A few days ago I made Jägerschnitzel aka Hunter Style Schnitzel. Today I came up with another popular dish from Germany, which is also schnitzel, but it is served with a different type of sauce that is Zigeuner sauce, or gypsy style sauce. As the name suggests, the sauce is slightly more piquant and has appealing, bright, red colour. Very tasty and definitely worth a try!

Zigeunerschnitzel - serves 2

The Cutlets

• 2 chicken/pork/veal cutlets
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tbs oyster sauce (optional)
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
• Oil for frying

The Gypsy Sauce

• 1 Tbsp oil
• 1 Tbsp minced garlic
• 1 onion, sliced
• 1 bell pepper, sliced
• 2 Tbsp tomato paste
• 2 tsp ground paprika
• 1 tsp cayenne powder (or to taste)
• Beef/Chicken powder to taste
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 250 ml cream
• Sugar, to taste
• Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

The Cutlets

1. Set the eggs, flour and bread crumbs in three different shallow bowls.
2. Add oyster sauce, salt and pepper to the egg bowl and mix well.
3. One at a time, dredge the cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the bread crumbs.
4. Repeat step 3 one more time (optional).
5. Deep-fry the cutlets until golden brown.
6. Serve with gypsy sauce, salad and fries.

The Gypsy Sauce

1. Sauté chopped onion and garlic with 1 Tbsp of oil.
2. Add tomato paste, ground paprika, cayenne powder and beef powder.
3. Pour the cream and mix well.
4. Add bell pepper slices and cook for 1 minute.
5. Dust with flour and season with sugar and pepper. Cook until sauce is thickened.

Jägerschnitzel or Hunter Style Schnitzel is one of the most popular schnitzel varieties in Germany. It is breadcrumb-coated veal/pork/chicken which is served with creamy mushroom sauce. Since it's so well-liked over here, you can easily get instant Jägerschnitzel mixes in most German supermarkets, be they big or small.

I love to use panko bread crumbs instead of the usual western-style bread crumbs. Panko bread crumbs are much coarser and as a result, your schnitzel will be crispier and tastier :)!


Jägerschnitzel - serves 2

The Cutlets

• 2 chicken/pork/veal cutlets
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tbs oyster sauce (optional)
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
• Oil for frying

The Mushroom Sauce

• 1 Tbsp oil
• 1 Tbsp chopped onion
• 8 -10 champignons, sliced
• Beef/Chicken powder to taste
• 1 Tbsp flour
• 2 Tbsp white wine
• 200 ml cream
• Freshly ground pepper

Instructions

The Cutlets

1. Set the eggs, flour and bread crumbs in three different shallow bowls.
2. Add oyster sauce, salt and pepper to the egg bowl and mix well.
3. One at a time, dredge the cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the bread crumbs.
4. Repeat step 3 one more time (optional).
5. Deep-fry the cutlets until golden brown.
6. Serve with mushroom sauce, salad and fries.

The Mushroom Sauce

1.  Sauté the chopped onion with 1 Tbsp of oil.
2. Add mushrooms and cook for 2 - 3 minutes.
3. Season with beef powder and dust with flour.
4. Add white wine, cream and pepper to taste. Cook until sauce is thickened.

Paprika-Sahne Hähnchen is German for creamy paprika chicken. It is usually eaten with steamed rice or noodles - a simple yet delicious meal. The one I made today is using the same sauce but I made a few changes to my liking. The normal German paprika chicken is usually oven baked together with the sauce, but mine is cooked separately. I always love food which is coated with breadcrumbs or flour as these lend crispiness to the deep (or pan)-fried meat, poultry or vegetables. I still wanted this meal to be relatively healthy, so instead of deep frying the chicken fillets, I coated them with egg and flour before pan-frying them.

Creamy Paprika Chicken

Pan-fried Chicken

• 2 chicken fillets
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• 1 egg
  
• Flour

Creamy Paprika Sauce

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 2 tablespoons chopped onion
  
• 1 sweet pepper, cut into long strips
• 1 - 2 dried chili peppers
• 1 tablespoon paprika powder
• Chicken or vegetable powder to taste
  
• 250 ml cream
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• Some grated cheese - optional

Instructions

• Chicken: Rub the chicken fillets with salt and pepper. Coat with beaten egg and flour.
• Pan fry the fillets until cooked and golden brown. Set aside (I left them in the oven over low heat to keep them warm).
• Sauce: Sauté the minced garlic and chopped onion with olive oil until slightly brown.
• Add dried chili peppers, paprika powder, chicken powder, tomato paste and pour the cream. Cook and stir for a minute.
  
• Toss in the sweet pepper slices and cook for another minute.
• Sprinkle with grated cheese.
• Pour the sauce over the chicken fillets.
• Serve with rice, noodles or pan-fried potatoes.
  

