Monday Night: Salad

I got back from Ireland Monday morning, no food comments from that trip ("If you can't say something nice...").
Monday night we had a simple vegetable salad made from diced potatoes, kohlrabi, and carrots (all from the biokiste), minced onion, and a dressing made with quark, mayo, mustard, crushed garlic, and savory. I boiled all the veggies first until they were just tender.

We ate this over lettuce [biokiste] with some nice bread.

Andrea had bought some local strawberries over the weekend and macerated them, so we ate those served over quark for dessert. mmmm, strawberries and quark!

vacation

I'm out of town from today -> next Sunday, so there won't be posts.

Biokiste 7

onions! and potatoes! and savory! and cauliflower! wow!

Yet another Wednesday Curry

how does this keep happening? :-)

Last night's curry was made with beef (magerer siedfleisch) that I cut into strips and then across the grain into bite-size pieces, diced kohlrabi (very Thai!), and onion chunks. For the sauce I used green curry paste, galangal, ginger, lemon grass, coriander roots, keffir lime, coconut milk, chicken stock, lime juice, fish sauce, and a bit of sugar. I served the finished curry with fresh cilantro and sliced Thai chilis.

We ate this with Thai sticky rice.

Wine: Baron de Hoën Beblenheim 2005 Gewurztraminer; quite a nice pairing indeed.

Tuesday leftovers

To go along with the leftover tuna balls and rice from Monday night, I made a potato salad using diced white potatoes [biokiste] and a dressing made from quark, garlic, parsley, a teeny amount of fresh rosemary, ground cumin, salt, pepper, sherry vinegar, and olive oil.

We also had a big green salad.

Monday Spanish

Last night I did a couple of recipes from Penelope Casas.

The main course, from a tapas recipe in Tapas, was Tuna Balls in Wine Sauce. I stuck to the recipe reasonably closely. Deviations were to use Spanish tuna packed in oil (instead of water) and fish stock instead of chicken stock. We had a partial loaf of fantastic rye bread that we got in Brig this weekend, so I used a slice from that to make the bread crumbs. I figured that the tuna could stand up to the additional body of the rye bread. Since I used fresh bread crumbs, I used half again as much as the recipe called for.

To go with the meatballs I also made Baked Rice from the recipe in La Cocina de Mama.

Both dishes were excellent.

Wine: Cicero 2005 Mattmann Pinot Noir. This was the wine we had at Lampart's and it was just as good at home as it was in the restaurant. There was the added bonus of one of those synergistic magic-pairing effects between the wine and the rice. I'm not sure if it was the saffron, the thyme, or the entire dish, but the combination was fantastic.

Sunday Salad

We were tired after the weekend's hiking, so last night we had a simple dinner.

We picked up half a roasted chicken at the supermarket and ate that with a big green salad and a dressing made from mashed garlic, minced cornichons, grainy mustard, mayo, sherry vinegar, olive oil, black pepper, and a bit of milk to thin it. On the side we had the remaining mixed vegetable salad from last week and some boiled potatoes [biokiste] with salt, pepper, and olive oil.

Simple and good.

Camping food

We were camping this weekend so I took the chance to try a couple of different ideas for backpacking food.

Coop sells prepared pasta sauces in small (320g or two big serving) foil bags, I used those as the base for each meal: Friday I mixed the all arrabbiata with some slivered roasted peppers and diced chorizo; we ate it over powdered mashed potatoes. Saturday I used the remaining slivered peppers, some diced smoked sausage, and the bag of sauce bolognese over pasta.

Friday's experiment tasted better, though it would have been better with couscous. Saturday's dish was pretty boring. Neither is really ideal for backpacking since the bags themselves contain a lot of water. It would be cleverer to use a powdered tomato sauce enriched with the peppers and sausages. I'll try that next time.

Thursday Schnitzel

How unusual I'm actually doing a post right after dinner; crazy!

Our plan wasn't to be here this evening, but rain delayed our departure for our camping trip. Today is a holiday, so dinner needed to be a "whatever is in the house" meal. There was some thinly cut pork loin (Nierstuck) in the freezer, so I thawed that out and made schnitzel.

The two deviations from the standard schnitzel program were to brush a bit of grainy mustard on the pounded out pork before flouring it, and using cracker crumbs instead of bread crumbs for the final coating. Both worked out quite nicely.

To go with the schnitzel there was leftover veggie salad from last night and some radish greens [biokiste] that I flash fried in olive oil and then let steep in some chicken stock and sherry vinegar to tame the intense bitterness.

Instead of wine we drank Ramseier Suure Moscht (hard cider). Andrea likes it better from a glass bottle (instead of the 1.5 liter plastic thing we have from Coop), but it went nicely with the meal.

Wednesday: Mixed Vegetable Salad

Last night's main course was the leftover cod from Tuesday night. To accompany it and to start using our kohlrabi collection from the biokiste, I came up with a mixed-vegetable salad based on an idea from a recipe I found on the Coop website: cut the vegetable into strips, cook it in stock, then serve it with a sauce made from mustard and the cooking liquid.

Here's what I did, all the vegetables (except garlic) are from the box:
chicken stock
3 cloves garlic, peeled and lightly crushed
2 kohlrabi, peeled and cut into 1cm matchsticks
1 large carrot, cut into 1cm matchsticks
4 medium white potatoes, cut into 1cm matchsticks
6 spring onions, cut in half if they're thick
salt, pepper
2 Tbs mustard
olive oil
fresh herbs, chopped (I used chervil, chives, and thyme)
ground coriander
soy sauce

Bring the stock to a simmer and add the garlic and a pinch of salt.
Simmer the kohlrabi until it starts to get tender, then transfer to a large bowl with a slotted spoon. Try to leave the garlic in the stock.
Repeat with the carrot and potatoes.
Broil the onions with a bit of olive oil and salt until they are nicely browned and softened. Transfer to the bowl.
Fold the mustard, herbs, coriander, some olive oil, and a couple spoonfuls of the veggie cooking liquid into the vegetables. Taste and add a bit of soy sauce to round out the sauce.
Let sit for a while to let the flavors blend.
Serve at room temp.

This ended up being a very, very nice dish. As a bonus it used up a variety of veggies from the biokiste and some herbs that needed to be finished.

We also had a green salad.

Biokiste 6

Time to figure out what to do with all the kohlrabi we've been accumulating...

Tuesday Cod and Fennel

We had three smallish fennel bulbs from last week's biokiste, so last night I made cod with fennel following the braised halibut steaks with fennel recipe from FStoS. I know I've made this recipe before, but I strangely can't find it in the blog... odd.

I don't recall ever reading the ingredient list for "Old Bay" crab seasoning, but I'm now pretty sure it contains toasted fennel seeds (or at least fennel seeds). When I pulled the fish out of the oven last night it brought back vivid crab boil memories. mmmm, crab boil.

