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Whatever

A Menu for Hope III

Lebkuchen

For the third time now, Pim of Chez Pim is organizing the fundraising campaign A Menu for Hope. This year’s donation go to the UN World Food Programme, helping to provide hunger relief for needy people worldwide.

For every US$10 you can „buy“ a virtual lottery ticket for one of the many wonderful prizes, food bloggers around the world are providing. These include Food and wine tastings, shopping tours, cook books and more.

You can make your donations here. Please read Pim’s instructions on how to sign up for a specific price first.

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Heaven in a Bowl With Recipe

Süße Kübiscremesuppe – Sweet(ish) Pumpkin Soup

Recently I stumbled upon a recipe for a Maple Apple Squash Soup on the internet. The original recipe used butternut squash and I first had to do some research to find out what butternut squash is called in German. It’s Birnenkürbis (pear pumpkin), by the way, which makes sense, since they look like really big pears.

Unfortunately my local supermarkets and grocery stores don’t carry a wide variety of pumpkins, so I eventually settled on the reliable Hokkaido pumpkin. (Side note: You won’t believe the lengths I went to just now to find out what the proper English term is. I still don’t know. Maybe it’s just pumpkin. Maybe wikipedia isn’t as great as everyone says. All I know is that the French term is potimarron, so maybe that’ll help.) I figured, since I’ve never ever handled a pumpkin before it would be save to start with the most common and pumpkin-like pumpkin I know. The Hokkaido pumpkin immediately sprang to mind.

I then proudly carried my little friend home and embarked on my first adventure with pumpkins. The one thing I’ve learned is that pumpkins are very easy to handle. With Hokkaido pumpkins you don’t even have to worry about the skin. Just cut it into pieces with the skin and cook until tender. Easy.

This is a very low maintenance soup, just perfect for a pumpkin greenhorn like me. It turns out pretty sweet, not surprisingly, since maple syrup, brown sugar and apple sauce are also added. I like to sprinkle it with chili flakes and pepper before serving to spice it up a bit.

The recipe said you should prepare the soup one day in advance, refrigerate it overnight and reheat it the next day. Though you can surely refrigerate and reheat, I don’t see why it can’t be enjoyed the very same evening it was cooked. I, at least, broke the rule and had my first bowl of soup the same evening it was cooked and I enjoyed it just as much.

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Reading Material

The Outside World: On Food Photography

I’m trying to make up for the lack of new recipes and such by linking to an article I just stumbled upon via Bea’s blog La Tartine Gourmande. (Now first of course you should check out her blog, because it’s great and pretty.)

We still don’t have our camera, so I’m hesitant to post new food entries. I am one of these guys who like to see what a dish is supposed to look like. I can work around it if a recipe sounds really tempting (or if it’s a recipe by Nigella Lawson, because those are always tempting), but in general I want a picture.

Now that I can’t give you pictures, I can still give you two articles on food photography:

Tasteful Food Photography offers simple hints on how to make good food photos. The writer, Simone Paddock, is a professional photographer whose specialty is architectural photography, but was asked to make a portfolio for a caterer and then had to learn one or two bits about food photography.

The article also links to Making Food Look Good, where you’ll learn just what gross techniques professional food photographers use to make food look good. Yes, it’s gross and it will probably change your view on professional food photography, but it’s also very interesting.

You can be assured though, that the food in my pictures never came in touch with motor oil or hair spray. It was made to eat and though I’m known to play with my food I would never ever waste any.

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Whatever

Hello and Goodbye!

So, did you by any chance notice that I got a new camera? The sudden appearance of not-so-bad food pictures might have given you a clue.

Yes, we finally went insane and bought a Nikon D70s and fumbled around happily for a week, getting to know all those little buttons and switches before they could team up and drive us insane. Then something broke and the camera didn’t like the memory card, so we had to bring it back to the store.

Since they don’t make this model anymore they couldn’t just exchange the camera and send us home with a new one. Apparently we were lucky enough to get one of the last ones in Cologne. Instead they had to send it in to get fixed. And we’re stuck with my old and seriously bad FinePix again.

