German leek pie

Polish: por
Albanian: preshi
Spanish: puerro
Sepedi: diliki
Welsh: cenhinen
Uyghur: کراث
Romanian: praz
Bahasa Indonesia: bawang bakung
Cornish: kenynen
Greek: πράσο

What was first, French quiche of German savoury Kuchen? Don't feel mistaken, Kuchen means usually sweet cake, but sometimes is used to describe savoury pies. In Germany people usually eat Zwiebelkuchen, onion pie, but I personally consider leek pie, Lauchkuchen, much tastier.

125 gr butter (1/2 pack)
250 gr (1 1/2 cup) flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons water
2 cups chopped leeks
1/2 onion
1 scallion
1 cup sour cream
3 eggs
2 handfuls grated cheese
optionally: 1 handful ham / sausage cubes
(+ butter, breadcrums)

1. Prepare the dough: knead butter with flour, salt and water until your dough is elastic. Set in the fridge until you are done with the rest of the preparations.

2. Fry chopped leks in butter or oil, low the heat. Add chopped onion and scallion and simmer until they all are soft.

3. Beat egg yolks with sour cream and (optionally) ham chunks. Whip egg whites until they are stiff and stir lightly in the yolk-sour cream mass. Spread butter into your pyrex dish, sprinkle with few breadcrumbs and cover with the dough (roll it possibly thin). Put vegetable chunks on the dough layer and pour egg-cream over it. As the last step, pour grated cheese over it and bake (30-40 minutes, 180C)

German Bratwurst salad

Polish: rzodkiewka
Mohawk: yotsihkwatskàra
Tagalog: labanós
Basa Java: lobak
Italian: ravanello
Manx: rahgyl
Silesian: radiska
Portuguese: rabanete
Tongan: lētisifoha
Albanian: rrepkë

Radishes taste like spring. I never thought they could go so well together with my beloved Bratwurst! I really love German Rostbratwurst, a kind of delicious white sausage. It can be grilled, fried, cooked, but I mostly buy it covered in filo sheet and baked this way, a kind of German hot-dog, my favourite outdoor snack (cause I rarely eat something outside, I am a kind of home-cooking fan). If you still find radishes, make yourself this German spring salad, Bratwurstsalat. Tastes great also during the first days of autumn :)

1 Rostbratwurst
1 bunch radishes (if you take 1 Wurst, 1 cup radish slices would be enough, but it's up to you)
1 bunch scallions
1-2 gherkins or cucumbers pickled in vinegar
1 teaspoon mustard or ground horseradish
1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
1 teaspoon vinegar-water taken from the jar with gherkins/pickles
1 teaspoon oil (olive, canola)
salt, pepper + a pinch of sugar

1. Fry / grill / cook Bratwurst. I think cooking it would be the best choose cause cooked slices would combine so good optically with radish slices, but it's up to you. When you are ready, cut Bratwurst into thin slices. Same with radishes. Cut scallions into rings and gherkins into cubes.

2. Prepare the sauce: combine vinegar, oil, mustard/horseradish and season with salt, pepper and sugar. Pour over salad and set into the fridge for about 1 hour - it will taste much better then eaten inmediately. Serve with slices of Schwarzbrot or any kind of integral or rye bread.

German elderberry soup

Polish: bez czarny
Manx: berrish hrammanagh
Persian: آقطی سیاه
Turkish: kara mürver
Bosnian: zohva
Russian: бузина черная
German: Holunder
Basque: intsusa
Italian: sambuco nero
Swedish: fläder

Holunderbeerensuppe / Fliederbeersuppe is a kind of late summer-autumn north German delicacy. Must be made from very ripe elderberries; if the winter is not frosty people enjoy elderberry soup even in the wintertime. As a rule, elderberry juice tastes tart but after some sesoning it becomes deep fruity rich flavour.

(3-4 portions)
1l elderberries
1l water
1 pack vanilla sugar (or vanilla stick) + more sugar to taste
2-3 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 teaspoon lemon juice (i added instead a teaspoon of freshly made sea-buckthorn juice)
a zest from 1/2 lemon
1 apple, 1 pear
1 tablespoon potato starch

1. Wash berries, take off from the stalks and measure about 1 liter. Cook them in 1 liter water for about 20 minutes (until they soften and break). Press through a sieve and throw the seeds and rests away. Pour into the saucepan again. Add vanilla stick/sugar, cinnamon stick, lemon zest, cloves, lemon juice and sugar to taste. bring to boil. if it is still too tart for you, add 1/2 cup apple juice.

2. Mix potato starch with a little bit of water and add to the soup. Whisk well and boil. Lower the heat.

3. Peel apple and pear (throw seeds away), cut into slices. Add to the soup.



Advice:
Usually this soup is eaten with milk-semolina balls, but I don't like them. You can serve your soup plain, with noodles (for instance ribbons), with crepes cut into long noodles or with semolina balls (Grießklößchen). How to prepare them? Cook thick semolina in milk or milk mixed with water with a pinch of sat and vanilla sugar. Add egg (half egg, one egg or more, depending on how much semolina dough you have) and cook them in water. When ready, put on the soups surface and let them swim :) Some people cook them directly in the soup but it's up to you.

