Yesterday morning I made a batch of apricot jam using the fruit (Walliser apricots) we picked up at the market on Saturday. Being able to buy "jelly sugar" (already contains pectin and citric acid) sure does simplify jam making.
Preliminary indications are that the jam is quite good.
I got tired of not cooking so yesterday, despite the heat, we had an actual hot meal. It was simple, but still it's a big change. :-)
As a main dish, I made frikadellen with ground lamb, onion, garlic, lemon zest, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. For a side I sauteed some fresh beans (long flat green beans, I'm not sure what they're called) with sliced garlic in olive oil until they were tender and almost caramelized.
And a green salad.
Wine: Santa Rosa 2005 Torrentes (Mendoza). This is an Argentinian white that Andrea and I both really enjoyed. It was a plesant change from the Swiss whites we've been drinking.
The heat here hasn't let up, so we're still mostly eating salads and simple stuff. Saturday I made a potato salad with new potatoes, pieces of cervelat, onion, and a mayo-mustard-lemon-garlic sauce.
We haven't been doing much in the way of cooking this week. I did make a couple of salads (quick-pickled cabbage and cucumber with a lemon vinaigrette; rice salad with green curry, lime, ginger, garlic, cilantro, and chilies) to fill out the meals, but otherwise it's been Abendbrot and green salads.
We found a good Asian supermarket on Saturday, so to celebrate I made a green curry last night. I augmented the curry paste with ginger, lemon grass, kaffir lime leaves, garlic, and onions. Just before serving I added some lime juice and sugar.
To go along with the sauce, I breaded some pieces of rotbarsch (redfish or ocean perch) by dredging them through egg and paniermehl (somewhere between standard American breadcrumbs and panko), and then shallow fried them in peanut oil. We also had some sauteed napa cabbage and broccoli stem pieces, and a big pot of jasmine rice.
As always we had a green salad. Last night though the flavor clash between the salad and the curry was extreme enough that the salad had to wait to be eaten as a second course. :-)
We had a bulb of fennel from the market that really needed to be used, so last night I made a gratin with the sliced fennel, some new potatoes, elephant garlic (or some kind of large-cloved garlic), cream, and gruyere.
To go along with it we had a green salad.
The wine was a Les Plantailles 2004 Aigle. We're really enjoying these Swiss white wines in the warm weather.
I stopped at a "turkish market" (gotta find out what they call these here in Switzerland) on the way home from work last night and picked up some eggplant and a couple different kinds of hot peppers.
For the meal I diced some pork stew meat and browned the pieces. I combined those with a bit of boullion, cubed eggplant (salted for a while, rinsed, and drained), diced onion, and the sliced peppers, then baked it at around 400 until the eggplant was soft. We ate this over rice, topped with chives.
As a side I steamed some broccoli and then melted a bit of gruyere over the portions.
It was good food.
The wine was a Abadia Retuerta 2001 Sardon de Deuro.
Unfortunately the wireless connection I was using to get online while we waited for our DSL went away, so we haven't had net access at home. Now our DSL is here, so the logging will pick up for real.
Luckily, there's not a huge amount to put into a catch up post: between the heat and our less than perfectly equipped temporary-housing kitchen we haven't been doing that much cooking. We've been doing a lot of Abendbrot + salad.
