crumbly-life

[crumbly-life]

Our approach to Food and Design

Gumbo beet greens corn soko endive gumbo gourd. Parsley shallot courgette tatsoi pea sprouts fava bean collard greens dandelion okra wakame tomato.

Wild salmon is a real treat and rivers in the British Isles are seeing more and more of them. If you can’t find wild salmon there are some good farmed fish on the market, but bear in mind they probably won’t be able to match the flavour.

Paragr…

[crumbly-life]

Join The Crew!

We’re always looking for like-minded souls to jump on board. If you think you’d fit our crew, we’re on the lookout for like-minded humans.

Wild salmon is a real treat and rivers in the British Isles are seeing more and more of them. If you can’t find wild salmon there are some good farmed fish on the market, but bear in mind they probably won’t be able to match the flavour.

Paragraphs only…

[crumbly-life]

The Absolute Best Restaurant in London

The key is to buy specific cuts for specific dishes and be firm with your butcher. Opt for tender cuts from the inner haunch muscle if you fancy steak and use neck fillet or shanks if slow cooking. And deer mince makes for a very good gamekeeper’s sandwiches.

Wild salmon is a real treat and rivers in the British Isles are seeing more and more of them. If you can’t find wild salmon there are…

[crumbly-life]

Broccoli & Quinoa Salad Dish

The key is to buy specific cuts for specific dishes and be firm with your butcher. Opt for tender cuts gumbo beet greens corn soko endive gumbo gourd.

The key is to buy specific cuts for specific dishes and be firm with your butcher. Opt for tender cutsfrom the inner haunch muscle if you fancy steak and use neck fillet or shanks if slow cooking. And deer mince makes for a very good…

[crumbly-life]

Disclaimer: All views and opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, I am not paid or invited by the restaurant to review their food.

Review: Restaurant Steirereck in Vienna, Austria (Part 1) Review: Restaurant Steirereck in Vienna, Austria (Part 2)

Hey guys! After a long absence from posting on here as well as cooking altogether, I decided to come back to my blog, by trying to write my first restaurant review. This might be as awkward for you as it is for me as I am, by no means, a professional writer. But hey, let’s see where it goes from here!

The restaurant

The restaurant, Steirereck, is located inside the Viennese Stadtpark, in close proximity to the famous center of the city. The restaurant is on the south-eastern side of Stadtpark next to basketball courts and a Kindergarten. Not the typical place where you can find the 10th best restaurant in the world, according to the St. Pellegrino list of best restaurants. The restaurant uses mainly ingredients from Austria and also has a great way of dealing with interest of guests in certain products. Every guest gets set cards with every course they eat with descriptions of the contents as well as a number that can be entered on the Steirereck Website to pull up pictures and descriptions of every dish as well. As I walked up to the restaurant, the building was like a shining diamond in the dark looking inviting even from afar.

The beginning

Walking in we were greeted very friendly and our jackets were taken care off, without the need of a tag or anything alike.

We were escorted into the main dining room, consisting of 13 tables that night, where we were placed on the right next to an old vase and the window behind it, looking onto trees.

After sitting down we were offered hot towels to refresh our hands and our main server for the night came by with the champagne and sparkling wine cart. We selected an Austrian sparkling wine as well as a rosé champagne.

The menu & choices

We were offered the menus which read as follows:

It is worth noting that off the menu they always have the typical Viennese veal schnitzel, a gulasch as well as “Beuschel”, a typical austrian dish made from lung and heart of veal.

Selecting from the Á la carte menu as well as the tasting menu, our selection was the following:

My choices:

Mountain trout with cucumber, melon & etiolated pea shoots

Char with beeswax, “carrot pollen” and sour cream

Viennese Schnitzel of veal with parsley potatoes and lingonberries

Poppy seed noodles with Damson Ice Cream

My dining-partners choice was the 6 course tasting menu, consisting of the following:

Kohlrabi with Diamante Albedo, Ice crystal salad & green almonds

Chervil Root with perigord truffle, Broccoli & fermented asparagus

Arctic Char with blood orange, Quinoa & dill

Pigeon with forona beets, salsify & chestnuts

A cheese course

Pear with spruce tips, parsnip & rose mallow

The food

I will go through the dinner course by course and try to give as close as an insight possible in what I thought of the food. I start out with a description of the dish and will then go onto the taste and mouth feel.

Bread cart

One of Steirerecks most famous pieces of interior is their breadcart, freshly stacked every single service they offer up to 30 different varieties of bread, some baked in house, like the bloodsausage bread or their homemade pretzel, others sourced at small local bakeries around Vienna, including the likes of Kasses or Ströck Feierabend.

Opinion:  You can’t go wrong when choosing off the breadcart, the necesities for me include the bloodsausage bread, the poppyseed & plum-jam bread or the Edison wheat sourdough bread.

Amuse gueule

Steirereck Amuse Gueule

Steirereck Amuse Gueule

Steirereck Amuse Gueule

The amuse geule consisted of 5 dishes:

Tafelspitz “New Style” (A variation of one of Austria’s most famous dishes, boiled brisket with potatoes and spinach): Thin shavings of boiled beef brisket on a potato souffle with  marinated spinach. Taste: Biting onto the soft potato was like biting into a delicious pillow of goodness.

Duckliver paté on potato dough: A circle of duck liver paté on a disk of potato dough with cassis-jam and crispy amaranth Taste: The paté was smooth and well deveined, the potato disk was salty and paired well with the crispy amaranth the dish was topped with. The jam was the necessary mean to combine all the ingredients together as the acidity cut through the richness of the paté and complemented the saltiness of the potato disk.

Cauliflower in breadcrumbs on cauliflower cream, olive oil and purple: A cauliflower floret coated in butter and breadcrumbs, served next to a cream of cauliflower topped with olive oil. Taste: The floret was cooked perfectly, coated in crispy breadcrumbs, which gave texture to the dish. Unfortunately there was no spoon to scoop even the last remainders of the cream out of the dish! Delicious!

Bitter-Salad, marinated and stuffed with beans: Not looking too exciting in the beginning, just a wedge of salad on a toothpick. Taste: When biting into it an explosion of flavour in your mouth. Perfectly balanced the bitterness of the salad with a sweet and sour vinegar dressing and stuffed with crispy black beans. Outperforming every expectation one had at the dish.

Char-belly tartar in a taco shell made from amaranth (?): Served on a bed of Char scales, not intended for consumption, the shells were delicate, breaking even at the smallest touch. Not ideal to eat. Taste: The great freshness and softness of the fish paired with the crispiness of the shell made for a great mouthfeel, unfortunately the dish fell a bit flat when coming to the taste as it was quite bland. Refreshing nonetheless but rather lame after the flavour explosions before.

Opinion: Great start of the evening, the two highlights of the course were the Tafelspitz “New Style” as well as the bittersalad. Since you cant order it I hope for you that you get exactly those dishes as they are overall great with the exception of the taco.

First Dish

Mountain Trout, Cucumber, Melon, Pea Shoots

Description: The Trout was served seasoned with lime salt, otherwise left pure. Served along steamed and raw honey-melon and verjus, ginger ale and balsam vinegar pickled cucumbers. Topping the melons were fermented mung bean sprouts and bleached pea shoots. The sauce was pureed salad with basil oil, honey and cayenne.

Taste: The trout was perfect in its raw form, complemented very well by the lime salt and the sweetness of the melon in two ways. The sauce gave a delicious acidity to the dish as well as a little spiciness. The cucumbers pickling made for a great source of freshness for the dish. The mung bean sprouts were utilized well to achieve bitterness.

Opinion: Perfection in quality when it comes to fresh and local fish. The balancing of sweetness, saltiness, acidity, bitterness and Umami was amazing. The usage of different textures in the dish was executed great.

  This is it for the first part of my experience of the famous Steirereck in Vienna, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did up until now. I am eager for feedback btw.!

The second part of the post will be coming soon!

I am finally back posting and I thought I'd give writing a review about Austrias Top-Restaurant a shot! I am by no means a writer, but I enjoyed writing it a lot! If you've got feedback I'd be glad to listen to it! Disclaimer: All views and opinions expressed in this post are completely my own, I am not paid or invited by the restaurant to review their food.

[crumbly-life]

Pulled Chicken Croquettas & Spicy Mayo

Crispy, salty, delicious. Chicken Croquettas with a cold beer.

Fingerfood has become bigger and bigger over the last few years and who doesn’t like a spicy, small treat at the beginning of  a party of when sitting togehter while drinking? If you make a large batch of those nuggets of deliciousness you can freeze them after battering and just fry them from frozen! Ingredients Croquettas 2 chicken breasts dried oregano thyme olive oil 120gr butter 140gr flour…

[crumbly-life]

Crispy Shrimp Tacos with grilled Corn Salsa

Finally a new recipe! Cajun spiced shrimp tacos for the warm summer days ahead of us!

Hot temperatures, where do you wanna be? The beach, preferably with a mojito in your hand and tacos on a plate in front of you! What gives you a better feeling of the beach, than spicy and crispy shrimps and corn? (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Watermelon & Buffalo-Mozarella Salad

The heat is here! How to counter it? Frozen watermelon, grilled peaches and a salad of course!

Hot days, warm night, the summer can take a lot of effort to stay cool in! Ice cold watermelon, grilled sweet peaches and creamy buffalo mozarella will hopefully relieve you of some heat and will make you look forward to the evening! (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Buttermilk - Blueberry Pancakes

Fluffy, sweet pancakes with fresh blueberries. Breakfast in bed is settled!

As today is Fathers Day in England, lets talk about breakfast in bed! When you think about a delicious breakfast in bed the first thing that comes to mind is blueberry pancakes. Fluffy, melting in your mouth because of the maple syrup, sweet and mellow. Ingredients For 4 people Pancakes: 180gr all-purpose flour 2 Tbsp baking powder 1 1/2 tsp baking soda 5 Tbsp sugar 1 egg 2 Tbsp melted butter…

[crumbly-life]

Egg-Fried Rice with Crispy Sweet-Chilli Chicken

Spicy, Sweet, Crispy. What else could you want from a dish?

Everybody has craved a bowl of delicious rice with vegetables and egg sometimes, but if you add cripsy chicken in a spicy and sweet sauce to it nobody will be able to resist the smell coming from your stove. Watch out for hungry neighbours trying to get a piece through the window! =) (more…)

[crumbly-life]

My Dad's Curry

My dad will not go into history for being a great chef. His curry is amazing though!

My dad will never be known as an amazing chef, but there is one dish that he knows how to do! When I was a small kid, I remeber it needing to be a special occasion for him to go into the kitchen but when he did, the Curry was delicious. (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Marble Cake

A recipe that has brought a lot of joy into my families life for generations!

This recipe has been in my family for a few generations, so I decided to share it with you all. There is nothing fancy about this cake, it just tastes delicious and is definitely worth giving a try when friends and family come for a visit! (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Silky Mushroom Soup

Treat your tastebuds to something known today! My mushroom soup will certainly do the trick!

A warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach, vegetables that are healthy, a load of Umami on your tongue and every dream coming true. I can promise you all those things except one. But you can only find out which one it is by making this recipe =) (Again, this is a dish that can be prepared Vegan, Vegetarian and omnivorous! (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Homemade Strazopretti, Duck, Star-Anis Ragù

The Strazopretti came to a good use! A duck ragu, filled with Umami coating the pasta. What more can you want from a dish that is pure comofort food?

This dish might require some time but that definitely pays off! Letting the ragu simmer for up to 4 hours will give you an unbelievable texture and so many layers of flavour. Because I had some pasta dough left, I also made some Fettuccine, that work perfectly with the sauce as well! (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Summertime Pea Soup

Finally we got some sun in London as well! Why not celebrate the sun with this easy and quick Pea Soup that can be done in under 30 minutes?

The spring has finally also arrived in London! Why not celebrate the sunnier times with a vegetarian and light pea soup? The soup can be served warm and cold and is done really really quick! (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Chicken Teriyaki Don

Dig into this quick weeknight dinner! Asian flavours and homemade teriyaki sauce included!

Enjoy a really quick and easy weekday dinner! Asian flavours that everybody knows and loves without the need of buying the premade teriyaki sauce. Fresh greens and a healthy portion of rice. What more can you ask for? (more…)

[crumbly-life]

Sticky sous-vide Pork Belly with buttery Spinach and Parsnip Purée

It is time for a new Recipe! Dig into my sticky Pork Belly with Parnsip Puree!

A dish that requires a Sous Vide machine (Anova/Joule) and time, but if those are used, the flavours and textures will reward you very much! Its definitely worth trying it out! This dish can be served as a starter and as a main course! (more…)