This made it difficult for my friends and family when I recently turned 40. What I really wanted was to take to dinner the people who had made the last 40 years so good. They very nicely let me, and we all had a wonderful, lovely time.
Some people weren't able to travel nearly 4,000 miles just to have dinner with. Instead, my beloved aunt Heide, who taught me to bake like a German during my internship in Stuttgart, mailed me a notebook of her baking recipes.
She divided the book into sweets, Christmas and savory baking. Old favorites like Schokoladekirschkuchen (chocolate almond cherry cake) are there, along with recipes I've wanted for years, like rhubarb cake and Swabian apple cake.
There are nearly fifty recipes in the book, many things I've had at Heide and Ernst's dining room table, or in their back yard next to the River Aich (more of a big stream), or in my aunt Emma's Stube, or in cousin Christel's garden. Not-so-sweet cakes with fresh or jarred fruit; spicy and nutty Christmas cookies; German quiches that make winter vegetables yummy. It is truly the best birthday present ever, representing decades of fond memories.
(I must qualify here -- it's the best birthday present that is a thing. I also received a surprise visit from a friend that is like a son. Both presents made me cry.)
I'll have to tell my produce store to keep some rhubarb and fresh currants for me.
One recipe I've meant to try for years is "Käsefüssle" which literally translates as cheesey feet, and will not surprise you is an idiom for stinky feet. They are a rich, flakey, cheesey foot-shaped "cookie" that makes a great appetizer. The recipe is very simple (combine, knead), and lots of fun for even small children to make. Obviously, you could make cheesey squares, or cheesey triangles, or cheesey strips if you don't have a foot-shaped cookie cutter.
Käsefüssle
1 2/3 c flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
pinch of hot paprika
1 egg
9 Tbs butter (1 stick plus 1 Tbs), cold, cut into 18 pieces
7 oz gouda or emmental, finely shredded
1 egg yolk
2 Tbs sesame seeds or poppy seeds
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, mix all ingredients except yolk and seeds until it looks like crumbly, streusel topping. Turn onto counter and knead just until dough comes together into a uniform dough.
Alternately, by hand, knead all ingredients except yolk and seeds just until dough comes together into a uniform dough.
Roll out to 1/4-inch thick. Cut out using a foot-shaped cutter and lay on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Brush with yolk and sprinkle with seeds. Re-roll scraps and cut out more feet. Bake 12 to 15 minutes until just a bit brown around the edges.
]]>TBar is both retail and restaurant; I was interested only in the retail. They have an extensive selection of loose teas: black, oolong, green and flavored. Prices start at $6.50 for two ounces, making it some of the most expensive tea I've ever bought.
However, there are lots of ways to make an informed choice. Most or all teas can be purchased in a pot; TBar offers a large "Book of Tea" with extensive descriptions of the teas; staff offer to let you smell the loose tea. I just picked from the descriptions.
If you are used to the to the supermarket descriptions of English breakfast, Irish breakfast, Earl Grey and Dareeling, you might be lost. The teas are described by country of origin (Indian, Ceylon), and some have tea grades (like SFTGFOP: Super Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe). Teas are organized by TBar name; to find an assam requires perusing the descriptions. There were a number of flavored teas and a wide selection of green and oolong.
English Breakfast: A not-to-strong, well-balanced basic tea. There were no surprises and likely to be acceptable to anyone used to Lipton. The second brewing was nearly as good as the first, and also good cold.
Nilgiri: Delicate with lots of bright notes. The second brewing was not nearly as good as the first; all of the bright flavor was lost.
Mt. Everest: Mildly smoky but not heavy. The second brewing was close to the first.
Moonlight PM: Billed as low-caffeine and tastes it; tea doesn't lose it's caffeine easily or well. The only good decaf I've found so far has been Barry's Gold, an Irish import.
For years, Philly tea enthusiasts were limited to the Spice Terminal, Fantes and other stores in the Italian Market. Although the teas were better than the supermarket, none had the variety or quality offered by Steap and TBar. It's wonderful to see the selection expanding: no more mail order for me!
