Chocolate with salt

I have a very special relationship with kale and until that dish, it wasn't a very good one.
My first encounter with kale was at German Christmas markets. It was that ugly side dish served with sausage or with sausage pieces in it and the texture and dead green color of it, simmering the whole day, always threw me off and I actually tried it only once and it was as dreadful as I always imagined, so I pushed even the consideration of preparing it myself far from me.

My next collision with kale wasn't good either. The organic store, we order from every week, offered kale and I didn't really know what it is. The funny thing is, when I looked for Kale in German recipes, I found lots of them and I didn't even stumble upon the German expression or let say, I didn't really realize, what it was..
Unfortunately either the Kale was old or I prepared it incorrectly, it was a big failure. For the first time in my life I had to throw away a whole dish to the bin. And the recipe sounded so good, the finished dish looked delicious, but the kale was just so extremely bitter, it was inedible. I remember putting tons of Parmesan cheese on it, hoping to make it at least edible... It ended in the bin and I gave our house keeper the second bunch I still had in the fridge.
I asked her later, if the one I gave her was also bitter, but she negated. So I tried to figure out, what I did wrong and asked her how to cook it properly, in order to avoid the bitterness.

I ordered once again kale at our organic store.

Third time lucky, this dish was divine! The combination of all ingredients, including the potatoes and the smoked pork chops was just perfect. I almost forgot, I found the recipe here and didn't change much, it was just good as it was.

One of the first things I started doing myself in Namibia, was bread. And not, because you don't get good bread in Namibia, you do. With the German past and still present influence, you will hardly miss the German culinary world. There are not only plenty German restaurants in Namibia, but also the typical occupations like baker and butcher, the Germans are famous for, are either influenced by or in hand of Germans. Beside Namibia importing wast of German products for the "feel at home" sensation. 
But it was a new challenge. I asked myself, is it possible to bake bread at home as good as you can buy at the bakery or even better? Well, I don't know, if it's better, but at least as good as and I know, what ingredients I'm using. The main motive for me cooking, was being aware of the ingredients I'm using. After the birth of our daughter even more than ever.
I remember I baked my first breads without a yeast sponge or sour dough. They are tasty, the day you bake them and if you're lucky even the day after. But we need mostly a bit longer, to finish a bread. I remember reading millions of recipes and various websites about baking bread, one of them very helpful from a German baker (Bäcker Süpke's Welt). 
The preparation of bread spread to two days or more kind of scared me off. And to be honest, when I was baking bread, then I needed it now or never, always somehow last minute. But after throwing away, I don't remember how many halves of breads, me, who is very aware of being poor and having nothing to eat and of the poverty in our country, I realised, that I have to change my bread baking behaviour. And I did and was rewarded with fantastic bread, sometimes even ready in only one day. 
My first sour dough I made from a ready to buy sachet. It was a German product, I don't know if you can buy ready sour dough all over the world. You can always do your starter yourself.

The linseed-sesame bread was again part of my birthday gift for my mum in law. I know, I'm late with my publishing, but I was sick and not really in the mood of writing. No excuse. 

So let's start, we don't want to waste any more time. One more thing, I only bake small breads, as I like eating them as fresh as possible. Please join me!

In my mind, the best burger buns ever. I never made the effort of baking burger buns myself, as I could always get them in the shops. That changed when I moved to Namibia, where one can't get them at all. You only get burgers made with ordinary white flour buns, even in the (fast food) restaurants. After a while, I started missing those soft buns I knew. So I decided to give it a try and bake the buns myself. After trying a few recipes, which were mostly terribly disappointing, I already gave up and settled for enjoying my burgers during my visits in Europe or on holidays.

Said so, on our honeymoon in January, we went to Mauritius and had the best burgers in a long time and the buns were made from brioche dough. Back home, I started again browsing, this time for burger brioche buns and luckily I found them here. It wouldn't be me, if I wouldn't make a mistake. While mixing the ingredients, I became suspicious, when the dough wasn't as runny as described in the recipe. The problem was I converted the milliliter measurement one-on-one to gram, without even thinking. So now I had to research how to modify the measurement right. As it turned out, I used way too much flour. The recipe you find is with the converted measurements and according to my liking and also to the ingredients I can get here. As you can see on the picture, they turned out perfect; and they not only look lekker, as you say in Namibia, they are delicious.