German sweet woodruff syrup

Polish: przytulia wonna / marzanka wonna
Upper Sorbian: wonjaty sydrik
Platt: Möösch
Estonian: lõhnav madar
Icelandic: ilmmaðra
Japanese: クルマバソウ
Manx: lus vollagh
Italian: caglio odoroso / stellina odorosa
Slovak: marinka voňavá
Danish: skovmærke


(pic taken from the net)

Sweet woodruff is a smell and taste of German spring and summer season. At the beginning I thought that Waldmeister mean nothing but forester (yeah, artificially flavoured and coloured green "forester" ice cream, cheesecakes and puddings :P) But yes, now I finally know the incredible sweet woodruff. I found it in a forest next to the Baltic coast. If you have a chance, collect some and prepare this sweet woodruff syrup (Waldmeistersirup), so popular in Germany. You can drink it with water, pour over pancakes or ice cream or, just like some Germans do, add to beer or mix with other alcohol (but I am not a specialist in this area so I can't give you many tipps, sorry...)

I will share now two recieps with you. First using sugar and second: honey and apple juice.


1st recipe
1 bunch sweet woodruff (only the one that is not blooming yet!)
4 cups sugar
2 cups water
1/2 cup lemon juice (+ 1 teaspoon citric acid)

1. Cook a syrup from water, sugar, lemon juice and citric acid.

2. When the syrup is cool, pour into a bottle and deep sweet woodruff in it. Let stand for about 5 days in the fridge or any other cool place


(sweet woodruff macerating in sugar syrup)

3. After 5 days, divide the plant from the syrup. Close the syrup in the bottle. In Germany people would add few drops of green food colouring, since there everything related with sweet woodruff should be green. You can do it as well :)

2nd recipe
1/2 l apple juice (without sugar!)
250 g honey
1 bunch sweet woodruff

1. Deep woodruff in apple juice for 20 minutes. After this time, divide juice from the plant

2. In a saucepan, cook (very short!) apple-woodfuff juice with honey. Still hot, fill the bottle. To prepare a delicious drink, dissolve 1 part of apple-sweet woodruff syrup in 4 parts mineral water.

Kashubian / German buttermilk sweet spread

Polish: maślanka
Chuvash: yйран
Xhosa: ixibhiya
Finnish: piimä
Chinese: 酪漿
Marathi: ताक
Slovakian: pinjenec
Suahili: mtindi
French: babeurre
Vietnamese: nước sữa

Do you remember manjar blanco, Latin American spread / cream / filling? There is a traditional Kashubian and/or German breakfast bread spread, very similar to the Latin American one, and the technique is so similar, too. Buttermilch Honig, or buttermilk honey, great with fresh crunchy bread (integral bread, too!) or pancakes :)

1 l buttermilk
500 gr sugar
optionally: a little pinch of cinnamon or vanilla

Cook buttermilk with sugar in a pan on a low heat and mix constantly until you obtain a creamy thick spread (takes about 1/2 hour)

German tuna pasta

Polish: tuńczyk
Turkish: ton balığı
Catalan: tonyina
Latvian: tuncis
Rapanui: kahi
Lithuanian: paprastieji tunai
Arabic: تونة
Japanese: マグロ
Russian: тунец
Thai: ปลาทูน่า

People were fishing tunas even in the antiquity, while canned tuna was eaten since the beginning of XX century. Now, the canned version is eaten especially among students and diet-watchers. I learned this simple dish when I was studying in Germany. If yiu have not much time but wanna eat something tasty, prepare this: Thunfisch-Nudeln.

about 500 gr noodles (or less)
1 canned tuna (better without oil)
1 cup tomato puree (packed or made on your own from fresh tomatoes)
2 big onions, 2 garlic cloves
a handful parsley
salt, pepper
grated cheese

1. Cook noodles the way you always do, chop onions and parsley finely and grind garlic

2. Fry onions and garlic until golden, add tomato puree and stew some minutes, until tomato puree is thicker. Add drained tuna, stew a bit more. Season with salt, pepper and parsley to taste

3. Combine cooked noodles with tuna sauce and sprinkle with grated cheese before serving

German grits pudding

Polish: kakao
Irish: cócó
Xhosa: ikoko
Yiddish: קאַקאַו
Lithuanian: kakava
Sestwana: khoukhou
Arabic: كاكاو
Japanese: ココア
Manx: coco
Serbian: какао

In Poland semolina porridge is considered baby food. In Germany Grießbrei is one of the most commonly eaten desserts. When I was studying at the German Baltic coast, it was normal to find semolina milk pudding with red berries sauce as the main dinner dish. Cocoa as the main ingredient was my own idea but the general proportions were based at many German culinary sites that I surfed through before preparing this pudding, that is why I include it to German recipes list. Pure vanilla version would be also tasty. But what surprises me the most is the way in which differrent nations serve semolina: Central Europeans, Arabs, Latin Americans... (p.s. Middle Eastern semolina desserts will appear soon, I promise!)

