Category Archives: Main Course

Trout with Rutabaga Puree, Red Carrots and Brussels Sprouts

If you get bored of potatoes in winter, rutabaga is a great alternative. It makes a puree very similar in consistency, although the rutabaga version is lighter due to its lower starch content. I like to add a small garlic clove to the rutabaga while cooking it over low heat, which adds a nice flavor while not overwhelming the rutabaga’s taste. Rutabaga and especially its cooking liquid always remind me of peanuts. It has the sweetness of the peanuts too, which needs some balance that can be adjusted by a fruit vinegar of your choice.

Trout with Turnip Puree, Red Carrots and Brussels Sprouts

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Braised Lamb Knuckle with Quince Sauce and Autumn Vegetables

Winter is the season of braised meat. The secret of braising is pretty simple: use the cheap cuts with a lot of connective tissue and do not trim anything off of them. So ask your butcher please not to trim off anything at all. You can still cut it off on your plate, but if you braise meat long enough, the connective tissue will just disappear. Meat cooks a lot faster than the connective tissues, but if you braise your meat at low temperature for a long long time, the connective tissues are going to melt into the meat and turn the meat moist and soft. That is also the secret of all braised dishes and why they need so much time. I like to prepare them overnight in the oven. This way I don’t have to worry about any burnt parts and if I wake up during the night, I turn the meat around and go back to sleep. And I wake up in the morning with a wonderful scent of braised meat all over my flat.

Braised Lamb Ham Hock with Quince Sauce and Autumn Vegetables

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Char with Asian Style Squash and Brussels Sprouts

Oven baked whole trout or char is one of my favorite dinners. It is simple, fast, delicious and infinitely versatile. Usually, the fish can bought already cleaned and it doesn’t have to filleted. It can be stuffed and flavored with almost any kind of herb, spices or citrus fruits. Also the vegetables can be adjusted according to what you have at home and what vegetables are currently in season. For example, during autumn I prefer to use various mushrooms or fennel and apples. In winter, broccoli with white wine and garlic is great, and also this current combination of butternut squash and Brussels sprouts.

Char with Asian Style Butternut Squash and Brussels Sprouts

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Butternut Squash Risotto

While peeling and cleaning a pumpkin or butternut squash, the skin and the seeds usually get discarded. From one point of view this is somehow understandable, because neither the hard skin, nor the stringy seeds have a pleasant texture. On the other side, they are edible and contain a lot of flavor, so it would be favorable to use the “waste” somehow. I had the idea to add the discarded pumpkin seeds and skin parts to a vegetable stock. The resulting orange colored stock can be added to a butternut squash soup, used for cooking pumpkin cubes or cylinders, which might also be blended into a fine puree – or for making this ultimate butternut squash risotto.

Butternut Squash Risotto

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Pork Belly Glazed with Pine Tree Honey, Green Bean Puree, Vanilla Shallots and White Wine Pears

Similarly to the green bean soup, this dish builds on the traditional combination of the three ingredients: beans, pears and bacon. Due to several modifications, my reinterpretation is pretty far away from the classical way of cooking everything layered in a single pot. Here each component received a unique role on the plate, and I also brought the fourth hidden component, the onions more into the foreground.

Pork Belly Glazed with Pine Tree Honey, Green Bean Puree, Vanilla Shallots and White Wine Pears

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Pork Fillet with Elderberry Sauce and Peach Polenta

Erlangen, the city I live in, is quite unique due to its huge grassland right in the middle of the city. During spring and summer a herd of sheeps is grazing, some parcels are used for wheat or corn production and of course the wonderful grass is regularly collected as animal food for the winter. Every morning on my way to work I ride my bike through this peaceful nature. Right at the outskirts I pass a small lake with giant elderberry bushes. In spring they are almost completely white and full of elderflowers. Now, at the end of summer the bushes turn black from the bending branches of tons of ripe elderberries. Unfortunately most of them are pretty high up and unreachable even with a ladder – but I managed to collect some for a fresh and simple elderberry sauce.

Pork Fillet with Elderberry Sauce and Peach Polenta

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