I got to know this soup a few years ago when I visited my mother-in-law and she made us some Graupensuppe or Barley Soup, in English. I was immediately captivated by its colourful appearance and delicious taste. It was hearty yet light at the same time. I was intrigued by this soup because I had never eaten barley in savoury dishes, actually, I had even almost never eaten barley in my life and if I did, only as Asian sweet dessert. So I really really wanted to make it myself and asked my MIL to reveal the secret of her beautiful barley soup :). I was surprised to find out that it's quite simple to make. The only hideous work you've got to do is cutting most ingredients into small cubes...!

Ingredients - serves 4

• 200 g barley, soaked in water overnight
  
• 2 large carrot, cut into small cubes
  
• 3-4 medium potatoes, cut into small cubes
  
• 10 - 15 black peppercorns
  
• 500 g lean beef/lamb shank , cut into small cubes
  
• 1 onion (I used shallot), chopped
  
• 2 leeks, sliced
  
• 1/2 celery root, quartered
  
• Maggi/Knorr beef powder to taste
• Pepper to taste
• 3 l water
  
• 1 tbs olive oil
• Chopped parsley for garnish
  

Instructions

• Heat olive oil in a soup pot.
  
• Sauté the chopped onion, beef cubes and celery root for 1 minute until everything is slightly brown.
• Add water, peppercorns and barley. Simmer for 30 minutes,.
• Now add the carrot and potato cubes, beef powder and pepper to taste. Simmer for another 30 minutes.
  
• Before you turn off the heat, add the leek slices and stir that they're slightly cooked.

Serve the barley soup with chopped parsley!

Another festive dish with poultry - roasted goose. I don't usually make goose dishes because goose tends to be very oily. But once in a year, it's something that we shouldn't really miss, because when cooked right, it's just sensational...!

Ingredients

• 2 haunches of goose
• 400 ml chicken stock
• Salt, pepper, marjoram, paprika powder
• 4 tbs Armagnac
• 50 ml cream
• 1 tbs corn starch (mixed with 3 tbs water)
• Sugar to taste (for the sauce)

Instructions

• Rub the goose with salt, pepper, marjoram and paprika powder
• Put goose, skin sides down, in a medium-heated skillet. Don't add any oil, because the goose itself is already fatty and going to produce (a LOT) of oil.
• Cook goose until skin is golden brown (about 10 minutes - you want to get all that oil out). Turn over and cook for another 10 minutes.
• Remove goose from skillet and put into a roasting tin. Pour chicken stock.
• Roast goose at 160° for 2 hours.
• Remove roasted goose from the tin and keep warm.
• Pour the goose juice into a saucepan. Add the cream, armagnac, salt, sugar, pepper to taste and let it boil.
• Add more chicken stock if necessary and the corn starch mixture to thicken the sauce.
• Serve goose with the armagnac sauce, carbs and braised vegetables of your choice!
  

Happy New Year, everyone! It's 2011...!!

Finally my mission to make a gingerbread house is completed...:)! But I have to say it was a LOT of work of several days. I am nevertheless happy with the result of my first gingerbread house ever. Well..., it's actually not really my 'first' gingerbread house, I tried to make one last year on Christmas Eve and thought I would be able to do everything in one night (template, baking, decorating, etc), but after one of the roofs broke and fell apart, I gave up completing the house. This year I was wiser and gave myself several days to complete the gingerbread house project.

The gingerbread house in the making...

The house after I added some sugar icing, sweets and muesli for the chimney.

Bilbo's house from The Hobbit, German Fachwerkhaus and of course Hansel and Gretel's candy house came into my mind when I decorated the gingerbread house.

Can you see why? Does the round 'oreo' cookie door remind you of Bilbo's little house? - at least a little bit... ;)

Hopefully the handpainted timber makes it look like a Fachwerkhaus.

And the candy-covered roof like the witch's house in Hansel and Gretel....

I will not write much as I am at the moment in my MIL's house. But I want to wish you all a lovely Christmas time with your family and friends.

And one more time, in German, Frohe Weihnachten, lovely readers :)!

Christmas is on its way... This means roasted duck time - my favourite German dish ever :)! Starting from November onward, you would start seeing duck or goose in the menu when you go to restaurants. The Germans usually eat roasted duck or goose on Christmas Eve, in some parts of Germany they also eat fried carp, but since I am not that fond of fish, I have never tried this other specialty. Last year I made traditional roasted duck with potato dumplings and red cabbage. For this year I wanted to make something slightly different, that's why I decided to use the homemade orange marmalade that my MIL gave me to make Ente à l'orange - Duck with orange sauce, a few days ago.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 duck (ca.1.5 kg)
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 shallots, chopped coarsely
  
• 2 tbs orange marmalade
  
• 100 ml orange juice
  
• 150 ml chicken stock
• 150 ml white wine
  
• 100 ml cream
• dried chopped marjoram
• Salt and black pepper
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1 tbs flour, mixed with 3 tbs of water
  

Instructions

• Rub the duck with salt, pepper, orange marmalade and marjoram.
• Put the duck into a roasting tin. Pour orange juice, chicken stock, white wine, chopped shallots and the bay leaf into the tin.
• Roast the duck at medium temperature (150 C) for 2 - 2.5 hours. Check every half hour and keep adding hot water (even better, chicken stock) over the duck. I would say, 50-100 ml per half hour.
  
