Food Porn - L’aile ou la cuisse

The motto of yesterday's evening of culinary delights was "L’aile ou la cuisse", so named after a famous French movie starring Louis de Funes (international title "The Wing and the Thigh").
So the topic was clear - French Cuisine.

We started off with a little snack made out of a slice of potato, a piece of foie gras and a tiny bit of caviar...

Appetizer: Potato Canapes

For the Soup, we chose the French classic - Onion Soup au gratin with cheese. Simple, but very delicious.

Soup: Onion Soup

Another French classic made the selection for our entree - Ratatouille. A dish that brought a taste of summer to our kitchen.

Entree: Ratatouille

 

For our main course, we initially had decided for rabbit with mustard sauce, but in the grocery store we discovered they had no rabbit, so we redisposed and went for Coq au vin.

Main Course: Coq au vin

After the main course, we finished off the dinner with a classic french cheese platter.

And for our dessert, we found the last French food cliché: Creme brulee.

Dessert: Crème brulée

I guess we can say we totally nailed that one. It was perfect.

Food Porn. (10)

Yesterday's cooking motto was "Die kulinarische Leichtigkeit des Seins" - in English: "The culinary Lightness of Being".
This time, we first decided what to cook and in the process, the motto formed.

For starters, we had two really refreshing snacks.

Snack One: Cucumber-Salmon-Nibble

Snack Two: Zucchini-Crab-Nibble

The Soup: Spinach Soup with Bacon and Potatoes

The Salad: Steak and Fruit Salad with Cranberry Jus

The Main Course: Rigatoni with Salmon in Cheese-Cream

The Dessert: Curd Dumplings with Poppy Seeds

Food Porn. (9)

For our "Before Christmas"-Dinner we chose the Motto "An Experiment of Maximizing Hedonisitc Extravaganza".
And we did create a six-course-dinner of truly epicurean proportions!

We started with two snacks served in a spoon.

Snack: Salmon Crépe with Caviar and Horseradish Foam

Snack: Quail's Eggs in Beef Coating

Salad: Lobster on Green Salad with Orange Sauce

Soup: Warm Lemon Soup with Salmon Tartar

Main Course: Roasted Lamb with Brussel Sprouts, Orange Potato and Pomegranate Jus

Dessert: Cream of Avocado and Lime with Coconut.Chili-Macaroons

Especially the dessert is worth mentioning, since to all of us it was something entirely new - trying to turn a vegetable into a dessert.
It really worked and out came this fantastic dish. Damn, that was good :)

Food Porn. (8)

Yesterday's motto was "Cook fast, die young".
The reason we picked this motto was that Sylvia had to go to work really early today, so we had to really hurry since usually, to cook and eat our four to six courses takes about 8 or 9 hours.
So the challenge yesterday was to get done in 5 hours!
 Fortunately, Frank brought an already prepared, fantastic chicken soup:

So we only had to heat that up, and we had our quick first course.
While heating up the soup, we prepared the beef roulades for the main course:

We fried the roulades sharply on all sides, put them in a roasting dish with a lot of mirepoix, fried it some more, deglazed them with a generous amount of Port and put it all in the oven.

After the soup, with the roulades in the oven, I wanted a quick salad, so I took some leftover beef from the roulades, a little honey, some Port and some balsamic vinegar and made it into a jus which we used as dressing for a small salad with steak stripes and oranges:

Here's a picture of Frank revisiting the jus:

After we had the salad, the roulades were almost done, so we had to get started with the red cabbge and the potato dumplings.
We added some apples and cloves to the cabbage, glazed it in butter, added some red wine and then let it simmer for a couple of minutes.
We took the roulades out of the sauce, filtered the liquid, seasoned the sauce and thickened it with a little cornstarch. Cooked the roulades in the sauce for about 10 more minutes and then served them with the cabbage and a dumpling:

While eating the roulades, we were already cooking out the next dish in the oven:
Hazelnut-Marzipan Roast Apple:

We served the apples with a ball of vanilla ice and - believe it or not - we were done in under 5 hours.

Food Porn. (7)

I saw this on the cover of a gourmet magazine at the checkout of my local supermarket and I thought, this looks good, let's try it.

