Chocolate with salt

I'm so late this week and apologizing for the delay. We have winter holidays and the kindergarten is closed; after almost 2 weeks at home, my three year old is missing her friends and is noticeably bored. I just hear her calling me all day and she wants to be carried around all day long. I'm so thankful for my husband being home and helping out, but both our patience is spent.
That's the best time for takeaways, but if it comes to takeaways here in Windhoek, the choice is very poor, beside the unsatisfying taste.
We have lots of different chicken and burger takeaways, Italian and Chinese and that's mostly it. There is a new place, that just opened a few weeks ago and is actually selling Döner Kebabs, but the last time we were there to try it out, the whole shop was full of smoke. I'm sure, we will give it an other try, but for now we decided on homemade.
This are moments, I really miss Berlin or Cape Town and the fabulous takeaway places, where you can get Döner, Shawarma and Co.
Berlin of course, as the hometown of the famous Döner Kebab, had the most amazing places you can imagine. Additionally I was living in Tiergarten Moabit, a suburb with mainly Turkish and Arabic population, so needless to say I was sitting at the source. From greengrocer, baker to the butcher, I had the best culinary experience from the Middle-east world right on my doorstep.

But that's far away now and I decided to try it myself. I'm not sure I can call them Shawarmas though, but let say it's my take.


We had them actually twice that week, once with lamb and once with beef.
Lamb was definitely the big winner. Even though I took lamb chops, not the best cut for that purpose, but it was more than delicious. And the dogs were happy about the leftovers hanging on the bones.
The beef was o k a y, but somehow it wasn't as satisfying as the lamb. I don't know, if the meat seasoning didn't work that well, or maybe I've cut the meat to thick, somehow we were missing something.

The pita bread was the second time head and shoulders better, for one thing because I managed to overbake them the first time by not sticking to the recommended backing time, for another thing the dough was resting for four days in the fridge and the flour had enough time to develop.

We'll definitely have that dish more often and next time, I will try to stick more to the original ingredients like tabbouleh and hummus (chickpeas are already bought).
But for now, we were more than happy about the outcome of my first homemade Shawarmas.

I stumbled upon this recipe last week on a search for a quick lunch recipe. I was bored with my old one and gladly tried this one out. Granted, the chicken must be marinated first, but according to the recipe, it's enough, if the chicken just sits a bit in the marinade, while preparing all the other ingredients. I would have preferred the chicken to be marinated longer and will definitely do that next time.
Even so, it was divine and we couldn't get enough of it.
I must admit, I didn't know, there is something like Thai chicken wraps; that's how the dish was called. So I researched and found to my surprise quite a few recipes. But, Thai wraps are wrapped either in lettuce leaves or rice paper and not tortillas. As you can see, I wrapped mine as usual in tortilla bread, so I refused to call mine "Thai".
I didn't change much to the original recipe, just substituted the ingredients I had to. Out came unbelievable tasty, fresh wraps with a sweet and nutty flavor.

I was just waiting for the ridiculous price for snow peas to drop, so I can do that delicious dish, that I just love, not only because it's so easy and quickly done. The combination of flavours and textures is so beautiful. 
To be honest, I was sure, I wrote already about that dish and was surprised not to find it here. On the other hand, I also wasn't cooking it for quite a while, because of the already mentioned crazy price for snow peas.

I'm trying to grow snow peas in our garden for years already, but that's what you can call an epic fail. This year the plants grew indeed and were even carrying some fruits, but despite our new sprinkler system, the plants dried out eventually after having only one set of fruits. I won't give up thou and gladly take any advise that could help to finally cultivate them in our garden. 

But we're not talking about my garden... The idea for the following dish came from here (in German language), but I've made the recipe only once with pork and substituted with chicken instead. You will see, that I changed some other things too, but all in all left the recipe as is.

And here comes one of our all time favourites:
Chicken stew with snow peas and almonds.

