A nice picnic not in the park

The venue with all of the things one needs for a Picnic

Saturday had been planned to do a picnic in the park out at Stocksee listening to music from one of the Schleschwig Holstein Music festival concerts (a yearly event at various locations.), Due to the immobility of one of our members, as well as the threat of inclement weather, we decided to re-venue it, so we sat out on the balcony of one of our members!

The gardens where in full bloom

I made a gazpacho soup, there where salads and chicken meat balls, and a refreshing summer fruit salad, all washed down with a bottle or three of Rosé.

The ingredients for the Gazpacho

2 slices of old bread, cubed and soaked

A cucumber half peeled and chopped

1 red & 1 yellow pepper de-seeded and chopped

600g of ripe tomatoes core and seeds removed

6 shallots, 2 large cloves of garlic all diced

1/2 l of  cold vegetable stock

1l of tomato passata 

2 table spoons of olive oil

2 table spoons of red wine vinegar

good pinch of cayenne pepper

1 tea spoon of smoked sweet paprika

Sea  Salt and pepper to taste

Wring the bread out, add together with shallot, garlic, cayenne , smoked paprika, oil and salt. Blend to a pulp. Now add all the chopped vegetables, blend, add the tomato passata and thin down with cold stock.

Adjust seasoning and refrigerate (I put it in the freezer for half an hour)

For garnish, cube some bread heat Olive oil and fry a garlic clove until it just starts to colour, discard and fry your croutons. dice a red pepper and a yellow pepper also a couple of  shallots or a red onion.

Serve with home made crusty bread 

We had a nice relaxing afternoon, classical music waffting over us as we ate and chatted the afternoon away.

When we got home after a relax on the couch, Linda made us a nice Supper of Fish in chips, the fish was done in a Panko crumb crust, it is slowly but surely taking over from batter or normal bread crumbing for me!

Oh! forgot to say the cod was from my angling trip of about a month ago and was really tasty!


Sunday saw us out in a small fishing village on the Kiel Förde called Möltenort, we had plaice and brat kartofeln with a small side salad, only one fisherman and his inshore boat selling fish (well at least his wife was doing the selling!

The catcher and the caught

Cutter Scholle with bratkartofeln

A bit of a BBQ and a bean and potato salad!

I had bought a couple of large Entecôtes and 2 lamb leg steaks. I put them in marinades on Sunday morning, whilst waiting fot the bread to bake and the trout to smoke.
The Lamb was marinated in  lemon juice, mint, rosemary olive oil. The entrecôte in a mixed BBQ rub with plenty of garlic (have been sleeping with the windows open and wasn't happy not being vapire protected).

I put this in a sealed box (phew did it need it) in the fridge and left it to rewst whilst I went shooting clays and then a couple of pints at my local. when I got in it was over 35°C  and so a quick strip off under the shower, into T-shirt, shorts and flip flops. removed the residue of the beeh sawdust from the smoking, loaded it up with fresh charcoal and using my gas blow lamp flashed up the coals.
Mean time I had shelled the broad beans, I put these into boiling salted water with a bouqette garni  (fresh from my balcony) and a crushed clove of garlic,

 put some very small pre-scrubbed new potatoes on to boil.

 Fried some speck, with a shallot and some diced tomatoes, by this time the beans and potatoes where done, drained, removed the bouquette garni and added the beans to the speck etc, removed the crushed garlic clove and chopped added this along with the small potatoes cut into quarters, added some EVOO, some steiermark pumpkin seed oil, a slug of redwine vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, gave it all a mix and boy did it taste great.

Mean time put an entrecôte and a lamb leg steak on the BBQ.

 Done them no more than 2 minutes the first side and 1 minute the 2nd. just how I like them, sprinkled a bit of Carolins special salt on them. I took out a bottle of cold Rosé from the fridge. Slice of fresh baked bread, boy was that good.

A nice plate of food

smoking of the trout

This Saturday I was up early and as I knew I would be out and about (watching Germany beat Argentina) I was at the markets as the stall holders where putting up their stalls, so I really got the pick of the crop. That done, I went down to the trout lake owned by a footy mate, I could have dipped a hook in and got my own, but that to me isn't sport, the trout are so tame they will bite at anything, I just bought three nice 1 pounders, € 2,- each, had a coffee and chewed the cud with my mate and was back home before the temperature had risen much above 18°C.


 
I made my brine solution 6g salt to 1 ltr of water (4 ltrs in all), added three bay leaves, 10 crushed juniper berries, three crushed cardamom pods and a teaspoon of dried rosemary needles. Popped in the cleaned trout lid on and into the bottom of the fridge for 18 hours. (you can use a stronger brine solution and brine for a shorter length of time).

Sunday morning I was again up bright and early, I made my bread, heated up my smoker, took the trout out of the brine, washed under running water patted dry with kitchen paper. I added my smoking medium to the smoker (beech and herb mixture), put the trout into a hot smoke for 30 minutes and took out when they where done (pull the dorsel fin between thumb and finger, if it comes out with no resistance the fish is done).

At almost the same time the bread was also finished, so I had three fish and one large loaf a cooling on a rack.

In between footy

This weekend was a bit of a footy weekend, but I did mange to get in a bit of baking and smoking some trout.

The bread was a sourdough/yeast  wheat/ rye flour mixture what is called here in Germany Mischbrot.

500 g of strong (505) bread flour
200 g of rye flour
100 g of  rough ground rye grain (called Scrott in Germany)
2 teaspoons of herbs and spices consisiting of
ground fenchel seed, ground marjorum, a twist of chillies, ground rosemary, cumin and anis all ground to a powder
20g of yeast
12g of dried sauerteig powder
500ml of hand warm water
2 teaspoons of runny honey
heaped tea spoon of salt

Mixed all of the flours together with a desert spoon of the mixed herbs and spices, crumbled 20g (half a block) of yeast into the middle of the flour, added the honey to the water, stired until desolved, then added the sour-dough powder and stired added this to the yeast in the middle pulled some flour over it and waited until it started to bubble (this happened almost immediatly), then pulled all the flour into the pond so as to speak, added the salt and mixed on full power with my hand mixer for about 10 minutes,

 covered and left to double in size, gave it another mix for about 5 minutes and left again for about an hour, turned out onto a floured baking tray, formed into an oval and covered for about 30 minutes (until doubled in size).

Popped into an oven pumped up to full heat (sprayed inside oven with water and put a tray of water in the base to make steam) turned oven down to 220°C and after 10 minutes turned down to 180°C. Baked for 30 minutes, gave it a knock, then removed to a cooling tray.

and some nice crusty bread to go with the smoked fish