To go along with the fish I made "Hafer-Quark-Tätschli" using a recipe from the back of the oats package. These are basically savory oat pancakes (containing chives and grated sbrinz). They weren't half bad (though I undercooked the first batch) and used up some quark, which is also nice. Now we only have about 500g left (with 400g more coming today).

We also had sauteed spinach [biokiste], cherry tomato confit, and a green salad.

Very nice food all around.

Wine: P. Lehmann 2005 "Wildcard" unoaked chardonnay

Oh, Marcella, you've failed me

I made the roasted veal breast recipe from Hazan back in September and was somewhat disappointed by how dry the meat ended up. I thought at the time that this might be due to the fact that the veal I used had been boned. When I made it again last night I used a piece of veal breast that had the bones and it still ended up being somewhat dry. The flavor was once again fine, but the texture of the veal just wasn't as enjoyable as I want. Mabye the veal we get is different from what Marcella expects. ah well... two strikes and this recipe is out.

As a side dish I sauteed some mustard greens [box] with garlic in oil. To play on the sharpness of the greens, I topped them with a bit of whipped quark and some confit'ed cherry tomatoes. That was an unalloyed success.

We also had roasted baby potatoes and a green salad.

Saturday Pasta and Veggies

Yesterday we ended up doing a simple dinner of spaghetti with a veggie sauce.

I started by tossing a couple of piri piri peppers in hot olive oil. To this I added a finely diced carrot [box], a finely diced onion, and a minced garlic clove. After the veggies started to soften I added some finely diced salami (air dried salami we bought at a farmhouse in the Jura), sauteed another minute, then added a spoonful of chicken stock and a splash of white wine. This mixture steeped off the heat for a while. Andrea finished the sauce by adding some chard stems [box] that I had stewed in olive oil and chicken stock earlier in the week and some fresh bread crumbs to thicken it up a bit.

This was quite a nice, simple, meal.

Friday Leftovers + Clams

To go along with the leftovers from Thursday I prepared the last of the clams as Clams in Garlic Sauce (from La Cocina de Mama). This made a lovely starter for dinner:

Biokiste 5

now with fennel!
another bonus: only 7 carrots this week... that's manageable

Thursday Spanish

Last night I made a couple recipes out of La Cocina de Mama.

As a main course I made "Francisca's Hake in Garlic Sauce" using cod (Dorsch Royal) and some very nice small clams (Vongele in Schweizerdeutsch). To go with that I made "Cumin Scented Sauteed Greens" using spinach [biokiste] instead of chard.

Both recipes were very successful. I also made basmati rice (cooked with some tomato juice mixed into the water and a pinch of saffron), and we had a green salad.

Wine: Rimuss 2005 Hallauer Blanc de Noir. This is a quite enjoyable white Pinot Noir.

Wine from Lampart's

Before I lose the piece of paper where I wrote it down, the wine we drank last night was a Mattmann 2005 Pinot Noir: http://www.ciceroweinbau.ch/index2.php
It was worth recording.

Nanorestaurant Review: Lampart's (Haegendorf)

This was an very, very good meal embedded in a great experience. I'd do highlights of the food, but there were so many that I'd violate my self-imposed "nanoreview" policy.

Two smiley faces.

Due to the vagaries of the train schedule (and the fact that this place is a bit out of the way), we had to make our departure a bit more hastily than we would have liked. Not that we hurried the food or anything, but we had to cut the "goodbye ceremony" a bit short in order to be able to catch our train home.

Sunday Chinese

Last night was my first use of Land of Plenty. After flipping through most of the book there were a couple of recipes that were crying out to be made, but none were quite as loud as the twice-cooked pork. So that's what I started with.

It's a new recipe in a new cuisine, so I stuck as closely to it as I could. We couldn't find either wheaten bean paste or sweet bean paste at the Asian grocery, so I left that out. I couldn't find fresh pork belly, so I used salted pork belly instead and just soaked it for a couple of hours before preparing it. This worked fine and the pork was not overly salty. I also substituted small leeks for the baby leeks by stir frying them briefly first (as suggested in the recipe). I also poured out most of the fat before stir-frying the bean paste (I'm don't get particulalry worked up about fat consumption, but that was 1/4 cup of completely gratuitous fat). To compensate for the missing liquid and make the dish a bit more saucy, I added a couple spoons of chicken stock just before serving.

We ate the pork with short-grain (Japanese... it's what we have) rice. The dish was very good: intensely flavored, complex, and nicely textured (mmmm, crunchy pork skin).

As a side I cubed (1 cm dice) a kohlrabi [box] and stir fried that in peanut oil. Once the kohlrabi lost its uncooked taste I transferred it to a bowl and then toasted some sichuan peppercorns and a couple dried chilis in the oil. I poured the resulting oil over the kohlrabi to flavor it a bit more. This was (somewhat surprisingly, I must admit) a nice flavor combination.

We also had a shredded carrot salad (gotta finish the carrots!) that I seasoned with dark soy sauce, sesame oil, and chinkiang vinegar (dark Chinese vinegar). The vinegar is fascinating stuff and this was quite a nice salad.

Save me from the carrots!

I guess that given the time of year it makes sense that we are getting lots of carrots in the biokisten, and we like carrots, but Andrea pointed out yesterday that we had a couple kilos of carrots in the fridge and that it'd probably be good to do something with them. So I made carrot soup.

I started by making chicken stock from the pieces in the freezer plus a whole chicken I bought yesterday (not the breast, see below), some leek greens [box] I saved, carrots(!), onion, parsley [box], pepper corns, and a couple of bay leaves. I added some white wine at the beginning.

The soup I made based on a recipe for "Carrot Purée" in The New Making of a Cook (time to come up with an abbreviation for that). I left out the sour cream enrichment at the end, but did serve it topped with chervil. The chervil was a nice touch on quite a good soup. Plus I used four big carrots (and that's not counting the two that went in the stock). woo hoo!

In order to have an actual meal, I poached the chicken breast (still on the bone) in some of the stock with another carrot (sweet!), some more leek greens, another bay leaf, more pepper corns, herbes de Provence, and a bouillon cube. I pulled the chicken from the broth when it was just cooked through and let it cool. Just before dinner time, I boned the chicken breast, cut it into 1cm pieces, mixed in some finely chopped garlic and browned it over high heat in a mixture of olive oil and clarified butter (sitting next to the stove from Friday). After pouring off the oil, I added soaked capers, a couple canned tomatoes (cut into large pieces), a pinch more herbes de Provence, a bit of the poaching liquid, a good grind of black pepper, and a couple drops of balsamico. This mixture I heated through (gently stirring to not destroy the tomatoes) and then served. I considered making a sauce from the reserved poaching liquid, but it was just too salty when reduced (the bouillon cube...).

We also had basmati rice topped with the rest of the walnut brown butter from Friday and some rehydrated dried green beans cooked with garlic and some of the poaching liquid from the chicken. Of course there was also a green salad.