• Remove the cooked duck from the roasting tin. Cover.
  
• Sauce: Transfer the juice from duck into a saucepan and let it boil, adding cream, sugar, salt, pepper and the flour/water mixture.
• Serve with potato dumplings, red cabbage and orange slices.
  

This meal is so festive and somehow always makes me feel happy eating it :)!

Look at my balcony! Isn't it pretty? I am really hoping for a white Christmas...!

I am a fan of schnitzel, be it chicken, pork or veal. In Germany, you can get schnitzel in almost any restaurant you go to. The most popular ones here are Wiener Schnitzel (the good ol' Viennese Schnitzel traditionally made from veal and served with lemon slice), Zigeuner Schnitzel (which means gypsy-stlye schnitzel, usually served with slightly spicy sauce with paprika and onions) and Jäger Schnitzel (or 'Hunter schnitzel' dished up with creamy mushroom sauce).

Last week I made pork schnitzel with salad. Making schnitzel is actually quite easy, because you don't need many ingredients: just meat cutlets, eggs, flour and bread crumbs and you're ready to fry the schnitzel.

Ingredients (serves 2 - 4)

• 4 pork cutlets, pounded to 0.5 cm thickness
  
• 2 eggs, beaten
  
• 1 tbs oyster sauce (optional)
• Salt and pepper
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs
• Oil for frying

Instructions

1. Set the eggs, flour and bread crumbs in three different shallow bowls.
2. Add oyster sauce, salt and pepper to the egg bowl and mix well.
3. One at a time, dredge the cutlet in the flour, then dip in the egg mixture and coat with the bread crumbs.
   
4. Repeat step 3 one more time (optional).
5. Deep-fry the cutlets until golden brown.
6. Serve with salad.

By the way, adding oyster sauce doesn't make the schnitzel taste 'asian' in any way. The sauce adds good flavour to the schnitzel which is usually rather bland. And if you want a healthier version, you can pan-fry the schnitzel instead of deep-frying it.

Another German dish that I like is Schweinebraten or German roast pork. I don't eat this dish very often, and to be true I had also never made Schweinebraten myself till today. It turned out it's not very hard at all to make.

I looked up the recipe from Die echte deutsche Küche (The real German Cooking) cooking book given by my mother-in-law, but I added a few more ingredients to my liking.

Ingredients

• 600 gr pork shoulder
• 1 onion, sliced
• 2 tsp paprika powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbs chicken stock powder
  
• Salt and pepper
  
• 1.5 cup white wine (or beer)
  
• 1 tbs plum mousse (optional)

What to do

• Rub the pork all over with paprika powder, chicken stock powder, garlic powder, salt, pepper and plum mousse.
• Place the onion slices at the bottom of the roasting pan.
  
• Add 1.5 cup white wine.
• Place the pork on top of the onion slices.
• Cover pan with foil and roast the pork for 1.5 hours.
• The gravy: Remove the roasted pork after 1 hour. Strain the pan juices from the roasting pan. Add stock, pepper, sugar and white wine to taste. I used Saucenbinder to thicken the gravy - Saucenbinder is like flour, so if you don't have it, just mix a bit of flour with water then pour it in the gravy.
  

Slice the roast pork and serve with anything that you like, e.g. potato dumplings, green beans, Sauerkraut, etc. You can also eat Schweinebraten slices with bread or rolls for breakfast. Very yummy!

Today's is the 3rd of October, a public holiday in here, since it's the German Reunification Day. I doubt that this day means a lot to most Germans nowadays, however this day is a quite special day for me because the 3rd of October was the day when I first got to know my husband. It's been ages ago....! We started as friends and a few years later we started going out. The fact that now we're husband and wife is actually quite weird and funny in a way. Well, however, just to celebrate this day, which also coincides with the German reunification day, I decided to have something German - a quite typical German breakfast : Brötchen (rolls) with an assortment of Schinken (hams) and Wurst ( sausages). There are of course many types of hams and sausages in Germany and I would love to show them all, unfortunately we're only a household of two so it's quite impossible and absurd to buy too many sorts of sausages and hams - they would have gone bad before we've had the chance to eat them.

