For ToScho

One of my friends Tobi came for dinner on monday. I know a lot of Tobis, so we refer to them either by location (Tobi New York, for instance — though he has moved to London in the meantime) and Tobi Sch., whom I also refer to as Stabi Tobi, because I met him at the state library here in Berlin six years ago. We met because we were the only people in the library using Apple computers and thus we immediatly bonded over our mutual cuteness, geekiness and snobbiness!

So, he came for dinner and brought beer and icecream, upon request. I had the jar pictured above on the countertop, and was excitedly explaining that this was dessert. Somehow he totally failed to be impressed, and I was really not getting why: who wouldn’t get excited about SALTED!BUTTER!CARAMEL!! A sauce, that routinely makes me want to bathe in it it’s so good.

As I got ready to serve dessert, the salted butter caramel sauce poured over vanilla icecream* Tobi asked me why I was using salad sauce to eat with icecream… Mystery solved, sauce tried. blissful coma ensued!**

Over dinner, I helped him put together a dinner for this weekend using the sauce as one of the features, and promised I’d post the recipe for him to check. So Tobi, here you go:

Salted Butter Caramel

prep time: 5 min

adapted from Trish Deseine Ma petite Robe Noire et autre Recettes

100 g granulated sugar
2 tbsp water
70 g salted butter***
2 tbsp mascarpone

Put the sugar and water in a heavy saucepan over low to medium heat. Do not stir and wait for the sugar to melt. You can swirl the content in the saucepan until everything is an even light golden color.

Take the saucepan off the heat and add the butter. Make sure to drop it along the sides of the saucepan and not into the middle, or the mixture will spatter, bubble and BURN! Slowly incorporate the butter with a wooden spoon and keep turning until all is melted. Add the mascarpone in the same way.

You can eat it rightaway, or let the leftovers cool down. It will harden in the fridge, but you can heat it up in a waterbath or the microwave to bring it back to pouring consistency.

*confession: I didn’t have salted butter, so I added about a quarter of a teaspoon of table salt, along with the butter. This made the caramel curdle. BUT. I have an awesome remedy for that: Let the caramel cool a bit to prevent it from burning you and quickly whizz it in the blender until it has reached a smooth consistency. This trick also works for custards (crème anglaise) and other sauces using dairy which have the tendency to curdle.

** We also crumbled some cookies on top of the sauce for extra textural tastey deliciousness, becaue that’s the way our cookie crumbles!

***I hate german icecream. I don’t know what they do to it, but nearly every brand (save for Landliebe) is all slimy and airy and gooey. All in a bad way. I think they must whip their icecream under the guise of conching. But thanks to Tobi for bringing icecream anway!

Bragging about Potstickers

In December, I got a copy of last fall’s donna hay magazine, and in it was a little dossier about the versatility of wonton wrappers. Being a dedicated follower of all things hay, I immediatly got hooked onto the very idea of anything to do with wonton wrappers. sadly, it took me a long time to actually purchase them. I had planned on stuffing and steaming them dim sum-style, but the package said ‘for deep-frying only’. Being that I have a deeply ingrained fear of deep frying (probably better that way anyway!) and that I was unsure as to wether I was gonna be able to steam whatever I was gonna make, I decided to go the potsticker route. I have not looked back.

I made them today, and I feel incredibly proud, as proud as the time I made my first cake. I also feel the ridiculous urge to repeat the word ‘potsticker’,'potsticker’,'potsticker’ over and over again, quite like my oldest son who is hooked on ‘Anhängerkupplung’(trailer hitch) right now. Except he says ‘Anhängerpupplung’ and he says it about, oh 20 times/h. It’s funny at first, really, but then you start to wonder about the title of that book ‘your three year old, friend or enemy’ and start to mentally ticking that ‘enemy’ box… Potstickers are friends. definitely.

Potstickers

prep time: depending on how many you make, about 40 min, cooking time: 5 min

mixing bowl, kitchen towel, pastry brush, non-stick frying pan

300 g of minced chicken/pork or fish
1 egg white
zest of one lime
2 tbsp chopped cilantro
1 tbsp chopped mint (or thai basil, if on hand)
1 cm fresh ginger peeled and grated
a minuscule amount of garlic (I pressed a tiny clove, which yielded the perfect amount for my taste)
1 tbsp sesame seeds
about 20 wonton wrappers

Mix the chicken with the egg, lime zest, the herbs, sesame, ginger and garlic together in a bowl.