All in all it was a very nice meal. AND I used up a total of seven carrots!

Wine: Domaine des Coccinelles 2005 Neuchatel white. This organic chasselas was pretty good and it worked well with the food.

Reminder to myself

I need to either start collecting quark recipes or we should stop getting a jar of quark with the biokiste. The fact that we usually don't eat dessert most of the time makes using 400g of quark a week tricky.

Friday Dinner: Cod with walnut brown butter

This was inspired by a recipe for pecan butter in The New Making of a Cook. I made a sauce by gently heating some walnuts in butter. When the butter turned brown I poured this off into a bowl and set it aside. For the fish, I cooked a couple of lengfisch fillets (lightly salted for 30 minutes before cooking) in clarified butter over high heat until each side was browned, then tossed the skillet in a 160C oven until the fish was cooked through.

To serve the fish, I gently rewarmed the butter sauce in the microwave, then topped each piece of fish with a few walnuts and spooned over some of the butter. I garnished with a lemon wedge to provide a counter to the richness of the fish+butter.

As sides we had shredded carrot[box] that I cooked with olive oil over medium heat until sweet and tender, diced kohlrabi[box] sauteed in peanut oil, and basmati rice.

This all fit together quite nicely, though Andrea wasn't overly impressed by the kohlrabi.

Wine: Domain Louis Bovard 2002 Villette Fraidieu. This Swiss white was acceptable, but not great.

Random aside: Lengfisch is "Ling" in English. It's a kind of cod. "Lingcod", which we used to see all the time in CA, is NOT a kind of cod; it's a scorpionfish. I love it!

Mixed greens

In addition to the chard from this week's biokiste, we also had chard and spinach from last week's double box. I applied my standard solution to the "massive quantities of greens" problem and made mixed greens.

Start by gently cooking a couple of sliced leeks [box] with two chopped cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt in olive oil until the leeks soften. Do this in a big pot.
Stir in a bunch of coarsely chopped chard greens, cover, and cook (stirring occasionally) over medium-low until the greens have substantially reduced in volume (10-15 minutes). Add coarsely chopped (and stemmed) spinach, cover and cook some more until all the greens are reduced and tender.

Voila! Two big bags of greens reduced to about 700ml. I see a pasta dish in our future...

Biokiste 4

This week's normal size box, once again, contains a load of carrots and chard:
I particularly like the bipedal and tripedal carrots. :-)

Energy bar followup

We took the two batches of energy bars with us on our hike this weekend. Both recipes held up well to the rigors of the trail (wrapped in plastic and living in my pack). The second batch is definitely more pleasing than the first, but it could still be improved. I think a higher fruit content would not hurt. Maybe some whole raisins.

Melange de viande haché au poireau et épinard

Last week's double veggie box included a giant bag of spinach. This dish immediately popped into my mind, so when we got back from our long weekend, it's what I made.

1 large leek, cut into rings. (original recipe uses an onion)
2 cloves garlic, chopped.
olive oil
500g ground beef (I used a mixture of beef, veal, and pork)
250g fresh spinach, stems removed, steamed until tender, and chopped.
4 eggs, beaten
salt and pepper

Saute the leek and garlic in some olive oil until the leak softens. Add the ground meat, sprinkle liberally with salt, and saute until it's cooked through. Stir in the spinach and a grind of black pepper and check the salt. Stir in the egg and cook until the egg is set.

For a more pleasing presentation, I plated it using a ring:Gourmet! If we'd bothered to wipe the plates and add a bit of color (curled carrot?), this really would have looked fancy!

We also had a green salad and some rice/wild rice.

Wine: Chateau Musar 2003 Cuvee Rouge

This whole thing is, of course, a piss take. This is Joe's Special. I made some changes to the original recipe (from San Francisco a la Carte) based on the contents of the box (e.g. leeks instead of onions).

New cookbooks

I keep forgetting to post this. When we were in the US last weekend I picked up an Amazon order of cookbooks:

• La Cocina de Mama: The Great Home Cooking of Spain Penelope Casas
• The New Making of a Cook: The Art, Techniques, And Science Of Good Cooking Madeleine Kamman
• The Cooking of Southwest France : Recipes from France's Magnificent Rustic Cuisine Paula Wolfert
• Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art Shizuo Tsuji
• Tapas (Revised): The Little Dishes of Spain Penelope Casas
• Land of Plenty: A Treasury of Authentic Sichuan Cooking Fuchsia Dunlop

I haven't had time to either read enough or make any food from the books, so I have no informed commentary yet.

Energy Bars Take 2

1 egg, beaten
60g dried dates, chopped in food processor
60g dried apricots, chopped in food processor
50g grated dried coconut
50g slivered almonds
100g coarsely chopped walnuts
pinch of salt
120g honey
180g of a 1:3 rolled soy:rolled oats mixture, coarsely chopped in food processor

Same prep instructions as Take 1.

These are texturally much more pleasing -- chopping the soy/oats really makes a different -- but the bars themselves don't hold together as well as I might like. I think this may be because the stuff:egg ratio is too high. I didn't intend to add as much stuff, but I screwed up the honey addition and put in considerably more than I meant to.

Next time:

1. same amount of the fruit and nuts
2. less honey

The next attempt will have to wait because the first two batches will now be put to the real test: we're going hiking until Tuesday.

Energy Bars Take 1

This is my first attempt at concocting a recipe for energy bars that we can take hiking with us.

1 egg, beaten
50g dried dates, chopped in food processor
50g dried apricots, chopped in food processor
25g grated dried coconut
50g slivered almonds
pinch of salt
50g honey
150g of a 1:3 rolled soy:rolled oats mixture
sprinkle of flour

Mix the ingredients up to the honey together well. Stir in the honey. Mix in the soy/oats mixture. Add a sprinkle of flour if it looks like things are too moist.
Transfer to a non-stick baking pan in a layer about 2cm thick and bake at 150C for 25-30 minutes.

The quantity here is the smallest I could make without using a partial egg (too big of a PITA). I'd guess this is enough for the two of us for a two day trip.

Given that I made it up as I went along, I'm surprised this turned out as well as it did. I'm particularly happy that the sweetness is close to right. Things to change for the next attempt:

1. More dried fruit
2. Maybe try running the oats and soy through the food processor for a bit first in order to alter the texture.
   

Thursday Salad

Given the composition of this week's box and the fact that we're going hiking this weekend, salad was an absolute must yesterday. I made up another batch of Wurstsalat (like on Monday) and served it with lettuce[box], sliced bell pepper and radish[box], and some bread.

Wine: Heraderos Del Margues de Riscal 2006 Rueda

Biokiste 3: Return of the Veggies

We were travelling last weekend, so we had them hold our veggie box and double the quantity this week. oof:

Tuesday and its Skewers

This piece of randomness came about because I ended up at the store without a clear plan in mind.