We managed to go to our organic market on Saturday morning. It's a really nice, small market, mostly  extremely packed with people, but I kinda like the atmosphere. That's one of these moments, when I miss the beautiful, huge markets of Berlin, I loved to saunter around on my days off. I like getting my groceries from the markets, it's like the small corner shops from the earlier days. You get the chance to talk to the farmers, see where your food is coming from, ask questions and being social.
Be that as it may, we bought okra again and I was eager for preparing another, for me exotic, dish with that wonderful vegetable.
As you maybe remember the article I read about okra and the writers dislike for okra getting slimy. Well, the following dish is one of those, but it didn't bother us at all, as it was in perfect harmony with all the other ingredients. I guess, if I have more time for preparing lunch (at the moment both kids are at home due to the kindergarten being closed for two weeks) I will give it a try to prepare the okra as in the article described, in order to get rid of the sliminess and check if I prefer the dish that way. But as I said, I wasn't bothered and just noticed, what the author meant.
The dish is inspired by that recipe, but as you will see, I changed quite a bit, especially because I was running out of time and the given recipe was very time consuming. Nevertheless we were more than pleased, so was our guest, we had that day for lunch. There is only one thing left to say, you must find out for yourself which recipe you prefer. Anyway, here is my take on

West African chicken stew with okra

We love our comfort food, that good home cooking, especially now in winter. The evenings are getting quite chilly nowadays - yes, also in Namibia, so we prefer rather something substantial. Coq au vin is one of the classics I really like to prepare, because it somehow cooks itself. Last year Christmas we got a pressure cooker from my parents in law, since then I do my coq au vin in there and after only 1 hour of cooking, the flesh is falling off the bone and melting in your mouth.

I honestly don't remember where I got the initial recipe from, it's so long ago and with years I stumbled upon many recipes with similar ingredients structure and I just added and abandoned here and there ingredients. The recipe I cook with  stayed unchanged for the last few years, so I guess I found for me my perfect coq au vin.

First of all, I don't use the whole chicken, as in the original french recipes described, instead I'm just using drumsticks and thighs. For us two ( and a half) I mostly buy a package of 8 each and it's more than enough for one dinner. The amount of the sauce is as much as for a whole chicken, because we love a lot of sauce, so if you prefer using a whole chicken, you don't really need to increase the ingredients.

Aside from that, if you are lucky to get a Burgundy wine, you must promise to use that. If you're not, as myself, you must use a decent wine, preferable a Pinot Noir and not the cheap "papsak" wine (wine in a box), you normally would take for cooking. I know, one should always take a good wine for cooking, but let's be honest, who really does it. So make an exception and you will be rewarded with a delicious dish.

As I already mentioned, I'm trying to get rid of my pregnancy fat, but without dieting, because I'm not allowed to do so. And even if I'm one of these women, whom most other women hate, because I can eat as much as I want, as long as I work out just a bit, I'm not really getting fat. I'm also rather a stress non-eater than stress eater so that also helps a lot. But my second pregnancy is not that long ago and I gained with my first pregnancy a few kilos, kept them throughout the time in between and gained again with my second pregnancy, so I'm sitting now with few kilos I need to get rid of in order to have my comfort weight.

Best option is to change my eating habits, which never have been really bad, but lately I felt for stuff like chocolate, the already mentioned fantastic ice cream, croissants and cakes or combinations of all above. So yeah, it's time!

We're trying now to eat more lean meat and more fish, leave the pork out and cut short on fat and sugar. We will see, how it'll work out.

On that note I want to introduce you to another of my favourite chicken recipes:

Chicken Piccata

I was unfortunately forced to make a longer break from writing again, as my husband and I suffered from food poisoning end of last week. We had sushi from our supermarket, as usual,  but that time we seemed to have bad luck. I must admit, it tasted different and was more sticky than usual. And I remember I was gulping the last pieces and was wondering why, since sushi is one of my favourite meals. Luckily our daughter decided not to eat with us, what she normally does, so we just had to cope with our own sickness and the daily madness of having two little children. I guess we won't have sushi for a while now.

So after a few days of dieting it was time to cook again and what better meat to start with than chicken.
With that said, I'm always waiting for the grape season, so I can cook one of my favourite chicken dishes. It's again an easy and quick dish, with lovely flavours. I don't remember where exactly I found the recipe, but I know, that I cooked this dish over and over. When I look back, my daughter was even enjoying that dish with one and a half already.

I hope you'll like it as much as we do.