Will I go back: I'm inclined to keep my purchases at Steap, which has better prices and as wide a selection. On the other hand, if I'm in the area and looking at a near lack of tea for the weekend, I wouldn't mind trying the Russian caravan or other teas.
]]>Even being born in the South is no guarantee of biscuit prowess; witness the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout complains of home ec class, and the rock-hard biscuits she made.
(I'd also like to say we'd never think of wasting good food on sartorial concerns.)
So, because the idea of carbs + fat for breakfast is appealing, I've been testing biscuit recipes with the help of two excellent baking references. The heavy cream biscuit recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From my Home to Yours are absolutely the easiest ever. No cutting butter, just mix, knead briefly, cut, and bake. For a fast breakfast, these are your biscuits. They are not, however, the best. Nick Malgieri's butter biscuits in How to Bake had better flakiness and lift than the Greenspan's cream or butter biscuits. But Greenspan used less flour and more butter for better flavor.
Each author had recipe variations, but none were really the perfect biscuit. One morning, desperate to use up a quart of buttermilk, I tried Greenspan's buttermilk variation, upping the baking powder to the two teaspoons that Malgieri used. (Why is buttermilk sold by the quart, when one only ever uses a cup before it goes bad, but heavy cream is sold by the half pint, when it keeps forever?) The biscuits were perfect, and the key is the buttermilk, which seems to tenderize the dough sufficiently to overcome any overkneading:
2 c flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
6 Tbs butter, cut into pieces
3/4 c buttermilk
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Wisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Cut in butter until pieces are very small, about pea-sized. As Greenspan points out, some pieces will be smaller. Mix in the buttermilk until the dough starts to hold together. Dump onto your kneading surface and knead gently until it begins to hold together; Malgieri recommends a fold-and-push technique that will create lots of layers. I find the buttermilk doesn't absorb all the flour in the bowl, so no extra flour is needed.
Roll to a half inch thick, and cut with a round, two-inch cutter (don't twist!). Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 to 15 minutes until golden brown.
An additional great thing about these is the lack of eggs. Not that I run out of eggs that often, but when I do, it throws a wrench in any weekend breakfast plans. And you can substitute whole milk for the buttermilk, and skip the baking soda; or substitute whole milk and add two teaspoons cider vinegar for the buttermilk.
]]>Tasting wine makes me feel incompetent enough; it reduces me to the mantra of philistines everywhere: "I know what I like!" Sake just seems out of my league: I have few chances to try anything other than Gekkikan (I live in Pennsylvania, home of the most draconion liquor laws in the country). Additionally, I can't even distinguish between labels, let alone read them!
Sake Fest has been put on in past years, and seemed the perfect place to learn about sake. Its the perfect place to learn about new-to-you sakes if you are already comfortable with sake, but it was bad for a beginner.
There was no way for me to know what I was tasting or comparing. Each importer had their own printed material about the sakes they offered. There was an overall guide to all vendors and their wares, but it was merely a list -- not very useful. I eventually settled into a plan of tasting each table's cloudy sake to be able to compare apples to apples. At one table I just worked my way through four of their dryer sakes. (Turns out my cooking sake -- Fu Ki -- is dry. Who knew?) By the end of the night, I could apprecieate the difference between sweeter sakes and dryer sakes, and the cloudy (or milky) sakes. Of course, I liked the bubbly sakes.
Although the room wasn't packed, the tables were so small that it was a slog to get through and get a tasting cup. Attendees tended to get to the table, get a cup, stand right there blocking everyone else while tasting ... and get a taste of something else. Uniform materials about the sakes from each vendor would have been fabulous, especially if the material showed a picture of the bottle, the name in English, a general description (dry vs sweet), and a place for tasters to make notes. It could be part of the packet handed to attendees (drinkers?) with their fuschia wrist bands.
Honestly, I'd rather spend $55 on a few bottles and taste at home with friends!
]]>Alright, I admit it, ideally I'd live in a little German village, where the produce store is across the street and the baker around the corner is my grandmother's step-brother's wife's nephew (no, really, he is kinda a cousin by two marriages). But I don't, and I'm stuck in the land of the supersize, and all I can do is thank my stars I don't live in Texas, where everything is even bigger. There once was a time when I loved to spend hours in the grocery, looking for odd ingredients and dreaming up menus to use them in. Now I have a toddler.
