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Potatoe nests


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Our company does special metal works, mainly connecting different metals by special welding. One of the companies which gets metal from us gave some late x-mas gifts to us: kitchen tools. At the lottery I got 6 Nestbacklöffel(nest baking spoon?). First I thought it would be sieves but I was told that they are used to do potatoe nests. For people like me who never heard of a Nestbacklöffel before, they look like:

 

9902387630.jpg

 

My practical brain protests and says that 2 sieves of different sizes would do the trick too if tied together with silicon rope. But probably it is a set of 6 to do quicker 'mass production' for a party.

 

So what I think a typical recipe would start with:

Cut potatoes or rutabaga into small stripes. Place them between the 2 parts of the Nestbacklöffel. Put the Nestbacklöffel (I slowly get used to this word) into a pot with hot oil to fry the nest. Let the oil drop away, add spices and fill it with some salade snacks. So far the theory, but has anyone ever tried this tool, has recipes for it, ....

 

Found a recipe with scallops in potatoe nests, but the tools I got seems to be smaller that the one on this thread.

 

potato+nests11.jpg

scallops-in-potato-nests-recipe

 

I fear if I show these tools to my kids they want me to do some cooking with them. So I will hide them for some days.

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Another great creative recipe with gifts come your way from friends of business. I think I've seen my parents use equipment like that before when they used to do a ton of cooking, but here, now I am, just getting excited over ten miracle knives! :lol:

 

I love potatoes, pass 'em to me anyway possible. My little adventure with some high blood sugar levels means that that my outings with the fried things have become precious moments. At least a read, like the one you just gave me cost nothing in blood sugar, but lots in an imagined satisfaction and filled stomach that accompanies it.

 

:)

 

gogo

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Wow, how cool is that ? Serve up the food in one of them deep fried potato bowls, then eat the bowls themselves............no washing up, lol !

 

Just don't try serving soup in them though ! :drool:

 

Steve. :)

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Did first experiments (late night and just the nests):

Living on country side and born into a family with generations of carpenters and wood workers we have some strange names for some of our food. My wife has late shift at hospital and so I did an evening meal for the kids: "Lehm und Stroh", which would translate as clay and stray. Yellow pea puree is the clay while the Sauerkraut is the stray. "Lehm und Stroh mit Balken" would haved added Eisbein as Balken which translates as girder, so stray and clay with girders. But Eisbein would be a bit too much for an evening meal. So the recipe descripes what is needed to build a wooden patchwork house: girders and the space between filled with a mix of clay and stray (well my special mix for our house includes horseapples too, but that is another story).

 

220px-Eisbein-2.jpg

 

So back to the nest: After the younger kids were at bed and while cleaning the kitchen I noticed that some Sauerkraut was left. It was to few to do a pea soup the next day (we allways put sauerkraut in pea soup) so I decided to do some experiments.

 

Fried Sauerkraut using the Nestbacklöffel (start to love this word): If it is crispy it breaks to easily. 11(!) small nests later I was at olive oil at 140 celcius for 80 seconds for best results.

 

I used the best 2 nests and prepared a welcome snack for my wife: filled them with boiled chickpeas and a tiny variant of brussel sprouts.

 

At weekend I will try the normal use of Nestbacklöffel: potatoe or rutabaga.

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Chattius, your killing me dude !

 

I'm supposed to be on a diet, and you keep tempting me with your delicious food !

 

You come up with some truely gorgeous food ideas, and make my day-to-day food look very ordinary.

 

Thanks for sharing, but I might have to ban myself from reading from now on........it's just too tempting to rush into my kitchen.

 

Thanks for sharing your stuff.

 

Steve. :)

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It is autobalancing:

 

The brussel sprouts had to be collected in the garden: with a torch at 10:14pm after the evening walk with the dogs

 

no cleaning automat for cups, knives and spoons --- so half an hour walking around in kitchen - normally cleaning involves all kids and is used to discuss the schedule for the next day. Who had to be driven to town, sport training, music school, birthday of friends, ...

 

from 11 nests I fried I was eating a smsll one in the size of half my hand, also 1 brussel sprout and 3 chickpeas to test if they were ready

 

So a neutral, perhaps even a negative energy bilance.

 

So the trick is not to eat all yourself ;)

 

With daughters 15, 12, 8 , 3 and a son aged 3:

 

The 12 and 8 year old can eat as much they want, they are grewing, do a lot of sports and keep their weight. The twins have to be controlled while feeding them if I don't want to have the kitchen look like a battlefield. So the 15 year old and myself automatically don't eat that much. I am keeping my weight for 20 years now with only 3 pounds more or less. And more is normally muscles I get in winter at wood work and which I don't need in summer at bureau work. Perhaps it is just this: around x-mas when you eat most I have the most bodily work to do.

 

Cooking for yourself alone is way harder: most tins you buy (if you don't have a garden) are for 2+ people, so the food you do is normally too much. So you either eat too much or have to throw uneaten food away and many people hate this idea and eat too much.

