The Amazing Race: Luxembourg Cook-Along

So this thread right here: exists and you should go look at it for more details. Basically you randomly assign yourself a country, then you cook a dish based around that country. My country was Luxembourg.

I originally wanted to do a soup, main course, and dessert, but I'm in the process of moving and things are going way faster than expected. If the competition and this thread are still around after a while then I might continue with a dessert, but that's a huge 'might'.

So instead I decided to do a cook along thread.

Soup: Bou'neschlupp (a modified version, it'll be explained)

Main Course: Chicken Schnitzel with Tomato and Onion Stew, and Roasted, Vinegared Potatoes, Carrots, and Asparagus

Some mistakes were made, but most of it came out really good. Stay tuned for cook along.

So let's get started on our Bou'neschlupp, which means green bean soup. Normally this thing would be hearty as fuck. Heavy cream, bacon, sausage, ham... Of which I can have none. In addition to trying to lose weight, I've got some thyroid and pituitary conditions. Cured, heavily salted meats tend to fuck my shit up. And I'm not going to make something that I won't eat, that's wasteful and retarded.

Here's what you'll need:

1 whole, medium white potato peeled and cubed
1 whole carrot, peeled and chopped accordingly (you want each piece to be no bigger than a nickel in diameter)
1/2 chopped white onion
1 cup chopped asparagus
1/2 bag of frozen green beans

Yes, I used frozen green beans. My grocery store didn't have fresh when I made this. Shoot me. If you're going to use fresh green beans, after you snap them you should have around 2-4 cups. Set half of them to the side.

If you're using frozen green beans, you only need 1/2 of the bag for now, but don't put away the other half. Set that, as well as a handful of asparagus stalks to the side for later. Those ingredients aren't pictured here, but they are necessary for the last few steps.

You'll also notice there's no seasoning here. That's because all I used was salt and pepper, and both of those things were to taste. I didn't measure them because some people like things super salty, others like to keep their salt at a minimum. You're all adults, you can figure this out. If you really, really want to you can mince up some garlic for the next step but really, you don't need it.

Let's continue.

Monitoring

So I guess Veeky Forums got done shitting itself? Is that what locked out all replies for all that time? And for whatever reason it's not letting me upload photos to the posts. Anyone else getting that issue?

Moving on.

I forgot to mention, you'll either need 1/2 tablespoon of butter or oil. I used butter because that's what I had in the fridge.

In one pan, you're going to coat the bottom with your butter or your oil, and toss your onions in. Saute those until they start to get a little golden brown on the edges, then throw in your green beans and chopped asparagus. I added a few sprinkles of salt to get them to sweat a bit, but it's not necessary. Once they're sizzling and browning just a bit, turn it on low and let it sit for a few more minutes. Do not brown them entirely... We're looking to preserve that green color as much as possible.

In a pot, toss in your carrots and potatoes, and let them sit on medium-low heat. Sprinkle a little salt in your water, and cover with a size-appropriate lid.

If you'd like to use chicken stock, then go ahead, but I didn't have any. My pantry was pretty cleaned out, and I'm not going to buy much until after the move. I used water to de-glaze the bottom of the veggie pan. Use cold water, you want it warm, not boiling, because the next step is going to be to take it over to the blender. That's right, the blender. I think mine cost $20 or less, you don't need any high-tech equipment for what comes next.

The water in your pot should be covering your potatoes and carrots, but not by an absurd amount. I made the mistake of putting more than this in, and it turned the soup into a stew. Flavors were still really, really great but the texture was a little gritty. It certainly didn't make it inedible, though. Just watch, and poke your contents with a skewer or something pointy and long enough so that you won't scald yourself, making sure they're the texture you want.

...If I could put up images, you'd be able to see what I was talking about.

Why are you doing this Veeky Forums?

The one time I actually want to follow someones cook-along...

We'll be resuming as soon as I'm able to post photos again.

The only thing it's telling me is that it's failed to upload. I'll keep trying, but I worked too damn hard not to post the process. If this thread dies off, there will be another version of it when this weeb site gets its shit together.

They must have a bug because I've been trying to upload a 721 kb jpg in another thread and keep getting a failure too. I've uploaded tons of photos w/o a prob.

...

Oh shit, nigga, it's working again.

MOVING ON, then. So this is what both of the pots looked like before our blender action. You can't see it here, but I actually added more water to the pot on the left before the blending, and it turned into stew. Stew is good, though.

CONTINUING.