I can say though that the Nikon D70s is a damn fine thing. I still feel intimidated by all the options, but I think I understood some bits and for someone as camera unexperienced as me that means a lot.

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Baking With Recipe

Omas Lebkuchen – My Grandma’s Gingerbread

Lebkuchen

There are those few recipes that are so loaded with memories and childhood nostalgia that you really start to wonder if you are ready to share it with the rest of the world. For these are the recipes that truly deserve to be kept a family secret. My grandmother’s Lebkuchen is one of those rare recipes. Though I think the English term for Lebkuchen is gingerbread, it doesn’t feel right to call them that, since there isn’t actually any ginger involved. Try to think of it as the German variety. Different, but just as good.

When I grew up we lived with my grandparents, and every year in November my grandmother made Lebkuchen for St. Martin’s Day. St. Martin is a tradition here, celebrating a certain St. Martin who – as the legend goes – on a bitterly cold night met a beggar who was freezing to death and didn’t hesitate to cut his warm coat in two parts and share it with him, thus saving him from dying. To celebrate this children make colorful lanterns and go from door to door singing songs and getting sweets. It’s kind of a cute Halloween without the dressing up and blackmailing harmless people into giving you treats. Back then we lived in a suburb of Cologne, kind of like a little village, only instead of being surrounded by fields and forests we had the highway on one and another main road on the other side. The thing was that everybody knew everybody and you could cover more than half of the houses in one night.

Another fond memory and one of the few moments where I will actually get into „back in the olden days“ mood is that we used candles to light our lanterns. Today all I see is those little light bulbs swinging from side to side. Sure, using candles also meant that probably everyone remembers that one year when their lantern burnt down, but I also do believe that the charm of real candlelight totally made up for that one rather catastrophic night.

However, every year my grandmother made her Lebkuchen to give as a treat (instead of bought sweets or fruit) and I also remember people saying that this was their favorite treat to get. Unfortunately we never get St. Martin visitors here (or rather, one group of children in four years of living here), so there goes my chance of becoming equally famous. This hasn’t stopped me from getting the recipe from my aunt and making my first batch of Lebkuchen this year. My aunt told me that the recipe usually gets her about 1 1/2 baking trays, though I got exactly two trays out of it. I guess my trays are just a bit smaller. Two trays equals a lot of Lebkuchen, so I brought some to work for everyone to enjoy and still have a lot left. If you don’t plan on feeding everyone at the office, you should probably just use half the recipe and still have plenty of yummy pre-Christmas Lebkuchen to enjoy.

Omas Lebkuchen

Note: Cups here do not refer to the standard American measurement, but rather ordinary coffee or tea cups, which I guess is about the same, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.

300 g sugar
500 g honey
125 g butter
1 egg
a pinch of salt
3 cups milk
1 cups strong coffee
about 1 kg flour (maybe more)
2 packages baking powder
3 teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoons real cocoa
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons whole aniseed (as in not ground)
1 teaspoons ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 180°C (about 350° F or gas mark 6).

The main thing about this recipe is that the difficulty – if there is any – rather lies in getting all the ingredients, not in the actual making of the dough. When my aunt gave me the recipe, handwritten on a piece of paper, half of page was a list of the ingredients, followed by two sentences.

This is a simple dough, so the first sentence was something along the line of: Mix it. I would add that if you’re going for the recipe exactly as written above (not half of it) you should probably go for the biggest bowl you have. Apart from that it’s as simple as that. Mix it. You want a smooth dough, so add some flour if it appears too liquid or some milk if it appears too solid.

Then prepare the tray(s), first buttering and then spreading it with flour (because this is how we did it in the olden days). Then spread the dough on it and you’re ready to go. Bake the Lebkuchen for about 30 to 45 minutes until they’re golden brown. Get it out of the oven, let cool, cut into squares and enjoy.

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Eating Out

The Bon Cuisine Deal

LebkuchenWhen it comes to eating out I love to try out new places. I still have my favorite places like the Italian restaurant right around the corner, but I am eager to find new little culinary gems. It’s nothing less than a quest for new dishes and tastes.

