Recipe: Pretzel? Logic...

Food should be simple sometimes...

While contemplating what to have for lunch, I spotted a lone pretzel sitting in its bag beside the toaster. It was a leftover from a beer tasting night and was a tiny bit stale but I couldn't leave it there, as they are too nice to consign to the freezer for making stuffing - although great for that too.

I hate waste, especially in food, and love to combine a few stray, leftover ingredients together to make a meal. So out came some cheese, leftover pork, a little butter and my magic ingredient - caraway seed!


Poor caraway... sometimes mistaken for its cousins cumin and fennel and often just ignored on both the supermarket shelf and in the cupboard. I first came across it in any meaningful way in Uerige Braurieri in Düsseldorf, served with beer marinated Mainzer cheese and a rye roll with a a little butter. And once you've tasted caraway you will never mistake it for anything else. It's great with cheese or pork, as a pickling spice, or in bread.

Anyway, I'll revisit that in a future blog but for now it's back to lunch...

It was easy-peasy to make after that, slice the pretzel carefully to split it in two, scrape on some butter, put on some chopped pork, a few thin slices of cheese and finally sprinkle with the caraway seeds. 10 mins or so under the grill - carefully watched - and lunch is ready.

Served with a nice beer - and a blob of mustard - of course!

Keep it simple. It's logic really.

Recipe - Quail Eggs with Spice-Salt Dip

I'm often looking for something different to serve and pair with beer. Quite often it's just something quick, easy and simple, especially when I decide to hold an impromptu beer night at late notice.

I had seen quail eggs in my local butcher a few time but had always passed over them, thinking them too fiddly and uninteresting to bother with, but on a whim before Christmas I picked up some and decided to experiment with ways to serve them. The simplest recipes I came across involved just boiling them and then serving them with a dipping salt. After a bit of trial and error I settled on the following recipe.

Quail Eggs with Caraway, Sesame Seed and Salt Dip:

10 Quail Eggs
1 tsp of Sesame Seeds
1/2 tsp of Caraway Seeds
1/2 tsp of Course Sea Salt

Toast the sesame seeds in a pan until they start to turn brown, add them to a mortar and pestle with the caraway and salt and grind to fine-ish powder.

Place the quail eggs in a saucepan of cold water and bring to the boil. Boil for 2 minutes and then place in cold water until chilled.

That's it!

Either peel the eggs before serving or peel them as you eat them. Use the salt sparingly and feel free to change quantities to suit you palate.

Experiment with different spices too or if your feeling super lazy just use celery salt.

By the way, this dip works well with strong Cheddar cheese types too.

Smoked beers seem to pair best with this, I've had it with smoked porter and think it would also work well with smoked German beers.

Enjoy.