Again, this is just a cheap ass blender that you're going to carefully dump your green beans, asparagus, and sauteed onions in. Fill it with a little bit of water, we are looking for a liquid consistency, and if possible pour the water in your pan and swish it around to get as much flavor as you can out of the pot. This is all the water I used, as you can see, it doesn't reach overwhelming heights but it will create the texture and consistency we're looking for. I would not add salt to this yet. Hold off on that until the next few steps.

You're going to give this sucker a medium blend for just a couple of minutes. I pulsed it a few times to see how it would handle, but for the majority of my time I was able to keep it on medium while holding the lid down without a worry...

...And this is the color you're going to be looking for. A nice, light green. You're going to notice two immediate things about your mixture: One, some of it's going to be watery, some of it is going to be pulpy. This is what we're looking for, that's normal. Two, that it smells. Amazing. Remember, the only seasoning we used was salt and pepper, with the addition of butter to grease up the pan. Other than that, the veggies are the stars of the show.

You're going to take your blender as well as a semi-large mesh strainer to the pot with the potatoes and carrots in them. Mesh strainers are typically inexpensive, I got mine at Walmart for like $5. I've used it nearly every day of my life. I love it.

Pour your veggie broth into the pot and use a spoon (I used wooden, I assume any spoon will work) to churn the more pulp-y parts of the mixture against the strainer. This actually took me a while, about 10 minutes to get it all in. You're going to get a lot of water as well as some more textured parts. That's fine. We want to avoid the heavily fibrous, stringy parts of the veggies, but getting a little substance into the soup is just fine.

It will look like this when you've completed those steps.

Further instructions in next post.

So we're nearing the final steps of our process. It is a little time consuming, cooking all the parts and then bringing them together, but if you know the basics of cooking then this shouldn't give you a problem at all as long as you monitor everything with general closeness.

Let's address the pot. Remember the green beans and asparagus I had you set aside? They come into play now. Because my green beans were frozen, thawed, and a little soft, I added them to the pot with no preparation. My asparagus, however, was a little tougher. I tossed it in another pan with just a tiny, inconsequential amount of butter and sauteed it until it was slightly bendable.

Now, two things. First, the butter. Do not use a copious amount. If you need less butter than what's recommended to get your ingredients where they need to be, then feel free to hold back (or add a little more if needed). And second, if you are using fresh green beans then add the remaining portion to your pan with the asparagus to soften them a bit.

If you don't like long stalks of asparagus in your soup, then cut them smaller. However, I am a child who enjoys funky looking food from time to time, and I like the way long asparagus looks. I had no difficulty eating it like a normal human being, either, but this is strictly a preferential thing.

When you've got everything in your pan at a desirable texture, carefully toss it in the pot. One more step before we can enjoy our hard work.

And this is our finished product! If you're incredibly picky with clean presentation, then go ahead and skim off what foam might be there, but don't feel obliged to do so. Make sure to poke your potatoes and carrots, seeing if they're the texture you desire, and taste to see if it needs any more seasoning. I think I added another pinch of salt, but not much.

You know what the best part is? This entire pot is under 600 calories. I think mine came out to be 525. Not per serving, for the whole thing.

Let's plate it up.

Finally, a bowl of our veggie-modified version of Bou'neschlupp, chock full of veggies. Because I did a deviation from the usual, I wanted to honor the green beans by including them not just as an ingredient, but as the base for our broth, and incorporate them throughout the entire dish.

You can see pretty well here what I was talking about with the potatoes. The starch thickened it a little, but it didn't bother me at all. I like stews, there was a period of where I was being medicated for my thyroid conditions and I got sick a lot. All I could eat were soups and brothy stews, so they grew on me. If you don't want to have to deal with potatoes at all, substitute them for more carrots or parsnips.

I hope you enjoyed my version of this Luxembourg dish! Soon to come to this thread, a cook along with our schnitzel and side dishes!

Alright, part two: Chicken Schnitzel Boogaloo

I had a few problems with this dish, which will come to light more towards the end of this cook along, so we'll get to them when we get to them.

Here's what you're going to need:

1 whole, de-boned chicken breast
1 white, medium onion (dice one half and cut the other into medium-sized strips)
2 whole tomatoes, chopped
2 whole carrots, peeled and halved
7-9 stalks of asparagus
5 red potatoes of medium to small size
1/4-1/2 tbsp. rosemary (dried or fresh, preferrably the latter but I only had dry)
1/2 tbsp. paprika

Your vinegar, bread crumbs, salt, and pepper will vary according to the size of your chicken breast and how much you like vinegar. Truthfully, you don't have to add any at all, but I love the stuff. But we'll get to that.

Prep all your veggies as shown, lay out all your ingredients to where they're neat and ready for use, and then we can get started on our main course.