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It is autobalancing:

 

The brussel sprouts had to be collected in the garden: with a torch at 10:14pm after the evening walk with the dogs

 

no cleaning automat for cups, knives and spoons --- so half an hour walking around in kitchen - normally cleaning involves all kids and is used to discuss the schedule for the next day. Who had to be driven to town, sport training, music school, birthday of friends, ...

 

from 11 nests I fried I was eating a smsll one in the size of half my hand, also 1 brussel sprout and 3 chickpeas to test if they were ready

 

So a neutral, perhaps even a negative energy bilance.

 

So the trick is not to eat all yourself ;)

 

With daughters 15, 12, 8 , 3 and a son aged 3:

 

The 12 and 8 year old can eat as much they want, they are grewing, do a lot of sports and keep their weight. The twins have to be controlled while feeding them if I don't want to have the kitchen look like a battlefield. So the 15 year old and myself automatically don't eat that much. I am keeping my weight for 20 years now with only 3 pounds more or less. And more is normally muscles I get in winter at wood work and which I don't need in summer at bureau work. Perhaps it is just this: around x-mas when you eat most I have the most bodily work to do.

 

Cooking for yourself alone is way harder: most tins you buy (if you don't have a garden) are for 2+ people, so the food you do is normally too much. So you either eat too much or have to throw uneaten food away and many people hate this idea and eat too much.

 

You are very right my friend.

 

Excersize is the big thing. I don't do any. I sit down all day at work in an office, and I sit down the rest of time at home ( gaming, or reading )

 

Also you are right about cooking for one. I should split meals into two portions and keep one for the next day, but I am weak and eat everything in one sitting !

 

I have no willpower.

 

I guess you keep fit running around looking after your children. Both my brothers have children and say about the hard work. They go all day !

 

Steve. :)

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I am wondering if I should start a thread:

traditional recipes/food from your area which area healthy

 

If you are a tourist than you are a guest, and guests get not the same as normal people. So many recipes you think as typical german, typical british,... are most often ones which only nobles could afford in old times.

 

Somehow I got the feeling that mainly exotic food is considered healthy. Exotic here is as different to normal food than possible. But if you look at health books: in ancient times it didn't matter much in which part of the world you lived. If you got enough food, didn't get diseases or die at birth of kids: you had nearly equal chances to become old. So traditional food can't have been that bad. The changes came like 250 years ago in europe: an army needed easy to transport food, many calories, not easily rotten, ...

So in germany the emporor asked people to breed beets with more sugar, potatoes with more energy, wheat with more energy, ....

 

So the same farms could now feed more than double the people, less farmers needed is more soldiers which could be sold to england, ... industrial revolution, ..., artificial fertilizer (my old university is named after the inventor and one of its former professors: Liebig), ....

 

So my theory is: if we go back enough and look for old recipes (more than 250 years old) we should still find a lot of healthy ones. The area I live was researched a lot: it had a century old economy which feeded around 150 people the square mile in an area covered to 90% with forest on bad ground (basalt). It was like nothing is wasted, and each farm or forest plant has several purposes fitting into each other.

 

Warning:

Corn has different usage in different parts of the world. If I use the word corn , then it stands for the type of cereals which are the main product of the area. So it may be rice in asia, maize in america, barley in german beer brewing areas, ... If you ask a farmer with a long family tradition anywhere in the world what is corn(or german Korn): he answers probably with the cereal which is most common at his place.

 

Spelt:

So take for example wheat: while prussian had big farmlands in plains to feed its soldiers, here it are hills and corn is sewed between tree trunks. The old horse driven or early motorized harvesting machines demanded that each corn plant was same height, not too high because wind on plains may break the plants, .... So within few decades nearly all wheat/rye was small plants with big corns.

 

In my area wheat/rye/buckwheat was sewed between tree siblings and harvested with a sickle. The plants had to be bigger than the siblings, and the straw was used to build roofs of houses.

 

So farmers here never really stopped to farm spelt (an ancient type of wheat). And now spelt is considered health food.

 

Sauerbraten:

Farmers had to give the best beef to the local earl. The beef which was left was low fat and poor quality, so they found ways to marinate it for days to make it eatible. Nowadays low fat is considered health food and you find the once poor people food in fine restaurants as health food.

 

Handkäse (hand cheese)- local sour cream chesse

While most cheese needs rennet hand cheese needs bacteria and can be done at lower temperatures. Cows in my area were used instead horses for farmwork in summer so most milk was in winter. Rennet based cheese need 40C, so you would have to heat a room to 40 degree celcius. So instead overheating a room Milk was left allone for 3 days, the fat on top was removed for other purposes and the rest was made into hand cheese. So this cheese is around 1% fat only- considered pure people food once, health food nowadays.

 

Sauerkraut, Bear garlic, .... lot of the old stuff seems to get a revival.

 

If you are a tourist than you are a guest, and guests get not the same as normal people. So many recipes you think as typical german, typical british,... are most often ones which only nobles could afford in old times. But what about the traditional food most people of a country had to eat, ...

