For your enjoyment…

Do you feel the same as I do on weekends on or special holidays, or when you have guests over? I’d like to cook something very special, not the usual fare. Then I’m either spoiled for choice or I can’t think of anything at all. If even intensively searching the internet turns out to be fruitless or leafing through piles of cookbooks doesn’t turn up any solution, try our Recipe of the Month!

From the chefs of the Schick Restaurants in Vienna, every month there is a new, seasonal recipe from Austrian-Spanish or Viennese cuisine for you to prepare and enjoy at home! If you don’t want to have to prepare the recipe yourself, you can order the finished dish in comfort at the corresponding Schick Restaurant and indulge all around…

In March 2017 – recipe by Felix Albiez – chef of the decorated Restaurant “Das Schick”:

Cream of lemongrass soup with curry, served with prawn tatare, flan and cashews

Ingredients:

250 ml wine – Gemischter Satz (a Viennese specialty wine consisting of at least three grape varieties grown in a single vineyard)
250 ml fish stock
250 ml seafood stock
1 tbsp. Madras curry powder
a pinch of green Thai curry paste
200 ml coconut milk
10 lemongrass stalks
1 fennel bulbs
5 shallots
1 leek
200 ml cream
salt
cayenne pepper
50 g ginger
2 eggs
nasturtium
20 g roasted cashews
20 g butter
4 kaffir lime leaves
5 large wild-caught prawns, with heads
1 lime
coriander

Preparation:

Prawn tatare:
Break open the prawns and remove them from their shells. Remove the guts from the prawns. (Don’t throw away the shells, since they’re needed for the soup.) Dice the prawns into small cubes. Season to taste with chopped coriander, salt and olive oil.

Soup:
Coarsely chop vegetables, ginger and 5 lemongrass stalks. Sweat them in a pot with a bit of olive oil. Add prawn shells and continue to sauté them together with the vegetables. Sprinkle with curry powder and add the curry paste. Quench with white wine and refill with fish and seafood stock. Continue cooking, reducing the mixture to one-third of its original volume of liquid. Strain the soup. Add coconut milk, 2 kaffir lime leaves and half of the cream, bringing the soup to a boil. Remove the leaves after 5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and cayenne pepper.

Flan:
Cut the remaining lemongrass into thin slices. Sweat the lemongrass in butter at low heat for approximately 10 minutes. Infuse with cream, add lime leaves and simmer. After a couple of minutes, strain the mixture and allow to cool. Whisk the mixture with the eggs. Season to taste with salt and pour into a suitable half-sphere silicone form. Put in an oven at 100°C (212°F) and bake for approximately 30 minutes. Once the mixture sets, remove it from the oven and set aside to cool prior to serving.

Serving:
For each serving, fill two flan halves with tartare and place them in the middle of the soup plate. Sprinkle with chopped cashews and garnish with nasturtium flowers and leaves. Bring the soup to a boil, froth up with a hand-held blender. Pour the soup into the soup plates, like in our photo, for example.

Have fun preparing this dish, and bon appétit!