I marinated some pork chunks (3cm, Schweinehals) in a mixture of sweet paprika, smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, salt, sherry vinegar, and red wine. These I threaded onto skewers with precooked potatoes [box] and dates. I also steamed some cipollini onions with a bit of white wine and some olive oil. After drizzling the skewers with olive oil, I broiled them in a pre-heated cast iron skillet along with the onions.

These were not bad, but they would have been better with a sharper marinade and with dates that had been soaked in water for a bit to plump them up some.

I also found some orach (Rote Gartenmelde) in the Coop, so I picked that up and sauteed the leaves in some butter.

We had, of course, a green salad on the side.

Back home

We got back from the US yesterday. I wasn't really fit enough after doing the "planes, trains, and automobiles" thing for real cooking, so I made a couple of salads yesterday.

For lunch we had a wurstsalat of my own invention: diced fleischkäse, cervelas, Emmentaler, diced carrot [box], minced onion, and a dressing made from mayo, mustard, olive oil, a splash of sherry vinegar, and copious black pepper. We ate this on a bed of lettuce with bread. Sure, it's a long way from authentic, but it was still really good.

For dinner we had plate topped with lettuce, diced cooked potato [box], diced cucumber (salted for a while), julienned carrot (salted with the cukes) [box], and chopped chives. I did a dressing from quark, lime, cayenne, coriander, sugar, and black pepper. On the side we had some Egli fillets (a freshwater perch) that I breaded and sauteed in peanut oil. Again, good food. The Egli was particularly nice.

Wine: Los Vascos 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon Rosé. This wine kind of surprised us since it's lacking a lot of the fruit notes that one typically finds in a rosé. But it's got nice acidity and a good grapefruit (from cab? what?) character. It worked well with dinner.

quickies

We're about to travel, so just a couple of quick notes:
Tues Night: leftover chicken+stuffing+mashed potatoes. I made some fresh peas to go with it.

Wed Night: pasta with a quick ham, caramelized onion, cream, ricotta sauce.

Monday's Sunday

Since we went out on Sunday, I didn't make the meal that I had planned. I was enamored enough of the plan that I made it last night. This is a bit beyond what I normally do during the week, but it simply had to be done. :-)

We had roasted spatchcocked chicken, cornbread stuffing with greens, roasted carrots, mashed potatoes and celery root, and a big green salad.

The stuffing was based on a CPV recipe and used the chard greens I didn't use when I made stewed chard. In addition to the chard, I used spring onions [box], parsley [box], garlic, finely diced bacon, lemon juice, butter, olive oil, and some bouillon. I didn't add either the milk or the egg called for in the original recipe. The sweetness of the cornbread (not present in the original recipe) plays well with the sweetness/tartness of the greens, the sour lemon juice, and the overall richness. This is very good stuff.

I mounded the stuffing in a baking dish, laid the butterflied chicken on top, brushed with a butter/olive oil mixture, and seasoned the outside of the bird. For good measure I tossed in some coarsely diced carrot and a couple more spring onions sprigs. After baking the whole thing until the bird was done (30-45 minutes, I wasn't really paying attention to the time), I removed the chicken and baked the stuffing+veggies alone at high heat for the 5 minutes while the chicken rested.

For the mashed veggies I boiled some all-purpose potatoes and some diced celery root [both from the box] until tender then drained them and mashed them with some warm cream. I really enjoyed the combination of flavors from potato+celery root.

A very fine meal.

And now for an aside: last night convinced me that I "need" a proper food mill. The plastic one I have now just isn't up to the task. Anytime I attempt to process food with the least bit of resistance (e.g. all-purpose potatoes), it turns into a festival of frustration and profanity. The problem is that the spring that holds the blade in place isn't strong enough/the shaft that holds it isn't long enough, so food with a bit of body to it ends up popping the shaft/blade out of its hole. The damn thing works fine for soft things like peas and long-cooked soups, but it just can't do mashed potatoes. And I really like mashed potatoes made with a food mill.

Nanoreview: Restaurant Sommereck

After yesterday's hike I didn't feel like making the dinner I had planned, so we went out. Sommereck is just around the corner from us, has nice outside seating, and is open on Sundays, so it was an obvious choice. We'd been here once before, but I see I forgot to record it.

• Food: Nothing fancy, Andrea had schnitzel, I had grilled pork chop with herb butter. Both were good and the fries were very nice.
• Service: Just fine
• Atmosphere: Outside in their garden is quite nice. We were on the side of the building, the area in the back seemed huge.

It's not particularly expensive and is a nice fall-back for a Sunday night.

A Spring Meal

When we were in the Tessin last weekend I had the idea of making ricotta cheese from a mixture of cow and sheep milk. Continuing that idea led me to the idea of mixing in some Bärlauch and using the result to fill cannelloni. Yesterday I gave that a try.

For the ricotta I used a liter of fresh cow milk and half a liter of sheep milk. I followed the method that I've used before a couple of times (using the double boiler). The resulting cheese is really good. It has a different character from all-cow ricotta that I think it great.

To make the filling I mixed some ricotta with chopped sauteed Bärlauch, lemon juice, and black pepper. I filled cannelloni wrappers that I made using the pasta recipe in FStoS, substituting semolina flour (Knöpflimehl) for the normal flour, topped with grated Parmesan and olive oil, then baked until crispy around the edges. The results were quite tasty, but next time I will add sauteed onions and a bit more lemon to the filling.

We also found some nice looking green asparagus (Italian) at the market and I couldn't resist that. Sauteing this asparagus was pretty much mandatory, so I did asparagus sauteed with crispy ginger. This asparagus wasn't as good as the stuff from the farmers market in CA, but it was still mighty good. Unfortunately it stoked my asparagus craving instead of slaking it... ah well.

Since we have a giant bag of carrots in the fridge (from the Biokisten), I made a batch of Moroccan carrot salad using the recipe in CPV. This is going to become a standard way of making carrots in our house; it's fantastic.

We ended up with plates full of color and goodness:

Wine: Pride Mountain 2005 Viognier

Salad salad salad

Yesterday 'twas warm and we have loads of veggies, so we had a big salad for dinner.

In the salad we had: red leaf lettuce, carrots, radishes, baby potatoes, diced ham (sauteed in olive oil with ground coriander). I made a dressing from mayo, mustard, white wine, mashed garlic, fresh parsley, olive oil, black pepper, and a bit of sherry vinegar.

On the side we had a nice loaf of bread.

Wine: a bubbly (blanc de blancs) from Les Coteaux des Hautes Garrigues.

Thursday: Stewed Chard

One of the things in this week's box was a couple of big pieces of chard; last night I got a start on the box by using the stalks from that chard. I cut the stalks into slices about 1/2 cm thick and then stewed those over medium-low heat in a covered pan with some butter and salt until they were nicely tender and sweet, about 45 minutes. This is a very nice prep method for chard.

