Slow Braised Chicory with Orange & Juniper (Happy Birthday to Me! And dark kitchen secrets)

October 18, 2011 11 Comments

I have these oven gloves.  They came free with Easy Living magazine (which I don’t normally read you understand, it was just that one time….).  They were obviously, cheap and thin (even though the tag optimistically announced they were Laura Ashley).  There was one novel thing about them: they were my size.  I wear a size 36 shoe, accordingly, my hands are little and finding oven gloves that fit is challenging.  In fact I’ve never managed to do it.  Which is why the Easy Living, Laura Ashley gloves survived and even thrived in my kitchen for many years, too many.  Plenty of essential kitchen items got culled but not these gloves.  They didn’t age well, their dubious quality ensured that I routinely sustained minor burns.  I did go out and try to find a replacement.  I even considered splashing out and buying myself a pair of Marimekko gloves and they don’t sell those babies as a pair, no, it’s per glove.  They were enormous though, I could have worn them on my head like some kind of a statement hat.All this to say that I have these gloves which are the kitchen equivalent to the gray granny underwear we all have, the one with the broken elastic, that look hideous but you can rely on never to ride up your bum, or leave imprints on your body (how could they with their malfunctioning elastic?).  You wouldn’t part with those for good money at the same time, you would never let anyone see them!  Same deal with these gloves, when I have friends over, I tuck them away in a corner and rely on kitchen towels.  Except last week, when I threw a dinner party for a few girlfriends and had enlisted the help of my friend Luisa.  I was off schedule to the point that the cold starter that was supposed to be served from the fridge, thereby allowing me to natter on with my guests, was not even started.  Luisa caught me off guard when she asked for the oven gloves, I nonchalantly surrendered their hiding place.  Then I realized and froze.Her eyes crinkled as she smiled and held them up to the light. “What are these?”
“My oven gloves.”
“Sooooo when you serve people, they get crumbled bits of oven glove in their food?” she teased.
“Umm, ya well, you see, I have small…” blah blah blah, all the stuff I said before but really in that moment I was BUSTED.She knew.
I knew.
She knew, I knew, she knew. (Say that fast 5 times)
“Well that’s what you can buy me for my birthday.” I tried to recover. But let’s be honest, there really is no way to recover from that.  All I could do was hope that she would find it endearing, a little like Daniel Cleaver when confronted with Bridget Jones’s ‘stomach holding underpants’. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , ,

The Fancy Nicoise Salad

September 22, 2011 8 Comments


I make two Niçoise salads. One for myself which doesn’t use up too many dishes. And another one, for guests. A show stopper. Where I treat all the ingredients right, dress a lot of them separately. Then layer and scatter the everything on a low plate so that they can really stand out against one another and arrest you visually.

This Niçoise relies on two principal things; good ingredients and prepping before everyone arrives. What you want to achieve is an outward and inward calmness and control; so that you can just nonchalantly drop, nudge, dollop your way into a salad, while being able to manage a conversation without suddenly saying “Oh No! My potatoes! Ach well, you guys don’t mind if it’s all a soggy mess!”

If all you’ve got in your cupboard are those abominable dyed black pit-free olives they sell at all the supermarkets here, then walk away from this recipe now!  (Great article on dyed olives in the Independent here).  Or just leave them out and definitely throw those nasty things out because there is no culinary use for them.  You are looking for those fingernail size niçoise olives or kalamata olives (they are expensive but good so shell out).

Then this is what you do:

Cherry tomatoes on the vine: drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Put in a low oven: 120 C and roast for 1 hour.  Then turn off the oven and let it cool down with the tomatoes inside.  They will look alarmingly shriveled but taste, sweeter than you could ever fathom.

Fennel: Halve and then slice through the core, as thin as you can go, retaining the core.  Trim the core leaving just enough to keep the fennel slices together.  Toss with olive oil and salt.  Add to the roasting tomatoes half way through and allow to dry up with the tomatoes.

