HANNAH BW

From real life:

• The university auditorium is being occupied. It has to do with tuition fees, access to education, the transition from the old degrees to the bachelor/master system, und mehr. Not sure I understand quite, but was amused by the account of the dispensation of 60 portions of lentil stew to the disgruntled youth. Not to be flippant or anything.
• Munich is also apparently being overrun by illegal guerilla gardeners, who wear beards while carrying out their dastardly duties.
• Telegraph: “Taliban captive won his release by cooking curry,” filed under “How about that?” Indeed.
• Did not read this speech in full, but: Archbishop of Canterbury basically calls the marketization of public services a crime, and reminds us that “‘economy’ is simply the Greek word for housekeeping.”

From the kitchen: a variety of inauthentic Asian style dishes, including this soft tofu stew (verdict: too spicy and not rich enough because I didn’t use ribeye) and several incarnations of banh mi (not, however, döner kebap banh mi, which I hope to eat sometime really soon).

Our recipe for banh mi, loosely defined:

1. Bake a batch of Emeril’s home style french bread.
2. Marinate some thin pork chops in a combination of soy sauce (we used Indonesian ketjap manis), fish sauce, and sriracha. Fry over high heat so that the outside caramelizes. Cut into thin strips.
3. Make some mayonnaise. Mine is a little thin but still really delicious.
4. Assemble your sandwiches: spread a thin layer of liverwurst (or paté) on the bottom of your baguette. Add coriander, sliced cucumber, sliced carrot, your pork, other vegetables and aromatics as you see fit, and mayonnaise on the top part of the baguette.

I’ve read that Asian food supposedly pairs well with pilsners, but we’ve been drinking mostly wheat beers (favorites: Franziskaner Dunkles and Hacker-Pschorr Sternweiß).

Hi, friends. It’s been a while, I know. I apologize for the prolonged absence and also give you what may count as an excuse.

my new kitchen, in typical disarray

Certain things may not come through quite clearly in the above photograph. Zum Beispiel, the fact that what is shown is the true extent of the available counter space. Also, that the small door to the right of the oven is, in fact, the door to the minifridge, the inside of which is difficult to photograph due to the proximity of all available vantage points. Finally, that this tiny excuse for a kitchen is located in Munich, which means that I moved abroad, which means I have been busy doing things like, oh, converting dollars to euros, complaining about the weather, and studying political science.

Note the plethora of condiments and plastic bags, as well as the nonfunctional freezer.

Ah, well. It’s not like I let this deter me from cooking. After I accidentally bought caraway instead of cumin (they’re practically the same word in German! A quick trip to Wikipedia confirms that both are members of the family Apiaceae), I baked a well-received loaf of Irish soda bread, half of which ended up as crumbs on the floor. Any ideas on what to do with two thirds of a bottle of caraway?

I also have a stash of Gourmet’s web-exclusive recipes, saved from their soon-to-be-extinct website, which inspired an adaptation of the Southeast Asian Squash Curry, substituting eggplant and broccoli for squash. It was a hit, as was an earlier rendition of banh mi.

And the preparations you see in the first photo––the head of escarole, black pepper, pot on the two burner stovetop that gives me a panic attack every time I want to make something more complicated than rice––are for this soup, which was tasty and kept me warm last night.

More TK. Promise.