BBQ'ed trout

We still have not seen any sign of a repairman for our stove (two weeks and counting), but fortunately, the weather is great for barbecuing.


I wonder if barbecuing is illegal too in Singapore...

Most important meal of the week

I just found out that we had an extra hour this morning. This explains how I was able to clean the oven, cook breakfast, eat breakfast, and waste lots of time on the internetz, all before noon.

Breakfast was great btw, and easy to make: fry some leeks in lots of butter until soft, add smoked trout and some cream, leave to cool. Put in ramekins, break egg on top, add some cream and chives, and put in the (clean) oven in a bowl of water at 170 Centigrade for 20 minutes.

Time for Trout

We had almost forgotten that we used to make barbecued trout quite often in the US.

Groceries

We are delighted to show you some of our groceries (grosseries?) and grocery opportunities now that we live in Europe.

Yesterday:



Rabbit! From the supermarket! And it was even packed and everything!



It was advertised as "lapin entier", and that was not false advertising either: on top we can see the little bugger's liver, we dug up the lungs and heart from its chest, and even its tongue was still present!



This was the result: Rabbit in a sauce of mustard and cacao from our new cookbook "Creole". To be honest, a little disappointing --- I think this dish may actually work much better with just mustard and taragon, and no cacao.



The potatoes on the side were great as usual.

Today:



Yes, no meat! Just a 244 pound pumpkin for only 329.73 euros!



I did not see how I could take this with me on my bike, so I settled for a rainbow trout instead. After firing up the barbecue, this was the result:



As a side dish, we made some couscous with eggplant, yellow bell pepper, hazelnuts and herbs and spices, which turned out really well as well.

Food at the Wedding

Now then the most important part of the wedding:



Trout mousse



Jelly of Watermelon with Shrimp



Tuna with Squid Mayonnaise



Fish with Lobster Sauce



This lamb was really beautifully prepared.



And the dessert was so good, that it deserves two pictures.



No pictures of the wine, even though these were great as well.

Jiankou Great Wall

When Ellen was here we rented a car and visited the Great Wall near Jiankou.



We not only took a lot of pictures, but also a lot of pictures of us were taken (especially of Ellen, I wonder whether her red hair had anything to do with this).





And then it was time for an early dinner.



This is specialty number 1: fresh trout (we had two).



Specialty number 2: wild herbs.



Trout again, in a different stage of its being. (After which it was no more.)



Some barbecued meatz.



Unspecified Chinese food.



Sweet potato slices.



A little breadz.



And the other trout grilled to perfection.

By the way, Ellen already made 5 posts about her visit: her first lunch in Beijing, zhajiangmian, duck, street food and a post on dumplings! Check them out to see some embarrassing pictures of A and F!

Rural Weekend III

After the hike, we were hungry.

Unlike all the other city people that had gathered at the trout farm/restaurant, we were not in the mood for catching our own lunch.





Luckily, the staff at the restaurant were nice enough to catch the trout for us. This time, we chose to have it raw instead of barbecued.




Also, we had weird deep fried leaves which were all the rage, and some less exciting stuff.

Rural Weekend II

We were aiming to go to Jiankou Great Wall, which is supposedly very rugged and wild (just like we are, says F). This turned out to be a bit hard to find. The directions in our book mentioned a trout farm (they are everywhere!) of a certain name, which we could not find.

In the end, we just took a random narrow dust road which surely wasn't the right one, drove through a little village, some more dust road, and finally, we hit a trout farm and a cute outdoor restaurant next to a couple of trout ponds. We thought it would do.

So, we got a bed in one of the two hotels (and not just a bed! A western toilet and hot shower too! We did not know they had those in the rural lands outside Beijing. The hotel also featured some night lamps which started billowing out black smoke a little while after we turned them on. Very exciting stuff.) We spent a wonderful, albeit very cold, night with an open window, listening to the waterfall that supplied the trout pond outside with fresh water.







Early the next morning, we looked for some hiking opportunity. Way up above the hotel, we could see a very steep mountain with some watchtower on top. We did not expect to be able to go there, but started out on a little stroll through the terraced farmland. Shortly after, the trail became insanely steep. We kept huffing and puffing our way up. Not much of a view to reward us for our efforts, because, even though the sky above was bright blue, the pollution was pretty bad.



We kept going however, and actually made it up to the wall. It was beautiful! By far the best part of the wall we have seen so far!



It looked plenty rugged and wild to us. We looked it up later, and it was indeed Jiankou Great Wall.









The last photo features A pointing out in typical Chinese girl-y fashion how high and steep the climb was up to the wall (which you can see on the top of the ridge if you look very carefully). By the way, isn't the story that the wall was built to keep out invaders? With the idea that they would not be able to get their supplies and horses and such across the wall??? So, ehhh, you think the wall is what kept them from crossing this ridge here?

Rural Weekend I

This Monday is a public holiday, in which we are supposed to clean the graves of our ancestors. This seemed a little challenging, so we opted to rent a car and go on a weekend trip to the rural areas of Beijing instead.

Here are the pictures of our first lunch. Being just outside Beijing means that we are still a bit of an attraction --- something Anke is thoroughly enjoying on this first photo.



The area we were going to is famous for its fish farms, so we choose a nice looking rainbow trout to be killed and barbecued for our pleasure. Here it is still moving...



... here it is not:



Everything barbecued in China seems to have exactly the same spices, therefore I present to you the Chinese barbecue spices in close up:



As side dishes we had eggplant



some really nice stuffed pancakes



and this hutspot with sauce.