So I got a good thick piece of filet, red onions and an apple.
I cut the steak in half to get two thin slices of steak and I fried them in butter sharply for about a minute on each side. I put the steaks in the oven to keep warm and let it stand. I used the excess fat in the pan to lightly fry a couple of thin apple slices and caramelized them in honey.
I added some butter to the remaining fat and honey and I put a bunch of thinly cut slices of red onions in the pan. I waited for the onions to become a little translucent and deglazed it with a rather liberal amount of port. I let that cook for a couple of minutes, seasoned it with salt, pepper and a small spritz of Worcerstershire sauce, arranged it on the plate in the order beef-onions apples-beef-onions-apple, put some copped chives on top and Voilá:

The whole thing didn't take much longer than about ten minutes and the best part is that you don't even have a big mess in your kitchen because you only use one pan and one plate :)

Food Porn. (6)

Unfortunately, the two-week-frequency of our cook-offs had been disturbed a little, so after four weeks without a feast, we decided to go for a six-course dinner.

And it totally worked out. Everything was perfect. No really, everything. Check it out:

The Snack: Bacon-Wrapped Pinapple with Chives Dip

The Soup: Cream of Rocket Salad

The Salad: Black Salsify with Louisiana Crawfish

The Entreé: Fried Scallops with Black Salsify and Ginger-Blood-Orange-Jelly

The Main Course: Breast of Duck with Balasmic-Vinegar-Port-Sauce, Red Cabbage and Mashed Potatoes with Pumpkin

And just so you see how wonderful the duck looked in the oven:

The Dessert: Cream of Mascarpone with Apples and Cinnamon

Here's a photo of the pile of groceries wie bought...it was funny to see how it kept shrinking over the course of the evening:

And this is how we cook:

I can tell you, I'm so looking forward to our next dinner evening!

Food Porn. (5)

For the latest installment of our cooking adventures last Saturday, we picked the theme "Golden Fall".
So we tried to stick to autumnal specialties. Here's what came out:

Soup:
Cream of Chanterelle Soup with Truffle Croutons

It was such a pleasure looking at the mushrooms glistening from the butter in the pan...

Entreè:
Pastry with Veal Stew on Lamb's Lettuce with Balsamic Vinaigrette

Snack:
Roasted Bread with Lemon-Parsley Pesto

We came up with this one because we had so much leftover parsley and didn't want to throw it away, so we added some lemon, cheese, olive oil as well as a little salt an pepper and voilà :)
Roasted some bread in the pan and we had the perfect snack.


Main Course:
Lamb Eye of Loin with Chocolate Sauce, Mashed Potatoes and Bacon-wrapped Beans

We roasted the meat sharply in a steel pan briefly from both sides. Then put in some twigs of Rosemary and some garlic cloves and put it in the oven for about 10 minutes. The meat was on point. Rosted brown on the outside, but still rosy and juicy on the inside...perfect.

Dessert:
Pear Mousse with Almond Crunch

As almost always, we didn't really use recipes. Most of the dishes are completely improvised (although of course inspired by recipes) depending on what ingredients we can get our hands on.

Food Porn. (4)

Last weekend, we had another evening of cooking fine food with good friends.
The evening's theme was fish, so we hit the cook books and looked for inspiration.
After "free-cooking" without recipes the last couple of times, this time we primarily kept to the recipes we found and only altered a few things.
The result was that we learned tons of new stuff about cooking. It's really exciting to try out new stuff and learn to cook things you never even thought about.

Anyway, what came out on Saturday was a taste explosion.We started cooking at around 6:30pm and finished eating at about 2:30am.

Here are the photos:

Starter:
Creamy Crab Soup

Entree:
Tiger Shrimps on Black Noodles with Saffron Sauce and Mango-Basil-Chutney

Main Course:
Seabass on Champagne Cabbage with Grapes, Bacon and Croutons

Dessert:
Vanilla Junket with Drunken Fruit and Crunchy Leaves

Food Porn. (3)

Das Motto unseres gestrigen Koch-Abends war "Schwein gehabt".
Also sollte es ein paar sehr leckere kleine Schweinereien geben. Alles völlig frei improvisiert und zubereitet.
Ablauf wie immer: Bier trinken, Beschluss fassen, was gekocht wird, einkaufen gehen, wiederkommen, Bier trinken, Zigarette rauchen und anfangen mit kochen.

Hier die Speisen des Abends:

Vorspeise:
Schweinische Kartoffelsuppe mit Bacon, Steinpilzen und Petersilie

Zwischengang:
Ferkelei in Nektarinen

Hauptspeise:
Pottsau mit Apfel und Zwiebeln

Dessert:
Schweineöhrchen an Vanilleeis

Natürlich gibt es auch von diesem Abend ein Videodokument, welches ich Euch nicht vorenthalten möchte:

Rezepte kann ich für diese Speisen nicht zur Verfügung stellen - alles ist selbst erdacht und gekocht, aber ich helfe gerne mit Ideen weiter :)