Due to the extreme pressure exerted on me by the atelier members, I present today “Take One” of the festive menu, to get the dialog and exchange of ideas started. This is a conceptual presentation, there are no real photos of the dishes.
First Dish
The first dish is the opening of the experience. It has to be adventourus, but at the same time familiar, so it does not have to fight the distance.
My choice is trout tartar, served with pears marinated in Greek Tsipouro (grappa) and leaks confit.
Main Dish
The main dish is always a big gamble, as you have ot meet and excced the expectations that were (hopefully) created from the first dish.
I propose a Millefeuille of roast pork leg with chestnuts, prunes, green and red gabbage and craked wheat.
The leafs are paper thin slices of the leg, the cream is made of all the ingredients listed above. It is served with caramelized carrots and potatoes.
Desert
My favourite is a Chocolate and Chestnut charlotte.
This is it for now folks, the ball is over to you!
The first bite came compliments of the chef. Trout with onion and yellow ginger. Succulent and full of aromas, a nice way to start the meal.
Gillardeau Oysters with buttermilk, glass pasta and pea shoots. This is the first dish in the 5-course set menu of the chef. The dish evolves around the oysters and magnifies their taste and flavors. A subtle and discrete dish.
Braised “Oxheart” Carrot with fillet, milt and marrow from Styrian beef. When I first read the menu, I thought that this was the heat of the ox! Wrong! Oxheart is a type of carrot, named so because its shape is like the heart of the ox! The braised carrot was served on top of raw Styrian beef fillet sliced paper-thin, and topped with a very light vinaigrette with marrow. The sticks you see on top are a type of rich bread with majoram.
Gilt Head Bream and Moscardini, with black radish, rocket and parsley. The fish was pan fried to perfection, its fresh firm and juicy. And -as always- the skin was the best bite of all! The bream was served on top of a angel pasta bed and was accompanied by one moscardino in vinaigrette, and paper-thin black radish, which was delicious! I must say that I somehow lost the flavors of the moscardini, this iwas rather neutralized. But if you exclude that, everything else in the dish was perfect.
Pheasant breast with chevril root, chanterelle mushrooms and yellow dates. What a wonderful dish! The breast was cooked to perfection, succulent, full of flavours, accompanied by the mushrooms and the dates. But the real taste booster was at the bottom. The skin of the bird was served with a semi sweet and savoury sauce, and this made the difference!
It is across the boulevard from the Parliament, in a quiet corner of the Burg Theater.
The decoration inside is 19th century “fin de siecle”, as you can see from the bar photograph.
The dish arrived in the hands of the chef, Christian Domschitz, who explained that it is crunchy gabbage, lightly treated in salt and vinegar, served to accompany the lobster in its butter sauce. This was a first course, and it had in it almost half a lobster! Tender, juicy, divine!
The main course was my choice. black truffle with beef marrow, served on a “sponge” of crispy white bread. This is beyond description! I have never before tasted such a sweet, buttery substance, that melts in your mouth with overpowering you, while at the same time the truffle infuses the liquid with all the aromas of the woods.
And now the dessert! Dark chocolate praline with campari sauce in the middle, accompanied by blood orange sorbet on the left and orange grog on the right.
Veronika, Christian, thank you!
Today I have prepared a dish that belongs to the family of Italian timbale, but I have changed the ingredients to a considerable degree. The overall concept remains the same. The timbale is a big stuffed drum. What has inside varies, as well as its skin. 
For the meat I got a nice chunk from the upper leg, that had some fat in it. I then browned the meat with onions, one red and one green pepper.After browning, I added tomato paste and two chopped fresh tomatoes.
I let the meat to simmer in low heat for one hour.
After frying the vegetables, I let them rest on paper, while I prepare the dough for the skin of the timbale. I made it like a rich bread, in order to adsorb all the juices of the vegetables and the meat without becoming excessively soft.
Add the vegetables and slices of parmesan cheese.
Add the penne.
Add the meat and make sure you have at least 2 centimeters to the rim of the dish, as the dough will expand in baking.
Add a layer of dough at the top, spread egg all over to give it a nice golden color, and bake in the oven for one hour, in 250 degrees centigrade. Stick a nice in the timbale a couple if times, to let the steam out.
Once baked, let it rest for 15 minutes, then serve on a round dish. A very sharp knife is required when serving.
Let the timbale warm your heart with its harmony of smells and tastes!
Slice them as thin as possible and brown them in olive oil.
Add finely chopped cured pancetta (if you do not have it, bacon will do).
Add a couple of finely chopped dry onions and parseley to colour and add taste, coarse sea salt and pepper.
Remove from the heat and let it rest and cool. Add a couple of eggs and a quarter of a kilo of strained yoghourt.
Bake in 200 degrees centigrade for one hour.
Serve and enjoy.
In the same pan I then put sliced green peppers, onions, parsley and celery.
I put the peppers alone at first, and then add the other ingredients.
While all of this is taking place, dry white beans from the northern city of Drama are boiling in water.
When the peppers, and onions are soft, I add the meat and half a bottle of good red wine, some slat, pepper and cover the pot. The meat must now cook in medium to low heat for at least one hour.
While the meat is slowly cooking, I put half of the beans in a mixer and puree them. I spread them in a baking tray with olive oil.
On top I add the rest of the beans, and spread them evenly. I add a lot of juice from the stew and bake for one hour in 200 degrees centigrade. To avoid dehydration of the beans, in the first thirty minutes cover the tray with aluminum foil.
To serve, cut a rectangle of the beans and serve the meat next to it.
What I really like about the dish is the combination of textures in the beans, accompanied by the aromas of the meat stew. 
To accompany the dish, as a matter of fact to announce it, I prepared zucchini rolls with pastirma. Easy peasyFry sliced zucchini in olive oil and dry in kitchen paper.
Slice pastirma very thinly. To avoid overpowering the zucchini with the pastirma, cut the slices very thin and short.
Take a zucchini slice, add some pastirma, about one third of its length should be covered by the pastirma slice, roll it up and let it rest on the serving dish.
These little bites are dynamite! I was quite surprised by the harmonious collaboration of the gentle soft and almost unspoken zucchini with the explosive pastirma!