Avigayil Damm

During the first week of March, my hubby and I made a sudden one week trip to Denmark. With a short notice, I was invited to attend a training which I could luckily accept thanks to the two year multiple entry visa that I got last October 2009. Otherwise it would have taken me 3 weeks to apply for a visa, rendering me unable to attend the training. With an even shorter notice, my hubby was asked to be one of the facilitators in the training.

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Tonight’s recipe is taken from a recently purchased Periplus Mini Cookbooks ‘Favourite Everyday Dinners’. The obvious reason for purchasing this book was to compile as many recipes as possible which are easy to make and won’t take much time. This time, I chose one dish I really like but have never tried to cook myself before: beef stroganoff. I must confess that I don’t always follow the recipe to the letter. So this recipe is how I made it (not how it is specified in the book).

Ingredients:

• 400 gr. beef fillet, cut into thin stripes
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 50 gr butter
• 1 thinly sliced onion
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 250 gr button mushroom, sliced
• 50 ml brandy (I actually used cognac)
• 1 cup beef stock or 1 cup water with 1 beef stock cube
• 1 1/2 tbsp tomato paste
• 3/4 cup (185 gr) sour cream
• 1 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley

Dust the beef strips in flour and shake of any excess. Melt half the butter in a large frying pan and stir fry the onion and garlic over medium heat until they soften. Add the mushrooms and cook for 2-3 minutes, then pour in the brandy (or cognac, whichever you’re using) and simmer until liquid has evaporated. Add the beef and cook until browned, and then add the beef stock and tomato paste. Add the sour cream. Cook for a few minutes until the liquid is slightly reduced. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Originally the recipe suggests to stir fry the beef separately and then put aside. But I don’t think it made much difference in the end result that I actually fried the beef after the mushroom is cooked. I served it with mashed potato, which went very well with it. It was definitely a keeper, and we had some leftover which we took with us for lunch the day after next.

This week has not been much of a productive week for me. After having leftover meatballs in curry, we called in for food once (pizza tropicale for my hubby and pizza margeritha for me from Izzi Pizza), and for two days in a row we had spaghetti bolognaise which was cooked by our housekeeper. One night, I made fried noodles which unfortunately did not deserve to have a post here.

Tonight, I was originally going to make lamb steak. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to take the steak out of the freezer, so we resorted to dining out. Since it has been a long time ago that we dined out at Brasserie, we decided to go there. However, we were not lucky enough because it seems that the place had been rented for a private party. So we ended up at the restaurant nearby which we also often visit (and I wrote a post about it here), Die Stube.

I had a big lunch today so I figured I would go for a small dish. So I looked under sandwich and snacks and found Fleischkäse on the menu. This was one of my favourite dish when I was in Germany, and since it fell under the sandwich and snacks category I thought I would be able to down this one easily. Boy, was I wrong!

Not only did it come with two slices of meatloaf, it came with sunny side up egg and a big portion of my favourite roast potatoes. How could I possibly finish that?

The meatloaf was great, I liked it a lot although I thought it was slightly too salty. The sunny side egg made up for it though. In the end I could only finish one slice and took the rest home in a doggy bag. And, yes, you guessed it, I gave it to my little dog so he was a very happy little pup. Would I order this again? Definitely! Just need to make sure that I have enough space in my belly!

My visiting friend and I went out today for a successful shopping spree at Melawai and Pasaraya, and we arrived home rather late in the afternoon. Having anticipated arriving late from the shopping, we decided on a simple menu: wagyu steak – simple to make but tasting very good.

We bought the steak at Gourmet Garage, the only place we know so far that sells good steaks. This wagyu steak, as my hubby claims, is the best meat we could have, and it’s so juicy and tender, that asking for it to be cooked ‘well-done’ would be the crime of the century. The carbohydrate source choice of tonight was boiled potatoes. We also caramelized some onion rings for additional taste. As for the sauce, we opted for our own home-made béarnaise sauce.

The steak, caramelized onion and boiled potatoes are of course easy to make, nothing that I can share with you. But the béarnaise sauce recipe may be of interest.

Ingredients:

• 150 gr butter, melt separately and let cool
• 6 egg yolks
• 150 ml beef bouillon (or use 1 cube beef stock in 150 ml water)
• 3 tsp white wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 2 tsp dried tarragon

In a medium heavy sauce pan, I mixed the egg yolks with the beef bouillon, white wine vinegar, lemon juice and dried tarragon. Once the butter has cooled down, I added it into the sauce pan and started to cook it at very low heat, stirring.

Now, in the original recipe the butter is melted in the sauce pan and then the egg mixture is added in it, but one time I accidentally discovered that my way (as above) is much better. It’s important that the butter is cooled down first, because not only does it help avoid heating up the egg yolk too quickly so that it becomes scrambled eggs, but it will also allow you to heat the sauce slowly, giving enough time to allow the sauce to thicken. Once the sauce starts to thicken, turn off the stove to stop the heat, as the heat from the sauce pan will be enough to keep it ‘cooking’. I have come to ‘master’ this sauce and my hubby has voted it as his favourite. Try it out and tell me what you think!