I used to think it weird and boring, just eating plain rolls with sausages or hams. But I think it's really a matter of getting used to it. After some time I grew to love this kind of breakfast - although I do like variation. If it's just a roll with one type of ham or sausage, then I would still find it not that very appetising.

Left: rote Wurst (red sausage), Frühstuckschinken (breakfast smoked ham) and Gyros Schinkenbraten (cooked ham, Gyros flavour).
Right: Slices of cooked egg, rote Wurst and Leberwurst

One of my favourite toppings for my rolls is called Leberwurst - it's a liver paté mixed with different types of herbs. You can see it pictured on the right handside, next to the salami-looking sausage.

That's it for now... For lunch I intend to make "four-flavour dumplings". Well, let's hope that it's going to be a success, so that I can also blog about it ;-)!

I made this duck dish by combining three different fruits for the sauce: plum, green grapes and apples. I used plum mousse given by mother-in-law to rub the duck, then I added apple juice and some green grapes to be baked together with the duck.

I have to ask my MIL how she made the plum mousse, because it made the duck dish taste sooo good! It's sweet, sour and of course plumy in taste. It has the consistency of marmalade but coarser, it still has some small pieces of plum goodness...

The magic plum mousse from my MIL ;-)

I chose Kartofellpuffer (German potato cakes) as the accompaniment to the dish - well, it's actually because I had a small packet of ready-made Kartofellpuffer in my fridge that had to be used ;-). The Germans don't usually eat Kartofellpuffer with duck, they normally eat it as snack as it is, with smoked salmon, apple mousse or with icing sugar. But since I still cannot really imagine eating potatoes with sugar, or something sweet, I like to have it as an accompaniment to savoury dishes. So here you go...Duck with Kartofellpuffer...!

Ingredients

• 2 duck thighs
• 4 tbs plum mousse (you can use plum marmalade)
  
• 150 ml apple juice
• 250 ml white wine
• 10-15 green grapes
  
• 1.5 tbs Maggi/Knorr chicken stock
• Pepper

What to do:

• Rub the duck with plum mousse, maggi stock and pepper.
• Add the apple juice, white wine and grapes
• Bake in the oven for 2 hours at 180 degrees.
• To make the sauce: After 2 hours, Remove the duck to a platter. Pour the remaining duck liquid into a saucepan. Add 1 tbs of flour (mixed with a bit of water) to thicken the sauce. Add salt/pepper/sugar to taste - normally you don't need to add anything anymore.

Serve the duck with potato cakes (or any other carbs of your choice), the fruit sauce and green grapes.

Gebratene Ente mit Knödel und Rotkohl or Roast Duck with Potato Dumplings and Red Cabbage is my all time favourite German food. You can also get the variation of this dish with goose, which tastes just as good. It's actually also a typical Christmas dinner in Germany, however, I like to make this dish from time to time, even though it's not Christmas, because I just love this dish...!

My German mother-in-law makes the best roast duck (no, I am NOT exaggerating!), and I like to take a look at her when she's preparing this dish. So, even though I am not German, the taste of my Gebratene Ente is quite authentic - so, you don't need to worry in case that you want to have a try at making this dish...:). However, I didn't make my own Knödel (potato dumplings) and Rotkohl (red cabbage) from scratch. With so many good instant packages of Knödel and Rotkohl around, the inner lazy me of course just prefers to take the easy way. I did try making Knödel from scratch sometime ago, but to be honest, I don't notice a big difference between the homemade and instant dumplings, so now I just prefer to buy the ready made dumplings and red cabbage, especially because they just taste so good...! If you live outside Germany, you might have difficulty finding instant German potato dumplings and red cabbage. Take a look at these links if you want to make them from scratch: Rotkohl and Knödel. (Update: For people outside Germany, I found out that you can buy instant Knödel from Amazon.com, just click the link!).

The potato dumplings package and a glass of red cabbage. You still need to add a few things to make the red cabbage taste better, such as Schweineschmalz (pork lard), slices of onion, red wine, apple juice, balsamico vinegar, bay leaf and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes under low heat.

Ingredients

Roast Duck

• 2 Duck drumsticks
• 200 ml chicken stock
• 100 ml apple juice
• 150 ml white wine
• 1/2 apple, sliced
• 3 bay leaves
  
• Pepper

Add all ingredients in an ovenproof container. Roast the duck at medium temperature (150 C) for 2.5 - 3 hours. Check it from time to time and if you notice that the liquid is almost gone, add more apple juice and wine - very important, because this liquid will be used for making the sauce.

Sauce
Take the juice from the duck, let it boil, add 1 tsp of flour (to thicken the sauce) and 100 ml heavy cream. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Serve the duck with red cabbage, potato dumplings and the sauce.

This dish tastes especially good with red wine. Enjoy!