The giant Acmes with the blaring TVs and complete lack of white baking chocolate are right out. The giant Genuardi's which trades privacy for fake "discounts" is out. The two-acre Shop-N-Save is out. The giant Giant is out, despite the truth-in-advertising theme of its name.
There is a wonderful Shop-N-Bag (George's Dreshertown), which was "big" when it was first built in the 60s or 70s. Now it's quaint, but it has great produce, a huge dairy section including whole-milk and Greek yogurts, a fishmonger, two butchers — kosher and non, LeBus bread, and really perky checkers who always gave my toddler a "Thank you for shopping" sticker. No loyalty cards. Prices sane. Fresh food was fresh. Small enough to be in and out in half an hour with groceries for the week. On the way home, so I could shop every other day if I needed, and I often did. Problem? We switched day cares, and the shopping center was so good I almost considered keeping my extra forty minutes of commuting to still go there.
When I'm really strapped for time or patience, I go to O'Niell's in Keswick: absolutely tiny (two check-outs), but well-enough-stocked. I can be in and out in 20 minutes. They're so small that I count on only the basics, but an often pleasantly surprised at what they do have. If I had brand loyalty, I'd be screwed, but I only have square-footage loyalty. Parking is on-street with meters, but that keeps the riff-raff away.
Within walking distance of my mother is the Hatboro Deli, which is either the world's smallest hoagie shop with a grocery store attached, or the world's smallest grocery (one checker, four aisles) with an in-store hoagie shop. The hoagies are good, but the grocery is better. They carry lots of prepared foods, but also rib roasts and Crystal hot sauce (I couldn't find Crystal for over a year in the Philly area, and here it was half a mile from my mother the whole time). Plus cheap greeting cards, and I'm sure they'll be open on my mother's birthday.
I can stand Whole Foods and its ilk. (What ilk? They've bought them out.) They often have the odd things I want like vegan chocolate chips, dried pears and Spanish goat cheese. They're packed but the footprint is small enough that you never have far to fight your way through. Trader Joe's is just too damn crowded. And neither is open at the sensible hour of 7:30 am., so that I can beat the crowds.
For the truly exotic, it's H-Mart on Cheltenham Ave. and Rieker's in Fox Chase. H-Mart is a Northeast chain of Korean groceries, and carry lots of souteast Asian ingredients, and have a small housewares section I always must visit. (Every Asian grocery seems to have a housewares section.) Rieker's is the German delicatessen/butcher my grandmother shopped at. They still make their own sausages, and carry lots of seasonal delicacies.
There is produce store around the corner ... and down the mile-long hill: Peas in a Pod. Wonderful produce, with a big organic section. Pumpkins at Halloween. Local in season. Suppliers deliver every day. Cute little bushel baskets for shopping baskets. Fresh, whole-grain bread. Local eggs. Now, if only I can convince them to carry buttermilk and whole-milk yogurt.
Well, there you go. If you live near me and want an old-fashioned grocery with a good selection, you know where to go. And if I ever get amnesia and forget where I shop, it's right here.
]]>I also remember clearly where we sat (windows along Locust Street), what I ate (linguine or fettuccine) and most of all, what we discussed: should I start seeing this new guy I'd met? She gave me the best advice ever: yes, date him.
He and I eventually moved to an apartment around the corner and ate at Upstares regularly. We took my father there when we had tickets for Messiah and the Nutcracker; they always made sure we were out in time to make it across the street to the Academy of Music. We took friends who were delighted to discover that Italian food went beyond red sauce. After moving to the burbs, we would occasionally return with out-of-town guests.
While hunting ever more desperately for a place for my fortieth birthday, I finally remembered Upstares, and its downstairs sister Sotto Varalli. Yes, they could fit 25 to 30 of us in a private room and feed us a three-course meal.