But how do you find new places? How do you choose? Of course you can just wander around and enter whatever interesting place you happen to pass by. Or you can buy a restaurant guide for your city and browse through it on your couch at home in search of a place that sounds like a possible gem. There’s the internet, magazines and of course helpful advice from friends. As far as I know all of these methods work.

Then there’s the Coupon Book. I’m not sure if this is a real German thing or if these books are sold and possibly worshipped in other countries as well. So in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, let me explain:

The Coupon Book is a great thing for the ever-searching foodie like me. Inside you find about 20 to 30 coupons for restaurants in your area you might or might not know. If you’re really lucky you have never been to a single one of them, thereby making it a great opportunity for lots and lots of new eating out experiences. The coupon book I was most familiar with offered a two-for-one deal on main courses, so you’d get the second (and cheaper) main dish for free. The book itself costs around 17 Euro, so if you eat out regularly and like to try out new restaurants, it’s a great way to get new inspirations and save some money.

On the downside it always seemed to me that the coupon book for my town focused too much on Italian and German cuisine. The reason for that might be that, considering this isn’t a big fancy cosmopolitan town I live in, the town itself focuses too much on Italian and German cuisine. Plus, the one time I witnessed the whole coupon handling, having dinner at a Cuban place with my husband, aunt and cousin, it was obvious that the restaurant owner didn’t really grasp the concept of the coupon book, but that’s another story and in my naiveté I like to believe that this was more like the proverbial black sheep of coupon cooperating restaurants.

Last weekend in Cologne I decided to go and finally buy a coupon book for the husband in me and I found another coupon book that appealed a lot more to me. This one works a bit differently. Instead of getting a main course (of your choice) free, each restaurant offers a special „Bon Cuisine“ (for that’s the name of the book) set meal, either three or four courses, an aperitif or digestif. You order two and get one for free.

Considering that I’ve been a lot into set (and even more welcome surprise) meals lately, just beginning to understand the joy of dinner starting with an appetizer and ending with a fancy dessert, instead of just having one main dish, this seemed like the perfect book for us. There are 24 coupons inside, the prices for each meal ranging from 17 to 58 Euro. Most of the restaurants are located in Cologne with two exceptions and there’s at least one Russian, one Austrian and one Vietnamese restaurant among them, justifiying the book’s subtitle „Eine kulinarische Länderreise“ (A culinary country-tour).

Needless to say, I can’t wait to set out for our first culinary expedition with this book, and I haven’t quite decided where to start. France, Russia, Italy, Indonesia or maybe just plain old Germany… we’ll see where the coupon journey takes us.

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Baking

‚Tis the Season

I want to apologize in advance for the lack of sensational food photography. It’s just that my camera sucks. It’s more than three years old and it shows. You just can’t take any good food pictures with it and I kind of gave up trying too hard. We’ve been talking about getting a kick-ass new camera (a Nikon D50 is what I have in mind), but that’s on a list together with a new couch, a MacBook, a shiny mandoline and a fancy pink KitchenAid, so there’s no way of telling when we’ll actually have one.

Anyway, I think that the season of cookie baking has officially begun, don’t you agree? Humble me, for instance, has already spiced up the air with smells of freshly baked cookies twice this month, and I’m usually not an avid cookie baker, so that has to mean something.

The godmother of all pre-Christmas cookie baking is my mother, though. For as long as I remember her cookies has been a part of the weeks before Christmas and she is the one in my family to both consult for cookie advice and to just beg for one more bag of cookies, please. She’s also the reason I have a cookie trauma, which I constantly remind her of half-jokingly.

To understand the cookie trauma you’ll need to know that my mother was the youngest of nine children, so when it was Christmas time and there were cookies to be baked, my grandmother never really cared for beauty. With nine children the quantity kind of overruled the quality. There were bits missing from cut-out cookies and other irregularities, since understandably my grandmother didn’t have the time it takes to make perfectly pretty cookies.