Green Beans: top (and tail if you want) and halve into bite sized pieces.  Get a big pot of salted water to the boil.  Throw the beans in, put the lid on to get back up to the boil.  Boil from anywhere to 3 minutes to 10.  Depending on what it takes for the beans to give a little.  Take out and either put in a bowl of ice water (I never have enough ice myself) or put in a colander in the sink with cold water running over them.  To store for the salad.  Lay a Tupperware container with some paper towel.  Put in the beans and cover with another paper towel.  They will stay in the fridge like this happily for 12 hours.

Eggs: put room temperature eggs into simmering water, gently.  (If they are cold from the fridge, they will crack).  Lower the heat to a gentle simmer (a rolling boil makes the white tough) and cook for 6 minutes, the centers should still be soft and creamy.  Cool down, peel, store between paper towel in Tupperware in the fridge.

Potatoes: I am at a total loss when it comes to potatoes here, no matter which kind I get “Festkochend” - Waxy or “Mehlig Kochend” - Floury, once I cook them, they just taste…odd.  (Very good guide to potatoes in Germany here) So I usually flake out and go to Galleries Lafayette and pick up a bag there, which are waxy and creamy at the same time.  Scrub them, boil them in salted water with their skin on.  Peel while they are still warm, otherwise you will never get the skins of once they have been in the fridge.  Leave them whole, store them in the fridge.

Dressing:  Dijon mustard is what makes this salad pop!  So use lot’s of it.  Make double what your instinct is, with white wine vinegar and olive oil.

Tuna: I like to splash out on Oritz tuna, which they sell in Berlin at Mitte Meer (sadly the shop behind Hamburger Bahnhoff has now closed but there are still 3 other locations in Berlin)

Bring it together. The look you are going for by the way is cool nonchalance, like all these vegetables happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to have an impromptu soiree. : Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , ,

Fresh Fig Cheesecake with Greek Yogurt, Almonds & Honey (& Greece for rent)

September 18, 2011 14 Comments

It’s hard to believe the changes that have taken place in Athens since my last visit in June.  The whole city is for rent, prices of soft commodities are 3 times what they are in other countries (6 organic eggs €4.60 versus €1.55 in Berlin).  Tax after tax is thought up and levied, the newest one - a 4 per square meter property tax paid yearly, if your flat is 100 sqm, you pay 400.  That is on top of car taxes, pool taxes, VAT of 23%.  I’m even at a loss for my fictitious “if I lived here, I would open a…” scenarios.  Right now, there is nothing I can imagine opening.  Sure, every other shop is for rent but let’s say I opened a cake shop, a Victoria Sponge would cost me about €8 euros to make, if I were to then apply the industry standard mark up of 3x, I would have to sell it for €24.I invited my girlfriends over for lunch, like I always do.  The mood was sober, these are young, talented, intelligent women who went to the same international school as I did.  They were not / are not trying to cheat the system, a simplistic retort that people like to throw around in tandem with “Well, whatchadya expect?”, but they don’t have a single opportunity.  To the point that one even closed her Etsy shop because she couldn’t afford to pay the taxes, on her Etsy shop!  The mind boggles.

In the once boisterous coffee shops, people talk in hushed voices, even the motorcycles are quieter, it’s eerie.  I find the Greeks themselves softer, like they’ve spent an extended period of time being rolled back and forth in the waves until their sharp edges have been filed down to smooth curves, like a sea glass you want to run your fingers over.It’s only at the beach that the mood lightens up.  Avlaki beach, the same beach I’ve been going to since I was a little girl.  With a mountain range that looks like a reclining dog, minus its head.  Not a thing has changed in 25 years (except for the prices and that people now smoke rollies instead of Marlboro or Camels), they still sell greasy cheese pies and Frappés so strong they give me heart palpitations.  There are fat, thick legged children building sand castles as best as they can with the impediment of arm floaties.  Whole families show up, grandmothers with epic breasts and backsides and, if they’ve survived 50 years of hen picking, their usually emaciated husbands, a few sprightly hairs dancing around on their otherwise bald heads.  This is the Greece I remember growing up in.

Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes, Travels Abroad Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Vegetarian Stuffed Peppers & Tomatoes (with a side of EasyJet rage)

September 9, 2011 4 Comments

I lost it the other day, totally and utterly, flushing hot with reduced hearing and tunnel vision - lost it.  Tra la la the Suzy has left the building.  It happened in the Speedy Boarding Easy Jet line.  Where else right?  I’d done it all: paid the fee to check in a suitcase; decanted my shampoo into teenie tiny bottles;  put those bottles in to a plastic bag; taken apart my bra to get at the wire that has the airport bouncers convinced I could detonate it.

I erroneously thought that by buying Speedy Boarding (more money spent), I can avoid the stampede.  Well, not really because Easy Jet is totally twisted, so what they do is the leave the gate blank until 20 minutes before the flight takes off.  Which means everyone pools in front of the monitor, necks craned waiting for the gate, standing of course because Schonefeld airport only has two seats.  If you are even 5 minutes late in noticing the gate, it’s over, you have to queue again! This time in an airless hallway, shuffling slowly in what is now the third line.    We are about the 10th in line, only because I blocked the stairwell as I was gingerly pushing Layla’s pram down step by step, with a whole plane load of people behind me groaning that I was going so slowly but never once offering to help. When a whole gaggle of over gelled, over accessorized Greek men looking like they are on their way to audition for a middle-aged boy band make their way into the Speedy Boarding queue.  Seeing a woman traveling with a child they opt to:

a. Help with the buggy

b. Play with the child

c. Cut in front of them

Yup.  C.  They picked C.  Silly fools that probably still live with their mother and drive tuned up Fiats but have Ferrari sunglasses. (Oh ya! I’m angry.  Pick up on the venom?)“Tell me,” I asked sarcastically “is your Speedy Boarding somehow superior to mine? Allowing you to cut in front?”  Dumb stares all round at what to do with the little woman with a pram who is antagonizing them.  “What do you do when you see an old lady struggling to cross the street?” I continued.  “Rob her?” Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Tahini Garlic Chicken Wings from the Moro Cookbook

August 26, 2011 10 Comments

There was a blog that I enjoyed reading. One day, she wrote something along the lines of - what’s the point of chicken wings, you have to work so hard to get out so little meat?

I un-subscribed.  Because frankly, if we don’t see eye to eye on chicken wings, we just aren’t going to be friends. I’ve got a chicken wing thing you see.  From Melrose & Morgan days when the large Brazilian girl would scream up the stairs “Susy, the chickens are ready my love.”  And I would bound down the stairs happily, find myself the corner to eat,  errant Sutton Hoo* chicken hairs tickling my nose while the rest of the kitchen busied themselves with preparing the chicken pie.That the meat is hard to get is a good point for me.  It awakens all my hunter gatherer instincts as I snarfle through.  There is the optimum ratio of crispy skin to soft meat. (Don’t tell me you don’t eat the skin?!) Plus organic chicken wings are only €5 for 6 (at the bigger Rewe)

I’ve been marinating them in all kinds of things, star anise and hoisin sauce was a delicious option, courtesy of Marcus Wareing’s Nutmeg and Custard but this later incarnation via The Moro Cookbook, is it.

This is really it. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Sumac & Quinoa Lavosh

August 7, 2011 8 Comments

 I am addicted to the magic of baking and all things sugared but when it comes to eating, I prefer salty foods.

Add crisp and crunch and I’m your valentine.

Oh Oh and a little bit of sour?  That’s it, I’m a goner!And all my highbrow la dee da dee da, ‘this place is too small’, ‘this place is too big’, doing my best impersonation of Goldilocks.  Yea well all that goes out the window.  I’ll eat anything salty, crunchy and sour.  Well almost anything.  I won’t eat the ubiquitous paprika flavoured chips they favour here or those weird puffed up concoctions that dissolve in your mouth and adhere  to every crevice in your teeth.