The menu started with rocket salad or their field greens salad. Sensibly, most everyone picked the rocket salad, which had the most amazing, large ripe strawberries. These were better than the grocery store carries in June. I had the lobster ravioli, Tobi had the steak, and that guy I started dating had the linguine. We finished with enormous portions of chocolate pyramid or tiramisu (trite, but still excellent). The weakest note was the coffee, but was more than compensated for by the excellent wine selections — I threw myself on the staffs' mercy, and they selected the wonderful Zefiro Prosseco with the appetizers, and the Terlano Pino Bianco and Red Mud Shiraz with dinner. Yes, I had at least a glass of each.
Will I go again? Will I have another birthday?
]]>When Food TV ran "Gordon Elliott's Door Knock Dinners," I always hoped he'd show up at my door and I could see what he would make of two frozen pounds of butter, some limp greenery, and half a can of cat food.
That was even before kid, with a set bedtime and extra time to pick up from daycare and a husband to get from the train station. I'm rarely home before 6:15 and we need to finish eating by 7.
You try making a pot roast in 15 minutes with a three-year-old.
But you know what's easy? Eggs are easy. Eggs are fast. Eggs are yummy, if you put enough cheese in them. Eggs are even gourmet if you call them omelet or frittata. I'm calling this frittata-like. Big advantage: most ingredients are things likely to be in the pantry — my pantry, at least, plus a Spanish goat's-milk cheese, which may be common in your pantry.
I used
three eggs
at a time, because that's how many fit in my six-inch cast-iron fry pan., which was heating on the stove. I whisked the eggs to a lovely froth with
a few tablespoons heavy cream
. (I've tried separating the eggs and folding in the beaten whites, but the result was too eggy and not cheesy enough.) I'd pre-heated my broiler to 400 degrees.
Then I added
three ounces carpricho de cabo (or manchego, or other goat's milk cheese) broken into bits
one roasted pepper, julienned
a four-inch length of dried chorizo, sliced very thinly
and poured it all into the hot fry pan.
When the bottom has cooked, put the pan under the broiler until the top is nicely browned and the eggs have cooked through. The eggs will puff nicely. Immediately show your audience, er, family, and invert onto a plate and eat.
Serves one to two.
]]>Miran's a BYOB, and, because I don't usually have a B tucked in my bag, I had the hot tea, which was probably Hyeonmi cha, Korean roasted brown rice tea. It was a wonderful antidote to January in Philly.
I started with the pork and kimchee steamed dumplings, then had the squid bokum &emdash; squid and veggies in a hot-sweet sauce. The dumpling filling and squid might have benefited from a minute less time cooking; the dumplings were not as juicy as I like, and the squid a bit more chewy. However, the flavor was good.
Most dinner entrees are served with "rice and side dishes," meaning short-grained rice and four or five small bowls of kimchee and a small bowl of iceberg lettuce, a slice of a tired tomato, covered in Russian dressing.
Service was casual (the waitress wore jeans and a McNabb jersey &emdash; I though the Eagles were out of consideration?), efficient (I was in and out in half an hour) and friendly (we both like su do ku). As I was finishing dinner about 6:30, the dining room started to fill up and my table was cleared immediately to seat the customers who had just walked in.
Squid bokum has become my favorite dish at Korean restaurants. As happy as I am that I can find something so good (and familiar) wherever I eat, it's disturbing to see Korean cuisine shoe-horned into American expectations of "these are the 20 dishes that $COUNTRY eats." That should have gone out of style with chop suey. If you wanted to define American food, you'd be hard pressed to limit it to 20 dishes. Of course, steak-house menus don't reflect that, do they?
Will I go back? Yes, Miran does at-table barbecue, and I'm sure my husband and son would love it.
]]>Tonight's Grammy-winner was inspired by leftover Käsespätzle and the Village People (to the tune of "Macho Man"):
Spatze Spatze Man!
I've got to be, a Spatze Man!
My husband assures me that being there makes it no funnier.
However, the Käsespätzle were delicious. People — well, chefs and food wanks, not people — claim Spätzle are Alsatian or Swiss to make them sound upscale, but I'm telling you, this is southwest German peasant food.
Boil at least 5 quarts (5 liters) very heavily salted water. Butter a large casserole dish. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees (160 C).