 

So what I need:

A good name for a topic which collects old recipes for healthy food from all over the world.

Edited by chattius
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  • 1 month later...

Found this picture with recipe last 2 weeks ago:

 

full_kartoffelblte500.jpg

 

This weekend we tried to re-do it. Instead using french fries as in earlier posts it is using thin potatoe discs and the end result is like a blossom from potatoe chips. The blossom leaves (potatoe chips) stick together because the Nestbacklöffel was used at frying, so they are rounded like the surface of a ball. The leaves are glued together with some ricotta.

 

The green in the picture is zucchini salade.

 

About 5 years ago I started to grow 'Blaue Kartoffeln', blue potato, a variant of Vitelottes in our own garden here in germany. 2 years back I managed to harvest 20 pounds of my first bigger ones. I also have some different coloured sweet potatoes, each around 20-40 pounds. Luckily they stay fresh for almost a year in our cellar from ramped clay (300+ years old).

 

220px-Vitelotte.jpg

220px-5aday_sweet_potato.jpg

 

So very much like the picture, only the chips are blue and orange. Whole blossom blue, whole blossom orange, or mixed orange and blue. We did 2 of each sort. You have to get used to blue chips, but hey, if you do it yourself you are not afraid of strange looking food.

 

220px-Blaue_Chips_Schüssel.jpg

 

I did 6*6cm analog pictures with my Rolleiflex. Hope I can digitalize it at a friend in some weeks.

Edited by chattius
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I've had those blue (actually purple) potatoes before. They're a rare (at least here in the US) gourmet item. I found a bag of them in the bargain bin at the high end megamart and bought them. They came out quite good. Not too much different flavorwise from more ordinary potatoes.

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  • 6 months later...

Tried a new recipe by accident yesterday evening. If you read some of my recipes I like to do my own food in garden, fruit fields and small fish ponds.

 

We spend an hour letting fly to kites (the paper beasts on a roll of thread) with the kids at afternoon. We parents collected some wild horse-radish, rose hips, sloes, blue berries, while the kids were playing....

 

I planed to create a recipe of self made smoked trout after returning. We use to smoke it in a mix of beech saw-dust and common juniper twigs and berries. The Juniper adds a fine note. However when opening the smoke chamber door I accidently removed a hook and a trout was falling apart :cry:

 

So I decided to do trout tartar. :smart: My mother used to serve it together with Rösti's (swiss recipe, roasted stripes of potato). So in the plate it looks like a sandwish of 2 Rösti's filled with trout tartar. Close to this image:

 

36-0035_b.jpg

 

But just as with Sacred2, I like to do multifunction builds. I play a character in sacred with having a test pattern in mind: how is armour/damage ratio calculated, how is chance to halve regen time made functioning, ...

 

So I did not just re-cook my mother's recipe, I wanted to try out if the recipe could be made useful for a snack at a work conference:

 

So the nests were made out of stripes from blue potato, carrots and rutabaga's. You guess it: red, white, blue are the colours of the netherlands , representated by my boss, the guy who owns the forest all around my place.

 

The trout tartar was made from fine cut smoked trout, creme fresh, onion, cucumber, leech. Filled into the potato-nests, and covered with horse-radish foam (cream and horse-rash with a lot of air in). Then skinned rose-hips with seeds removed and blue berries put on top. Again a red,white blue theme.

 

Tasted surprisingly good, looked nice and even after the kids were at bed I ate one more nest just to test if it would still taste good. Really I just wanted to do this test and not living out that I am a gourmand. :blush:

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oooh those looks delicious! damn you! now my stomach is growling. hehe.

the red white blue theme sounds interesting. I like doing things like that on a plating, repeat certain elements, but keep it different

 

Delta!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Lauchstroh - leek hay

 

Currently experimenting with Lauchstroh. It would translate as leek stray, but I think leek hay is more used in english. Isolate single leek leaves, roll them and cut them in fine long stripes. Then they are fried. Cross with leek taste it is often added to scallops, shrimps...

 

leek stray from the more white part of leaf

jakob003.jpg

 

from the green part

mid_48931947cedcb.jpg

 

I did nests with a mix of potato-stray and (green) leek stray. So the nest look more real. Leek needs a bit longer frying, so I did the potato stripes double diametre compared to the leek ones. Filled with roasted quail put on half unscaled boiled quail eggs, Looked like a breeding roasted quail on eggs. Added red rose-hip cream for some blood effects. Was a funny halloween evening dinner.

 

I had too much quail roosters from the last breeding,so o wasn't wastingmoney on buying quails.

 

Do you do leek hay in your area?

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  • 2 years later...

Got an x-mas present today from the food tools company which buys our special metal: a potato ricer. Wonder why it is called potato ricer when most of the time it is used to make spaghetti ice:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato_ricer

 

bild_10.jpg

 

The above is ice :)

The potato press has exchangeable sieves with different sized holes: potato pressing for dumblings and mashed potatos, sort of noodles and for the ice.

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