I’ve been struggling with my cravings here, there is no where I can get my fix.  Sometimes it get’s so bad, I shake a little Furikake (a salty Japanese condiment for sprinkling onto rice) into the palm of my hand and eat that.  Without rice or even plans to eat any time soon.

Hmm.  Have I said too much? Maybe.

Listen, that’s it - I swear! No other questionable habits in the closet. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , ,

Berlin Cooking Club & Smoky Spicy Cold Tomato Soup

July 31, 2011 10 Comments

Kelsie and Mel of Travels with My Fork Supper Club have come up with a genius proposition: a cooking club for Berlin.Genius because with 6 different people doing their utmost to impress each other and the guests outside, there is bound to be some good stuff to eat.

And there was.  Rene served up a tousled plate of noodles with gambas and sauce chien.  Stefan made a chilli chutney  so punchy and addictive, I spooned it on top of everything!  You hear that Stefan?  You need to bottle that stuff up and sell it. Jill surprised me with a raw sweet potato salad.  (Who knew you could eat sweet potato raw?) Mel’s Jambalaya had 3 different kind of sausages.  I had two servings and kicked myself for not bringing along a container to take some home.  Caroline, of the wonderful Thyme Supper Club, made a spiced chocolate bread pudding.The theme is different every time.  Saturday night it was Cajun / Creole food served up in the cute cafe that is The Dairy in Prenzlauerberg. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Lemon Tart and Dinner for a Discerning Friend

July 21, 2011 13 Comments

Proclaiming myself ‘Foodie in Berlin’, then eating my way through the city giving long commentaries on what I think about a place is a little…..

Well, King Julien the XIII (the conceited but fun-loving lemur from the cartoon Madagascar. “Maurice, my arm is tired. Wave it for me. Faster, you naughty little monkey!”)

My self-declared expert status on food means that when I invite friends over for dinner; there is a little bit of implied ‘Okay sister; bring it on.” After all that talk I would expect nothing less.

Still, it makes me sweat a little (a lot).  This weekend I invited my friend Margue for dinner. The first time I met her was at Winterfeldplatz market where she had picked up a thick slice of veal liver which she was going to cook for her family later that afternoon.
Offal for children? And they eat it?
She must be gifted, I thought.
And did I mention she’s French? Oh ya, she’s French. And cooking for a French person, well - they wrote the book on cooking.  Plus they actually wrote the book on cooking! Careme, Escoffier, Point, Bocuse, Roux, Ducasse.I opted to deploy the bulk of my energy on a main course of herb tortellini with an oxtail ragu.  The ragu was not a thick chunky murky soup but rather a clear jus which took an hour of diligent skimming, in it two large tortellini filled with a light chicken mousse flecked with chervil and parsley.  Around each tortellini, a shawl of prosciutto ham.  It’s an elegant dish and one which takes a lot of preparation. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Coffee Éclairs AND a mention in New York Magazine!

July 14, 2011 111 Comments

The plan has always been to do the whole domestic thing until Layla goes to school.

It helps that I have never been tempted to climb the vertical career ladder (I have more of a horizontal, snake and ladders approach) and that my husband has enough ambition for four people.I’m secure in the knowledge that I haven’t and won’t miss the formative moments, minutes, hours and days of a warm, unfocused bundle becoming a person.  And that delicate as she is, she won’t be crushed by the possible coarseness of strangers.  Instead, she is allowed to form along her natural inclinations.Sometimes my girlfriends ask how it doesn’t drive me crazy, spending all that time together without a break.  But I just think of this as the Layla and me era, which will pass in the same way the previous eras of my life have, when she begins school.  Things are oppresive only if you think they are going to last forever.  And nothing does right? Still it’s hard not to get lost in the fabric that is the minutiae of everyday, like one of those fat black flies that buzz aimlessly against a pane of glass.  Or spending half an hour trying to find the right day underwear.  (What? You don’t have day of the week underpants?)That is why this blog has been so useful.  It  introduced a bit of structure, direction and soothing repetition (as opposed to the irritating repetition of putting playmobil toys and their accompanying tiny accessories away daily).  I’ve kept diaries since I learned how to write, often with scraps of things that I found interesting but without the risk of someone reading, they were little more than vessels into which I could discard thoughts that nagged me.I never expected people to read this blog but I hoped they would.So I am over the moon to be mentioned in this week’s New York Magazine!  ”The Urbanist’s Guide to Berlin: Where to Eat“. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , ,