We also had leftover baked pasta from Tuesday night and a big green salad.

Biokiste 2

This is more like what I think of as a reasonable quantity of veggies in a "box":

The easy solution

Today we get new veggies, so last night I needed to use up last week's delivery. I used one of the easy solutions to this: roasted vegetables. The vegetables were: green onions, leeks, kohlrabi, and carrots, all from the box. I tossed them with herbs de Provence, salt, pepper, and olive oil and then roasted them at 175C until done.

I used up the last of the quark by making a salad dressing.

Ready for the new Biokiste!

Tuesday Night: Baked pasta with veggies

With all the getting ready and then travelling last weekend, I didn't get the chance to do any cooking using the contents of our first biokiste until last night. Since we're getting the veggies every week instead of splitting them with someone else like we did in CA, this puts the pressure on to finish the box before next week's arrives tomorrow.

I made a straightforward baked pasta dish with diced smoked bacon, diced carrots[box] and sliced leeks[box] sauteed in the bacon fat, diced smoked ham, and a sauce made from quark[box], minced garlic, and chopped parsley and chives. I mixed this all into some "straightened elbow" noodles (for want of the proper name), topped with fresh bread crumbs mixed with olive oil, and then baked it.

The quark didn't remain creamy when exposed to heat, but the dish was quite good anyway.

We also had a green salad and some bread with the pasta.

Nanoreview: Ristorante Cyrano (Lugano)

We had dinner on Friday at this place, which we picked because it looked promising.

Two smiley faces.

• Food: Very good, Italian
  
• Service: Excellent, friendly and helpful but not irritating
• Atmosphere: Very nice

Nanoreview: Pizzeria Mary (Lugano)

We did lunch here on Friday.

It's a nice place to sit outside, have a pizza and a beer, and people watch.

Pizza was good, prices Swiss normal, service was about what one would expect for a massively crowded cafe.

Thursday Night: Chili and cornbread

We've got friends coming into town tonight then we leave for a weekend of hiking in Tessin. I made a big pot of chili and a pan of cornbread so that there's something there for whenever they conquer the traffic and make it into town.

The chili is good, but is somehow overly acidic. I didn't really add anything acidic other than the tomatoes so either the canned tomatoes were higher in acidity than what I'm used to or someone snuck in and dumped vinegar in my chili.

Biokiste 1

I'm post-dating this since I forgot to do it in a timely manner.

This "box" seemed a bit light:

Wednesday Leftovers

Instead of just reheating the remaining rice, I decided to try making omusubi/onigri with it. I followed the very simple technique posted by Makiko and filled each rice ball with a bit of omebushi. No problems at all there, the technique works great.

After crafting the balls, I flattened a couple and then toasted them by sauteeing in a skillet with a bit of sesame oil. End result: quite nice; probably would be better if I broiled the omusubi instead of sauteeing them, but still quite nice.

Tuesday Night Japanese

Last night I put some of the ingredients from Saturday's shopping trip to Zürich to use.

Our main course was a bowl of sweet rice (oh sweet rice, how I've missed you) topped with gingered minced chicken (from Washoku), matchsticks of Takuan (pickled daikon), matchsticks of braised kombu (from making dashi), and an umeboshi.

As sides we had braised daikon with citrus miso sauce and a bowl of kimchi (I ate this at the end of the meal since it was substantially stronger in flavor than the other components of the meal).

Wine: a 2006 Sauvignon Blanc from Sudtiröl.

Nanorestaurant review: YumiHana (Zürich)

We went to Zürich yesterday so that I could look for Japanese ingredients. Andrea had found this blog post with some pointers to places to try.

We walked into YumiHana at around lunch time and upon seeing that they (a) have a lunch counter and (b) serve noodle soup we immediately had to eat.

We ordered udon soup, bibimbap, and a side of kimchi. The udon soup and kimchi were both very good. The bibimbap was a nice rice dish, but without the crust on the bottom I don't think it deserves the name.

I was also able to find most everything that I needed, so I ought to be making more stuff out of Washoku over the next couple of weeks.

Saturday: quick pickled daikon

This was quite simple: I diced a daikon, salted it, put it in the pickle press for a few hours, rinsed well, added the juice of an orange, a bit of yuzu, and some mirin and let things soak for another hour or so before serving.

I meant to add a grind of coriander as well, but I forgot. I will do that today when we finish these treats.

Saturday Pork Roast

This was another great application of the Römertopf.

I started with a nice piece of Schweinehals, just over 1kg.

I covered the bottom of the pot with a layer of chopped onion, topped that with the zest of an orange, put in the seasoned roast, surrounded it with coarsely chopped Bärlauch and small potatoes, topped with peeled and sliced half-blood oranges, added a bit of stock and some sherry, put on the lid, and baked.

Aside from the sauce being a bit thin (I didn't need to add the stock), this was fantastic. I could have solved the sauce problem by reducing it after the roast came out, but it was time to eat. I need to trust that the Römertopf doesn't need much additional liquid.

Saturday Apero: Tuna in Herb Vinaigrette

I really wanted to use raw tuna in this, but I'm not sure that I can even find sushi-grade tuna here and I definitely wouldn't want to pay for it. So my work around was to get a piece of yellow-fin tuna and slow roast it (100C for 35-45 minutes) with salt and olive oil.

When the tuna was cooked, I flaked it by hand and then folded it gently with finely chopped chives and Bärlauch, black pepper, and a thin mayonnaise/vinaigrette made from an egg yolk and a mix of peanut and olive oils and a bit of sherry vinegar. (Yes, this was supposed to be a normal mayo, but I somehow screwed it up, again. I need to go back to the cookbook and return to the basics.)

I let the mixture marinate for a couple hours in the fridge and then served it at room temp with crackers. Very, very nice.

Saturday Dinnery Party

We had a couple friend over for dinner last night, so I got to make more stuff than usual. I'll do individual posts for some of the dishes but here's the overview:

• Apero: yellow-fin tuna with herb vinaigrette
• Main: Schweinehals roasted in the the Römertopf with baby potatoes, onions, and oranges.
• Sides: quick-pickled radish; caramelized carrots (I didn't have oven space for this recipe, so I just did them in the pan).
  
• Salad: yes
• Dessert: salty caramel custard

Fortunately, I can pat myself on the back without injuring myself.

Friday: Broiled steaks, roasted green onions

For the steaks: I made an herb paste from chopped Bärlauch (wild garlic leaves), chives, parsley, black pepper, and olive oil. After salting the steaks (ribeye), I applied a good coating of the herb paste to one side, then broiled them herb side down in a pre-heated, oiled, cast iron skillet until they were medium rare. After letting the steaks rest, I topped them with the remaining herb paste and served.

I managed to find some nice fat green onions and roasted those with olive oil and coarse salt.

As a second vegetable, I thickly sliced a bulb of fennel and baked that with chicken stock until the slices were tender.