We're going to start off with our tomato stew, which we will use as a topping for our chicken schnitzel. Luxembourg's cuisine is described as 'international', taking inspiration from Germany, France, and Belgium. I tried to do the same here. While I'm well aware that this dish is far less healthy than the one we previously made, I packed it with the best ingredients I could.

Let us begin.

We're going to tend to our onions first. I used oil for this, and it was a tiny, tiny amount. I dripped a tiny bit into the pan and wiped it around with a paper towel. You only need enough so that your onions will be able to lightly fry.

Add your diced onions to the pot, and once they've started to brown remove half of them. Place that half to the side, we will be using them with our potatoes and veggies.

After you remove one half of the onions, toss in all of your tomatoes into the pot and stir them around a couple of times.

Sorry for the lighting here, I made this pretty early in the morning and it was bright as fuck.

Once you've got that taken care of, you're going to lightly sprinkle in some salt and let it simmer on the lowest heat your stove can produce. Cover it with a size-appropriate lid and just leave it alone to do its thing.

Let's move on to the potatoes and vegetables.

In a very lightly oiled pan or pyrex dish that can go into the oven, add your vegetables... And you'll instantly notice the first mistake I made. I put in the asparagus with the roots. What was I thinking, right? Well, the asparagus I had available was actually really, really tough. I thought it would be able to hold its weight.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong. It did come out edible, though, and no food was wasted.

I also added the carrots to the sides, and I quartered each potato and threw it into the dish. Mistake number two, the potatoes should have been in smaller cubes. What's more, they probably should have been tossed around in a pan with some oil and vinegar before they were added to the pan.

But you know what, mistakes are how you learn. I consider myself an intermediate cook, someone who knows the general feel of food and cooking but still fucks up. As long as you take something away from those fuck ups, though, there's nothing to be ashamed about. And, again, no food went to waste. It just wasn't as good as it could have been.

Pushing that aside, I topped it all off with the remaining, lightly fried onions, some salt and pepper, and about two tablespoons of vinegar. For some people, that's an insane amount of vinegar. For others, it's not nearly enough. If you do it the way I did it, your veggies are going to be far more permeated than your potatoes. I recommend you do the thing I mentioned with tossing your spuds around with some oil and vinegar before adding them to the pan.

Sprinkle on your rosemary, then cover with foil and pop it in the oven. I baked this at about 350 F for an hour.

Mistake number three, right?

We'll come back to that. In light of my screw ups, we're going to move on to the most successful part of our dish and the star of the plate, our chicken.

So... As far as the chicken breast goes, this thing was butchered to hell to begin with. I'm not the best at butterflying meat, but this thing did not make it easy whatsoever. It was already a big, big, BIG breast to begin with, and whoever butchered it... Didn't do a great job.

But you know what? It's schnitzel. These things don't matter, because we're going to bread it and fry it in our pan. It can look as funky as it wants to, as long as it's still edible.

Butterfly your chicken breast and tenderize it. If you're like me and don't have a meat tenderizer, take a knife and make very light, criss-cross cuts into the top and bottom of your meat. Even if it looks hacked up, as long as there are no holes or significant tears in your chicken there should be no problem.

Lay out your breading station, with one beaten egg, your bread crumbs, and your flour. Add all of your paprika to your flour and give it a stir. I also added a few shakes of salt to the flour, and as far as measurements go I would say you shouldn't have any more than 1/2 tbsp. of salt for each breast you're battering. If you do need more, then definitely no more than 1 tbsp. More than 1 tbsp. and it's just going to be a salt brick.

Make sure you've coated every nook and cranny of this chicken breast. I also forgot to mention that your flour and breadcrumb amounts are going to differ based on the size of your chicken breast. You can figure it out on your own, trust me, I believe in you. And if you're not confident about getting the right amount, add a little at a time until you're satisfied with what you've produced.

Once you've got something you're happy with, cover it with some plastic wrap and pop it in the fridge. Let this set for a minimum of 15 minutes. I let it rest for about 20, but I was doing other things at the time like...

...Checking on our tomato stew. A good way to tell if it's done is if the tomato skins are falling off the flesh.

Can you remove the skins beforehand? Well... I suppose so, but I didn't even think to do that. I like the skins. I love everything about tomatoes. But if it's that big of a deal for you, then yeah, take them off.... you tomato philistine...

Joking, it's your food you bought with your money, do whatever the hell you want with it. When this mix is just a bit above soupy, pour it into a bowl and set it on the side. You're done with this save for plating, so all it's gotta do from this point onward is look pretty.

Once those 15 minutes are up, it's chicken time.

