I am going to my Austrian friends house tomorrow and she makes an amazing cake called a NussTorte. It is basically breadcrumbs, whipped cream, sugar and a handful of crushed hazelnuts. I will get the recipe. She doesn't make the expensive versions w/ tons of ingredients although if you have an old bottle of liqueur you can add a slug but the important thing is it is just as good without and a cheaper treat.
My Brother lives in Germany and is married to a German woman. He works as an executive chef. I am going to challenge him to come up w./ some real budget recipes using real budget ingredients.
Here are some-
German Filled Pancakes
250 g flour
1 tbsp salt
2 eggs
400 ml milk
butter, oil to bake them
Dough
- Sieve flour into a bowl, add salt, milk, eggs and mix well.
- heat enough butter in a skillet and pour some batter into it, pancakes should be thin, so don?t use too much batter.
- fry on each side.
- take aside in the warm oven.
Now fill w/ whatever you have in the fridge or pantry- slices of cheese or packaged ham w/ handful of cooked peas; cheese and onion; onions and mushrooms fried together; courgettes fried w/ tomato or a few slices red pepper; spring onion, sliced and fried potato chunks with parsley.
German Pumpkin/Squash soup-
4 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion
500 g pumpkin meat
2 medium sized potatoes
125 ml milk
1 l vegetable broth
100 g fresh spinach leaves (a bag of them can have leftovers frozen)
150 g rice
salt, pepper
4 tbsp cheese (any type of decent strength)
- Boil rice.
- Chop onions fine; cup pumpkin meat into cubes.
- Peel potatoes and cut into cubes.
- Fry onions and pumpkin in olive oil, add potatoes.
- Add milk and broth, bring to a boil, then let it boil on low heat until pumkin meat is soft.
- Add spinach, let it boil for another 2 minutes on low heat.
- Puree the soup through a sieve or with a mixer.
- Then mix the soup with the rice and bring it to the boil; if the soup is too thick add more broth.
- Spice with salt and pepper, serve with the grated cheese. If you have any curry spices these can be added to the soup to make it different. Indeed use this soup method to suit a lot of root vegetables such as swede, parsnips, squash, carrots. Or remove the squash/pumpkin, add loads more spinach and make spinach soup. If you have any nutmeg, grate this in whilst cooking to taste.
Bavarian Speckknödel
5 ounces smoked Bacon
10 ounces day-old white bread or brotchen
1 cup parsley, finely chopped
1 tbsp. milk
2 eggs
white pepper
salt
2 heaping tbsp. flour
2 medium onions
1 tbsp. Butter
Cut smoked bacon into finely diced pieces. Chop day old bread/brotchen
into 1 inch chunks. Wash parsley, shake dry and chop finely. Fry bacon
in saucepan until golden brown. Remove from pan and set aside.
Peel onions and dice. Melt butter in pan and saute onions until golden
brown and set aside.
Add bread chunks to bacon fat and fry until light brown on all sides.
Remove bread from pan, place in mixing bowl and allow to cool. In a separate
bowl, stir together milk, eggs and pepper. Pour over bread and mix well.
Let stand for at least 3 hours.
Combine the flour, bacon, onion and bread-egg mixture and stir together.
Make sure the ingredients are well blended. Dampen hands and form 8 dumplings
from mixture. Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot. Carefully place
dumplings in boiling water and leave in for 15-20 minutes
Remove dumplings from boiling water and allow water to drain. Arrange
dumplings on a platter and sprinkle with bacon.
Good rib sticking stuff for Winter and suitable for toddler/child palates. Parsley freezes so if you can get a fresh bunch then keep it wrapped in wet paper in the salad chiller for a week or freeze leftovers straight away. All three of these recipes will suit added parsley garnishes as will anything w/ fish. I have tried to choose recipes that share ingredients such as butter/milk/flour/bacon so nothing is wasted.