0. Introduction

Edit 2025-09-26: Typing & punctuation errors as well as some grammar mistakes and word repetitions corrected. Also: Phrasing improved and a few more logos added.

Some people still keep complaining that I’m not posting enough stuff recently. Like, interesting stuff. Yeah, I know, I’m not, because there just isn’t anything interesting happening around here right now! So you shall get a new article that has nothing to do with what this weblog is about. Just because. Here you go:

Like probably many other people who weren’t used to cooking, I was… let’s say “encouraged” to try it during the COVID pandemic. Only getting Pizza and Kebab via delivery while being locked up at home got boring pretty quickly and instant meals aren’t very fulfilling in the long run either. Plus, that stuff just doesn’t taste good. Back in the day I used to find recipes kinda too vague to follow. As a tech guy I am used to very precise and highly specific manuals. Cooking recipes aren’t that, given it’s more art than science I suppose. Luckily, experience can fix that, and pretty quickly as well.

What follows comes in chronological order.

1. Simple Ramen

The first attempt was to make some simple Ramen. I chose this because I could use instant Ramen noodles and spices as a base to just upgrade a little, making them an easy starting point. All I added was set up a kombudashi broth (briefly boiled seaweed and fish flakes) and added the instant Ramen stuff and some simple toppings to that. The most complex part would be the Ajitsuke Tamago – marinated Ramen eggs. My marinade consists of soy sauce, Nihonshu (Sake), Hon Mirin, garlic, finely sliced ginger, and 1 – 2 pieces of star anise. Sometimes I mess up the soft-boiled eggs a little bit, but here are some successful results, this was the very first attempt:

 

For the next two attempts that I made two weeks apart from each other I omitted marinating the eggs. I don’t remember why exactly, maybe I was just too lazy or didn’t have the additional, Japanese ingredients at the ready:

 

2. A failed Pizza

The next thing was Pizza. But not normal, Italian Pizza, but a version that my late grandmother had created. It was nothing at all like that super-thin dough with but traces of toppings on top. She used yeast dough, so the result would be about 1 – 1½ cm thick. Then tomato paste and another cm of [Leberkäse] (there is no exact English translation for that) or even [Käseleberkäse]. And then the rest, so ham, cheese, olives, onions, paprika, etc.

Having a larger piece means you’d have to run around the block for the rest of the day to lose all those calories.

This was a failure however, as I had made a critical mistake:

The mistake: When I put herbs into the freshly kneaded dough, I also added salt. That was before rising the dough. Hint: Salt kills yeast bacteria. Dead yeast bacteria aren’t particularily helpful when it comes to rising dough. It looks a bit as it should, but the result was still a catastrophe. The dough was ruined, so I only ate the toppings and threw the dough into the compost (as much as I hate throwing food away), it was an inedible, compact mass.

Well, mistakes were unavoidable I guess.

3. Fish

Sadly, I didn’t make photos of my attempts to fry bass and trout, even though that ended up rather well. In any case, for now let’s have some fish soup with lots of mashed tomatos, tomato paste, paprika and some Zander (that can barely be seen in the photo). This is a really simple dish to make, just boil the tomato juice, add herbs to your liking; Rosemary and a larger amount of thyme in my case. Also some salt and real, red Kampot pepper. The red, ripe variety has a (very!) slightly fruitier taste than green / black pepper, which is picked while still unripe. Don’t mistake red pepper with the pink peppercorns they put in pepper mixes, that’s from a different plant! Red pepper fits vegetables and especially fish very well. Or so I think at least:

4. Meat

The next step had to be meat. I went for certified organic meat, with the first example being leg of lamb. I need to pick and prepare my meat carefully, as I suffer from quite a significant lack of saliva (long story). So swallowing very dry foods such as lean pork is very hard if not impossible in my case. Lamb on the other hand is pretty juicy. Also, I found some chanterelles in my granny’s freezer, which became the side dish together with an onion. Spices were salt, black pepper, mustard, the before-mentioned onion, thinly cut garlic and the obligatory thyme and rosemary. I didn’t go all out with the heat, so I had it set to ⅔, which seems to be getting me the best results. The chanterelles were fried separately, the onion together with the lamb:

I was shocked to see how well this turned out. With very, very little in terms of experience mind you. The meat – being of a very high quality – was quite tender! I had picked that medium-rare style to further overcome my swallowing issues, but I also like the taste better than that of say medium or god forbid well-done meat. The gravy consists of fat, some olive oil with a bit of fatty butter for frying, now-fried mustard and freshwater added to the pan after removing the meat.