To tie everything together I made rice (parboiled rice + wild rice).

Wine: 2004 Lagrein Grieser Südtirol (Collection Baron C. Eyrl)

Random Idea: baby potato sambar

Make some South Indian (sambar, poriyal, whatever) using whole baby potatoes.

Wednesday "Indian"

More like "Indian influenced" since I did this without recipes.

The main dish was a cut up baked chicken that I marinated in raita (yogurt, mint, toasted cumin, salt, pepper, dried chilis) overnight then baked at 160C in a covered pan. On the side I served more raita (no chilis, less salt).

I also roasted some baby potatoes after coating them with peanut oil, salt, garam masala, and BvG spice rub.

The veg was broccoli stewed with South Indian spices: Toast mustard seeds, curry leaves, urad dal, chilis, and asafoetida in oil until the mustard seeds start to pop. Add chopped onion, broccoli pieces, tamarind water, tomato paste, and a bit of stock (veggie stock would be "right", chicken is what I had). Cover and simmer until the broccoli is about done, then cook uncovered a few more minutes to reduce the sauce.

'twas all good food.

Saturday Night: Lamb stew in a clay pot

Yesterday it was clear that I needed to make some kind of stew or braise or roast or something; we're running out of time for such things and the weather was suitably bad. Then at some point in the morning the idea of using a Römertopf (clay pot) got wedged in my head. From there on out things kind of took on their own momentum.

I started with a recipe for lamb shoulder with eggplant, saffron, and raisins from How to Cook Meat and then adopted things to the prep method.

700 g lamb shoulder, cut into 2cm pieces
2 Tbs chopped garlic
1 good pinch saffron
10 allspice berries, ground
freshly ground coriander (1 tsp?)
salt and black pepper
3 smallish onions, small dice
1/2 cup dark raisins
2 med. eggplants, cut into 1 cm slices
1 can diced tomatoes
~1/2 cup stock

Toss the lamb in a bowl with the garlic, saffron, spices, onion and raisins until everything is well integrated.
Put a bit of olive oil in the bottom of the soaked Römertopf, then add a layer of eggplant.
Alternate lamb and eggplant layers until there's only some eggplant remaining.
Spread on the tomatoes in a layer.
Add the last eggplant.
Put the top on the pot and put it in a cold oven. Set the oven to 190-200c.
Bake for 2.5 hours.


I had some mint to top the stew with when serving, but I managed to forget to do that. Maybe I'll give that a try tonight.



This ended up being a really spectactular dish. I'm going to have to quickly find more occasions to deploy the Römertopf before it gets too warm.

As a side, I made "Persian Rice", also from HowToCookMeat. This is pretty much identical to one of Bittman's Stuck Pot Rice recipes, except with onions on the bottom instead of potatoes. It's great.

We also had a green salad.

Wine: McLaren Vale 2001 Linchpin Shiraz, plushy fruity shiraz and lamb... enough said about that pairing.

Thursday Night: Beans and Greens

Yesterday I was craving comfort food and after runnning through the options, beans and greens seemed to be the obvious choice.

I used cannellini beans (canned), escarole, the remaining zuckerhut, the remaining smoked pork neck, leeks, white wine, thyme, rosemary, sage, and some fresh garlic added at the last minute. I served the delicious soup drizzled with good olive oil and topped with chopped parsley.

We also had a green salad.

Wine: Quasso 2003 Barolo: this isn't a stunning wine, but the combination of fruit and still-rough tannins was a pleasant change of pace.

Tuesday night: Chinese

Andrea requested something Chinese, so that's what I did. Instead of the usual random stirfry, I pulled a recipe I haven't made before out of BittmanWorld: pork ribs with blackbean garlic sauce. Since it's a new recipe in a cuisine that I don't feel comfortable in, I followed the recipe pretty closely except for the meat. I didn't find ribs that had been cut in small pieces (and that wasn't going to happen at the Coop meat counter), so I used longer pieces of "pork breast" (includes more meat than the standard US rib cut). This didn't cause any problems. Er, I also used leeks instead of scallions because there were no scallions to be found.

To go with the pork I made broccoli braised in hoisin sauce and xiaoxing wine and white rice.

This really was nice food.

Wine: Les Tisserandes 2005 Chablis

Another asparagus prep attempt

The 2+ hour slow roasting method doesn't work during the week (even for my quite high tolerance for time-consuming dishes), so I tried an alternate approach last night with the last of the asparagus.

This time I put the peeled stalks in a pan with some butter and a bit of salt and cooked covered over medium-low/low heat for an hour. This yielded a quality between the slow-roasted and the sauteed asparagus. The flavor was quite nice except for some residual bitterness, particularly near the bottom of the stalks.

Next time I will try the standard approach of boiling the stalks; it sounds boring, but maybe it helps pull out the bitterness.

Sunday: Lentils

Smoked "pork neck" (I'm not really sure how to translate Schweinehals beyond that) was also on sale on Saturday and I can't resist smoked pork on sale. So to "accompany" the asparagus last night I made a pot of lentils with smoked pork.

For the basic prep I sauteed diced onion (2 small), carrot (1), and celery (1 stalk) with chopped green garlic (2 Tbs) in olive oil, then added French green lentils (~1/2 cup), chopped parsley (1Tbs), a couple bay leaves, a pinch of herbs de provence, salt and pepper, and enough water to cover everything by about 1cm. I simmered this for about an hour, keeping an eye on the water level. Then I added a couple of thick (1cm) slices of smoked Schweinehals, which I pushed underneath the lentils, and simmered for another half hour.

The result, drizzled with good olive oil and topped with more parsley, was delicious.

We also had a green salad. Note to self: Zuckerhut looks like romaine lettuce, but it's way too bitter to use in pieces as the body of a salad.

Wine: Kanonkop Kadette 2004. The dark flavors in this wine went very well with the earthiness of the lentils.

Sunday: Asparagus

On Saturday we saw the first European asparagus at the Coop (from Greece), and I just couldn't wait any more so I bought a bundle. I did a couple of test preparations during the day since I hadn't cooked white asparagus before.

For the first attempt I peeled a few stalks, wrapped them in parchment with a bit of salt and a drizzle of olive oil, and then baked them at 85C for 2 hours. This is what I call the "Wolfert method". The result was good, but not as good as the sauteed asparagus we used to make all the time in CA.

For the second test run I cut a few stalks on the bias after peeling them and then sauteed them in butter with a pinch of salt. The result here tasted nicely of brown butter but the only real aspargus notes that came through were bitterness. What's the deal with the bitterness? Is this a white asparagus thing? Is it a "bad Greek asparagus" thing?

So for dinner I used the long-baking method.

