So Peter came back from Malta and brought various Maltese cans and jars for me, erm… us (of course) to explore. Tonight we had Maltese water crackers with Maltese cheese (I forgot the name, but I’ll look it up), Maltese mixed and pickled vegetables (I detected peppers, onions and olives – I think), and of course: Maltese white wine.
With Peter being in Malta for four weeks, I suddenly was challenged to cook for only one. How long has it been since I had to do that? (Well, actually not so long. I remember a lovely dinner for one I had one time Peter was away in Frankfurt for a few days, but still.)
I was kind of confused at the supermarket and suddenly couldn’t decide what to buy. For some reason, those tiny potatoes caught my eyes. They looked cute and lovely and just perfect for my dinner for one. I hardly ever buy potatoes, usually I just get some when I have a recipe calling for them, so I don’t have a lot of potato experience. But nevertheless I decided to go crazy and just figure out what to do with them later at home.
You can’t go wrong with cute little potatoes, can you? I think I even might have had a little crush there.
What I had in mind was roasted potatoes, probably with garlic and a side of green salad and tomatoes. Tonight I got out Nigella Lawson’s How To Eat for some great tips of this domestic goddess. There was a recipe for roasted poatoes with garlic infused oil and herbs which I adapted to my taste (and what I had in the pantry). The result was better than I thought. Dessert will be a slice of the tarte tatin I made last night. So, all is well so far.
I hope you all had a great Christmas. As for us, this year we spent it at my aunt’s house, together with my two cousins, my parents, one of my aunt’s friends and the friend’s son (sounds complicated?), so this year I didn’t have to worry about cooking up a four course Christmas dinner for two so much and could let other people do the work.
We had an uncomplicated, but really tasty pre-Christmas dinner on the 23rd instead, with warm goat cheese salad as an entrée, rumpsteak with grilled tomatoes and french fries as the main course and chocolate chestnut cake with vanilla ice cream as dessert. I had baked said cake for my goodbye party at my old company and there was some left, so I froze it. It’s a recipe by my beloved Nigella Lawson, a not-so-sweet chocolate cake, which uses pureed chestnuts instead of flour. It’s very filling, so I usually cut it in small pieces, but it’s really tasty as well. It also can be frozen easily, which is a great plus with any cake.
However I was surprised at how easy this more or less improvised dinner came together. The hardest part was actually the steak, since Peter wanted to try the step-by-step instructions he found in one of my cook books. Mind you, but these step-by-step instructions for roasting the steak consisted of about 20 steps, telling you to turn the steak over approximately 30 times. It was good, though, so I should probably stop complaining.
On Christmas Eve (which is the most important day of Christmas here in Germany) we had the table laden with food, roast beef, pasta, carrots, brussels sprouts, snow peas and a lovely dessert made by my aunt, raspberry’s topped with a deliciously sweet curd cheese cream, a recipe she was only willing to share reluctantly and which I of course forgot to write down. Stupid me.
Yesterday we had dinner with my parents, grandparents and another aunt at my parents place, with shrimps and salad as an appetizer. Then came a roasted goose, more brussels sprouts, red cabbage, Semmelknödel (bread dumplings), Chinese cabbage salad and a lovely sweet sauce made with lingonberries and chestnuts. Dessert was Tiramisu. I don’t have to tell you what this is, do I? I love Tiramisu, but mostly for the thick mascarpone cream. I don’t actually need the alcohol and coffee drenched sponge fingers, so I usually try to get a piece which consists mostly of cream.
Today we’re not cooking up anything. Partly because we’ve been stuffed with good food these past three days and partly because both me and Peter are sick. I caught a flu and generously infected him with it, so we’re both busy sniffling, coughing and whining at each other. It’s very cute actually. Kind of.
There’s this show here in Germany called „Das perfekte Dinner“ (The Perfect Dinner), which is kind of a mix between a cooking and a reality competition something show. It’s broadcasted daily from Monday to Friday and it works like this:
Every week a group of five people from the same town (or at least region) get together for five attempts at the perfect dinner. Every day someone else prepares and serves a three course dinner for the rest of the group. The dinner then gets „graded“ by the servees and the one contestant who served the best dinner wins. It’s that easy and a lot of fun, because you get all the kitchen drama, a sneak peek into other people’s lifes and the one or other culinary hint all at the same time.
This week one of the contestants started his dinner with a strange plum cream soup, which according to him he once ate in a Berlin restaurant and managed to get the recipe. It was served with roasted duck and the idea of a plum soup alone sounded so weird that I had to try this out. The recipes get published on the TV station’s website, so I had no problems getting it.
Since the recipe I had was intended for five people I roughly halved the measurements thinking I’d get about as much to feed two and still have some left. But apparently we eat too little (which for the life of me I cannot believe), because what I got felt like it could easily serve five or six. So, for a lovely dinner for two I’d recommend roughly halving the recipe again, although you might want to concentrate on the plums and liquids, and leave everything else as it is.
Vegetarians just leave out the bacon and duck and you’ll have nothing to fear. As for regular meat eaters, the duck is not exactly mandatory, but it adds some luxury – and of course a lot of additional flavor – to the dish.
It occurs to me that I have this thing for dishes that can be prepared in large quantities, so that you can prepare them Friday evening or Saturday morning and then don’t have to think about cooking for the rest of the weekend. The downside here is that you have to like that one dish so much that you don’t mind – in fact, actually enjoy – eating nothing much beside it.
So, if you think about spending and adventurous weekend, doing exciting stuff and maybe eating out or preparing a fabulous dinner, this is not the thing for you. If you want to spend the weekend mostly on the couch, watching DVDs and reading, this might exactly be what you want. And in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with a weekend spent on the couch. In fact, I love those lazy-ass weekends every once in a while. There’s always a tiny little feeling of guilt, a little voice that tells me „You should get out and do something“, but I learned to ignore it.
So there I have two special dishes that I make on these occasions. One is my oh-so-yummy Chili con carne, which I usually serve with some kind of pasta to make it last longer, the other is My Very Special Pasta Salad.
Please be aware that this is in no way healthy food, but to me it is comfort food at its best. I bet it has a lot of calories too, especially since there’s mayonnaise involved, but I’m not a calory-counter. If I like it, I like it and that’s that. So, if you’re looking for a healthy and diet-approved meal, skip it, please. You won’t be happy with what you’ll get. If you’re looking for something to eat while watching your favorite TV shows (which means Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars and a lot more) on a couch, probably cuddled up under a blanket, then this might be the one.
In my experience it lasts up to three days, if stored properly, but it’s usually best on the second day. So I would prepare it on Friday evening, enjoy your first bites while the pasta is still warm and then spend the next day running from the living room to the kitchen and back to get another serving. At least that’s what I do.