Rinderrouladen-Beef olives in a paprika mushroom sauce in the slow cooker

I was buying some steak at my local butchers and piled up right next to the piece of entrecote from which the steaks where going to be cut, a good 1.5cm is my standard entrecote weighing in at 350 -400g, were Rinderrouladen. I said they look very nice ,I think I will have 2 of them.

As the next couple of days would be a bit hectic, I thought I would cook in advance for a couple of meals.

The Rouladen

so the ingedient  for 2 people are:

2 large Rouladen cut from the rump of a well hung piece of beef (hee hee)

The rest automatically follows in varying proportions depending on supply and demand.

100g speck or airdried ham (I made one of each)

2 tea spoons of mustard (I used a one from the firm Altenburger, it is specially made for rouladen)

12 fresh sage leaves

1 Spreewalder gerkin sliced longways into thin sticks

1 banana shallot sliced the same as the gurkin

Salt and pepper

For the sauce.

1 good handful of freeze dried vegetables

100gr  cooked beechwood smoked pork belly diced fine

2 teaspoons of marigold vegetable bouillion

1 level tea spoon of tomato paste

1 heaped te spoon of mild paprika paste

1 roasted paprika (out of a jar) sliced in strips

1 onion diced

2 cloves of garlic diced

50g of schinken speck (cured  raw ham but with a good layer of fat)

150gr of small mushrooms (or lager ones, diced or sliced)
1 table spoon of oil

1 gerkin diced

1 bay leaf and sprig each of rosemary, thyme and oregano


Lay the beef out on a board, salt and pepper both sides.

Spread each with the mustard.

Top of this comes the speck or air dried ham (some use boiled ham) on top of this place the sage leaves
Now place half of the sliced gerkin and shallot at one end of the roulade.

fold the  long sides inward  to make a uniform oblong, then roll it up to make the rouladen form.

Pin the end flaps with a needle (or tie with kitchen thread, or there are special rings on the market to make this even easier) and do the other exactly like the first or even better as you now have got the hang of it.

Put the freeze dried in the slow cooker (SC), along with the cured  cooked belly

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add the onion, then the speck, then the garlic, saute all together until the onion is translucent and the speck just starting to colour.

Add this to the SC on top of the rest of the sauce ingredients, leaving as much of the oil behind as possible.

Put the bouillion stock along with the tomato and paprika paste into a measuring jug and fill with 330 ml of boiling water, mix well and pour this into the SC.

In the same pan that the onions etc. had been fried in now brown the rouladen all round.

Add these to the SC, add the sliced paprika and the small mushrooms whole. Add all of the herbs.

Put the rinder rouladen on top of all the lot and push down as far as possible (don't worry about them not being covered in liquid as they will cook in the moist air that is formed under the sealed SC cover.

Now pop on the lid  set to high and leave to cook for 3 hours or 4 or 5 it doesn't matter as the SC will not dry out)

I made champ, Savoy cabbage in a speck, onion, crème fraiche sauce to go with this along with some fresh minted broad beens.

It was a nice change from the currywurst, bratwurst, chips and frikadellen over the past few days, that I had eaten on the hoof at various carnival parades.

Savoy with shallot, speck in a crème fraiche sauce.

Fry some speck (or smoked bacon) along with a sliced shallot, very finely slice some Savoy cabbage add this and saute briefly (I like mine still with a bit of crunch) add a carton (150g) of crème fraiche. salt and pepper and a few scrapings of nutmeg (I like nutmeg, so a couple more for me). Bubble up and it's ready to serve)

Champ (no secrets here)

Boiled the floury spuds in well salted water  until just starting to break, pour off the water (I boil mine in a sieve attachment), return back to the hot pan , cover with a clean tea towel and place the lid on top, this will remove any excess moisture. next squeeze through a ricer, add some butter and a little cream, add a good handful of finely sliced scallions (spring onions) salt and peper to taste.  Turn out into a dish , make a well in the middle and fill with melted butter.

Fresh minted broad beans.

