HANNAH BW

I promised Christopher a pie, but the man is picky. No apple, he said. Pumpkin is not readily available here in the Old World, and I won’t make pecan because it requires too much corn syrup (something else I haven’t seen over here). Berries, cherries, and rhubarb are so out of season it isn’t even funny. And we don’t have a food processor, so I thought that lemon pie was out of the question, too. Turns out I was wrong, but that’ll have to be a pie for another day, folks.

So! Banana cream pie it was. And it was good, though not as good as the one from Marble Falls, TX.

after a brief aufenthalt on the patio for chilling

Man, I swear that the lighting in this apartment is the worst!

Anyway here is the recipe I used, from Recipezaar.

• 3 cups whole milk
• 3/4 c. sugar (I thought it was a little too sweet, so maybe cut this by 1/4 c.)
• 1/3 c. flour
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 3 egg yolks, slightly beaten
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1 tsp vanilla (we don’t have this, so I used vanillazucker–FAKE)
• 3 bananas

Bring your milk almost to a boil. In a heatproof bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Pour your hot milk in gradually, mixing together, then put back in your pot and stir constantly over medium-high heat until thickened. The directions say to cover and cook for two more minutes–I didn’t think this made any difference whatsoever. Pour a little bit of the hot mixture in with the eggs to temper them (don’t let them scramble! ew!) and then pour the egg mixture in with the pudding mixture and stir constantly for a minute or two. Then let cool to warmish/room temperature. Slice your bananas into a parbaked pie shell (I used Alice Water’s pate brisee recipe, via Smitten, baked at 400ºF for 15 minutes lined with foil and pie weights, then 5 more minutes without foil to brown.) and top with the pudding mixture. Chill and serve with whipped cream.

What a round number.

The wrap up from Israel: I had a great piece of cheesecake at Confiserie and a great falafel at Dr. Sa’adia. I ate the latter on a bench on King George V St. Strange to me that these benches just hang around looking at traffic. I made good use of it.

pickles on a bench

Then I came back and, embracing my Jewish heritage, made a load of rugelach.
Recipe inspired by this post.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened

Cream the cream cheese and butter together. Add the flour and salt, mix until it holds together. Form into two flat discs and refrigerate (or put outside on your patio in the -7º C weather).

Fillings: I did two types (call me crazy!). Dark chocolate, dried cherry, walnut, and raisin walnut.

Here’s what you do: chop your fillings til pretty small. Divide each disk in half and roll out til pretty thin (1/8″ ish) and rectangularish (so now you have four rectangles). Spread each sparingly with apricot jam–about 1 1/2 tbsp per rectangle–and sprinkle with toppings. Then sprinkle with about 1 tbsp of cinnamon sugar. Roll up, brush with milk, sprinkle with a little more cinnamon sugar, and make cuts crosswise about 3/4″ deep. These cuts will be a guide for where to slice the cookies later on. Bake at 375º for about half an hour, or until golden and crispy and not soggy on the bottom. Let cool, then slice through and eat.

rugelach!

Some (honest) questions about kashrut:

Why can’t you eat milk with meat, but you can eat eggs with chicken?

Why can’t you eat chicken with milk?

If you know you want to eat ice cream for dessert, why do you have a hamburger for dinner? And how long do you have to wait before you can have proper ice cream?

Notes on Jerusalem food:

The big bagels (NYC bagels: 0; Jerusalem bagels: <===>) are too big. But the little bag of za’atar makes them as addictive as crack (um, not that I would know).

The salad bar at my conference was the bomb.

Musakhan (is this like moussaka? etymologically, I might say yes) is also really delicious. And mine came rolled up and looked like a burrito. Even better.

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.