Some guy on the Internet told me that he didn’t consider frying lamb so briefly an option, he only knows braised versions, so he said. So I looked that technique up on the web as well. My idea was: Throw lamb and root vegetables (carrots, parsley root, celery root, onions, potatoes) into a large pan, fill it up with port wine and lamb stock and leave it in the oven for 2 – 3 hours. I had no port wine however, but I did still have Nihonshu and Hon Mirin leftovers, so… yeah. I just used those. I had just enough left back then and they had to be used up anyway. First I prepared the meat, the herbs, garlic, butter and tomato paste and fried the veggies including some floury potatoes from the years’ first harvest:

 

So much for the preparation steps, on to the actual braising. What can’t be seen in the pictures is that I covered the pan with aluminium foil as to not lose too much moisture. Here we go:

 

Could’ve made the serving a bit more presentable I guess, but taste-wise I’m happy to say that using Nihonshu and Hon Mirin as (weird) replacements for port wine did indeed not ruin the dish. Also doesn’t somehow make it “feel Asian”. This is actually very good, because it means I have found another use for those left-over alcohols from making those Ramen eggs.

Now let’s switch to beef! Usually, beef means trouble for me (just like lean pork does), but there are a few exceptions. And one of those is the ribeye steak. Here it is even more important for me to pick the certified organic variety, because those cuts are much more finely marbled with fat. That, and picking one that has a nice, big fat eye. Sadly I forgot to take an image of the raw meat, but anyway, here we go:

 

While cooking I suddenly got a strangely intense craving for eggs and still had a bit of time left before the meat would be done, so hence I ended up with those two sunnies on top of the meat. At first I was a bit worried that I might’ve fried the steak for a bit too long, but surprisingly the end result was very close to perfect, best one I’ve produced so far! That was two or three weeks ago. Like for the leg of lamb, I had the heat set to ⅔.

That pattypan squash came directly from the garden, so it was very fresh when I made this. First time I ever had pattypan, actually. It’s quite crisp and has a nice, refreshing taste, although I have a hunch it might be a better match for fish than meat.

5. The 2025 Zucchini flood

Next comes a part of this years’ Zucchini madness. It seems Zucchini loves cooler, wetter weather, because that was what the entirety of our July looked like this year. And the mere two Zucchinis we had planted this year had simply exploded out of their patches. When I made the below dish, I had eaten nothing – literally nothing! – but Zucchini for an entire week already! Fried zucchini, steamed Zucchini, ugh. This was starting to border on malnutrition, so I added some tomatoes, minced meat (mixed pork and beef) and some cheese to make filled Zucchini:

 

I guess I made a few minor mistakes here. First, if you look closely at the first picture – so the top left one –  you may notice that there are little yellowish “sticks” in there. That’s butter. An attempt to add fat and juiciness. Did it work? Maybe. I guess I need more of them for effect though. At least twice as much.

Second, I chose “Geheimratskäse”, a local brand of butter cheese for the topping. That’s a very fatty, soft cheese that is however also very mild when it comes to its taste. I should’ve probably chosen some Alpine cheese or maybe some Emmental cheese with 6+ months of ripening. It was lacking that distinct kick that you get from slightly stronger, harder sorts of cheese with longer ripening periods. Not bad, mind you, but there clearly is room for improvement.

This was followed by Zucchini soup just the next day (ugh…):

I mean, let’s face it: It looks utterly boring. And don’t get me wrong, I love Zucchini, but at that point I’ve had (almost) nothing but Zucchini for eight days or so, so bleh… (I still liked the soup though, to a degree). The salad was an amateurish attempt at Greek Tzatziki, could’ve done that better. Well, next time, then!

Finally I made a simple and apparently primitive dish. Just breaded Zucchini – yeah, again –  (remember the zucchini explosion? There was STILL more of this!), hah. In any case, I invested some extra work in the breading here. First, a photo:

Breading things is probably an exclusive German and Austrian (maybe Swiss?) thing, I guess? So you drown the stuff in wheat flour (rye flour might be an option though, need to try that), then in scrambled eggs, and then typically in wheat-based breadcrumbs. This is where I upgraded things a bit. First, I added a lot of Parmesan cheese as well as a lot of sweet paprika powder on top of some garlic powder and a bit of salt and red Kampot pepper to the breading. And then I just fried it in a pan using olive oil.

Sure, it was not the best of meals. And – like all others so far – not vegan either, given there’s cheese in it. Not that I care, really. But this is like, super-primitive, right? But with all those upgrades to the breading, it was actually quite enjoyable even if a bit too spicy because I overdid it with the pepper a little. I gotta modify and retry this, maybe with more cheese.

One more – pretty large – Zucchini left in the garden. Cracking my knuckles already!