My mother though did. With only one child (and a low maintenance one, I’d like to add) to raise and her very own cookie trauma to tend to, she became the very Master of the Perfect Cookie. Her Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars), Vanillekipferl, Nusspangani and whatnots look perfect. This of course made her pretty unfit for enduring a child involved in the baking process. A child (even a low maintenance one) doesn’t quite get the concept of only kneading the dough until it’s done. Children tend to overknead. They also tend to sprinkle about more flour than needed. In general they tend to not respect or even grasp the Importance of Baking Perfect Cookies. They do tend to get the Importance of Eating Cookie Dough Before It’s Baked though. At least I know I did. Still do, as a matter of fact.

Can you imagine how hard it is to live up to this big role model who has been there all my life and slowly injected me with the idea that cookies have to be perfect. And pretty. And tasty. It’s not easy, I can tell you that.

So, I chose the way that worked for me, going for completely different recipes, sometimes recipes that guaranteed the unperfectness of the cookie, because unperfect was half of what the cookie was about. I still adore my mother’s cookies. There’s just no way not to. And that is why I’ll try to bring to you some of her and my favorite cookie recipes. If I can snatch some from her, that is. I will even try to take some photos, though, as I already mentioned, I cannot really promise that they’ll turn out great.

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Dinner is Ready With Recipe

Pflaumencremesuppe mit Barbarie-Ente – Plum Cream Soup with Roasted Barbarie Duck

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.

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My Sweet Tooth

Chocolate Wonderland

Chocolat bagPerhaps you’ll be shocked to learn that I’m not a chocoholic. I’ve always been more for savory food than sweets, but every now and then (and lately more often than not) do I get a strange and sudden yearning for some chocolate. My favorite chocolate right now is the Marabou chocolate and I always grab at least two of those long sticks when we’re at IKEA. They’re sold in regular supermarkets as well, but somehow we got this IKEA routine down and it involves stuffing ourselves with Köttbullar and buying Marabou chocolate.

You also might be aware that I’m not a big fan of all things bitter. I don’t drink regular coffee or eat brussels sprouts and you might catch me eating the endive leaves in a salad first thing, just to get rid of them. So chocolate for me usually means really sweet milk chocolate. I love nougat, and not the white chewy kind (known here as „Turkish honey“), but the sweet chocolatey kind.

But lately my husband and I have gotten a bit adventurous when it comes to the chocolate department. We chased for quite some time after the Lindt 99% chocolate, a very dark chocolate that contains 99% cocoa and is a bit like eating chocolate dust really and only to be enjoyed in really tiny bits. Only a few weeks ago we stumbled upon a special chocolate sale thing at a local department store and each chose a chocolate bar we’d like to try out.

So, naturally when I heard that there was an all chocolate shop in Cologne I went to check it out last week. It’s called „chocolat“ and apparently it’s a small chain with six shops in Germany at the moment. Two of them are in Cologne and one is in Düsseldorf, so we’re covered. I went to the one situated in the DuMont Carré, which is a small shopping mall on Breite Strasse.

At first I was overwhelmed. So much chocolate, so many different brands and flavors, one stranger than the other, although of course you can always get your basic dark or milk chocolate here. They even had traditional Cologne beer bottles made of chocolate, which I believe would be a perfect gift for someone who adores Cologne and chocolate. I wandered around aimlessly, considering all my choices and then went for the Dolfin Carré 24 Épices, which appealed to me because of the somewhat strange use of spices and chocolate (Earl Grey flavored chocolate, anyone?).

I also chose little chocolatey balls intended for making hot chocolate, picking the bourbon vanilla flavor, which turned out to be white chocolate balls. You just drop three to six in a glass or cup and then fill it with hot milk and stir. If you are my husband you might ask your wife (aka me) to add a bit of rum. Both my non-alcoholic and his were really tasty and exactly what you might need on a dark cold winter night.

There were so many other flavors and brands that appealed to me, so I’ll definitely be back. This also reminds me that I have never been to the chocolate museum here in Cologne, which – especially considering my food obsession – seems pretty inexcusable. I know.

chocolat
DuMont-Carré, Shop 14
Breite Straße 80-90
50667 Köln
Phone / Fax: 0221 / 250 88 15
mail@chocolatshop.de

For the addresses of the other shops, please check out their website.

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Dinner is Ready With Recipe

My Very Special Pasta Salad

Pasta Salad
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.

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