Already on the first day of the dinner week in Münster, Jess came out as the absolute queen of chaos. On day 3, the influencer proves that her self-image is right. But although the guests are prepared for everything, they are always surprised – or rather: overwhelmed.
Wednesday, June 15: “I always have to be interrupted,” Jess (33) prepares the camera team for a lot of text during the day. She tells her followers every day “how to master everyday life as a mother of three children”. And how to get the figure you want thanks to hulla hoops. That’s why their motto is “Round
The fact that a three-course menu is served at all is thanks to her friend’s memory: “I checked it out. I was quite sure it wouldn’t be my turn until tomorrow.” Accordingly, Jess goes to work without a plan and has to use the ingredients that are just so tangible. “If it works, that’s good. If not, then I’ll try to save it with spices.”
Ilka (48) expects chaos: “Jess is a real stage pig. She’s really hooked.” Mechthild (60) is critical of the green sticks: “It’s absolutely not the asparagus season now.”
In the evening, Ilka is overwhelmed by the table decorations: “There was a lot going on on the table. I thought I’d come to a children’s birthday party.” Domenik (29) laughs: “I thought so too!” Then comes the starter with lamb’s lettuce, chicken and shrimp skewers and caramelized pear. Domenik: “I hardly tasted any spices.” Consistency? “Rather rubber.” Shrimp fan Ilka couldn’t eat the shrimp: “I don’t know if they were half raw.”
“Now I have to take care of the worst,” Jess reluctantly tackles the beef. “I have the most respect for that.” She admits, “I only picked this because it sounds fancy.” In any case, she’s not good at cooking: “I’ve never succeeded. Not even when trying to cook.” Your whole hope is on the newly purchased meat thermometer. Every few minutes, Jess pokes around with the tip of the meat, but the right cooking temperature is a long time coming.
Meanwhile, Jess serves baguette with herb butter. “Did you make the bread yourself?” Domenik asks. “I definitely warmed it up myself,” Jess says. Domenik chews: “It was a bit of a shame because it wasn’t tasty either.”
“I’m just as curious as you are” – with these words Jess serves the main course. Salt and pepper mills are passed around the table. Silence. “You didn’t preheat the plates, right?” Ilka breaks the silence. Thomas consequently criticizes: “Unfortunately, the meat was cold.” Not even the side dishes convince Ilka: “The asparagus was so dead. It was so mushy.”
Jess garnished the layered raspberry mascarpone yoghurt cream with colorful whipped cream and marshmallows. The faces of the guests speak volumes. “The look of the dessert…” – Ilka and Domenik snort. “Sorry Jess! What did you do? That was awesome!” Ilka can hardly keep up: “That was doomed to fail!” Mechthild sums up the experience: “It was just the Jess dinner, and not the perfect dinner.” With 23 points, the hostess can only dream of victory.
Tuesday, June 14: Mechthild lives in Dülmen near Münster with her husband Jürgen and five deer. The four-legged friends are lovingly fed every day with leftover vegetables from the kitchen: “I cook a lot vegetarian every day.” For dinner, however, the hostess makes the exception: “Today I would like to present an onglet that is not so well known.” Onglet means kidney cone in German – and each cow has only one of them. Mechthild serves this rare piece of meat under the motto “Eat better in the Münsterland”:
When the guests arrive in front of the house, the five deer quickly flee. Not so Mechthild, because she is looking forward to the evening – despite the growing nervousness. With her aperitif she hits the mark. Jess (33): “Aperol always works.” Even Domenik (29) admits: “You can’t say that as a man, but it tastes good.”
As a starter there is a salad with bacon pear and pear in puff pastry – not “Pear Helene” as Thomas (20) and Jess suspected. “Personally, I didn’t find the salad with the raspberry dressing that tasty,” Domenik wrinkled his nose. “That was a bit too sour for me.” Thomas has a completely different taste: “I found the salad very tasty. I also found the dressing very good. There was a certain acidity in it.” But he complains: “The puff pastry was a bit dry.” Ilka (48) cannot understand the criticism: “The puff pastry scored for me.”
Mechthild gives a short lecture on the subject of beef onglet from the Reken nature reserve for the main course. “There’s only one of them” per cow, she reports. “Then I had to get the second piece and ask if the animal could be slaughtered.” The reactions of the guests: uncertain laughter and horrified silence. Especially Thomas, who actually became a vegetarian for the sake of animal welfare, has to swallow briefly. But good. Now the animal is on the plate and is eaten with due respect. Thomas enjoys his exception: “I find the meat very tasty intense.” Jess sounds less enthusiastic: “I thought it was a bit softer and easier to chew.”
Strawberry mousse, sparkling wine mousse and chocolate nut mousse round off the three-course menu. And again the tastes diverge: “Strawberry is my favourite,” announces Thomas, while Domenik is more of the chocolate-nut type and Ilka’s version of sparkling wine tastes best.
Mechthild thanks the nice guests with a little liqueur: “I heard you laugh, and that’s the main thing.” Ilka praises back: “I perceived her as an incredibly good hostess.” However, she cannot take the lead with 28 points.
Monday, June 13: “Fight for survival,” laughs Ilka at the imminent kitchen fight. “I usually never have a plan, but today I need one. Otherwise there will be chaos here,” she looks at the note on the wall for help. Point by point, the mother of a daughter can tick off the steps that will bring her closer to her perfect dinner under the motto “Soulfood – (My) dishes with history”. There is:
Nobody can imagine anything under the appetizer. “Maybe Italian?” Domenik (29) is puzzled. The self-proclaimed mess Jess (33) has no plan at all: “I’m overwhelmed with myself and with the whole situation.” Meanwhile, Thomas (20) admits: “I don’t really eat meat.” Neither does Mechthild (60). Nevertheless, both try everything that comes on the table this week.
