SMBC #4: Pseudo Pancakes Part 2 - Kaiserschmarrn

A loooong time ago we promised here that there would be a second post to explain the phenomenon that random people would stop at our kitchen window to try our food creation. Well, it finally digitalised…

The dish in question is called “Kaiserschmarrn”, a simple but delicious Austrian dish made with pancake batter and combined with the subtle sweet-sour taste of home-made cranberry jam. Even though this popular dish is sweet, it is often eaten as a main course for dinner. Its name is a bizarre combination of the German word for emperor, “Kaiser”, and the word “Schmarrn”, which means nonsense or rubbish in the Viennese dialect. While it is confirmed that Schmarrn is a simple poor-mans-dish, first mentioned in a document in the 16^th century, there are many different legends on the origins of its noble sibling, the Kaiserschmarrn.

The Kaiserschmarrn was most probably invented at the court of the Austrian emperor Franz Josef I (1830–1916). According to one legend, this delicious dish was created in 1854 for the emperor's wife, duchess Elisabeth Amalie Eugenie of Bavaria, commonly known as Sissi. Obsessed with maintaining a thin waistline, Sissi directed the royal chef to prepare only light desserts for her, much to the consternation and annoyance of her husband who loved pastry. Upon being presented with the chef’s confection, she found it too rich and refused to eat it. With a smile Franz Josef tried to safe the situation and replied, “Now let me see what "Schmarrn" our chef has cooked up”. It apparently met his approval as he finished his and even his wife's serving. Thereafter, the dessert was called Kaiserschmarrn across the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Lets now come to the preparation of the Kaiserschmarrn. On the internet one can find many complicated procedures involving baking in an oven and subsequent glazing with caramelised sugar, but this recipe is really simple. For four portions you will need:

• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 4 eggs
• 4 tablespoons of sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 120 g of flour
• about ¼ litre of milk
• raisins at pleasure
• 1 packet of vanilla sugar
• some good cranberry (or plum) jam
• icing sugar

Destroy it! The pancake is torn into bite-sized pieces.

And here is the preparation:

1. Separate the yolks from the egg white. Whisk the yolks with the milk, the salt, the sugar and the packet of vanilla sugar. Add the flour and give it a good mix to obtain a smooth batter. Finally add the raisins. 
2. Whip the egg white till it is nice and firm. Carefully stir it in the prepared batter. Don’t overdo it, too much stirring lets all the small air bubbles escape from the batter.
3. Melt a little butter is a non-sticky pan and pour in some batter. The Kaiserschmarrn has to be quite thick, about double the thickness of a pancake. Bake the Schmarrn on small heat till it is golden brown on the bottom, then turn and bake till the other side is ready. The finished pancake is brown and crisp on the outside and still relatively soft inside.
4. At the end comes the fun part: use your pancake turner to tear the pancake to bite-size pieces, giving the Kaiserschmarrn its characteristic shape. Finally melt a small piece of butter to the pan and toss the pieces of Kaiserschmarrn in it.  
5. Serve the Kaiserschmarrn on a large flat plate, strewn with icing sugar and a few spoon-full of cranberry jam to the side. Traditionally this dish is served with a glass of cold milk. 
   

PS: Don’t worry if the Kaiserschmarrn doesn’t turn out perfect the first time. Some say even good cooks struggle with the preparation of this seemingly simple dish, they don’t know how to make it good and fluffy. Kaiserschmarrn is a dish that is often served in alpine huts, a typical mountain food. And up in the mountains they really know how to make a good Kaiserschmarrn! 

New Series -- QED: Zucchini omelette

 

This is the first post of a new series called QED. No, it is not quantum electrodynamics and we don’t prove a mathematical theorem in cooking science. With this series, we want to show that it is possible to cook Quick, Easy and Delicious meals with the limited kitchenware and fridge space available to the average student in college. The QED series shall become a collection of simple recipes that doesn’t necessitate a load of fancy ingredients or hours of cooking.

This dish is one my mom used to cook in summer with the fresh zucchini from our garden. I like this dish so much because of its taste of gently stir-fried zucchini and because, apart from the zucchini, usually I have all the ingredients in my kitchen cabinet. For two people you will need:

• 2 zucchini
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup of milk
• flour
• herbs (e.g. rosemary, oregano, provencial herbs)
• a clove of garlic
• salt and pepper
• oil
• parmigiano cheese

Whisk the two eggs with the milk and add the flour a little at the time, trying to avoid the formation of lumps. Add as much flour as needed to obtain nice omelette batter, not dense and not too liquid. Press the garlic into the mixture and add the herbs, salt and pepper to taste. Fresh herbs are preferred but any dried herb you can find in your kitchen will do. Don’t be afraid to use quite a bit of herbs, it makes the omelette more savoury.

Cut the zucchini lengthwise in half and then into semicircles. Gently stir-fry them in a hot pan with little oil. Don’t cook them to death, they are best when they start to get just slightly brown but they are still “al dente”.

Fry the omelette on both side till golden brown and top one half of it with the zucchini. Fold over the other half. Finally place on a nice plate and serve with some grated parmigiano on top. Bon Appétit!

PS: If you like you can add small pieces of cooked ham to the batter, which makes the omelette even tastier.

PPS: As I child I loved to eat it with ketchup. It might sound outrageous, but it tastes quite good. Try it. The noble alternative is to decorate the plate with halved cherry tomatoes.

SMBC #2 - Broccoli Lemon Chicken with Cashews; Chilli Tofu with Chicken

Here's the second edition of our SMBC series, this time courtesy of PC.

Ingredients:

General:	Seasoning:	Extras & Decoration:
450g deboned chicken thighs 300g tender stem broccoli 400g rice	1 tablespoon cornflour 1 tablespoon honey 2 tablespoons sesame oil 2 lemons (preferably organic) 1/8 cube of vegetable stock 1 tablespoon soy sauce 2 large garlic cloves pepper and salt	canola oil for frying fresh chilli if you like it hot thin strips of lemon zest handful of cashew nuts

• Start with roasting the cashew nuts in a non-stick pan at medium heat, flipping them over repeatedly so that they don’t get burnt. 

• Next, peel off a few pieces of zest from the lemon using a sharp knife or peeler. Avoid the white part of the rind, it just tastes bitter. Cut the zest into very thin strips, set aside some for decoration. 

• Chop the remaining lemon rind and put it into a bowl together with the finely chopped garlic, the juice from one lemon, honey, soy sauce, sesame oil and salt and pepper to taste. Mix the seasoning thoroughly and add the chicken meat, cut into lengthy chunks, give it a good stir and put it to rest for 10 minutes.

• In the meantime, wash and cut the broccoli if too large. To obtain a nice tasty sauce with the right consistency, dissolve the cornflour and the vegetable stock in a little water and add the juice from the second lemon. Cook the rice in a separate pot.

• Fry first the marinated chicken in a well heated pan with some oil until golden brown and set aside on a plate. Subsequently stir-fry the broccoli with the chilli in the same pan. If the broccoli starts to become brown, add some water. Don’t overcook, the broccoli should retain a nice green colour and remain crunchy.

• Finally combine the chicken meat, the broccoli, the cashew nuts and the corn flour-lemon juice mixture in the pan and heat gently till the sauce thickens.

• A nice way to present the dish is to press the rice into a scoop. With the help of a spoon, arrange the rice hemispheres on the plate and top them with the chicken and some sauce. Garnish with some more cashews and spice it up with the lemon rind strips. 

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Ingredients for the Tofu:
400g firm tofu 150g deboned chicken thighs 2 large cloves garlic 4 spring onions	oyster sauce fresh chilli sesame oil	light soy sauce dark soy sauce canola oil for frying

• Mince the chicken and mix it with the soy sauce and the oyster sauce and a few spoons of sesame oil in a bowl. Separately, mince garlic and chop the spring onions and chilli. 

• Drain the tofu and cut it into cubes of about 2cm edge length.  
  

• Fry the garlic in a pan with little oil, followed by the chicken mince. When cooked, add the tofu, followed by chilli and spring onion and fry for another 2-3 minutes. Serve in a bowl as garnish for the rice.  

And SMBC proudly presents the end result...

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Join us next week when we take on Greek cuisine, minus a grill or oven of any sort. And as always, let us know if you have a recipe suggestion! Have a good week =)

PS. No we did not have this for breakfast. 
PPS. We went to 3 different supermarkets in an attempt to find silken tofu without going to Mill Rd. We failed.