Place a single wonton sheet onto a dry kitchen towel (if the wonton wrapper gets wet, it will stick to any other surface), place a tablespoon of the filling unto the center of the wrapper. Brush the edges with the some water and press them together to form a little parcel. Repeat until no wrappers are left behind.

Heat a frying pan over medium heat, fill the bottom wiith water, bring to a boil and place the potstickers in it. They will stick. Cover, and cook until nearly all water has evaporated and the bottom of the parcels is brown. Serve hot with soy sauce, chili sauce, hoisin sauce, lime juice etc.

You could make the raw parcels ahead of time and freeze them until ready. The would cook for about 10 min straight from the freezer.

Tried and True!

I love my cookbooks but, more often than not, it is to *teh innernets* that I turn to for inspiration and ideas. The cooking sites and blogs I read are all listed in my sidebar, and I have to admit are visited daily. (Or at least they were up until this week, where I finally started work again after a year on maternity leave.).

Anyway my ’system’ for marking and remembering internet recipes leaves a lot to be desired: I try to bookmark them into a ‘recipe’ folder never look back. Not such a great technique however, since I end up spending hours trying to remember something I saw. Not so with this recipe, from a highly recommendable blog, which I have been meaning to try for a year now. Everytime I saw lemons, I had to think of this recipe and I have finally made it. And I can tell you: tried and true, it’s absolutely awesome. Because you use an entire lemon, you get a little bit of the bitterness of the peel and the zest which makes it taste somewhat like a gin and tonic with sugar. And no booze.

By the way, my biggest fan and harshest critic (all rolled into one) did yet again, not believe me that a whole lemon was a good idea for a tarte au citron. That’s probably because legend has it her husband makes the most perfect, delicous tarte au citron meringuée. But I have never had the privilege to taste it (HINT!). Anyway, if you hear me sistah, go make it!

Oh, and I am also using this post to make a little special smartypants insert about tarte dough (which my husband INSISTS on calling pie dough–a tarte is NOT a pie my friends!). As a disclaimer, though, I will tell you that my mother (what’s with me and my family in this post, huh?) makes the absolute most perfect tartes and subsequently, tarte doughs. Hers are buttery, flaky and most of all thin. I have somehow never managed to achieve my mother’s tartes’ degree of thinness, but I actually also like tarte dough so much, that i absolutely don’t mind if there is a lot of it! Ok, enough digressing, let’s move this along!

Whole Lemon Tarte

Basic Tarte Dough

2 cups of flour (about 240 g)
1/2 tsp salt
100 g sugar
145 g cold cold butter
3 tbsp icecold water

prep time: 5min, cooling time: 30 min, parbaking time 25 min*

metal mixing bowl and knife or food processor ( I beleive it’s called a ‘cuisineart’ in the english speaking world)

Make sure all your ingredients are very cold. Cut the butter in cubes and using a knife, cut it into the flour, salt and sugar, or mix it together in your foodprocessor until it looks like coarse crumbs. Add the cold water bit by bit until the dough starts to come together. Roll it together in a ball, wrap it in clingfoil and put it in the fridge to rest for 30 min.

Butter and flour the tin(s), to be extrasure, line the bottom with baking paper. Roll out the dough to the desired size, fold it and unfold it into your tarte or cake tin.

Now you have two possibilities: 1) prebake the dough and fill it with chocolate, or strawberries and cream or I don’t know what, and 2) dust some almond meal or couscous in the bottom, fill it with uncooked fruits (apples, apricots you name it) and bake it as a whole.
We are going to go with number 1), and I wil give you a better and detailed description for number 2) whenever I think of it.

To make the whole lemon tarte, prick little holes in the pie dough with a fork, line it with baking paper and fill it with beans or rice or actual baking weights if you are truly fancy. Bake at 180° for about 20 min. The crust should be semi-baked and still somewhat soft, but shouldn’t break if you attempt to remove it from the tin (if it did, and your crust is ruined, I am truly sorry…). Remove the baking weigts and baking paper and put it back in the oven for another 5 min. Let it cool. Take it out of the tin and put it onto a baking rack or sheet

Lemon Filling

adapted from Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan, via smitten kitchen
prep time: 10min, baking time: 45 min, cooling time: 20 min

1 medium sized lemon (about 130 g)
300 g sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp corn or potato starch
115 g of butter, melted and cooled

23 cm round cake or tarte tin

Preheat the oven to 160°C. In your foodprocessor combine the sugar and the lemon and whizz it until it becomes a homogenous and delicious smelling puree. Resist the urge to eat it all on the spot.
With a whisk, add in the whole egg and the yolk. Sift over the cornstarch and slowly add the melted butter, making sure all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Pour the lemon mixture into the parbaked tarte crust and slide it into the oven. Bake for about 20 min. Increase the heat to 180° and keep baking for another 15-20 min, or until the filling is bubbly and golden. take it out of the oven and let it cool for a while before serving.

