Nanorestaurant Review: Gasthof Baeren (Eggiwil)

One smiley face. What one hopes for in a good "dorfbeiz".

• Food: Swiss standards, well prepared
• Service: good
• Atmosphere: pleasant; two thumbs up for being non-smoking
  

Wednesday: pasta with beans

A recipe from Hazan that I somehow haven't done before: Embogne. It's a sauce made from beans (kidneys in my case), the bean liquid, minced bacon, onion, garlic, sage, and rosemary. Served over pappardelle with copious parmesan, this made for a really good meal.

Monday: Risotto and Pork tenderloin

For the risotto we used onions, garlic, diced carrots, and radicchio. Kristen did the stirring. :-)

For the pork I made a relish (salsa, pesto, whatever) from finely diced dried tomatoes, chopped pine nuts, parsley, smashed garlic, minced onion, balsamico, salt, and rapeseed oil. The tenderloin itself I browned on all sides and then did in a slow oven (80C) until it hit serving temperature.

Verrrrry nice.

Sunday fondue

Always a winner with visitors: cheese fondue and a big salad

Saturday choucroute

We have family visiting, so I kicked things off last night with a choucroute: Cook diced onion, carrot, and leek with some lardons in a bit of rapeseed oil for a few minutes. Add rinsed sauerkraut, bay leaves, lightly crushed juniper berries, and caraway and mix well. Transfer to a baking dish and top with a couple bratwurst. Bake at 175 for a bit, then add a schuffeli and some wienerli and bake a while longer. Serve with steamed potato wedges, pickles, and grainy mustard.

Friday: rigatoni with red cabbage and sausage

The usual biokiste-driven improv: lightly brown some sliced bratwurst. Add leek, diced carrot, and minced garlic and cook for a few minutes. Add chopped red cabbage and a good pinch of salt and let cook another couple minues. Add good chicken stock, some diced dried tomatoes, a bay leaf, and a bit of tomato paste and simmer until the cabbage is ready to eat. Serve over rigatoni.

Wednesday chickpea ragout

Bit of a Spanish-influenced improv: cook onion and garlic in some olive oil with a few piri piri chilis. Add diced salami, diced yellow carrot, ground cumin, and ground coriander and saute a bit longer, add drained chickpeas and a good amount of sherry. Let the sherry reduce. Add good chicken stock and let it reduce. Add some tomato puree and a couple bay leaves. Let the whole thing simmer 15-20 minutes.

Serve with brown rice and a big salad.

Tuesday leftovers

To use the leftover mashed potatoes I did some quick croquettes: mix the potatoes with grated cheese and some black pepper, form them, roll them in bread crumbs, and then cook with olive oil. It would not have hurt to add an egg or two to add structural integrity for the pan cooking part, but these still tasted quite nice, particularly with the mustard sauce.

We also had pork chop, sauerkraut, and some cornbread. All quite randome, but good.

Sunday: Chili and cornbread

For the chili: browned beef, soaked kidney beans, garlic, onion, red wine vinegar, water, some tomato puree, toasted cumin (whole) and coriander (coarsely ground), dried arbol and New Mexico chilis, soy sauce, oregano.

I did the chili in the slow cooker on Saturday and reheated it last night.

Something wasn't quite right with the cornbread. I ended up using a different measuring cup for the milk and I think there was too much liquid. The flavor was just fine, but the texture was too dense.

Saturday: pork with mustard sauce, sauerkraut

For the pork: Coat boneless pork loin chops with a marinade of both grainy and normal mustard and dry vermouth; let stand for a couple hours; cook in a 85C oven until the interior temp is 65C.

For the sauce (inspired by something in the Niedergaren cookbook): reduce a mixture of good chicken stock and white wine by 2/3. Whisk in some hot mustard (Loewensenf) and a corn starch slurry. Add a bit of sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in whatever liquid collects around the pork just before serving.

The sauerkraut was from the biokiste, I just heated it up.

As a side (and additional use for the sauce) we did mashed potatoes.

Nice food.

Sunday soup

This was to help Andrea recover from her cold and use up the chicken breasts from the tagine bird.

I started with a stock made by roasting a couple chicken carcasses then cooking them with leeks, carrot, onion, celery root, garlic, clove, bay leaf, and pepper. To make the soup I added diced carrot, leek, chicken breast (cut small), cooked macaroni, chopped basil (from the freezer), and light cream.

Saturday tagine

This was the Bittman chicken-chickpea-vanilla tagine. I toasted the spices first to add some extra oomph.

We ate it with flatbread and some eggplant puree (eggplant roasted in the peel, then pureed with olive oil, salt, lemon juice, and a bit of chipotle tabasco).

mmmm, ooomph!

Another bread

A repeat of the rye version of the bread to have for breakfast.

mmmm, good.

Friday: a random curry

Somewhat random curry: tofu, dried shrimp, green curry, onion, chili, lime leaf, lemon grass, lime juice, etc.

Not my best effort, but it certainly wasn't poison.

Lentil soup

A simple soup: lentils, carrots, celery root, leeks, and beef broth and diced beef from Sunday.

mmm, lentil soup and rye bread

The next bread experiment

Another round of no-knead bread. This time I added some coarsely ground rye flour: 150g rye, 300g bauernmehl, 350g water.

Wow does this method produce some good bread.

Monday: Choucroute simple

On Saturday we had grabbed some sauerkraut from the Alsatian farmer we like. That stuff is so good that there's no need to do much to it: cook some diced onion in a bit of rapeseed oil; add caraway seeds, crushed juniper berries, and a bay leaf; add white wine and rinsed sauerkraut and cook for 5-10 minutes; add a saucisson vaudoise (mmmm), cover and cook gently for 10-15 minutes; serve with grainy mustard and pickles.

Sunday miscellany

Kind of a random evening:

1. Beef brisket simmered with carrot, celery, onion, garlic, bay leaf, clove, allspice, fennel, sliced and served with a horseradish-cream sauce
2. Oven-roasted potatoes
3. Butternut squash diced and cooked with some butter in a pan until soft, then mashed with salt, nutmeg, white pepper, and lime juice.

Random, but good. :-)