“The perfect dinner”: “High-proof alcohol” relaxes the mood
Ilka’s warm welcome immediately breaks the ice. “Please make yourself at home,” the hostess disappears into the kitchen to get the aperitif. She is happy about the uncomplicated squad: “Mega! Everyone eats everything! I’m freaking out!” The cold drink loosens the tongues. Domenik: “It was already high-proof alcohol. Of course, that got the whole thing going.” Back in the kitchen, Ilka quickly puts her glass aside: “It’s so strong, I put a bit too much in.”
Nevertheless, she brings the soup into the bowls without any complications. “Sopa de mani” means peanut soup. “You can’t avoid it in Bolivia. It’s a very traditional soup,” explains Ilka, who worked in a children’s home in Bolivia for a long time. “Traditionally, there’s a whole chicken in it, head and feet and all the pipapo,” she says, making the soup tasty for her guests. Domenik is happy about the fried potato strips as a soup ingredient: “Small mini fries!” Thomas also likes their crunch: “That was something extraordinary.”
“The perfect dinner”: Domenik positively surprised: “I expected worse”
After the culinary trip to Bolivia, Ilka’s next story follows: “The connection to the main course is my father, who has been collecting mushrooms for as long as I can remember.” The porcini mushrooms come from him, the cattle come from Münster. Domenik: “The meat was cooked perfectly.” As a mushroom critic, he was pleasantly surprised by the risotto: “It tasted really good. I expected worse.”
Jess expects “definitely colorful fruit” for dessert. However, behind the “happiness” plate are: lemon tartlets, liquorice crème brûlée and macarons. Ilka prepared the latter the day before: “It took me ten attempts and I was done.” The small meringues just didn’t want to succeed.
All components of the dessert make Ilka happy. The positive vibes also spread to the guests. Jess applauds the lovingly decorated plates: “You’re beaming with happiness!” The liquorice note is subtle enough for everyone to taste. lucky! For this, Ilka earns a whopping 33 points – a good start to the dinner week in Münster.
Friday, June 9th: Oh, blissful East Friesland, where young women with a porcelain complexion wear starched striped dresses to cook, the properties are huge and old farmsteads are stylishly renovated… There, cute daughters are called Lilly and Rosa, leave no traces in the house, instead pluck happily eat basil from the stalk and have loving parents who have been a couple since school.
Hostess Carina (36) met and fell in love with Keno at the age of 15. Your magic formula for long-term happiness? “Always redesign the relationship.” As for the interior design, the husband can chime in: “If she wants something, I’ll build it for her.” Carina, who always seems patent, also knows how to package her feelings in an appealing way. Each of their menu courses is a homage to “favorite people”:
Motto: “A matter of the heart”
Carina’s mum used to fill zucchinis with cream cheese, the older daughter loves fish and the five-year-old of course already cooks risotto. The crumble dessert is again a recipe from the not bad mother-in-law. The clan and the village – according to Carina, a single idyll: “We love knowing everyone here and being able to get an egg anywhere at any time,” enthuses the hobby cook about Emden, previously known primarily for the Waalkes legacy “Dat Otto Huus”.
Rich in words and gestures, and with unshakable organizational skills, Carina works her way from course to course – a real elementary school teacher. Husband Keno, called “My Heart” by Carina, has a more “moral” function: “She actually always has everything under control – and I offer broad shoulders as an anchor.” For her, cooking is a matter of attitude: “If it’s done without passion, it’s definitely hard work every day.”
However, before residents of moderate city apartments with an affinity for deep freeze in fickle relationships and far from home-made lavender lemonade get into the crisis, master hairdresser Hiltrud (52) comes into the picture. Down-to-earth and laconic, she comments on the high-gloss property from 1838: “But that’s something nice. Oh, an old bell – let me hear it!”
But one thing doesn’t suit Hiltrud at all: “You can fry fennel for me however you want – I can’t swallow something like that.” With seven points, she is rather covered for the finale: “Somehow the cream cheese taste in the mouth didn’t go away.” However, Wilhelmina (34) and Michel (30) are flashed by Carina’s “affairs of the heart”, even if only the passionate bodybuilder (“It’s no use”) can do the whole lot. Full points from both of them – and Carina’s “Schöner Wohnen” ambience is complemented by victory in the “Perfect Dinner” with 27 points. Then a perfectly shaped pear and quark tart!
Thursday, June 9th: “I live the fitness lifestyle,” announces Michel proudly, host on day 3 of “The Perfect Dinner” (VOX) in East Frisia. It wasn’t always like this: the 30-year-old geriatric nurse shows a photo of himself as a pudgy teenager, not at all wistful. Growing up in the Ruhr area near Herne, he suffered from croup cough as a child, which prompted his family to move to the north German coast. Today Michel lives in Aurich, is now the “daddy” of a little daughter and a competitive bodybuilder.
Therefore, he knows exactly about the connection between training, nutrition and model body. He meticulously keeps a record of everything he eats. He compensates for frequent evening escapades in the form of ice cream (“Ice cream is my life”) with exercise. The essence of all this knowledge goes towards the Far East that evening, where he has not yet been because of his fear of flying, but at least he can greet it in North German.
Motto: “Moin Asia”
You can read more about “The Perfect Dinner” on the following pages.
