Japanese hamba-gu with a twist of cheese and milk

Today I craved for japanese hamburger/hamba-gu. The japanese version of a hamburger comes without a bun and it is served with rice, veggies and a gravy /sauce. After a litlle research, on different blogs and some You Tube channels, I came up with something pretty delicious. The recipe is very easy and it makes up a pretty well balanced meal!  both me and my husband ate everything in a few minutes!!

This is how it looks like. I still have to work on the presentation / ;)) pls bear with me, I`ll get better.

 

 

 

 

INGREDIENTS:

-1onion

-500 gr minced meat (pork, beaf, mixed, chicken,etc) I used pork today, that`s all I had in my fridge

-2Tbs. milk

-200 gr bread crumbs

- salt, pepper, nutmeg to taste and 3cloves of garlig-smashed

- 1egg

- some flour to cover the burgers before you fry them

-1 or 2cups of water

-100 gr of cheese (gorgonzolla, ementaller, etc your favourite- one that is creamy and melts nicely)

 

Sauce

-2 scallions-white part only or half onion

-50 gr butter

-2Tbs. tomato puree

-4Tbs. ketchup

-1Tbs soy sauce

-a pinch of sugar

-1Tbs red wine or Japanese sake if you have

 

STEPS:
1.  Boil your veggies (carrots, brocolli, potatoes, etc) and set aside.

2. Chop your onion and sautee until it`s soft and gold. Let it cool. Soak the bread crumbs in milk.

3. In a bowl mix your meat with salt, pepper, nutmeg , add the bread crumbs and the sauteed onion, mix well. Add the egg and mix again. Now make 2  meatballs with the cheese cubes in the middle, and put them in the fridge until you ready to cook.

4. Add butter to a fry pan  and sautee the onion, then add wine, soy sauce and sugar. Let it "boil" for 2minutes then on low heat add ketchup and  tomato puree, mix well , done!

5. Cover the meatballs in some flour and make sure you press them and they are about 2cm thick. In another fry pan, add some oil, when it`s hot add your burgers and fry on each side for 4 minutes then lower your heat and add about one- two cups of water, it depends on the size of your pan. The burgers should be half in water ;) when the water it`s gone, your hamburgers are done.

HAPPY COOKING !! ;))

St. Gallen, Switzerland

St. Gallen, Switzerland 08.2014

The city of St.Gallen with its Abbey District (UNESCO World Heritage site) is the center of eastern Switzerland.  "The tourist destination St.Gallen-Lake Constance contains 32 different municipalities reaching from St.Gallen’s Lake Constance shoreline to the beginning of the rolling foothills of the Alps and the St.Gallen Rhine Valley." A beautiful summer destination where you can enjoy the sun and the Alps :)) A little tip- you might want to book a hotel on the German side of the border, prices tend to be lower than on the Swiss side.  From Konstanz, where we booked our hotel, it takes about an hour with the Sbahn and the ticket costs around 28 Euro for a round trip. You can either switch Sbahn no. S8 in Kreuzlingen for S14 or walk directly to the station and get on S14 to St Gallen. The two cities/countries are not really separated by a custom office or something....you just walk back and forth between two countries. How cool is that? Keine Grenze!  The scenery is really awesome, cows, greeeeeeen, blueee water, just countryside.  I LUV Milka ;))

Have you ever been to St  Gallen ? If you were, what do you think of  their German? isn`t it a bit funny? or maybe it`s just me and the German I`m used to hear in NRW?? :))

Here is the official site of  St. Gallen:

http://www.st.gallen-bodensee.ch/en/region-touring/st-gallen-lake-constance/places/stgallen

and the Swiss Railway official site

http://www.sbb.ch/home.html


And some pictures :))

                                                                   The Post Office

                                                 The Abbey UNESCO World Heritage site

Paris

PARIS 09. 2013

Apart from being `almost` robbed twice, once in front of Gare du Nord and once again in front of  Eifel Tower, the trip was amazing!! Paris is an amazing city and you need days to discover everything that it has to offer. It`s definitely worth a visit! It is recommendable, like in any other big city to buy one day passes or 2-multi for either hop-on hop-off if you`re lazy (expensive though!!!) or metro/ bus/ trams that will allow you to move freely from one place to another without any hassle. For shorter distance we walked and walked and walked.......Taro chan was sooo tired :))
We went to Paris by Thalys, a comfy 4.5hours ride from Cologne Hbf  to Gare du Nord. These are some of the pictures I took.:)))

                                                                      Taro chan ;))

In case you didn`t know, they say that Paris is the second biggest Japanese community in Europe after London. The 3rd place belongs to Dusseldorf, Germany!! I haven`t seen too many Japanese in Paris though...it is a big city but... There is a little (literally little!! 狭いいい）street called Rue de la Anne if I remember well, full of Japanese eateries. I was very eager to try the okonomiyaki restaurant!!!  It was good but not as good as I thought!  one thing is for sure, it definitely suits the size of an authentic Japanese restaurant!! Watch your head when you go upstairs!

                         Galeries Lafayette huuge shopping centre! of course, veeery expensive!

                                                      Sacre Coeur ! beautiful inside out.

                                                               Notre Dame Cathedral

The Seine River

          
                                    Angelina Patisserie 住所: 226 Rue Rivoli, 75001 Paris, フランス