2 cups milk
2 tablespoons cocoa powder (add only one if you don't like your grits to have a strong chocolate taste)
1 tablespoon (or more, or less, just as you prefer) sugar or even better vanilla sugar
1 tablespoon butter
50 gr (about 3 tablespoons) semolina
a pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
coconut, shredded

1. Combine milk, cocoa and sugar to obtain cocoa drink. Try if it contains enough sugar and cocoa!

2. Cook cocoa drink with butter and a pinch of salt. Add semolina, stir and cook until boiling - until tht time semolina gets thicker.

3. Reduce the heat. Add yolk and stir constantly, until homogeneous. Don't boil anymore! Just sprinkle with coconut flakes and enjoy :)






Pora na polską wersję :) Po raz pierwszy od założenia bloga mam zamiar brać udział we wspólnym gotowaniu tematycznym! (chwilkę przedtem było o anyżku po angielku, a teraz o kakao po polsku; dzień debiutów!) Strasznie się cieszę na tę myśl. Miałam w zanadrzu przepis na czekoladową kaszkę mannę i czekoladowy pudding z tapioki. Zdecydowałam się na pierwszy z deserów, ale o tapioce jeszcze będzie u mnie mowa. Nawet jeśli nie wypróbujecie mojego przepisu, to mam nadzieję, że zainspiruję Was w jakikowliek sposób do upichcenia czegoś nowego :) Proporcje przygotowałam na podstawie wypadkowej kilku niemieckich stron kulinarnych. Niemcy bardzo często jedzą kaszkę mannę. Z ich przepisu wyszedł mi naprawdę pyszny deser; przedtem mój grysik zawsze był zbyt gęsty albo o prostu niesmaczny.

Zatem włączając się do czekoladowego weekendu Bei z Mojej Kuchni: proponuję Wam moją czekoladową kaszkę mannę. Potrzebne będzie:

2 szklanki mleka
1 łyżki kakao (chyba że wolicie mniej czekoladowe)
1 łyżka cukru (zależy od Waszych upodobań: może wolicie mniej cukry, może więcej) albo lepiej cukru waniliowego
1 łyżka masła
50 gr (około 3 łyżki) kaszki manny
szczypta soli
1 żółtko
szczypta wiórków kokosowych

1. Wymieszajcie mleko z kakao i cukrem az otrzymacie kakao (koniecznie spróbujcie czy jest odpowiednio słodkie i odpowiednio czekoladowe)

2. Zagotujcie kakao z masłem i szczyptą soli. Dodajcie kaszkę, mieszając doprowadźcie do wrzenia. Kaszka zgęstnieje.

3. Zmniejszcie ogień do minimum. Dodajcie żółtko i mieszajcie aż masa będzie jednolita. Zdejmijcie z ognia - masa po dodaniu żółtka nie może się już zagotować! Udekorujcie wiórkami kokosowymi i... smacznego!

German rutabaga fritters

Polish: ziemniak
Kashubian: bùlwa
Turkmen: картошка
Swiss German: Härdöpfel
Manx: praase
Slovenian: krompir
Schwäbisch : Äbbiere
Romansh: tartuffel
Punjabi: ਆਲੂ
Maasai: ilpiasi
Byelorussian: бульба
Nahuatl: tlālcamohtli
Old Prussian: Bolbė
Telugu: బంగాళదుంప

Latkes is considered in USA a typical Jewish dish. Here in Poland we call them placki ziemniaczane, eat them often, usually with sour cream, gulash or sugar (!). Working with rasper is the longest part of preparation, but it is worth, even if the dish is caloric and fried, thus not very healthy. Polish latkes have a differrent consistence. They are crunchy of course but the recipe requires more flour and even milk or sour cream to add. To make it lighter in digestion, people often add grated carrot or pumpkin, which gives a beautiful colour. You can also add a spoon of tomato puree or chopped onions and garlic. This time I was basing on a German recipe for potato-rutabaga latkes (Steckrübenpuffer) but of course modified it a bit to fit my needs. Nice yellow rutabaga gives other colour to the dish and make it lighter in digestion.





500 gr rutabaga
500 gr potatoes
2 eggs
chive, parsley green
3 spoons (about 40 gr) flour
1 spoon a bit of salt
pepper
1 spoon dried herbs if you like to
lemon juice

1 cup sour cream or balcan yoghurt
1 spoon mustard
1 clove garlic
salt, pepper

1. Grate rutabaga first, than potato. This is important cause potato oxygenates, but you should not allow this. That is why you have to sprinkle grated potatoes with lemon juice and it won't become brown. Chop chives and / or parsley green

2. Mix eggs with flour in a bowl, stir grated vegetables very well and add in the bowl. Stir up all the ingredients, add salt and pepper

3. You can think you need more eggs or flour. Don't! Fry small portions in a saucepan with hot oil



4. Mix sour cream, mustard and chopped garlic, add salt and pepper to taste. The sauce is mine, not taken from any recipe, and it tastes really good with rutabaga latkes.