* This recipe makes enough for a thickish crust in a 27 cm tarte tin, or two medium crusts in a 23 cm tin, or a covered ‘pie’, or one 23 cm tarte tin and 10 muffin sized mini tartelettes. phew, thorough, eh?

A Guilty Pleasure

The last time I was in New York, I was pregnant with our first child. It was one of the most wondefful and harrowing experiences. We were there, because my husband was shooting additional material for his film, which meant, that we were effectively mixing business with pleasure, or in my case, business with pregnancy. I was permanently exhausted, elated, hungry, nauseated and also mad at the american public space for being host to numerous anti-french ads (this was the time when ‘french fries’ were to be renamed ‘freedom fries’ and everyone was pouring french wine down the gutter).

Anyway our host during that trip was and is one of the most wonderful cooks known to me (that is excepting my family) and had hosted me a number of times in his place in Brooklyn. I had stayed with him during a summerlong internship I did at the very beginning of my studies, nearly 10 years ago, during which he introduced me to asian cooking (mainly thai, my peanut sauce and I are forever indebted!) and to Ben & Jerry’s icecream.

During this visit with my husband, I was going crazy (and I mean a pint-a-day-crazy) for their chubby hubby flavor, and more specifically, with the sweet/salty combination. I was immediatly introduced to chocolate covered pretzels and remember tasting them somehwere in SoHo, as we were looking for the Prada store. It took us a while to find it BTW, I blame my blindsight to hormones, and those pretzels. In the end I was equally smitten with the pretzels as I was with store; but the pretzels were kind of easier to budget for!

Since I haven’t been able to find them since –either in Canada or in Germany– I have thought for some time that I should find a way to do them myself. So today, about 3 1/2 years later, I did it. In anxious expectation I tasted the first one, and lo, those pretzels, they rocked. Go make them, they are done as quickly as they are eaten!

Chocolate Covered Pretzels

prep time: 5 min cooling time about 1 h

100 g dark chocolate*
about 75 g pretzels (or salt sticks)
pat of butter

saucepan, silicon mat or parchment paper

Melt the chocolate with a pat of butter over low heat (You can do it in a double boiler or in the microwave, today, I was particularly lazy and just melted it straight in the saucepan). Drop the pretzels in there, and toss to coat them**. With whatever instrument you have (I used a knife and fork) pull them out and lay them on your silicon mat to harden. Store in a cool, dry place. If you can resist eating them all at once, I imagine they would taste fabulous crushed and sprinkled over ice cream…

* I used an organic dark chocolate, but suspect that milk chocolate would have tasted more fun
** At first, I gently dredged each pretzel through the melted chocolate and pulled it out, but then the lazy hit me again, and i just dumped the rest of the pack in there!

Dip It!

The weather being the best conversation starter there is, let me just tell you that I have nothing but complaints on it. It’s been a continuation of winter for about as long as spring has officially started.

As much as we WANT to buy spring fare, what I really want to EAT are stews and roasts and real mac’n'cheese.

The produce vendors however, are plowing on and trying to convince us of the season by offering asparagus, rhubarb and (globe) artichokes. And because I am a sucker for marketing, i fell into their terrible ploy (for the third time, might I add!), caved and bought artichokes.

As a child I have never been incredibly fond of artichokes, and a bout of stomach flu a few years back left a truly terrible memory involving the lovely thistle hearts(variation, a pseudo-writers best friend!) paired with spaghetti, and I will leave the rest to your imagination. I mainly got them at the markthalle because my toddler boy is absolutely in love with dipping. Dipping for him, is food at it’s funnest (as opposed to funnIEST). i figured therefore, that artichokes (how many times will I type artichokes in this post, hmm? well, better read on and count!) were a nice change and a bit of fun for the rainy dinners.

The artichokes were steamed and I served them with two dips: a variation on the classic italian salsa verde - a green sauce (my linguistics skills are unparalleled) made with fresh herbs, capers and anchovies - for the husband and me, and a surefire winner for all of us, which is a tahini-yoghurt sauce spiced with ras-el-hanout (a very fragrant north african spice/herb mix including cumin, fenugreek, coriander and mild chili, to name a few).

