Draff Bread

The only real waste from brewing beer is draff, that is what is left off from cooking the malt. You can feed it to animals or compost it but I replaced the sunflower seeds from my favorite bread recipe with the draff from the last brewing day.

Olive Paste

Olive paste is spread on every second sandwich in Bulgaria. On a recent visit home in Cologne I desparately needed some olive paste (for a vegetarian burger) and could not find any in shops around. I didn't search for a long time though because I was pretty sure that it is dead easy to do yourself. That way want of something can become a stroke of luck.

Optimize Ryanair

Flying with Ryanair is comparatively cheap but requires a whole lot of patience. Ryanair's aggressive cost optimization strategies do not necessarily improve the flying experience of the passengers. But who cares? They have already bought a ticket. Nonetheless, there are countermeasures for the passenger.

How To Do a Fair Online Raffle?

How can you draw the winner in an online raffle in a fair and reproducible manner? Fair means that all participants have an equal chance of winning. Reproducible in cyberspace means that every participant can generate the same result without being physically present at the draw.

Poached Egg With Braised Chard

Chard was mostly missing until recently at Bulgarian greengrocers. But now it is available every now and then. Considering the rareness of the trove, picking the right recipe was a challenge. I opted for the most simple one, the classical variant with boiled potatoes and egg.

Spicy Red Lentils On Rucola Bed

Lentils are high in plant proteins and as such an important constituent of a low-meat or meat-free diet. In traditional German cuisine they normally appeared in stews with lumps of bacon and wurst. Nowadays they experience a much more creative treatment and also come in many different kinds.

Peach Crumble With Fresh Herbs

Last weekend my greengrocer on ulitsa Tsar Ivan Asen II had perfectly juicy and sweet peaches, probably the last ones for this year, that seemed to be just made for a nice cake. Searching the internet for a recipe I came across a recipe with rosemary, almost exactly what I was looking for.

Group Authentication For Nginx

Nginx's{:target=_blank} access control system lacks an equivalent for Apache's group based access control{:target=_blank}. But it is easy to emulate this Apache feature with a little bit of scripting.

Salty Caramel Sirup With Roasted Chilies

Recently, I was desperately looking for a Bulgarian supplier of salty caramel sirup. In vain, as it ultimately turned out. Instead I flew it in from Germany for tons of money and was even disappointed: To my taste, the original sirup by Monin is to thin, the caramel is not browned long enough and it lacks a pinch of salt. I started experimenting, and as it turned out, making the sirup at home is ridiculously simple at 10 percent of the costs and the result is in my humble opinion not at all second to the convenience product.

Pepper-Crusted Tuna With Pomegranate Corn Salad

The best way to cook a fish is not to cook it. Tuna seared in a pepper crust is a candidate for the second place. Crispy and hot from the outside, raw fish inside, and a thin layer of lukewarm, beautifully soft cooked tuna creates a remarkable combination of different flavors and textures.