Green bean Casserole... Germany style

I attended a recipe exchange- so much fun!

I was assigned a side-dish to bring and share... SO I decided to give homemade cream of mushroom sauce a try... so I could attempt a green bean casserole.

This is what I did.

Cream of Mushroom Soup

• 4 cups button mushrooms
• 1 tablespoon sunflower oil
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon flour
• 1 3/4 cups vegetable stock
• 1 3/4 cups milk
• 1 pinch dried basil
• 2 -3 tablespoons cream
• salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• fresh basil leaf, to garnish

This includes ingredients for the green bean casserole portion as well :) 

1.  Pull the caps away from the mushroom stalks.

2.  Finely slice the caps and chop the stalks, keeping the 2 piles separate.

3.  Heat the oil and half the butter in a heavy based saucepan and add the chopped onion, mushroom stalks and 1/2-3/4 of the sliced mushroom caps.

4.  Fry about 1-2 minutes, stirring frequently, and then cover and sweat over a gentle heat for 6-7 minutes, stirring occasionally.

5.  Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute. 

6.  Gradually add the stock and milk to make a smooth, thin sauce.

7.  Add the basil, and season with salt and pepper.

8.  Bring to the boil and then simmer, partly covered, for 15 minutes.

9.  Allow to cool slightly and then pour into a food processor or blender (I use an immersion blender) and process until smooth.

10.  Melt remaining butter in a heavy based frying pan, and fry the remaining mushrooms over a gentle heat for 3-4 minutes until they are just tender.

11.  Pour soup into a large clean saucepan and stir in sliced mushrooms.

12.  Heat until very hot but not boiling and add salt and pepper to taste.

13.  Add the cream. (Make your own cream at: http://www.thecomfortofcooking.com/2011/12/10-tips-to-simplify-baking.html

This is what mine looked like done! And I just tasted it... sooooo yummy!

Green Bean Casserole (my mom's recipe, adapted to ingredients I have in Germany!)

• 1/2 Bag of frozen (or fresh) green beans (or 2 cans if you can find cans!)
• 30 oz of Cream of Mushroom Soup (see above) (or 2 cans if you can find cans!)
• 1 T Soy Sauce

1.  Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F (177 C)

2.  Put drained beans in a casserole dish.

3.  Add Soy Sauce to the Cream of Mushroom soup and heat (if it's not heated already).

4.  Pour mixture over green beans.

5. Cook for about 10 minutes in the oven.

6. Sprinkle top with french onions (Röstzwiebeln in Germany) or make your own.

7.  Bake for another 10 minutes or until the fried onions are lightly browned.

8.  Eat! Yummmmmm.

Kurbis Suppe (Pumpkin Soup)

Kurbis Suppe
From Susan

This recipe comes originally from a kind German woman... a traditional pumpkin soup (or so I hear) for these parts. They use smaller, cute pumpkins... and everyone raves about the pumpkin soup they make! So today I'm giving it a whirl! Thanks, Susan, for sharing your gems!

First of all, you'll need a pumpkin puree... however you get it. I made mine from 2 of these small pumpkins (that are everywhere right now). I used this recipe from The Pioneer Woman for my puree.

You'll probably want to get your seeds roasting as well... at least, that's what I did. After doing the above, I separated as much of the gook from the seeds as possible (in the sink in a strainer). Then I followed this roasting recipe from All Recipes.

From there, I followed Susan's recipe:

Saute until soft:

8 T Butter
2 Onions, small-medium
4 Apples, small-medium

Add:

6 Vegetable Bullion
1/2 liters of water
1 T ground nutmeg
1/2 T ground ginger
1 T cinnamon
Pear juice drained from a can of large pears

Blend well, then puree with an electric hand-held mixer that can be used with hot liquid.

Add:

8 C pumpkin flesh (can follow recipe above or do as the German woman did... peel the pumpkin and cook it in the soup!)

Cook on medium heat for 30 minutes. Puree again.

Add:

2-3 boxes (?) of schlag sahne (I think this is heavy cream... I used 1 C of heavy cream).

Serve with roasted pumpkin seeds (see recipe link above).

EAT! YUMMMmmmmmmmm!

Chocolate Chip Cookies... in Germany

I wanted a great chocolate chip cookie.

The only problem.

There are no chocolate chips in Germany. And all of my cookies, regardless, were coming out flat.

Enter my friend, Susan.

She passed this recipe on to me and, well, it was FABULOUS! Even with my little tweak (though I hope to do it her way next time :) Just to see...

Chocolate Chip Cookies (in Germany)

• 3/4 Cup Sugar (I used raw sugar)
• 3/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1 egg
• 3/4 C Butter (I used to mashed bananas instead)
• 2 1/2 C Flour (plus the 1/4 C flour to make up for German flours)
• 1 tsp. Salt
• 1 tsp. Vanilla
• 400 g. Chocolate chunks (I used about half of a huge Milka bar because that's what I had... Susan uses 3 bars of Zartbitter chocolate)

Beat sugars, egg, and butter first (again, I used banana instead of butter). Add the rest and mix. Drop a spoonful of dough onto cookies sheet until it's used up. Bake 13-15 minutes at 190 degrees Celsius (374 F).

Some notes:
-Because the flour is different in Germany, you may have to add a little. A good standard is about 1/4 Cup of flour for every 2 Cups called for in an American recipe.
-The dough will seem a little dry (except my way... it just seemed sticky... banana?)
-The cookies often seem underdone when you look at the bottoms of them... but don't over-bake. I find that if they start browning on top, that they get too hard once cooled.