6. You got a sweet tooth instead? I got you covered!

So you are more into sweet than hearty and spicy things? Alright, here is another one out of grandma’s kitchen! Or at least, almost. In summer, she used to sometimesmake apricot and Damson plum dumplings, where Damson means the European plum variety, not the Asian fruit of the same name. What made me fall in love with those dumplings wasn’t just the sweetness, but the awesome dough she produced. When I grew older I learned that this was curd cheese dough. It’s made from – obviously – curd cheese, but also wheat (I actually used spelt flour instead), vanilla sugar, semolina, eggs and warm butter. Hm, I’m thinking I could maybe add a shot of milk to it as well, maybe the fattier, tastier sheep version. It’s like regular milk, but on steroids.

Anyway, I did not use my grandmothers’ recipe here, simply because I do not have it. But, I got a recipe from a newspaper, originally from a restaurant in my country, and those guys likely didn’t get two Michelin stars for nothing! The recipe was probably published for advertising purposes, because it came with a large article about the restaurant itself. But hey, whatever. A free Michelin-star-level recipe that has survived generations unmodified? Sure, why not!

The fruits all came from my garden by the way, just like the Zucchini. Doesn’t get any more fresh than this.

The original recipe is for apricot dumplings specifically, and yup, it too is based on curd cheese dough! My mum – and she doesn’t like sweet things at all – once made some for me upon my request. She used potato dough. Really, mom, I love you and all, but… just no. After that – for the sake of experimentation – I requested some dumplings from my grandma, but this time with choux pastry. That was not bad, but all in all, curd cheese dough it has to be! Anyhow, here’s the result, this was actually my very first time that I made dough (aside from that failed pizza), so I expected failure. But thank god, there weren’t any catastrophes this time around:

 

Oh my god, it really worked!

But: Some of you may notice something here and become a bit concerned. People tend to warn me about the stones. You should remove them, because they’re dangerous! Yet, my grandma never did. Time for some research: Is there any danger? Actually, potentially, yes! The stones contain Amygdalin, which reacts to produce hydrocyanic acid via a multi-stage chemical reaction in your body. Hydrocyanic acid is a potent cell toxin that results in O₂-deficiency on the cellular level throughout your entire body! So, you’d be suffocating your body on the cellular level?! People are especially concerned about cracked stones (can happen during cooking), because of toxin leaking out into the pulp.

Yet, my grandma never removed the stones. Why did that never harm us, even when stones did eventually crack open? More research, and… truth is, the amount of toxin that you ingest in such cases is absolutely minimal. Even if you eat three dumplings, all with broken stones inside their fruits, you wouldn’t feel a thing. What you would have to do to actually, seriously harm yourself is to break any unbroken stones and then swallow a few of them whole! No person in their right mind would do something like that. And if you do, I shall nominate you for the Darwin award!

The original recipe had instructed me to replace the stones with sugar cubes, but I consider that to be too sweet for my taste. I like that kinda sweet + sour thing you get from the apricots as-is. So I left the stones alone.

Quick word about the breading: It’s bread crumbs made from wheat with sugar added and then fried in lots and lots and lots of butter. And no, we cannot become friends if you use low-fat butter here. Like. Seriously. Don’t. It’s wrong.

And now, with the apricots all gone it’s plum season! Hence I redid the dumplings, but with the Damson plums I mentioned:

 

They did not taste exactly like the dumplings my grandma used to make. Maybe it was the rum that the recipe told me to add to the water for cooking the dumplings? Or was it the vanilla sugar? I am not sure. But they were very much, pretty darn close. So I guess my late grandma just earned herself two Michelin stars! At least in my book!

If you want to learn the full recipe, just ask in the comments (That is if you can withstand the extreme slowness of this 1996 server). Those dumplings are the only dish that is based on an actual step-by-step recipe after all.

Now to the finals with yesterday’s dish, also a pretty simple one:

7. Potato goulash

This is yet another one that I loved when my grandma made it. Any day that she made this was a good day! It’s quite simple, but what can I say… I can’t help myself, I need this at least once a month or so. This time around I recorded the entire cooking process in a little more detail. And I dared modify my grandma’s recipe in pretty weird ways this time around. Let’s see how that turned out!

First, let’s prepare the ingredients!

 

Yeah, the floury potatoes still have their skin on. I like it that way for texture, but it’s also healthier. More vitamins and fibre and stuff, just like it works with apples. The paprika does not appear in the original recipe, but hey, if lots of the flavour of this dish is supposed to come from paprika anyway, adding more can’t hurt, right? As for the spices: We have tons of marjoram, a mix of basil, parsley, thyme and rosemary, as well as black pepper, garlic powder and wild garlic. Plus another ton of sweet paprika powder.

Let’s continue:

 

So I fried the onions and garlic in a mix of olive oil and butter, then when the onion bits started to get translucent, I added the paprika. When the onion bits started to get brownish, I added the broth. Oh boy, the broth. It should’ve been beef stock, or maybe pork stock mixed with some vegetable stock or something. But I used leftover lamb stock and white wine instead. That’s the modification I mentioned. Also: I made some salad that’s kind of a cultural mashup: Leaf lettuce with cocktail tomatoes and Mozzarella? Screams Mediterranean, and with it “olive oil”, right? Yet, I used Styrian – or “Austrian” by now – pumpkin seed oil. Well, it does not matter at this point I guess.

