4 posts tagged “german food”
Ok, so here's what I did after scouring the different recipes that came up when I googled "Flammenkuchen recipe"....
I bought premade pizza dough from my local deli/butcher/liquor store. Not sure why they have there own premade pizza dough balls, but they do. Many of the recipes for flammenkuchen also came with directions for pizza dough, but I am lazy and have a fear of making things with yeast and requiring kneading and rising.
So I thawed it, let it rise, punched it down and spread it out in on a cookie sheet. Then I took a 4 oz container of creme fraiche (I read that you can also use sour cream) and spread it on the dough, like you would with pizza sauce. I topped it with thinly sliced onion and some panchetta (I cut it into small pieces and cooked it over medium high heat for about 5 minutes. I didn't cook it til it was crispy, just cooked through.) I put it in the oven, middle rack at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. And it was yummy.
I still want to find a better crust. The crust on the flammenkuchen we had in Germany was flakier and least yeasty. But this wasn't bad. It was my second attempt. First attempt I used sour cream mixed with cottage cheese and an egg instead of creme fraiche and real bacon bits instead of panchetta. It wasn't horrible, but this one was definitely closer to what we had in Germany. I think the creme fraiche and panchetta made a big difference.
I hope that wasn't too hard to follow. I don't usually use recipes. I look at it, decide what I want to do and then go in that general direction substituting and changing things here and there. So yeah, I need to get back to laundry. No moblogging that until I get it down to a more manageable and less embarrassing state!
Victoria, Sophia and Josiah are home safe from North Carolina. Victoria is so happy with her new chinchilla. Definitely better than a replacement rat she says. We were racking our brains sitting outside the Twin Kiss Ice Cream Parlor on 301 while licking our ice cream cones and sucking down our milkshakes enjoying the beautiful day. At one point, we didn't think we would come up with anything. Victoria even told me I needed to take a picture and stick it on my blog and get your suggestions.
Then suddenly within seconds of each other we blurted out, "ZuZu's Petals!". So ZuZu it is, after George Bailey's daughter on "It's a Wonderful Life", one of our family's all time favorite movies. Instantly we knew we had our name. It was perfect.
ZuZu has a new cage too. Multilevel living. She's going nuts in it. Jumping around like a crazy chilla. Rolling around in her dust bath. She's cracking us up with all her crazy antics.
To change the subject the overeating and indulging continues. We went to a cheap Mexican restaurant for lunch with my brother in law, Rob. I had my first tamale. I'm wondering why I hadn't tried one before. To quote Dora, "Yum, Yum, Yum, Deliciouso!". We also stopped at the Twin Kiss on our way back from picking the kids up in Virginia. We drove an hour south to help cut some drive time off of their father's long drive to and from North Carolina. So anyway, the Twin Kiss, I had a soft serve vanilla cone with chocolate sprinkles. Mmmmm. I totally would've moblogged it, but my phone died. Oh the tragedy!!!!
Oh, oh, oh and just now I took my other ball of pizza dough that I had bought from a small local deli/butcher/grocery/liquor store. They sell there own pizza dough frozen, 2 balls of dough for $1.99. I bought them to try with my flammenkuchen. All the recipes I've found called for pizza dough, usually homemade, but I'm not that brave yet. I have a fear of making breads or anything else that requires the use of yeast and kneading. So anyway, I used one yesterday for that beautiful delicious flammenkuchen (Recipe to come NorthernGeek, I haven't forgotten you!). The other was just sitting in the fridge, and I had the rest of the ingredients to make pizza, so I did. And it is yummy. Steve and I are eating it right now. No picture though, sorry. I'm going to pick up more dough this week and make pizza for dinner one night this week.
I'm off to eat more ice cream and help Steve finish up this pizza. Tomorrow, I'll explain what a "flammenkuchen" is and post a recipe.
My husband knows I have a terrible weakness for ice cream. I finished off my last 100 calorie ice cream sandwich today. I was glad because there would no longer be temptation staring me in the face every time I opened the freezer door. I only buy ice cream every couple of months, or off the ice cream truck one bar at a time. Otherwise, I find myself sitting at the dining room table after the kids go off to school gobbling down a huge bowl.
I have lost a bit of weight since the fall, and would like to keep it that way. I've been indulging a bit much lately and know it is time to pull back the reins a bit, unless I would like to break out a pair of larger pants from my large selection of sizes (c'mon, we all have fat pants, skinny pants, and a few sizes in between....you just never know if you might need those larger sizes ever again). Steve seems to think I still need to gain a pound or two, so he brought me home more ice cream. Not just any ice cream, certainly not my 100 calorie ice cream sandwiches. Oh no, he brought home 270 calorie per 1/2 cup Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
Of course, we all know you can't eat just a half cup of ice cream. Whoever decided a half cup of ice cream was your standard serving size was insane. Although, maybe he was trying to keep us from having a heart attack when we realized (after eating the whole pint) that we had consumed over a thousand calories in one sitting.
So after a wonderful dinner of wonderfully fattening homemade flammenkuchen (well, the dough was store bought, but I rolled it out and cooked the panchetta, thinly sliced the onion and spread on the creme fraiche), I ate a half pint of Ben and Jerry's too.
I can't be too mad at Steve though. He agreed to fill in for a friend's sunday school class tomorrow. Seems this week the lesson is on the husband and the wife and meeting the sexual needs of your spouse. Serves him right!
Steve is waiting for me to finish up so we can watch "Snakehead Terror". We taped it on the Sci-Fi channel earlier today. It looks wonderfully cheesy and is set in Maryland too. I'm a sucker for a good B movie. Hmmm, a bear was just killed by a snakehead fish, or maybe a school of 'em, who knows, but this deserves my undivided attention.
If you could open a restaurant, any kind you want, what would it look like and what's on the menu?
Submitted by A is for Amy.
Oh goodness. That's so hard. I really get frustrated over the lack of good German restaurants and I do make a mean schnitzel. Haven't quite perfected my flammenkuchen yet. Steve and I have talked to my brother in law many times about opening up a steakhouse. My brother in law can grill a steak that will melt in your mouth. I would be in charge of soups and sides. I make awesome cream of crab, cheesy corn chowder, vegetable crab, baked potato, bean, cream of broccoli, chicken rice. You name it, I just love making soup. I think I'm pretty good at it too.
So I guess I would open a steakhouse that also had schnitzel and soup on the menu. And flammenkuchen if I can ever get it right!