Artichokes with Double Dip

prep time: 5 min/dip and 40 min total for the artichokes

For the Artichokes

count one artichoke per person

pot with a steamer inlay or a pressure cooker fitted with a steamer inside.

Cut of the long Stem of the artichokes to about 1/2 cm of the globe. Chop pf the tips of leaves with scissors or simply cut a couple of cms of the top. Place in a bowl of cold water with a splash of lemon to prevent them from turning black.

When you are ready to cook, place the artichokes ionside the steamer basket and steam them for about 15-20 min or until tender. Reduce the cooking time appropriately if you are steaming them in a pressure cooker ( my guess would be about 10 min after the cooker is starting to vent steam)

Serve the artichokes hot or cold. to eat, pull out the leaves and dip them into a classic vinaigrette, or even just olive oil and lemon or this, or whatever else you like. To eat the artichoke heart, pull or cut out the hairy fuzzy part, the heart is what lies underneath.

For the Salsa Verde

4 tbsp olive oil or more
1 tbsp basil
1 tbsp mint
1 tbsp flat leaf parsley
1 tbsp cilantro (optional)
1 tbsp capers (either salted or brined, be sure to rinse the salted ones well!)
3-4 anchovies, packed in oil or salt (again, if salted, make sure to rinse them well)
splash of lemon juice, or more to taste

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and whizz together until it all comes together. Alternately, you can chopp up the herbs, capers and anchovies finely and blend with the lemon juice and the olive oil. Your sauce needs to look green, and solid, between a vinaigrette and a pesto.

For the Yoghurt-Tahini Sauce

1 tbsp tahini (sesame butter)
1/2 cup of yoghurt
juice of one lime/lemon
1 tsp mint
1 tsp ras-el-hanout

salt and pepper to taste

Whisk together all the ingredients and let stand for a little while. The tahini will cause the sauce to thicken slightly. If you find it a little to runny, add some more of the sesame butter.

Both sauces/dips will keep covered in the fridge for a few days, but make sure to check because mint can sometimes cause dishes to go bad quickly.

Update!

After 3 full months of blogging, I have finally updated my about page, where you can read about me and the title of this blog (more self-quoting and referencing!).

Peanuts

I don’t know where to begin with this other than to say that this is the sauce to replace all sauces for any asian dish, salads and other dips. You can add it to something healthy (like a tofu stir fry*) or slather it on something like fries or dip stuff — or cars, according to my older boy, because cars are pretty much the answer to everything these days!.

You can play around with proportions depending on how spicy you like it, adding more chilies, milk or coconut milk instead of water to thin it, adding in some chopped peanuts, cilantro or whatever other flavors you enjoy.
The essence of this recipe seems to be: I made peanut sauce, I hope you like it. Figure it out on your own! Does it seem lately that my recipes are vague? Hmm, anyone else but me, got the feeling I am being lazy here? Well,if so I am sorry and offer this as an explanation: I am starting work in a few weeks after a year on maternity leave and am feeling like everything around me is coming to a crashing halt before some wort of explosion occurs!

This sauce did make me feel better though, so that’s a start!

Peanut Sauce

prep time: 5 min tops

about 4 tbsp peanut butter**
2 tbsp water
1 small dried chili
1 cm fresh gingerpeeled and grated
splash of soy sauce
juice of 1 lime
a few drops or more toasted sesame oil

Mix all the ingredients together in a saucepan, heating it up gently until it comes together. You can add more liquid if you want your sauce to be thinner, or less if you want it more as a spread/dip.

* The stir fry you see in the picture is simply green onions heated up with sunflower oil in the wok, cubed tofu added in and fried until slightly crispy and raw broccoli florets, tossed in at the last minute. I added a splash of lime juice to keep the green color of the raw broccoli.

**I use natural peanut butter, which is basically pure peanuts, ground to a paste. It has no additives, salt, sugar or other oils in it and it’s a source of good proteins and fat. In Europe, you can find it in health food stores and just like ‘normal’ PB, it comes in creamy or crunchy versions. Of course, you could also use regular ‘american style’ peanut butter if you prefer. This kind is super-processed and not very good for you, the taste is a little more kind though!