To go along with the asparagus and provide a counterpoint to the slight bitterness that's left after slow baking, I made a mayonnaise/sauce by emulsifying an egg yolk with the juice from half a blood orange, a pinch of salt, and some peanut oil. I didn't want to dilute the blood orange flavor too much, so I didn't add enough oil to get a real mayonnaise. The sauce, which I served on the side just in case it didn't work at all, went very well indeed with the asparagus.

So this method works to produce something that's good; it's not as good as the stuff we were getting at the farmers market in CA, but there's a big difference between asparagus from the supermarket and that from the farmer. We'll see how things look after the local asparagus starts appearing. Meanwhile, my asparagus craving has been at least partially slaked.

Saturday: Chickpea soup, baked chicken

The soup recipe (chickpea soup with spinach) is something I found in the recipe box from an older Bittman column (now apparently also in BittmanWorld). Deviations: I used frozen spinach because we had a bunch that needed to be used up; I fried a couple of thinly sliced garlic cloves in olive oil and added those (and the oil) to the soup.

The chicken is a Gary Danko recipe (by way of Bittman) that I also made back in November. This time I did bake the chicken at a lower temperature for longer, but it could have been even nicer... maybe 150C for an hour? I'll have to play some more. Other variations: I brushed the mustard on the chicken a couple of hours before baking. I also forgot the herbs in the crust (I was cooking between game summaries on the Sportschau), but that wasn't a tragedy. The garlicky breadcrumbs were quite lovely on their own.

We also had a big green salad.

Nice food.

Wine: we've been drinking a bottle of Domaine Alfred: 2003 Califa Pinot Noir that we picked up before moving from CA. It had been a while since we drank a big fat CA wine, and this is a good one.

Nanorestaurant review: Au Violon (Basel)

We'd been here before, but not when I was keeping track of restaurants.

Two smiley faces.

• Food: Very good, French-influenced, not complex and very well done.
  
• Service: No complaints.
  
• Atmosphere: Inside is nice and comfy; the tables outside in the summer are really nice.
  

Thursday: Baked Fish with Dates

Yesterday morning I got the bee in my bonnet to prepare a whole fish. While paging through BittmanWorld I came across a North African dish for whole baked fish stuffed with dates. That was clearly what needed to be made.

For the fish I used a Dorade (sea bream, or orata). The preparation was dead simple. The cleaned fish is seasoned and stuffed with chopped dates and butter, then baked on a bed of sliced onions seasoned with white wine, cinnamon, and ginger.



To go with the fish I made a pilaf from Ebly (durum wheat berries), brown mushrooms, onions and garlic. I also did some sauteed zucchini.

What a happy making meal. I'm going to have to do more whole fish. Next time I think I will try either broiling the Dorade (they're small enough) or baking it in salt.

Wine: Mont sur Rolle 2005 "Le Charmeur": a cheap, but not displeasing, Swiss white.

Tuesday Night: Chicken and Beans

This was a weeknight pressure-cooker soup/stew.

1 cup dried beans (I used Riesenbohnen), soaked all day
2 chicken leg/thigh quarters
2 onions, diced large
2 Tbs coarsely chopped green garlic
2 carrots, 1 cm dice
2 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp freshly ground coriander
2 tsp sweet paprika
2 tsp smoked paprika
2 bay leaves
2 Tbs tomato paste
stock
To serve: good olive oil, lemon juice, croutons

Heat some olive oil in a the pressure cooker and brown the chicken well.
Remove the chicken and add the onion and garlic. Cook over high heat until the onion starts to brown.
Add the carrots, cumin, and coriander. Cook another couple minutes.
Add the paprikas and cook one more minute.
Add the chicken, bay leaves, tomato paste, a good grind of black pepper, and enough stock (I used boullion) to cover everything with room to spare (don't forget the beans swell when they cook).
Close the pressure cooker, bring to pressure, and cook until you think the beans are done (~25 minutes for Riesenbohnen).
Open the pressure cooker and reduce over high heat, stirring frequently, until you're happy with the consistency. During this stage, the chicken will probably fall off the bone, just fish out the bones.

Serve topped with a drizzle of good oil, some croutons, and a tsp of lemon juice.

This is very good food.

We also had a green salad.

Sunday Night: Piccata and Spaghetti

Last night we were both looking for something relatively simple. I ended up making piccata using a recipe in Le Menu and spaghetti with tomato and butter sauce (from Hazan).

The Coop at the train station didn't have any reasonably priced veal, so for the piccata I used thinly sliced pork loin chops (pounded out even thinner) instead.

The results were good: the tomato sauce wasn't as nice as when I was making it using self-canned tomatoes (of course); Andrea thought the piccata was too eggy, so when I do the second batch tonight I'll add a bit more cheese to the egg.

We also had a big green salad.

Barcelona Restaurant Notes

Cafe Viena: it's a damn good sandwich, but it's not the best I've ever had.

Taverna Basca Irati: Suggestion from friends, Lonely Planet, and the Michelin. We referred to this as the "toothpick place" and went back several times. Good tapas, good atmosphere, nice place.

Nou Candanchu: this was a suggestion from the Lonely Planet. We had a very pleasant (and cheap) lunch sitting outside on a nice square.

Txapela: Suggestion from multiple guidebooks. The atmosphere is incredibly hectic, but the tapas is good. We went back a second time.

Suquet de l'Amirall: suggestion from multiple guidebooks. We had a *very* nice mixed seafood dinner (the "menu pica-pica marinero"). About the only thing I would change is to include more fish in the menu.

Meson Cinco Jotas: We somehow had the impression that this was going to be a tapas place and it ended up being more of a white-tablecloth restaurant. It was pretty overpriced and with the exception of the ham, which was sublime, the couple of things we tried were not particularly interesting.

Restaurante Petra: We picked this based on a gut feeling and were not disappointed. The food was very good and the atmosphere was nice.

Monday Night Gratin

There was a motley assortment of stuff in the fridge that needed to be used up before I leave for Barcelona on Wednesday, so I made a "Garbage Gratin" to clean out the fridge.

In the gratin was: leek, fennel, and cauliflower. I added a couple of chopped boiled eggs and made a sauce from creme fraiche, veggie boullion, parsley, and herbs de provence. After baking covered for about half an hour, I topped with sliced cheese (mariage de trois laits) and some buttered bread crumbs then finished baking uncovered.

good stuff and the fridge is now empty!

Sunday's snack: spiced almonds

I had some almonds leftover from the monkfish last night, so I tossed them in a pan with some olive oil, salt, pepper, coarsely ground cumin, paprika, and cayenne and cooked them over medium heat until they were golden brown.

After they cooled I ate way, way, way too many.

The box begins again...

We signed up yesterday for the local CSA equivalent: a Biokiste/Gemüseabo from the Birsmattehof, a local farm. We get the first delivery in April; I can hardly wait!

Saturday: Monkfish with almond sauce

The Coop had Seeteufel (monkfish) on sale yesterday, so that drove our dinner plans. I pulled a Spanish recipe out of BittmanWorld for monkfish in almond sauce and complemented it with braised radicchio and a rice/wild rice mixture.

