too late for Halloween …

Today marked the day of our oldest child’s first Hallowe’en party. It also marked what must be the fifth pumpking we’ve eaten in as many weeks. It also marks the day of the American elections, but that is so totally beside the point here, that I’ll just move on and back to Halowe’en.

My son’s halloween party. A party for which (so we heard YESTERDAY) there would be a costume required. Preferably a scary one. And possibly the bringing of some sort of celebratory food. Now. I am not saying this to blame our daycare, but these types of things are not exactly music to the ear of the working (outside the house, I got the pc-memo) parent (HINT; tell me maybe a week before?).
BUT: as luck would have it, early in the week is generally a good time to ask me for baked goods. In fact, I had just managed to do something about my near constant craving for cinnamon rolls* and had ended up with waaaay too many (which I otherwise totally wouldn’t have shared if I hadn’t have had to be the perfect mum bringing baked goods to daycare), and — luck was on my side again — because I had made those rolls not with a straight up cinnamon filing, nono, but instead with PUMPKIN. Due to the pumpkin abundance and my feeling that I will never find, nor make cinnamon rols as good as these. But the pumpkin, is what now gives me a beautifully easy segue back to halloween and then back to the recipe at hand. Bear with me.

I know exactly, why those last minute notes from school/daycare send me in a tizzy. It’s because growing up, my siblings and I often were the kids with no lunch money on a field trip, more often than not no snack for the break**, and definitely always the ones with the non-matching-non-mended-totally-not-cute socks. Meaning, I know what it’s like to be the kid who’s parents weren’t always prepared (and I have to add, lest my parents choose not to speak to me again, that this is the ONLY thing I would ever jokingly reproach them of. If ever. That, and the early curfew perhaps…).

Fast forward a few years later, and guess which parent I am? The one who isn’t always prepared. They get snacks for their day, but they are sensible snacks, no juice boxes and prepackaged cheese bits, and no nutella. Just boring stuff. Oh, and their socks are all way too small and non-matchey. But yesterday, as I was told there was a party, we should bring food and have a costume for the child. I felt super confident thanks to the delicious rolls (buns?) I had made; but there was a measure of discomfort there somewhere which I wasn’t able to pinpoint until…
11pm, deep into the last episodes of season 1 of Mad Men (are you watching? you should watch!), when I suddenly sat up and realised that we didn’t have a costume. And all I could think of was that he wanted to be a dog, because dogs are scary. And figuring out how to make that costme happen at 11pm was not an option. So we chose an easy out a perfectly acceptable solution combining mummy’s tshirt and daddy’s designs skills . The ‘blood stains’ are courtesy of jello and fruit punch.

The pumpkin rolls however, were no cop out, those were truly good and I shall now, after this long-winded story, leave you with the recipe.

Pumpkin rolls

Adapted from epicurious

prep time: 15min, rising time: 2h total, baking time 35 min
mixing bowl, dough hooks, rolling pin, 1 big square baking pans or 2-3 round small ones

for the Dough

1/2 cup warm water
5 teaspoons of active dry yeast
1/2 cup granulated sugar
5 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting (I used something like cups)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 cup warm milk
2 large eggs at room temperature
1/2 cup (115 g) butter, softened and cut up in chunks

for the Filling

400 g pumpkin puree (I made mine by steaming the pumpkin until tender and then leaving it to drain in a sieve)
1/2 cup (115 g) of butter
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
a dash of grated nutmeg
1 cup of chopped walnuts (expendable)

Mix the yeast into the warm water and add a pinch of sugar. Let rest until bubbles form at the surface (don’t go off to another room with a phonecall for 10 min. bad idea.).

Stir together all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl, and in a smaller one whisk together the milk and the eggs. By now, your yeast mixture should be bubbly. Add the liquid ingredients to the flour and beat until all is combined Add the softened butter and mix on medium speed until the dough comes together, about 4 minutes. It will stil be fairly sticky. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about 1h).

In the meantime, make the filling by simply mixing together all the ingredients save for the nuts in a large bowl.

When the dough is doubled in size, punch it down and roll it out wth a rolling pin to a 40cm square. Spread the filling evenly and sprinkle with the nuts. Roll up the dough away from you and pinch the seams to close it. You will now have a giant doughy log. Cut it in 2 cm thick slices and arrange them in you baking pan(s). At this point, you can either freeze or refrigerate the individual rolls until further use or let them rise again right away. If you choose to freeze/refrigerate them, let them rise again after defrost until doubled in size.
Bake them in an oven preheated to 190° until golden, for about 30 min.

I chose not to ice them, because until I can find the recipe for these particular cinnamon buns, i will not take any icing. It’s a thing I have. You can of course ice them at your own discretion.

*or buns? I never know how to tell them apart!
** to my (working) parents defense, it wasn’t lunch, school only went ’til 1 om in Germany, so you would eat lunch at home).

A good soup

I was going to get all economic-crisis-y on you with this particular recipe, but then I realised that the only reason to post this recipe is because it’s damn good.