Spargelzeit…

In Germany, there is a fifth season. During the spring, there is a time dedicated solely to asparagus (Spargelzeit), which in Germany is the absolute symbol of spring. A huge deal is made out of this by marketers and consumers alike (speaking of marketers, I now have the stupid jingle for Thomy hollandaise sauce for Spargel in my head, and I know everyone who has ever watched TV in Germany in the spring knows what I am talking about), and this was very intriguiging to my husband when he moved here, since every single restaurant was advertising it and you could
eat it just about as ubiquitously as Berlin’s n°1 food — the curry wurst. The region around Berlin is particularly known for a thick white asparagus, the Beelitzer Spargel; but I personally really like the green kind, which has only been available for a few years here.

Anyway, enough silly stories. I like asparagus in a risotto, so here goes.

Asparagus Risotto with Herbs

prep time: 10min, cooking time: 20-25 min

heavy saucepan

a bunch of asparagus (about 500 g), washed and roughly chopped with heads reserved
3 tbsp of various fresh chopped herbs (I used basil, parsley and cilantro)
1 small onion, diced
2 cups of risotto rice
5 cups of chicken/vegetable broth, hot
2 tbsp of butter
lots of parmesan
olive oil

Break of the ends of the asparagus, remove the heads and chop into bits. Melt 1 tbsp butter with some olive oil in a heavy saucepan and add the onion and about half the herbs. Fry on low heat until translucent. Add the rice and stir until translucent. Add the chopped asparagus, stirring until everything is well coated in the butter/olive oil.

Slowly add about 1 cup of the hot broth to the rice, stirring until the liquid has been absorbed. Kepp adding broth while stirring, until the rice has softened. When the rice still has some bite to it, add the reserved asparagus heads and the rest of the herbs. Turn of the heat, add the other tbsp of butter and parmesan to taste. Cover and let it rest for a few min before serving.

This is my basic way of doing risotto, you can subsitute the add on ingredients and some wine/vermouth for one cup of liquid if you like. You could also be extra indulgent and serve it with a dollop of mascarpone

A Trifle for Easter

Easter sunday in Berlin was looking a lot like Christmas what with the snow and the cold, and my hailing of spring a few weeks ago was feeling more ridiculous by the minute. To make matters worse, nearly all of our guests cancelled due to illnesses of all sorts, and we were left with an enormous lamb shoulder and only 3 1/2 people to eat it.

Everything turned out well in the end, however. The shoulder was nearly entirely eaten, as were the easter eggs and the trifle of sorts that had been planned for dessert. I still had some poundcake left (ok, I didn’t just happen to have some left, I actually had to pry it away from my husband’s hands who wasn’t too pleased about it!) and I had an idea to make a white chocolate whipped cream and raspberry fool to go with it.

The chocolate whipped cream I made up as I went, helped by this recipe. The dessert wasn’t really a trifle, more a sor tof layered dessert thingie — which sounds absolutely tempting, admit it — and so I layered away and am calling it a trifle for the purpose of google searches (Oh, I must share those some day, BTW. Hilarious what people google before they end up here!).

‘Trifle’

prep time: 15min

mixing bowl, saucepan

100 g white chocolate
1 cup of whipping cream
1 Tbsp mascarpone
a good handful of raspberries fresh or frozen or more to your liking
pound cake, sliced.

Set the raspberries to defrost slightly if they are frozen. Melt the chocolate with 2 Tbsp of cream in a double boiler until dissolved. Set to cool. Whip the cream together with the mascarpone until soft peaks form. Pour one half of the cream into the cooled melted chocolate to temper it. With the mixer beating, pour the chocolate cream into the bowl with the mixed cream in a steady stream and beat until whipped to your liking. Chill, covered in the fridge until serving.

Arrange the pound cake slices, cream and raspberries in layers on a plate or in a pretty glass. Serve.

More From the Healthy Ones

After having made this salad (and yes, I am quoting myself — sue me!) approximately 100 times in the last weeks, we all got a little bored of broccoli. This is when I remembered a similar take on raw vegetables with fennel. It’s more of a guideline than a recipe and (i feel supremely pontifying typing these words) you can use the base with many different vegetables.

The fun thing about this salad and the other one, is the classic combo of acid and salt, somewhat like a salt and vinegar chip. You could replace the fennel with carrots, or green beans or cooked potatoes even.

Fennel Slaw with Toasted Sesame

prep time: 10min, marinate for as long as you can stand!

1-2 fennel bulbs cut in thin slices, with a mandoline if you have one you showoff, you!
juice of one big lemon
1 tsp salt
2 tsp sesame seeds
olive oil

In a salad bowl, mix the lemon juice and salt. Add the sliced fennel and toss to combine. Heat up a pan on high heat and toast the sesame until fragrant. Sprinkle still hot over the fennel and add olive oil. Eat straight up or let it marinate a while.