Toss that sucker into a pan with a thin layer of oil. You are frying it, but you're not drenching it. If you do overdo it a little bit and it comes out greasy, however, lay it down on a plate that's covered with a paper towel and pat it a few times. After about 3 minutes all the excess grease should be removed, but you do need that barrier to absorb it.

Get a pan appropriate for the job. Do not fry a big piece of meat in a small pan. This was actually the biggest pan I own, though... And I would have liked it to have been a little bigger.

I kept my burner on medium to medium-high heat throughout the duration of this process, just so you know. Don't blast it with max heat, otherwise you're going to end up with raw chicken and black crumbs.

Turn it to the other side, but be cautious. Remember, we added paprika to our flour, so the color of the batter is probably going to be a little more golden than what it would usually be. Watch your actual meat, and judge by the color of your chicken on whether it needs more time. I think I cooked mine between 11-13 minutes, but a smaller breast would probably need 10. Remember, it has been butterflied and flattened.

When you're confident your chicken is done, relocate it to another plate.

After this is taken care of, it's time to check our veggies in the oven. Now, following my recommendations above, everything in that pan should be ready to plate up. However, as we've already established, I'm a doofus. So, to further my fuckery, I took off the foil and broiled the potatoes and veggies for just a couple of minutes. It did... Less than I had hoped.

There's one more step before we get to plate.

Remember the other half of our onion? The one we cut into semi-thin strips? Go ahead and toss those into the pan the chicken was frying in. If you have to add some more oil, be careful while doing so, but I didn't need to.

Once those are soft, we can assemble.

Here we are!

Place your chicken cutlet on the plate, then spoon over the tomato stew and top with your fried onions. Scoop out what are hopefully better potatoes than mine, along with half of one carrot and your asparagus. As you can see, the asparagus here... Didn't make it. The flavor was pretty damn good but the texture was not there at all. I should have just sauteed it on its own and added it to the final product. But the carrots were very nice, and the potatoes that were cooked a bit more thoroughly had a very good flavor.

And that concludes The Amazing Race: Luxembourg Veeky Forums edition Cook Along! What a ride. I hope I entertained at least a couple of people, because this really was fun. Some things I knew and improved upon, some things I tried for the first time, and others I screwed up completely. But it was fun, and I'm looking forward to participating in the next session.

This was a LOT of food. I did plate it up to look pretty, but in truth I only ate about a quarter of this. Had it for the next two days, as well.

That looks pretty tasty

I'm gonna bump this up because the competition is still ongoing.

This was enjoyable. Going to try the soup. Good instructions for a beginner like me.

You should post the image on this Amazing Race thread.

In the previous threads, people would post pictures of their finished product to show they delivered.

I am from Luxembourg, keep up the good work

It was very good. If you don't like chicken, you can sub it out for pork, but I had chicken breasts in the house so that's what I used.

Good luck! Watch those potatoes :>

Good idea, will do.

Thank you, I knew nothing about this cuisine going into it and I'm happy someone who knows the food likes what I've done.

Well, the movers had to reschedule, so it looks like I'll be making dessert!

It was my initial plan to do a soup, a main course, and a dessert, and I didn't think I'd get around to the sweets because I was planned to move soon. That's been set back, so hopefully this thread will be alive a few more days for me to post the results.

I'm having trouble deciding between plum and apple cake... What do you guys think/want to see from someone with semi-intermediate skill? Leaning towards apple, myself, but plums are easy to get where I am.

Obviously plum

Alright, I will be back with the best Quetschentaart I can make as soon as possible.

To keep this thread alive, I actually used to have a plum tree in my back yard. And now, literally across the street from my house is a pear tree. Nothing fancy, just regular green pears. It's been there for years, and it's kind of become a staple in my summers. Pears are just now coming into fruit. I always had a bad habit of eating them before they were perfectly ripe, though, as would the kid that lived next door to me. She and her friends would ride their bikes, and always stop by to grab like 10 of them... And lose them all down the street, and have to pick them back up. But she's in her later teens, now, and doesn't really care about it. She cares about boys and dying her hair black. Some other kids moved in on the other side, and come around to pick a few and hang out around the tree. It's nice to see that, I live in a small town in USA and it's pretty rural. Instead of being attached to cell phones and consoles, kids here have attachments to nature and the outdoors.

Although, we've had a... Pest problem... Recently. Every time one of us feels like grabbing a pear, for the past two or three years, some old crone takes a basket to the tree and picks them all. You old bitch, those pears are for everyone. Go die in a fire, you contribute nothing.

I'm gonna go check on the status of said pear tree and hunt down some plums. Do you guys have any local fruits? Maybe they're not in your backyard, but where do you go and what do you grab when you're in the mood for fruit?

cool

would cook onions a little longer tho