in the sauce in a bowl and put it into the fridge for minimum 4 hours to cool down. The more time you leave the crème anglaise in the fridge, the better the vanilla aroma can expand.
Ingredients:
75g sugar
50g almond “leaves”
1st
Add sugar and water into a pot and heat until the liquid boils. Then add the almond “leaves”.
2nd
Cook until the mix gets golden-brown, then spread it on baking parchment. Be quick, it gets hard very quickly…;-)
3rd
After 5-10 min. the almonds rug is hard and you can break it into pieces
Ingredients:
2 egg white
50g icing sugar
tee spoon lemon juice
a little salt
1st
Put water in a big pot and put it on the stove to boil.
2nd
Use about 2 egg-white that remain from the crème anglaise eggs and stir them until the mass gets „hard“. Continue stirring and slowly add the icing sugar, lemon juice and salt.
3rd
Take a big spoon and put „balls“ onto the boiling water. Let the sit there for a few minutes until they are hardening. Then take a ladle and put the meringues on baking parchment to dry and shrink for a few minutes
Take a dessert bowl (ideally made of glass), fill crème anglaise in it, put a meringue on it and then scatter caramelized almonds on top of it. Voila 🙂
A historic moment: today I launched the 10-billionst cooking blog. Nobody needs it and that’s the beauty. Luxury is usually something nobody needs, so maybe this is simply a luxury…;-)
After the soft-launch of Spoonfights on Facebook and Instagram the proper blog was born today. I got a lot of positive feedback and this motivated me to do this. From now on Spoonfights dinners will be documented here including detailed recipes. The aim of spoonfights remains the same: Inspire people to dedicate time and love to good food and share beautiful moments with friends. Spoonfights does not aim to reach a broad audience – it’s mainly for my friends. If I accomplish to inspire a single person to cook with more dedication, I am happy.
Today the 2nd Spoonfights dinner takes place to celebrate this occasion:
Stay tuned and follow me on spoonfights.com, Facebook or Instagram.
spoonfights 