Cevicheria

Today is my 35^th birthday. Five years after the birthday I unsuccessfully tried to skip. I didn’t see it coming, me hating turning 30 as much as I did, but it hit me in the face a week before the big day and progressively got worse from there. On the day itself I started telling people I was turning 29. Most of them reacting with “oooo, one year left till the big 3-0” made me feel even more depressed, so I just went on joking around that it’s inappropriate to ask a lady her age. 

It luckily only took me a week to get over it and accepting my new age. I decided to join the trend and make myself a bucket list, so I won’t be as grumpy when I turn forty. My bucket list only contains 2 items:

1. Finding myself the perfect hairdo that will make me look more nature in a sophisticated ladylike kind of way
2. Writing my own cookbook

I still have five years to accomplice both, so today is just about celebrating my birthday by spending a day with my husband doing one of the things I love the most: strolling around and eating. We went to have lunch at one of the places on my wish list: the Cevicheria in Kreuzberg.

Ever since I ate the Peruvian fish dish for the first time at Gordon Ramsey’s Bread Street Kitchen in London it is one of my favorite things to eat. Curing the fish in citrus fruits optimizes taste and structure, making the fish briny and tender with a sour twist. I’ve made ceviche several times back in Amsterdam, mostly with salmon or scallops. Since Berlin is not really that close to the sea I’ve never prepared it here, for I don’t know if the available fish is fresh enough to eat it raw. Today I will finally have a plate of ceviche again, and the Cevicheria far from disappointed me!

If only for the entourage it would be worth visiting this place. The light blue interior, the friendly people and last but not least the South American music make you feel you’re in another country, leaving the busy city behind for a moment.

As for the food we ordered a pulpo salad and the white fish ceviche with prawns. The salad was a very well balanced combination of oil and herbs, freshened up with chopped tomatoes and cucumber. I could’ve easily eaten a whole plate of it. The ceviche was perfect as well, classically accompanied by sweet potato, corn, red onion and coriander. We enjoyed every bite of it.

Please go here if you have the opportunity! Even if you don’t like raw fish (they have grilled and baked dishes) or you don’t like fish at all (as befits a Berlin restaurant: the have vegetarian dishes)

For the both of us eating here felt like a mini vacation.

Olive Blinis

Today for lunch, and as part of my challenge, I made Olive Blini’s with Beets and Salmon. This seriously is one of the most delicious little bites I have ever tasted. The combination of the sour beet with the salty salmon and the sweet mascarpone is amazing. It was hard to stop eating them, luckily the girls loved them as well and most of the blini’s were served directly to the plate because it was hard to bake faster than they were eating.

Of course my picture does not look as nice as they look in the cookbook, but that was mainly because I don’t own a flapjack pan. One more reason to get one. I did manage to find the recipe on a website right here

Farls

Still going strong on my cooking challenge. I have cooked my way through at least a quarter of the first Home Made book and started adding other books to my challenge to cook as versatile as possible. I will only post some of what I make because on one hand most of it tastes good but is not looking that photogenic. On the other hand I do forget to take a picture most of the time and I also don’t think all these food pictures without recipes are that interesting.

Today we made something that was really delicious and looked good as well. We actually wanted to go out for a picnic, but as we were putting on our shoes thunder and lightning started as we haven’t heard before in Berlin. So we had an indoor picnic instead.

These Farls (kind of like blini’s but made with potato) with herb crème fraiche and salmon were sooooo delicious that I had to made a post with them. The girls absolutely loved them and almost didn’t leave me some. I’m writing this post a few weeks later and have made them two more times already when we had people coming over and everybody loves them!

Want to make them? Recipe can be found here

Spicy Oriental Soup

Fry 1 chopped clove of Garlic and a chopped up cm of fresh ginger in a bit of sunflower oil. Add 1 small sliced leek, a small sip of stock and fry for a couple of minutes till the leek has softened. Add 1 grinded chili pepper and the rest of 500 ml of vegetable stock. Softly boil while preparing the other ingredients.

Whisk 1 egg with some pepper and bake a thin omelet of it in some oil. Roll the omelet and slice it up. Fry 50 gr of shrimp in the left over oil of the omelet.

Put ½ a sliced bok choy in with the broth, season with a dash of fish sauce and bring to a boiling point. Put the omelet, shrimp, a chopped spring onion and a bit of chopped parsley in a bowl and pour over the soup. Ready is your one person spicy soup

Mackerel with Mustard Sauce

I've eaten a lot of smoked mackerels, but never had a fresh piece in my hands. Until De Krat brought me one, or actually two fillets. Including a recipe, which I tried immediately as fish should be eaten as fresh as possible. What I particularly like about the dish is the crispy skin and the nice solid texture of the fish.

Preheat the oven at 250ْ  C, season 2 mackerel fillets, with skin, with some salt and black pepper. Create, in the middle of a baking dish, a mound of 1 chopped red onion, 1 bay leaf and a handful of fresh parsley (keep a bit aside for the garnish). Put the fillets on top with the skin side up, pour 100 ml of white wine over it and put in the oven. Cook for 7-10 minutes, depending on the thickness of the fillets. Put the fillets aside on a warm serving dish as soon as they're done, cover with some aluminum foil to keep warm.

Strain the cooking liquid from the baking dish in a small saucepan and boil for a couple of minutes to concentrate. Add 2 tbsp. of mustard and stir, whisk 30 gr of chopped cold butter through and let it simmer for about 3 minutes. Pour the sauce over the fish and garnish with some parsley.