This oil is very dark green, almost black and has an intense, nutty taste. If your oil isn’t almost black and maybe looks a slight bit brownish, you might have encountered a Chinese counterfeit instead of the real deal. It happens even to salad oils these days.

In any case, you need to test the potatoes for softness using a fork while they are boiling! As soon as they’re easily penetrable, add the Debreziner! Or… add your [Frankfurters] or [Braunschweiger] (smoked liverwurst) instead, which are also viable options after all. In any case, cook it for no more that five additional minutes after adding the sausage parts!

Oh, I should probably explain this; You likely know Frankfurters. Imagine those, then add some smoking, add some spicy paprika for seasoning, and then you get: Debreziner. There you go! They aren’t overly spicy though, just a little extra kick.

The final 5 minutes:

And the result:

And the result? Was it better than the original passed to me by my grandma?

No.

It was still quite good (I’ll have another portion at work tomorrow), but the prominent lamb stock does not harmonise very well with the rest of the recipe, I have to say. Don’t get me wrong, this was by no means “bad”, it just… wouldn’t win any prizes, I guess. I don’t think the white wine hurt, but the lamb stock just isn’t a good fit. So it didn’t quite work out. Beef + vegetable stock again next time.

So much for out-of-context articles. Keep asking for more content, and more of this unrelated stuff will be coming along. 

Ah nooo, wait, I forgot about dessert!

8. Dessert

When most of the other dishes are filled with fat, carbohydrates or even sugars as well as proteins, why not add something reasonably healthy (aside from that Zucchini soup…)? Here you go, this is for dessert. The banana was from a special basket of my supermarket that is meant for stuff like “We can’t make profit off this anymore, because it’s got brown spots on it, so let’s just cut our losses”, and the strawberries were locally sourced in-season:

All done and dusted! And all off-topic. 

Edit 2025-11-30: Let’s extend this.

With what? With two dishes, one from last week on the left and one from yesterday and today on the right:

 

The carp on the left comes bathed in a mustard-lemon sauce with some onions and scallops on the side as well as garlic on top, plus a salad that included some radish and cocktail tomatoes for added colour as well as Styrian pumpkin seed oil together with balsamic white vinegar for its dressing. For the drink on the side we get freshly pressed orange juice, pulp included. Usually, I’d add blood oranges, grapefruit and pomelos to the mix, but this time it was regular oranges only!

On the right side we get a photo taken today, on the first Sunday of Advent in 2025. I made duck soup, which is essentially exactly the same as chicken soup, with just the meat replaced by duck. From an immunological perspective, this brings no up- nor any downgrades; Both are good for you when you are affected with the common cold just the same. That’s folk wisdom or empirical medicine, but there’s also some actual, [scientific proof] for this being the good stuff by now.

But: With the slightly more expensive duck meat, the dish will just taste more hearty, more fulfilling, also a little bit more fatty. Added Umami I suppose. I also add a lot of thinly-sliced ginger. This adds spiciness as well as additional, strong flavour. That part is a make-or-break deal though. If you don’t like ginger, then this is gonna ruin it for you. Immunologically though, ginger is an absolute killer; Not only are its anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-inflammatory as well as anti-cancerous ingredients heat-resistant, but they are also incredibly potent!

If you can, spice things up even more by adding pepper! The spicy piperine inside will add another weapon to your arsenal when it comes to fighting those common colds throughout winter! So, you know chicken soup but never tried it with duck? Go ahead! You’ll be surprised!

Edit 2025-12-19: This isn’t really “cooking” at all, but doesn’t matter. I had the following two plates for breakfast some time this week at my workplace, so here we go:

 

I guess it’s quite strange to eat those things for breakfast, but whatever. It’s home-grown cocktail tomatoes with snack cucumbers on the left and surprisingly also home-grown Kiwano and starfruit on the right. The Kiwano really surprised me, as they come from an arid, desert-like and hence pretty warm part of Africa. And now we grow them in Austria? In greenhouses I suppose, but still. Guess that’s climate change for you.

I never had Starfruit nor Kiwano before, but they’re nice, a pretty light, refreshing taste with only very little in terms of sweetness, especially the Kiwano.

Coffee is a bad fit for those though, so tea it was.

Edit 2026-01-14: Today I had some more veggie snacks in the morning at work, this time some snack paprika and some really good cherry tomatoes from [Frutura in Blumau] (which is quite known for its excellent tomatoes):

At least it’s not always just potato chips and other salty wheat-based snacks.