While waiting for the water to boil, measure the flour and a bit of grated nutmeg into a large bowl, and make a well in the center. Crack the eggs into the center, and pour in the water. With a fork, mix the eggs and water together, then mix in the flour. You'll have a very stiff batter, but not a dough. If you have dough that you would like to put through a pasta maker, add a few tablespoons water. Mix until smoothish.
Spoon/plop a quarter of the batter into your Spätzle press, press into the rapidly boiling water, and boil until the noodles float. I prefer thinner noodles. If the noodles are thick, either add a tablespoon or two more water to the batter, or hold the press higher, so that gravity stretches the noodles more. My press is the kind that looks like a giant garlic press, not the kind that looks like a food grater with a sliding handle thing on it.
When the noodles float, fish them out with a large slotted spoon, or strainer, or pasta spoon, or whatever works. Spread noodles evenly on the bottom of the casserole, and sprinkle a quarter of the grated cheese over them. Pop the casserole into the oven.
Repeat the cooking of the noodles, and the sprinkling of the cheese three more times, until all the batter is cooked and all the cheese used. The cheese will melt nicely in the oven.
]]>![[Interior of downstairs fridge.]](/images/eve2007.jpg)
Fourteen mini-loaves of Stollen chilling so that I can bake them after picking up my in-laws. They sit on the leftover beer and wine from the party: half a case hard cider, a case of beer, two cases of wine. A case plus of Yuengling is still out back. Soda is ... somewhere else.
]]>And yes, I did use Leslie Harpold's format for this.
I'm slowly realizing the insane amount of work I've set out for myself. Insane when you think I spend 5:00 to 5:30 getting my son from daycare, 5:30 to 7:00 cooking and eating dinner, then 7:00 to 8:30 getting my son ready and into bed.
If you have any cool holiday links, e-mail them to me at the address below. This will stop the panic attack that come from looking at my list of potential good links.
Well, I need to bake something, and we need to get the tangible Advent calendars out of storage.
]]>This may be my husband's favorite holiday, but my own feeling is must I? For various reasons -- four sets of parents, the only grandchild, an unwillingness to eat the same food every year -- we've hosted Thanksgiving since before we were married.
Thanksgiving was so early this year it completely blindsided me. One weekend I'm baking fruitcake, the next I'm making a grocery list over breakfast so that I can make cranberry sauce that afternoon.
On the pro side, the house will finally get a spring cleaning, the refrigerators are cleared out and cleaned, and I know it won't be the same menu as last year and the year before and the year before (if only because I change the side dishes). Our families are great, and we don't see them enough. Everyone enjoys themselves enough to return every year. It is a four-day weekend. And I control the menu.
As the child of divorced parents, I have few holiday traditions, since each holiday changed from year to year. The allure of Thanksgiving was always the chance to throw a big dinner party -- albeit with a mandatory turkey. Unfortunately, as I've found recipes that everyone likes and are easy enough to make and would disappoint someone if they were missing, the menu is starting to fossilize. I'm fighting back with two new side dishes, but it's hard when most of my thoughts turn to Nick Malgieri's cookbooks.
(I have an extra bag of cranberries, maybe I will make the cranberry-chocolate tart from November's Bon Appetit and shake up dessert. Wait, it calls for mascarpone cheese. Maybe not. Next year, the stuffing definitely gets a makeover.)
On the minus side, I'd planned to bake pfefferkuchen and lebkuchen, but spent the weekend cleaning. The only baking was corn muffins for breakfast, and pre-making and freezing crust for the pumpkin pie.
Maybe if I just brought three or four desserts, I could relinquish control of Thanksgiving. And I wouldn't have to clean.
]]>The critical ingredient for fruitcake success or failure is candied citrus peel, what the British and Irish call mixed peel. This replaces the revolting mixed peel from the super market (which you can't buy now, anyhow). Real mixed peel is hard to find in America, but the good news is that home-made candied peel is easy, if time-consuming.
I don't have a set recipe yet, but the basic procedure is as follows:
Throughout the year, save and freeze intact lemon, orange, grapefruit, tangerine and clementine peels. Don't bother saving anything that's been zested.
