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Berlin: Day 14

Published March 14, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Welcome to the land of East German crap!

This weekend we went to the flea market in Treptow AND the one in Mauerpark. I liked the one in Treptow better because it was inside and there was excellent falafel. Mauerpark was cold and full of Americans being insufferable by the record stand. We walked through icy rain to get to Werkstatt der Süsse, where we ate hazelnut mousse and drank cappuccinos and talked about how terrible the weather is and how strange the decor is.

On Wednesday, reeling from the garlic soup disaster, I made tabbouleh and beets in vinaigrette (recipes follow). Chris, no longer confident in my skills, ate döner. Dinner on Thursday was chicken and dumplings, beer bread, and salad. Breakfast on Friday was biscuits, lunch was foccaccia and lasagne, dinner on Friday was more beer bread (this stuff is good! recipe follows), cheese, and salad. Lunch on Saturday was aforementioned flea market falafel, dinner was hamburgers. Dinner tonight was more burghul-bi-dfeen, only with ground beef this time, leftover from the burgers.

In other news, here is Egypt’s version of The Onion: El Koshary Today. The title refers to an Egyptian dish immortalized by Francis Lam in (sob) Gourmet.

Recipes

Beets in Vinaigrette:

  • Cook beets until tender. I bake them at around 400ºF, wrapped in foil. You can boil them, too, if you want.
  • Peel and slice.
  • Make a vinaigrette with olive oil, vinegar (I used white because that’s what we have), sugar, salt, minced onion, and chopped parsley.
  • Pour it over the beets.

Tabbouleh:

  • Wash and chop up a lot of parsley. Also chop a tomato. If you have mint and scallion, chop those things too.
  • Cook a little bulgur (the ratio of parsley to bulgur is supposedly 5:1).
  • Mix it all together with lots of salt and pepper and lemon juice and olive oil.

Beer bread:

  • 3 c. flour
  • 1 tsp. baking soda
  • 1/2 tsp. baking powder
  • 1 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tbsp. sugar
  • 1 beer (12 ounces)

Mix together your ingredients. Pour into a greased loaf pan. Bake at 425º for 10 minutes, then at 375º for 30 minutes. Eat.

Berlin: Day 9

Published March 9, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Let me preempt Lucy’s sure-to-be-hilarious rundown of tonight’s dinner and say simply that I tried to make garlic soup, and it didn’t really work.

I used Julia Child’s recipe, via Julie Powell* via the Wednesday Chef, and it produced a hot, vaguely garlicky water, basically. Maybe I should have paid more attention to her when she said “clear broth”? Anyway, it was way clearer than her picture, which looked at least like the soup had some kind of substance to it. So I put some cut up potatoes in it. Nothing improves water like potatoes! (I have a friend visiting from Ireland in a couple of days–getting in the zone.)

Poached eggs, though, make everything better. We put lots of salt on our soup. And some salçası, a hot pepper paste that comes in a jar and is really good on white bread with cream cheese. We ate that with our soup, too. And a big salad with radicchio, feta cheese, avocado, orange pepper, oil-cured olives, and cucumber. But the star of the show was the eggs.

*I still haven’t seen this movie! So sad.

Berlin: Day 8

Published March 8, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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here's a bad macbook photo of burghul bi dfeen

I just made this. Sort of. I didn’t follow their directions because they were overly complex and involved a pressure cooker. Also, I added allspice. Total cost for this meal:

1 leftover grilled chicken from ris-a chicken downstairs: 6€

1 huge can of chickpeas: 0.89€

a cup of bulgur: ~0.32€

two onions: ~0.16€

cinnamon and allspice: ~0.05€

water: FREE

So, basically, cheap (and would have been cheaper if I hadn’t overordered our meal from Ris-A last night. Also, sorry, Mom, I forgot to take pictures of the fried chicken.) and I made enough for a small army.

On a semi-related (as in, related to the Middle East, like me) note, I found this article about L. Paul Bremer’s cooking skills today. It is from 2005 but for me it will always be timely.

Berlin: Day 7

Published March 6, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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I adapted this bulgur dish from the Wednesday Chef/Claudia Roden. It was pretty good… for bulgur. Granted, I skipped the nuts and parsley and just made the bulgur and dressing. And threw in some fava beans for good measure. So maybe it would have been better if I had actually followed the directions.

Cooking with Sartre.

I made a bread pudding, too. And some sauteed Swiss chard. And a sort of Turkish chicken stew that I threw on top of the aforementioned bulgur, vastly improving it. Tomorrow is halal fried chicken night. Bet you wish you were here.