Let me take a few steps back to explain what this is all about:

The soup shown here is made from turnip greens — something you wouldn’t normally think of using in that way, since it’s what one would generally consider waste or would feed to rabbits (if you had one); but growing up, we often had a soup made with the greens from radishes, and it was one of my favourites. Also, with the whole economic crises thing, I was thinking waste-not-want-not kind of food — though I have sometimes bought radishes just for the purpose of making the soup, discarding the actual radishes in the process (humhum, waste not what?!).

Anyway this weekend was the first time I made this soup with this particular ingredient and I am happy to report that it was equally as delicious as my memory of it with radish greens. The flavor is really delicate, nutty, and somewhat green close in taste to watercress soup. Plus I find the color really refreshing and spring-like. So, go get yourselves some turnips w greens or some radished and give this a try!

P.S. I don’t plan to throw out the turnip tops, though, because I really like them steamed, or in a soup, or with chickpeas and raz-el-hanout in a couscous…

Turnip Green Soup

Prep Time: 5 min cooking time: 15 min
1 medium sized saucepan / stockpot, blender

1 bunch of turnip leaves (about 4 cups), washed
4 medium sized potatoes
1 bay leaf
about 4 cups water
salt and pepper, to taste

Peel and roughly chop the potatoes.
Put them in a saucepan together with the bayleave. Cover with cold water (2 cups should be enough),bring to a boil and cook on medium heat until just tender (about 10 min).
While the potatoes are cooking, wash the turnip greens in a lot of water. Add them, still wet, in to the saucepan with the now softened potatoes and leave the greens to wilt and slightly cook (5 more min).
Take the saucepan of the heat and thoroughly blend the whole thing together, making sure that there are no remaining chunks or stringy bits. You can add more water to adjust the consisteny, I ended up using about 4 cups. Season with salt an pepper and serve with toasted bread and creme fraiche.

in which things get complicated

Last friday, yours truly got invited to the book launch party of Cynthia Barcomi’s latest cookbook called ‘Kochbuch für Feste’. The party was great fun, as I got to hang out with a new friend as well as with Madame Barcomi herself AND in addition had a taste of a lot some of the food that’s featured in the book.

Waiters were passing along tray after tray of beautifully arranged taste samples. The only thing was, that we had joined the party a bit late (three kids will do that to you: no matter how you play it, you are never at the right party time – arrive too early, leave too early kinda thing!) and that everyone was already getting into trying out the desserts. This kid next to us however, kept running out and coming back with plates full of salty snacks such as piggies in a blanket, and some fabulous looking bacon-wrapped dates. I was really jealous (seriously, I CANNOT miss out on food. It makes me cranky!) so I made after him only to find myself in front of yet another empty tray. I must have looked really disappointed, because after I explained to the waiter that, while figs w/mascarpone and honey (delicious) and mousse au chocolat were great, I really wanted those piggies, he kept coming to the spot where I was standing with my friend. And every single time, he was bearing a fresh tray loaded with salty goodness. The pout never fails to deliver (or so I like to think!).

Amongst some of the foods I sampled were a fabulous creamy porcini soup, potato salad w/ smoked salmon and caviar, piggies in a blanket (YAY!) and medjool dates filled w/parmesan wrapped in bacon and roasted. Those were just insanely good. I mean, in a way anything w/ parmesan that is subsequently wrapped in bacon and roasted is bound to come out perfect, but those dates were just really really perfect. The secret as C.Barcomi said herself, is to use the medjool dates by the way, and not any ole’ date found at the supermarket.

Apart from talking about the food, the other thing we discussed were kitchens, specifically, how to organise them. And this is a topic dear to my heart since it turns out we are moving and will have to buy an entirely new kitchen of our own liking (I know, right? Poor us!)!
This is as much fun as it is totally grueling, because everything happened really fast and we have to get our act together in the next 6 weeks. AAK! So, if you ever had a brilliant piece of advice about what to do and what not to do in a kitchen, now’s the time to bring it! And yes, I am asking the internet’s opinion, watch it not answer me!

Because all this is very complicated and my head seems to routinely explode when faced with the realisation of the task at hand (Because from now until christmas is also the busiest time at my work. And I will be travelling. A lot. While packing. Watch me spontaneously combust!), I am craving something simple foodwise, namely a pre-meal snack that only requires a quick peeling, chopping and dipping.

Yes, this is a Kohlrabi, a boring old Kohlrabi, a food dear to many a german heart which found it’s way to mine just a few years ago. And somewhere in Switzerland, my sister just dropped from her chair from sheer incredulity and the might of assocations she doubtless has from it. I used to associate it with smelly wurst and prepackaged bread on the dining table for Abendbrot*, alongside the little invidual cutting boards known as Frühstückbrett.

I take back all these associations however, when Kohlrabi is peeled, chopped and paired with a food snobs simplest tools: “a sprinkling of fleur de sel and some really good olive oil!” And as much as this whole “fleur de sel and good olive oil” thing annoys me, it does often turn something boring, into something really great. It’s also good for me, since it means all I need to do now, is post photos and bow out!

*Germans often eat an early dinner of cold cuts, cheese and sliced vegetables along with bread. The whole thing having been totally inconceivable to my 7 year old french self.