Smoked trout spread on
dark bread and butter

Two weeks ago I cooked dinner for two dear friends of mine. A fine five course meal with a wild apetizer: a spread made out of boiled potatoes, smoked trout, lemon, olive oil, parsil and a handmade garlic salt.
It is not very intricate to produce and moreover a nice stronger appetizer going very well with aperitifs like sweet wine and a tasteful dinner after it.

The ingredients

1 smoked trout filet – take a fresh one from the market or your lokal fish dealer if possible, cut it into little pieces
1 big boiled potatoe
1/2 peeled apple, grated
4 stalks of parsley finely chopped
5 table spoons of mild olive oil
peel of a half lemon, in very fine slices
garlic salt
black pepper
tea spoon of honey mustard
tea spoon of lemon juice or soft wite vinegar

How to prepare the smoked trout spread

Boil the potatoe in salt water, let it cool down and peel it. Put all the ingredients exept for the trout in a bowl and use a fork to puree everything. It takes a while until all the potatoe pieces have dissapeared. In the end add the trout filet slices. Taste the spread and add more salt and pepper according to your personal preference. Let the spread rest for minimum 2 hours – it needs this time to fully develop its flavour.

Then take small slices of dark crust bred from a very good lokal bakery, butter them generously and add the trout spread on top. Garnish the little appetizers with parsley. Serve them with a strong cava or a sweet wine.

How to produce your own garlic salt

Garlic salt is very easy to produce. I like it very much because it allows to bring a slight, taste-supporting dash of garlic into dishes and underlines all other flavours without overlaying them as normally garlic does.
Take 150 grammes of raw sea salt, chop a clove of garlic finely and put it together in a glass. Let it rest for minumum two weeks. That´s it.

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds

COOKING WITH GAUMENPERLEN NO 6:
Cannelés Bordelais with creme fraiche + gaumenperlen orange jelly.

I love Cannelés. A fine french bakery in form of little cakes from the Bordeaux region. The French say, they were invented on the vineyards. Because the huge amount of egg white used for the clarifictaion processs of the vine there was so many egg yolk remaining in the kitchen that they had to invent a recipy using a lot of yolk. On the other hand the English claimed to have invented them. Nevertheless if these little cakes come form France or Great Britain – there are 100s of recipies, same same but different. 
I tried about 10 of these hundreds I found and as often I decided to establish a mix of the two best ones.
There are various flavours added in the different Cannelés recipies. Some are made with rum, some with lemon peel, some with abricot brandy. I decided to flavour them with orange peel, cover them with sugar powder and serve them with a bit of gaumenperlen orange-cranberry-jelly and a spoon of fat creme fraiche. The guests were very pleased with that version:-)

Here comes my favourite recipy für Cannelés Bordelais

50 cl fresh fat milk
30 grammes butter
2 egg yolk
1 egg
250 grammes sugar
130 grammes flouer
2 vanlilla beans
fresh peel of an organic orange

Heat the milk, the butter and the opened and vanilla beans and the vaniilla pulp slowly up. After the milk has slightly cooked turn the heat down and let it cool down for 2 hours to get the whole aromas aut of the vanilla beans.

Cut the fresh orange peel in very tiny slices.
Stir the eggs and the sugar, add the flour step by step and the milk-vanilla-butter liquid afterwards. Add the orange slices in the end.

The dough has to rest for minimum 24 hours in the fridge. Better is 2 days. The consistence changes within these rest phase and the dough becomes better.
So Cannelés are an easy dessert to prepare.

Baking the Cannelés

What you really need is an adequate cake pan. Even if I am not a fan of silicone baking pans they were the only ones to get. The old fashioned way is to bake Cannelés in very nice single copper forms, but they are so high priced that I decided to convince myself to buy a silicone pan. In former times they used real bee wax to cover the inner side of the pan before they poured the dough into it. What a taste! I definitely have to try this when I get a bee-wachs connection to a Berlin beemaster. The silicone pan should also be covered with a slight baking oil layer.
Turn your oven on, chose the hottest temperature you have. Fill the little Cannelés pans a bit more than over the half with dough. Put it in the oven for about 8 minutes and then turn the heat down to approximately 150 degree (electric).
The Cannelés need to bake slowly round about 1 hour and 10 minutes – depending on the size of pan you bought.

Only fresh!

Take the Cannelés out of the oven, powder them with sugar and serve them with orange jelly and a big spoon of fat creme fraiche. They can be served warm (I like them best freshly out of the oven) and up to 4 hours later. Afterwards they are not really as tasty as before. 
So Cannelés are one of these beloved volatile culinary pleasures you should never keep.

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds