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 May 2016 – recipe by Marcel Neumann – new chef of the decorated Restaurant “Das Schick”:

Cream of nettle soup
Arbequina olive oil . Fritattenschwamm (pancake sponge)

Recipe for 6 servings

Ingredients for the soup:
160 g nettle (young leaves)
2 shallots, finely diced
1 root celery
2 potatoes
300 ml vegetable, beef or chicken stock
500 ml milk
30 g butter
100 ml white wine
olive oil
salt
pepper
bay leaf
nutmeg

Ingredients for the olive oil emulsion:
160 ml chicken, beef or fish stock, according to taste
80 ml Arbequina olive oil (or another high-quality olive oil)
4 g tapioca powder (substitute corn starch in a pinch)

Ingredients for the Fritattenschwamm:
120 g flour
200 ml egg whites
10 ml oil
60 ml water
salt
black pepper, ground
mace, ground

Preparation

Cream of nettle soup:
Remove the nettle leaves from stems and blanch in well-salted water. Subsequently quench with cold water and set aside. Slice celery and potatoes in equally large pieces (approx. 1 cm.). Slowly sweat shallots and celery in olive oil so that they do not discolor. Add potatoes and likewise sweat briefly. Quench with white wine. Allow the white wine to boil away, then pour in stock and milk. Let the soup simmer lightly until it is nearly boiled away. Purée and season to taste. Subsequently strain through a hair sieve, add the blanched nettle and purée with a hand-held blender. Again season to taste.

Olive oil emulsion:
Stir stock until smooth and slowly bring to a boil. Slowly add olive oil using a hand-held blender until an emulsion forms.

Fritattenschwamm:
If you have an iSi bottle, first mix all ingredients in a bowl, then fill up the iSi bottle with the mixture. Using two iSi chargers, fill several cappuccino cups half-full with the mixture. Heat in a microwave for approx. 45 seconds, until the mixture gets an airy sponge-like texture.

Without iSi bottle: Beat egg whites until foamy. Stir remaining ingredients into a smooth dough and season to taste. Carefully fold in the foamed egg whites under the mixture, then proceed as above (half-fill cappuccino cups, etc.).

Arrange all components as desired – like in our photo, for instance – and enjoy.

We wish you much cooking success… bon appétit!