pumbaa

Thick flavours coming together colourfully. Happened today on this piece of bread. Spicy, herby, mild. Red, green, white. Chili paste, baba ganoush, yoghurt.

As I’m currently staying in Taiwan for a bit, I gave it a try to make noodle soup which is really popular around here in all variations. The cool thing about being here is that you can get all the green vegetables and tofu variations that you hardly get your hand on in Europe, easily, and cheaply, everywhere. One vegetable caught my attention because of its curious production method. Wild rice shoots or  茭白筍 (jiāobáisǔn) is wild rice infected by a fungus which will prevent flowering and eventually causes swelling at which point it is harvested. Eating noodle soup with chopsticks is so much more fun!

Today I prepared an old potato dough based dish called schupfnudeln or bubespitzle from Southern Germany for friends in Taipei. It's easy to make but a real mess in the kitchen. Their heart consists of potatoes, flour, and eggs. Their appearance is gently golden browned. Best and traditionally served with either apple sauce, sauerkraut, or creamed mushroom sauce; also combines vibrantly as a sidedish with savoury beef roast.

Beef shank slices are nowadays rarely found but pretty essential for beef broth. It also gives a scrumptious goulash. The meat is rather marbled and sinewy but when given time in the cauldron even that bit will be tender. The bone and its marrow add really good flavour, thicken the goulash, and obviate the need for beef broth. When roasting onions and beef, flour and brown it for a nice colour, also add a spoon of tomato purée. Deglaze with red wine and water. Wait patiently for a few hours. A goulash spice made of paprika, garlic, caraway and rosemary will do the rest.

Burgers inspired by Portuguese street vendors. Beef, fried egg, cheese, bacon and matchstick-shaped crisps on top.

A recent trip took me to Lisboa, Portugal to see a friend. Fish is rather prominent in Portuguese cuisine and ubiquitous in traditional dishes, even in pastry (e.g. pastéis de bacalhau), usually in the form of dried and salted cod called bacalhau. As you can also find various types of dry beans in the greengrocer's shop around the corner, we decided for a bacalhau-bean stew. This improvised recipe features spinach, garlic, tomatoes, white beans and black-eyed peas, bacalhau fresco and various other vegetables. It's delicious, preferably served with beer, and delicious again when coming home drunk after a long night out.

A friend gave me one of her homegrown pumpkins. Her cellar looked like this year's harvest was especially lush. Happy about the late fortune of getting one of these juicy orange beasts I decided on having pumpkin cream soup. It is actually enough to put some onion, cream and broth. Some like it with ginger and coriander. I treated myself to some root vegetables, caraway, a slightly spicy and aromatic ethiopian paprika powder mixture called berbere and a cream and parsley finish. A culinary delight!

It isn't particularly chive season these days. Still, it's just perfect for a fresh quark dip. Mix quark with a sip of milk, sea salt, pepper, loads of chive and a hint of olive oil. The same olive oil the potato wedges took a deep breath in before, while tanning in the oven. Be better than me, add coarsely chopped rosemary to indulge your senses. May be not better than sex, still delicious.

You found dried out stonyish baguette that you forgot to eat yesterday? Consider yourself lucky if you’re about to have breakfast! Really old recipes are so damn sexy. What most people consider rubbish can be turned into a delicious treat. Old baguette slices soak in eggs and milk. They get a golden crust roasted in a buttered pan. Pour sugar-saturated milk over it or use it as a dip. Poor knights of windsor, heaven exists!

If you have ever searched for a simple, but simply delicious dish: here it is, widely known as the tongue twister geschnetzeltes in Southern Germany. All you need is champignons, a veal tenderloin, an onion, cream, parsley and ten minutes. Roast the diced veal, add onion. After a while add champignons and shortly after cream. Parsley joins at the last minute. There should be add-ons for every simple dish to make it somewhat extraordinary. Here is my list: Keep it simple and fast with pasta, make it special with spätzle. Add half a spoon of cocoa for a nice flavour and colour. Deglaze with white wine, or even fancier: cognac. Replace diced veal by lamb tenderloin, but leave it a whole piece. Add knödel. Try chanterelles.

Happiness is... finding two olives in your martini when you're hungry. - is said to have been said by some American entertainer. Olive haters, olive lovers? I'm definitely one of the latter. Maundering on an olive ochard is most likely to be on the top five romantic things to do. Whoever couldn't withstand the temptation to pitch one freshly from the tree: it's perfectly horrible bitterness that instantly contracts all of your facial muscles. Thank human ingenuity for the method of brining olives which gets rid of all bitterness, and leaves us with a bonne bouche. And the undecidedish feeling while standing in front of a sheer endless variety of olives, as seen in the photograph, taken on a Turkish bazaar. Turkish olives, called zeytin, impress most notably with white cheese, tomatoes, and cucumber bedded in olive oil at breakfast.

Multiculturalism must be one of the most enriching ideas for life out there. It works with food as well. Well, actually it may only work that perfectly with food. The idea for this improvised nosh emerged in a friend's kitchen in Stratford. King prawns, fresh root vegetables and Caribbean-influenced: Black beans! On the quick and scrumptious. Cheers!

W. C. Fields

Delicious dumpling. You should find these steamed buns all over china . It's filled with golden needle mushrooms, greenish spinach-celery-asparagus and features a tiny little breath of garlic...and that's only one of endless varieties. Its coat is made of simple yeast dough. I'm sure it's the fancy steamer equipment that gives it its unique taste.

I'm pretty sure this salmon fancies that bit of chèvre loafing on top of its tenderloin. It couldn't foresee it though, relaxing next to that two fully grown ridiculously green courgettes and some spring onion just a bit ealier. It heard a bubbling sound just one kitchen knife's throw away. The pasta was just drawing salted water. Next thing it remembers is breathing in olive oiled veggie steam carrying a lovely basil, dill and lemon odour. Everything went fast when the pasta joined and a splash of cream came basically out of nowhere.

Pumbaa