Membrane can be easily cut away with a small, sharp knife. Cut the peels into quarters; that is, halve each half. Each quarter will have two pointy end. Holding the peel flat on a cutting board, make a quarter-inch cut into each point, keeping the knife blade parallel to the cutting board. Grab the bit of pith just cut away from the peel and pull gently; you may need to work your fingers under the pith and membrane to keep it in one piece. If only part of the membranes comes off, make a similar cut in the other point of the peel and pull off the pith. Most of the pith (the white part) will remain behind, and that's fine; this is only to remove what's left after, say, juicing a lemon.
Keep the peels in a gallon zipper bag with as much air squeezed out as possible. If the peels get freezer burnt, throw them out or compost them. When the bag is full or half full, there is enough peel to candy for yourself and any friends.
In a six-quart pot, boil the peels with enough water to cover them. When the water is boiling nicely, drain the peel. Repeat twice more. This step is supposed to eliminate the bitterness of the pith; I've not confirmed this, but it makes the kitchen smell nice. This step will take about 45 minutes.
The final step is to gently boil the peel in sugar syrup until all the syrup is absorbed. My friend who makes her own peel uses a medium syrup (3:2 ratio of sugar to water, that is 1 1/2 c. sugar to 1 c water) to cover; other recipes have a ratio of weight of the peel to weight of the sugar. Knowing I was running out of sugar, I used most of my remaining sugar, added water to make a medium syrup, boiled, then kept adding peel until it started to poke over the top of the syrup.
Gently boil the peel, stirring occasionally. The syrup should bubble, but not much. The peel requires more and more stirring and attention as the water evaporates and the sugar is absorbed.
In the end, the peel will be very translucent and most (all?) of the sugar will be absorbed. This will take three to four hours.
Allow to cool, dice if desired, and freeze.
Or, you'll be planting tulip bulbs in the garden with your son, leaving your husband to watch the peel, and he'll fall asleep. The peel will scorch and you'll spend the next day fishing peel out of very thick sugar syrup, cutting the blackened bits off, and dicing peel.
You see why I don't have a recipe yet — you have to order those tulip bulbs in May!
]]>At first, I was hesitant to commit to a full vegan cookbook and tried the sample chocolate cupcake recipe. It wowed everyone, I bought the book, and baked over a gross (a dozen dozen) of vegan cupcakes this summer.
So far I've made the chocolate (with chocolate, mint and coconut icings), lemon-lemon, vanilla, and carrot cake (with cream cheese) cupcakes. All were yummy. The carrot cake is the leading favorite: a few bites of intense, carrot-cakey goodness, perhaps even better than Dorie Greenspan's carrot cake. I am determined to make the green tea cupcakes before winter. Additionally, there are low-fat and gluten-free versions of the basic vanilla and chocolate cupcakes.
Complaints are few: I upped the cocoa content from 1/3 to 1/2 cup in the chocolate cupcake recipe; Republicans will want to skip the sections where the authors write about "cruelty-free" baking.
Because the recipes usually use oil (rather than margarine) as the fat, each cupcake recipe is super-easy, requiring only two mixing bowls and a whisk. (Icings usually require a mixer to beat the margarine.) Soy cream cheese is the most exotic vegan ingredient I've used so far (green matcha tea the most exotic non-vegan ingredient). If you aren't baking for vegans or the dairy-averse, I see no reason not to use dairy ingredients in the recipes. Plus — import for the parents of toddlers — without raw eggs in the batter, small children can lick beaters and bowls without anyone fretting over salmonella. (I eat raw batter, but certain short household members will need to be much older.)
One important thing: if you are baking for someone who doesn't eat dairy, check your margarine: most margarine contains milk products like whey or casein. Makes sense to me too. You may need to find the vegan section or or make a special trip to the vegan grocery store.
Will I bake from it again? Yes!
]]>Most of the caterers I've looked at have hired a professional design team. This is good in theory, but in practice it's like eating larks' tounges — novelty for novelty's sake.
So, caterers, from a professional web programmer and a potential customer, don't do this:
It would be really nice if you: