Kale, Red Onions, Pine Nuts and Feta Entrée

GET
1 head/bunch of kale
4 red onions
or Höri-Bülle
2 cloves of garlic
150 g goat cheese/ feta
1 cup roasted pine nuts
Olive oil
all organic


DO
Wash the kale leaves well. Discard outer leaves and dry well. Cut the leaves from the stem by sliding a knife along them and keep both parts separate. Peel the onions and the garlic. Heat oil in a large pot as the initial amount can be rather bulky. Cut the onion into wedges, keeping one aside.
Fry the onions golden. Chop the kale leaves and stems rather finely. Add the chopped kale stems and garlic. After 6 min. add the kale leaves. Fry and stir for 5 min. Add a small amount of boiling water to the pot, stir and cover. Add the remaining red onion wedges. Lift the lid after 6 min. and let the moisture evaporate.

Tuscan kale

Roast the pine nuts in a dry pan until they are golden. Place in a bowl and cover.

Place goat cheese on 4 plates.

Once the ingredients are cooked to your liking, place an equal amount on each piece of cheese and sprinkle with the pine nuts.

The tasty red onion 'Höri-Bülle' is grown in the Lake Constance region by the Alamanni tribes. The onion can only be harvested by hand (no fossil fuel machinery!) and the seeds are not on the market, but have been used by the people of this Alpine region since 840. Farmers of the Höri peninsula are the main guardians of this vegetable today. Once rejected by EU norms for its non- standard shape, it is now protected by the EU as a regional slow food with a specific geographical indication in 2014.

Curly kale and savoy cabbage
Curly kale with soba noodles and sesame

Asparagus quiche

get

2 bunches asparagus
200g spelt flour
50g hard mild cheese
100g butter

4 Tbsp olive oil
6 eggs
4 heaped Tbsp spelt flour.
150g hard mild cheese (cheddar, Bergkäse) (grated finely)
2 Tbsp Parmesan cheese (grated finely)
boiling water
1 cup spelt-almond milk

do

Break the hard bottoms off the asparagus stems. Wash them well.
Steam asparagus until soft. Cool and drain well.

Preheat the oven to 190°c.

Put 200g flour in a bowl. Mix in 50g cheese. Cut in 80g butter. Mix together with hands. Add drops of water and continue kneading until the pastry holds together. Cool.

Heat the olive oil with 20g butter in a small saucepan. When melted mix in 4 Tbsp flour and allow it to cook a little. Add boiling water bit by bit while mixing. The Flour mixture will absorb the water. Continue adding water until the mixture is a thick paste, then gradually stir in the spelt-almond milk. Add enough to make a very thick sauce. Stir occasionally while cooking for about 10 minutes. Then turn of the heat and continue stirring occasionally as it cools.

Roll out the pastry on a cloth. Form it to a pie shell in a 28cm round baking form. Sprinkle a little cheese on the bottom.

Beat the eggs well until foamy. Gradually add the warmish spelt sauce while beating, starting with a small amount. When it is all mixed in, spoon some into the pastry shell to cover the bottom.
Using scissors cut small pieces of asparagus into the pie shell. Discard any woody bottoms. Save the tips for later. Use half the asparagus. Sprinkle some cheese on top and then add more spelt sauce covering the asparagus.
Cut the remaining asparagus on top as before. Sprinkle with Parmesan and then add the remaining spelt sauce evenly on top. Arrange the asparagus tips on top and sprinkle the remaining cheese evenly on them.

Bake the quiche at 190°C on the second shelf from the bottom for 30 minutes.
When you are ready to serve the quiche, bake it for another 60 minutes at 180°C and serve it hot. Test it with a skewer. It can also be eaten cold later.

Jackfruit Dinner Music

The jackfruit (Artocarpus heterophyllus) originates from Asia. It is a fruit of the subtropical rain forests.

"The jackfruit is made up of hundreds or even thousands of individual flowers that are fused together. We eat the "fleshy petals" that surround the seed, which is the actual fruit." (source).

The fruit can weigh as much as 35 kg. The flesh has a very strong odour, and oozes a thick white sap. In India various dishes such as pudding are made out of it.

"There is also another tree which is very large and has wonderfully sweet and large fruit; it is used for food by the sages of India who wear no clothes." Theophrastus 300 B.C. (source)

It seems that every part of the tree can be utilised - food, dye and wood for musical instruments. The hardwood from the trunk is used to make drums for the gamelan.

As both the fragrance and taste did not agree with us, we prefer the percussive instruments made of the tree and the music generated on it. Dinner will be accompanied by the traditional ensemble music of Java and Bali, 'reverberations the influence' (video) of Steve Reich. (video)

Davidson's Plums with Cashew Cream

GET
Plums
15 Davidson's plums/ Oorays
1 Vanilla pod (forget extracts)
10 Tbsp maple syrup

Cashew cream:
120 g cashew seeds
5 Tbsp filtered water
3 Tbsp maple syrup
1 tsp cinnamon
A dash of lemon juice
A pinch of salt

Click to enlarge

DO
Soak the cashews 2 - 6 hours before in water. Preheat the oven. Wash plums, cut and remove seeds. Cut the skin very fine and the pulp can be chopped. Mix the content of the vanilla orchid pod and the syrup and add it to the plums. Place in a casserole and roast for 20 - 30 min at 190°C. Keep an eye on the roasting process. Stir if necessary or even add water. It is not to go black!

Place cashews in a sieve and rinse. Pound in a mortar (or blender). Add the remaining ingredients as you go. Taste and add more sweetener or water if necessary.

The plums can be served warm or cold with the cashew cream.

Davidson's plum sauce
Cinnamon biscuits filled with Davidson plum jam

Meat

When you sit before delicacies and fancy foods, you will recognize their nature if you bear in mind that this is the corpse of a fish, that is the corpse of a bird or a pig; or again, that imported wine is merely grape juice, and this purple robe some sheep’s wool dipped in the blood of a shellfish; and as for sexual intercourse, it is the rubbing of a piece of intestine, then a convulsion, and the spurting of some mucus. Thoughts like these go to the heart of actual facts and penetrate them, allowing us to see them as they really are. 

Marcus Aurelius (Meditations, 6 13)  (source) 

Images:
Tomb of Menna, Scribe of the king, scene: Hunting and fishing, detail: Fishing, Thebes 1422-1411

Corinth, Lovis: Butcher shop, 1913