Very nice with some skin cooked potatoes and a green salad. Very light, the fish is oily enough by itself.

Plaice Fillet with Spinach

My weekly organic box "De Krat" has been delivered today, a whole bunch of fresh ingredients to cook with!

Thinly slice 1/2 a Granny Smith apple. Saute 1 clove of chopped garlic and 1 chopped shallot in some olive oil until they're soft (about 5 min.) Than put 500 gr of spinach in hand by hand, it will shrink very much. Heat a knob of butter in another frying pan until the foam is gone. Put salt and pepper on 2 plaice fillets and, at the last moment, put a tbsp. of flour on them. Fry them on both sides for 2-3 minutes.

In the mean time the spinach should be done, sprinkle the juice of half a lime on and season with some salt and pepper. 

Spinach on the plate, apple on the side and fish on top. Finish with a bit of pepper and a slice of lime on top

 

Salad with Bloater and Red Cabbage

De Krat Brought me some nice Bloater this week and also contain some Red Cabbage, Nice apples and something I don't remember the very difficult name of, but it was Japanese and can be used in stead of lettuce.

 

Thinly slice 1/2 a red cabbage in. Peel 1 big apple and cut 1/2 into chunks and thinly slice the other half. Make a dressing by mixing up 1 tbsp. mayonnaise, 1 tsp. mustard, 1 tbsp of red wine vinegar, a drip of honey, salt & pepper, then wisk 3 tbsp. of olive oil in slowly

Mix the cabbage with 8 halved pickled onions, the apple chunks and dressing, then put aside. Clean 2 Bloaters. Put the 400 gr of the Japanese veg (or something like it, like raw spinach) on two plates, squeeze 1/4 of a lime and sprinkle 1 tbsp. of olive oil above. Put the Cabbage salad  on top. Than the Bloaters, sliced apple, 1 sliced avocado and 2 thinly sliced spring onions. 

Pasta Puttanesca

Pasta is something I just could eat every single day. Especially spaghetti. And if the sauce is good, you definitely do not need a lot of it to make your dish delicious. I always like the puttanesca pasta so much for it is so simply to make, yet it is very tastful with a nice salty bite to it.

A good plate of pasta with a tomato sauce.

Dinner for 2

1 shallot, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

4 filets of anchovies, chopped

40 gr of black olives, chopped (green ones also will do just fine)

1 tbsp. capers

1 can of tomatoes

250 gr spaghetti

20 gr parmesan, grated

50 gr fresh goats cheese, moldered

A handful of fresh basil

Fry the shallot, garlic and anchovies until it softens. Add the olives and capers. Fry for a minute before adding a can of tomatoes, 50 ml water and salt and pepper. Bring to a boiling point, turn the heat low and let it simmer for about half an hour.

Pangasius with Broad Beans

My grandmother and grandfather-in-law are coming over for dinner and I want to make them something special, but also easy to digest. My choice for tonight is some nice oven baked pangasius.

Unfortunately I slipped on the bathroom floor two hours before their arrival – keeping my balance is really hard with this belly that is due in 12 days – so  it was a bit of a race against the clock and I had to skip the planned soup as a starter

Oven baked pangasuis 
Dinner for 4

½ a liter of fish stock

300 gr broad beans

25 ml white wine

A bit saffron

125 ml cream

4 pangasius filets

100 ml white wine

2 shallots, halved

Big knob of butter

Preheat the oven at 180C. Boil the stock down to about half. When the fish stock is boiled down add the white wine, saffron and cream. Bring to a boiling point, add the beans and lower the heat to simmer until the fish is done.

Mullets and a salad

I had a day off, so there’s time to try out a new recipe. Not that this recipe takes that much time to make, but today I have time to visit the Albert Cuijp market and buy some different fish than the usual trout. Today it’s mullets and this is how I made them tonight for the two of us:

Oven baked Mullets 
Dinner for 2

For the mullets

2 mullets

2 tbsp. olive oil

½ a tbsp. sea salt

1 tbsp. fresh thyme leaves

1 lemon

2 bay leaves

Spicy Shrimp Pasta

Blue Mondays. The start of the week, the end of a perfect weekend. The days are getting shorter and shorter.  We really are longing for a sunny, but easy to prepare dish so a light Shrimp pasta it is!

Shrimp Spaghetti 
Light meal for 2

250 gr of spaghetti

250 gr of shrimp

1 tsp. sunflower oil

2 cloves of garlic, sliced

1 chili pepper, grinded

1 cm fresh ginger, chopped

1 tbsp. butter

½ lime

Rocket

Cook the spaghetti in plenty of salted water. Fry the shrimp a couple of minutes in sunflower oil, add the garlic, chili pepper and ginger. Add the butter, stir till melted, press the lime above and then stir in the spaghetti so it’s nicely covered in butter. Add a few hands of rocket and ready you are.

Nicoise Salad with Herring

A Simple salad made around the wonderful herring we bought at the specialist Jewish sour shop De Leeuw. If you like souer stuff as much as I do, please go and visit this sweet little shop on a thursday, friday or sunday and get yourself some fish, pickles, onions or even some souer horseradish.

This salad is a mix of boiled green beens, tomatoes and sliced red onion, mixed up with some vinegar and olive oil. Herring, hard boiled eggs and some fresh dill on top.