Berlin: Day 3

Published March 2, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Lucy BW washing my dishes in Berlin

We made it! Safe and sound, installed in the new apartment in Neukölln above a halal fried chicken place and Öz Gaziantep Baklavarı, both of which we have already tried and which more than passed muster. Tonight we inaugurated the new stove (three burners!) by making pizza (arugula, pancetta, mozzarella and ricotta, artichoke hearts). I bought Lebanese coffee at the store down the street and we drank it with our pistachio baklava. We traipsed around the Turkish market at Maybachufer (bought: olives, thin-skinned cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes; did not buy: chicken hearts, something called dragon fruit, shoes). Am happy to report that vegetables here are more plentiful and cheaper than in Munich. All varieties of Kohl (Weisskohl, Rotkohl, Grünkohl, Rosenkohl, Blumenkohl) are present and accounted for. I bought a real German chef’s knife at Karstadt. To cut things with.

Speaking of cutting things, please read this article from the WSJ about couples who fight in the kitchen. The comments section is particularly lively. Other reads: I really liked the story about this guy’s baumkuchen machine, and this article about the disappearance of Chinese restaurants on the UWS makes me homesick for steamed pork dumplings.

But it’s okay, because now I’m among my people, sort of. And even if ground pork is sort of hard to come by in a neighborhood full of halal butchers, I’m sure I’ll make dumplings at some point soon. Or cheeseburgers, because I’ve been craving one since September. Or cheeseburger dumplings. Wait, could I possibly be hungry again already? Time for a bowl of yogurt!

Munich: Day 146

Published February 25, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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Sorry for the extended absence. I’m moving! The bundt pan and pasta machine are in Berlin already, and I am still here.

I thought I would tell you about some tomato sauces. When we were little Lucy and I used to beg our mother to buy Ragu brand sauce that came in a jar. I don’t know why, but we considered it a serious treat, on par with the Martinelli’s apple juice that came in the apple-shaped jug, and Quaker peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars. I cannot explain this. We loved it.

But spaghetti sauce was one of the first things I learned to make, and it’s a lot cheaper to make it than to buy the bottled version. So I used to make it the same way, always: a little butter, a little olive oil. A couple of cloves of garlic, some rosemary, some fennel seed, pepper flakes, and a big can of whole peeled tomatoes. Some people used to eat the tomato chunks and leave the spaghetti behind. When I started buying alcohol got more adventurous, I’d add a glug of red wine, maybe a half teaspoon of sugar. Salt and pepper, too, obviously.

Once I made tomato sauce Marcella Hazan’s way, with carrot and celery and onion, diced. Lucy yelled at me and then admitted it was pretty good.

Several times I have made it Marcella Hazan’s other way, the famous version: a can of tomatoes, half a stick of butter, and a peeled onion, halved. Tastes exactly like what you think it does, but better.

And then recently I made it a la Scarpetta, with a basil-chile-garlic infused oil. Echt kompliziert for spaghetti.

Last night I made puttanesca. I’m cleaning out the fridge, so I didn’t get olives–just used capers and a can of sardines I had lying around from an errant visitor who claims to love them. C. didn’t like it, so I had to eat all of it. Oh well. At least he had truffles.

Munich: Day 124

Published February 3, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment

We ate Bosnian food this week. It is a testament to my total immersion in German (ha!) that I almost wrote “vood” up there. Das Vood.

Here, some British Vood:

“Have you got nothing else for my breakfast, Pritchard?” said Fred, to the servant who brought in coffee and buttered toast; while he walked round the table surveying the ham, potted beef, and other cold remnants, with an air of silent rejection, and polite forbearance from signs of disgust.

“Should you like eggs, sir?”

“Eggs, no! Bring me a grilled bone.”

From Middlemarch, p. 98.

And from the recipe files: make these brownies, NOW. Christopher made them last night and the pan is quickly dwindling.

Munich: Day 119

Published January 29, 2010 Uncategorized 1 Comment
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Today I went to the Motorama Ladenstadt to find a green vegetable. Broccoli doesn’t count, I want something with leaves. They had samples (rare here) of grapes sitting out. The little girl next to me at the grape table asked her dad three times whether it was okay to take one. I also had a little chunk of plum. I almost cried it was so good, and it made me so homesick for Central Market.

Anyway, I digress, because I still couldn’t find anything leafy other than dill and lettuce. So broccoli it is. Oh, and cabbage. But I want spinach, or kale, or mustard greens…

I shouldn’t whine so much, I guess, because the oranges are really good, and in spring, when it is lighter outside and there is asparagus, I will be so happy. But I am perplexed by this alleged “seasonality”–aren’t leafy greens a winter crop? What about all those other root vegetables–sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabaga–they don’t have here? Why stock baby pineapple and not kale? I JUST WANT SOME KALE.