Cherry & Cranberry Puff Pastry Pies (+ Recipe for Rough Puff)

July 6, 2011 11 Comments

The reasons I love my gym are:

  1. Free creche service (kinderbetreuung, doesn’t that word just roll off your tongue?)
  2. It’s cheap! €45 a month for weekday morning membership
  3. It’s pretty, all purple lights. Even the sauna has alternating colours, something that is supposed to relax me but has the opposite effect, like being trapped in a confined hot space with a schizophrenic ”I’m blue! No red! No pink! No Blue!” Pick a colour and stick with it for crissakes!

The reasons it drives me up the wall are:

  1. There are no partitions in the shower, not that I have body shame or envy, but do I really need to see you lather up your unmentionables? Ah, no, don’t think so.
  2. The shower is on a timer. Like 45 seconds or something. So when I crucially need the water because I’ve got soap in my eyes, there is no water.  I’ve got to grope the wall until I find it, and there is NO PARTITION. MY EYES ARE CLOSED. AND I’M NAKED!  Tell me, is there a water shortage in Berlin or something? Because from where I’m standing, it’s literally coming down in buckets.  Who decided the timer on that thing? 45 seconds? A man probably (sorry boys).  They are the only ones that think a shower and getting wet are the same concepts.
  3. They follow the rules to the L E T T E R. So if I want to book my 2 year old into the creche four days before I always get the “Sorry, we only accept bookings 3 days before.” Even though my kid is usually the only one in there. And it means they will receive a garbled phone call from me trying to pronounce Kinderbetreuung. Or take Monday, I arrived with my hair straightener, clothes, shampoo, Polar fitness monitor but forgot my towel.

“Can I rent a towel?” I ask.

“Leider nicht.” (By the way, Leider nicht translates as regrettably / sadly / unfortunately no. But what I hear when people say that is: you lose suckaaa! It’s just so passive aggressive!)

“Okay, can I buy a towel?”

“Leider nicht.”

“So you have no towels in the gym.”

“Leider nicht. If you want, you can go to Butler’s down the road and see if they are selling some?”

Because that’s the solution I was looking for, going out in the rain, walking for 15 minutes and getting one of those acrylic towels that are designed to repel water.  I figure, I can try to dry myself with paper towels and see how far that gets me when my eyes fall upon a special massage deal on offer that day: ’20 minutes for €15′. I go back up to the ‘no’ girl. “So I could book a massage here right?”

“Yes.”

“And if I book a massage, well then, they give me a towel so I don’t go in there all smelly and sweaty right?”

“Yessssss.” she answered, suspicious as to where I was going with all this.

“Ok, great, so I will have a massage in 2 hours and take the towel now if you that’s alright with you.”

She stalled a bit with that one, not sure if she was agreeing to some illicit concept. “Umm, yes, well, ok.”

“Great!” I patted her heartily on the back. “Good thing I forgot my towel then!”

I’m telling you, she didn’t know what hit her. She went into the revolving door and came back out on the street where she started. And I enjoyed a great massage, the first one I’ve had in years.

I got a big kick out of that.  From not letting an inconvenience ruin my day and set me in the whole “Aw man, it’s one of those days, I’m giving up on this day, I will try to do better tomorrow.”  Then slump back home and play 10 games of Tiny Wings on my iphone (how embarrassing, I’m deleting that app! No, I’m not.)So I went home and continued the day on a high, deciding to tackle a pastry as difficult as the ‘no’ girl at the gym.  Puff pastry. Read more of this post

Filed under Recipes Tagged with , , , ,

← Older posts

Newer posts →

Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 1,074 other followers