Freshly shelled broad beans, boiled in salted water along with  a desert spoon of dried mint (I find that dried mint works better in this case)

And as they say in Germany Guten Appetit

Karneval not in West Rio, but in Westphalia

This Thursday was not like any other Thursday in the year, it was Altweiberfastnacht in Rietberg. Rietberg is so small that it doesn't appear on larger maps, it is a sleepy town to the East of Gütersloh , famous in the region only for its geese and chicken breeding AND once a year its Altweiberfestnacht

It all starts out quite nice and peaceful, a bit of a breakfast for the Ladies on the last Thursday before the start of Lent, Called Altwieberfastnacht. I say start because by the time the processions are all in the right order and the groups have been extricated from one another, the girls are quite obviously getting merry. The scissors are starting to do their snipping, don't think you can get away with not wearing one; there are always belts and shoe laces to be cut. Now why I ever thought that the Rietberger altweiber would start at 11:11, I do not know, to hell with tradition, it was to be 11 minutes past 3, I had arrived well ahead of time as I wanted to take a few photographs of the scene of the crime prior to the crime taking place.

It was a fantastic day and I went along the river bank snapping some of the bird life (not the ones that where later to be snapped.)




taking a late breakfast or early lunch





obviously something didn't agree with this lady





I then walked through the Altstadt, which was in the last throws of preparation. (All shop’s closed at midday and all pubs open, the beer stands and the food stands all ready for action. I walked to the Rathaus and took a few photographs of it and the adjacent church; this is after all a religious event. (How! what? did I hear you say)

I paid my not quite compulsory entrance fee and got my Reitberg karnevals button (that's it at the top of the blog), I do believe I have last years somewhere around. I then moved to the other end of the street (Rietberg Altstadt is all of 500 meter long). There was the banner showing the way to the festival tent.

There the girls had started to come out of the Festzelt (event tent) where they had been Frühstücken (breakfasting) since 11:00 ahh so that was meant by starting at 11:11, not the procession but the partying (only women allowed in the tent).



a group of lady builder, obviously had a little something stronger than tea for breakfast



I returned to my warm place directly across from the Rathaus and waited, the Narren Prince and Princess done their thing, greeted everyone in rhyme.

Down the street came the lead band, trumpeters trumpeting and drummers drumming.

This was leading the Altweiber all dressed as Ice Princesses (well at their age it was more perma-frost than ice, hee hee). In front was their elephant towing a cage, no, THE cage.

They came to halt direct in front of the Rathaus stage; they then stormed the stage taking over the workings of the commune for the next 24 hours. Head Altweiber Astrid read out the proclamation, again all in rhyme, in which she poured scorn, discredit and satirical humour on the whole of the local, regional and national politicians (male of course).

This done the white bed linen flag was flown from the Rathaus tower signaling that the town of Reitberg was now in safe hands of the fairer (sic) sex.

The procession was formed of over 100 foot groups of women dressed in various costumes, most of which are made in meticulous heimarbeit (home handwork) by knitting groups, skittle clubs, card players or just a few neighbours that enjoy a good hearted day out.

That is for them, not for us poor men, we must put up with all manner of abuse both verbal and physical. I was unfortunately standing a little too close to the Ice Maidens, they grabbed me and quite unexpectedly (wink wink) whipped out a pair of scissors and snip, off came my tie. I was then unceremoniously bundled into the cage in which was the Queen of the Ice Maidens.

The ransom that must be paid for release is €5.- for the Altweiber Karneval fund, a slug from the magic elixir bottle (this is to make you a good husband and provider for the coming year), Woh, woh thrice woh, but worsts of all you have to kiss Queen Astrid, yuk yuk, spit spit

I now had to battle my way through the masses back to my place at the Rathaus, of course now occupied by another, not to worry, I wandered along the street to the starting point taking photos of the various groups.



I wonder what type of club these ladies where in!!!!



until I reached the river Ems, crossed the bridge and back into normality (if there is such a thing over the next 5 days.)

I then made my way back to Rheda-Wiedenbrück, to make ready for the evenings festivities when the whole pack descended on the Altstadt and filled the pubs and tents set up to satisfy their thirsts and music to satisfy their dancing needs. I do believe I made it home at about 01:30.