Recent makes:

  • Roast chicken and mashed potatoes
  • Marcella Hazan’s rice and smothered cabbage soup, via Wednesday Chef
  • Stir fry–uninspired. I have a block on stir fry.
  • Boiled eggs. I told you I’m uninspired, okay!
  • Salad: butter lettuce, sliced oranges, goat cheese, avocado, and walnuts, with salt, pepper, olive oil and orange juice.

This last is my salvation. I purposely buy unripe avocados days in advance so that we can have a regular supply.

Munich: Day 114

Published January 24, 2010 Uncategorized 2 Comments
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This morning we went to our local Bräuhaus, where we ate sausage and pretzels and drank Bockbier for breakfast. It was so German, it was almost enough to make me forget about the pathetic realities of American political life.

Here are some things I’ve made recently:

  • Cabbage cake. Despite sounding gross, this layered concoction of blanched savoy cabbage leaves and highly seasoned ground meat (pork/beef) was totally delicious. Plus, beautiful when you turn it out of the dish, it’s true.
  • Mujadara. Kind of a letdown. But then, what else do you expect from a cheap-ass meal that’s also a complete protein? Three words to guide me next time: fry more onions. Was really yummy with a lemony salad with feta cheese.
  • Delicious Thai-style and Indian-style chicken curries.
  • Potato, egg and bacon breakfast tacos made on homemade tortillas.
  • A delicious take on this Peruvian chicken soup.

Peruvian chicken soup recipe:

Simmer together:

  • One whole chicken (1 kg)
  • One package chicken wings (.5 kg)
  • A couple of peeled, chopped carrots
  • A piece of parsley root
  • A piece of celeriac
  • A leek, roughly chopped
  • A big hunk of galangal
  • Some powdered ginger
  • Some pepper flakes
  • Salt to taste

for a couple of hours, until the broth is fragrant and yellow. Don’t forget to skim the scum (yuck!) while you keep it just below a boil, and if you refrigerate it later, you can scrape off the fat. Strain the broth, toss the vegetables, shred the chicken from its bones (ditch the skin–or do as I did and fry it in a pan and eat it like chips, oh yum, I can’t believe I’m admitting this).

Heat your broth and serve in a wide bowl with some cooked egg noodles, a hardboiled egg, some shredded chicken, chopped scallions, pepper flakes, a lemon wedge, and sriracha sauce.

Munich: Day 102

Published January 12, 2010 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
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On Sunday it’s supposed to get up to a balmy 39º, but we all know how reliable the weather forecast is. It’s frigid here–my first real winter in 4 years. I’m operating on the assumption that it’s cheaper to heat the apartment by baking things than by turning on the radiator.

So last night I made the Kazakh family loaf from Alford and Duguid’s Beyond the Great Wall, one of my favorite cookbooks, now resident in New York. I grabbed the recipe off of this site, subbed half the flour for whole wheat, and baked it covered in tin foil for an hour. It’s delicious (though a little low on salt) and perfectly fulfills bullet point 2, above. Plus I got to think about Kazakhstan while I made it. Bonus points!

I bet it's so much colder in Kazakhstan

Map via, where else, CIA “Fact”book.

Kazakh family loaf

  • 1 1/2 c. warm water
  • 1 tsp. yeast
  • 2 tsp. salt
  • 1/2 c. yogurt
  • 4-5 c. flour (I used a mix of white and whole wheat)

Dissolve the yeast in the water in a large bowl. Mix in the salt and 1-2 c. flour to make a batter, then incorporate the yogurt. Then add the rest of the flour and knead, baby, knead, until it’s not sticky anymore.

The recipe advises you to do this in a very specific way on a very heavily floured surface. But if you have a hand mixer with dough hooks, you don’t even have to knead it. Actually, I like kneading bread, but only if I have more than 1 square foot of counter space and a wooden surface to do it on. So I took the lazy way. It’s winter, all right?

So then you put your dough back in your (cleaned) bowl and let it rise until it is doubled in volume. I did this in the oven with the light on. It took 2 hours. Grease the sides of a tall oven-safe pot and line the bottom with parchment. Put your dough in, cover tightly with tinfoil, and bake at 400º for 40 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake for another 20 minutes.

Eat with overpriced peanut butter from the organic market. Or Camembert. Or butter. Or honey. Or jam.

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