A pot roast pheasant and feathers for a trout

Well I was stopping off at my very good friends Marga and Ewald in Bonn on my return from my Christmas run around. I was actually there to pick up my camera that I had left by mistake on the way down to France the previous year. But it is always smashing to see them Marga was my first Land-lady in Rheda when I came here 19 years ago, she runs an old peoples home on the outskirts of Bonn and I have spent many wonderful times there. (all right you lot stop it, I am not in need of looking after, JUST YET).

We always have a nice evening either in the Wintergarten or in the Kaminzimmer. The ritual is always the same, Ewald cooks steak and makes a salad from his own field,this is done around the kitchen table over a bottle of  local wine, that Ewald has searched out from the winzers of the  near by Ahr region.

The Ahr wines are some of the lesser known German wines, as the vinyards only produce a small quanity. There have been vine yards in this part of Germany since the legions of Rome came through and planted the vines in the Eifels volcanic soil, this area of the eifel still has warm spars and volcanic hot spots and every so often there will be a bit of a mini earth quake. Though there are no internationally known wines or great vintages, they produce some very pleasant light reds.

But back to the Kammer-zimmer small talk, we got on talking about fishing which is one of both Ewalds and my great passions, I was inquiring about his next angling trip, (he has done the British columbia rivers, Alaska and has been a regular in Irland) he said that he and his pals where off to North Bavaria on the river Wisent to do a bit of  wild brown trout fly fishing over the Whitsuntide (Pfingstwoche). Alas he said that his friend, fly fishing pal and flytier in chief "Willi" had because of the lack of niederwild been unable to get any pheasant feathers to tie their favorite fly's. I said I would see what I could provide when I got home to Westphalia. I am sure that he thought that due to lateness of the evening and the corpius amount of Ahr grape juice that I would forget.

 Now not forgetting that this was 9th Jan and the pheasant season closes on the 18th, I did forget! But one of my hunting pals at work happened to say that his dad had a shoot on the last day of the season, a dim light became a beacon and ping, bingo my promise to Ewald sprang into mind. I said, I want, no I must have a pheasant, what time is the shoot?

The star of the show

So now we have our pheasant, lets start with the plucking and skinning, I would normally skin a pheasant, as I am not a great lover of pheasant skin., I also tend to pot roast my birds as they are in the main cocks and many are not all that young.

This time as it was primarily the feathers that I was after, I started by plucking the ones that I wanted mainly the tail, ruff, head and wing feathers.

 bit of a pull

out came the tail and wing feathers

Next when all the useful feathers removed the skinning

Skinning the bird

Finished skinning, the waste feathers to be disposed of.

The plucked, drawn and freshly bathed pheasant, notice the shot trail across its breast

Vacuum packing for the freezer

2 weeks ago Linda came down for the weekend, it was cold and icy, so I though, a nice pot roast pheasant would be just the job for Sunday lunch. I had removed the pheasant from the freezer to thaw out nice and slow on the balcony, but it was that cold I had to take it in and thaw it out in the warmer fridge.

That done on Sunday morning, I set about preparing the pot roast. I first salted and pepered inside and out, sprinkled with a good desert spoon full of game spices, heated up some neutral oil in my trusty cast iron casserol and browned it all over.

Removed and added  a chopped up onion with a 100g of juniper smoked pork belly (pre-cooked) sautéd this until the onions translucent.

Next added some sliced carrots, white of a small leek and sliced mushrooms, coloured these, added a 1/4 of a lemon, placed the bird on top, sprinkled with rosemary from the grinder, added a sprig of time and a sprig of parsley complete with stalks, poured in a liter of good homemade chicken stock.

put the lid on and popped into the oven at 180°C for 2 hours. The result was a moist, falling off the bones, tender as hell delicious pot roast pheasant

Strained the liquid through a funnel strainer, added a good 1/4L of Riesling and reduced, checking taste at the end, (it didn't need any additions).

This was served with the floury potaoes and riesling sauerkraut (the rest of the riesling for the sauce was used to do this) along side some very nice snow pea pods just sauted with a bit of speck.

I really did enjoy this as did  Linda, and I am now looking forward to Ewalds part of the bargain, some wild brown trout .