The fish was excellent - very flavorful and nicely textured. It had no problems standing up to the strongly flavored sauce (bread, almonds, onion, garlic, parsley, white wine, veggie stock). The radicchio was a bit too bitter; I have a high tolerance for bitterness, but this was over the top. It would have been better to save this head of radicchio for risotto or soup or something.

Wine: CVNE Monopole 2005 white rioja. This was in the sauce as well as in our glasses. :-)
Next time monkfish goes on sale, I am definitely going to use it for the miso-broiled fish thing; I think the texture would be perfect.

Friday: leftover Geschnetzeltes with Schwarzwurzeln

To go along with the leftover Geschnetzeltes last night I made some Schwarzwurzeln (salsify).

Last time I prepared these things I ended up with sticky sap all over the place. This time I followed a tip I read somewhere (can't remember now, couldn't find it last night) and boiled the scrubbed, but unpeeled, roots until they were tender in acidulated water. Then we peeled them. This avoided the problem with sap completely.

To serve the Schwarzwurzeln, I cut them into bite sized pieces and then sauteed them in butter and olive oil with some sliced shallots, salt, and pepper until the shallots were nicely browned.

This was good, but it worsened my already bad craving for asparagus by a couple of orders of magnitude. It's made even worse by the presence of Mexican asparagus in the Coop (I won't buy it! I won't buy it!) and the knowledge that there is plenty of asparagus to be had at the farmer's markets in CA at this time of year... oh well.

Thursday: Veal Stew

At least they call it a stew in FStoS; here it's just called "Geschnetzeltes".
I threw the last of the leftovers in the freezer because I had to do some cooking. I think I'm going to make a conscious effort to do more FStoS recipes; I flipped through it again this weekend and found loads of fantastic sounding stuff that I haven't touched. There's a whole section on rabbit that would have been tricky in CA but that I could do now with no problem...

Anyway, tonight I made the version of Geschnetzeltes Zuricher Art that's in FStoS. My only deviation from the recipe (simple as it is) was to add chives instead of parsley when serving; they didn't have any flat parsley left at Coop and I'm not gonna put curly parsley on food.

I served the veal on broad noodles and made some fresh sauerkraut with white wine, juniper berries, and a bit of freshly ground coriander as a side.

We also had a green salad.

Wine: Baron de Hoën Beblenheim 2005 Gewürztraminer. Not a bad pairing, though a somewhat more austere wine wouldn't have been bad.

Sunday Tagine

I made this same chicken and chickpea tagine with vanilla a couple of years ago from a Minimalist column. Now it's in BittmanWorld. Same as last time I deviated from the recipe by browning the chicken first and deglazing the pan with the onions. I also toasted the cumin and coriander first, then ground them by hand. Since it was Sunday, I started early and let the tagine cook all day over very low heat. Boning the chicken was not required by that point... stirring to pot was enough to strip the meat from the bones. :-)

To add some brightness to the final dish, I made a drizzling sauce with some lemon juice, good olive oil, and cayenne pepper.

We ate the tagine with brown rice and a big green salad.

Delicious!

Saturday: Chili and Cornbread

Since it hasn't been cold, we haven't been doing the usual gamut of winter stews; so it's been almost a year since the last time I made chili. Somehow cornbread has also fallen through the cracks; I haven't done that for the same amount of time. Last night that changed.

For the chili I used ground beef, smoked ham, and a bit of salami as meats. I spiced it with toasted cumin, coriander, paprika, a couple cloves, and a pinch of cinnamon. For heat I added ground pasilla chile and dried chile de arbol and chile negro.

I made the standard cornbread recipe, using medium polenta as my cornmeal.

I also did a cabbage salad using some fresh sauerkraut, lemon juice, and cilantro.

Wine: Château Musar 1998. This is the big brother of the cuvee we had the week before last. I have to say that at least yesterday I didn't like it as much as the lower-priced version. Maybe the big wine needed more time, but yesterday it was very one-dimensional (oaky) and reminded me of some of my less favorite Valley of the Moon wines. We'll see what today brings.

Nanorestaurant Review: Restaurant Kelim (Basel)

One smiley face (only one because of the relatively high price/creativity ratio).

• Food: Very good oriental/mediterranean food, high-quality ingredients.
  
• Service: Just fine.
  
• Atmosphere: It's nice enough now, but it'll be great in the summer when you can sit outside.
  

Wednesday Asian

Last night's main course was sesame-crusted fish (seelachs) with ginger butter sauce (from the recipe box). I added a bit of mirin to the sauce to give it some sweetness and to harmonize a bit with the side: broccoli braised in dashi, soy, lemon, mirin, and sake and then topped with a sauce made from light miso, lemon, and water. We also had Asian rice.

very good food.

Tuesday Night Schnitzel

Veal was on sale at the Coop, so we had a close approximation to Wienerschnitzel last night.
I pounded out the veal; seasoned it; breaded it with flour then egg then fresh bread crumbs; sauteed it in butter; and served it with a lemon wedge.

We also had oven-roasted potatoes and some more stewed zucchini (with a bit of herbs de provence this time).

Good food!

Wine: Penfold's 2004 "Rawson's Retreat" Shiraz/Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine isn't bad, but I would have preferred a pure shiraz; I didn't really need the taste of stems in my plushy fruity.

Sunday Night: Lamb and Cannelloni

This meal was the result of two influences:

1. An inexplicable, but irresistable desire on my part for cannelloni
2. Nice pieces of lamb loin being on sale at the Coop

I chose the basic cannelloni from FStoS: filled with potatoes and arugula because I really enjoyed that last time we had it.

For the lamb I opted for the very simple approach of seasoning it liberally with salt and pepper and then searing it in a cast-iron pan slicked with peanut oil for a couple of minutes per side.

As a side I tossed some zucchini planks in a pan with olive oil, covered it, and cooked it a medium heat until the zucchini was very soft.

This was some serious happy-making food. I can't wait for the leftovers tonight.

Saturday: Indian

It had been a while since we made Indian food, so that's what I did last night.

I made a cauliflower sambar recipe from Dakshin and chicken vindaloo using the recipe in BittmanWorld. The cauliflower sambar was very good, as expected. The vindaloo was disappointing, which surprises me considering the source. First the sauce was way too thin (not user error, there's no way it could have been thick given that it contained only vinegar); this I solved with a bit of potato starch. Still the sauce lacked oomph and wasn't well rounded. Ah well...

Wine: Los Vascos 2005 Chardonnay. This Chilean chardonnay made by a French company is nice and bright and has not a hint of oak or butter. yay!

Saturday Lunch: Quick Pasta Sauce

We had some egg yolks in the fridge that really needed to be used, so I made this pasta:

Brown some 5mm dice smoked ham in butter. Add minced shallot. Add the garlic clove you boiled with the pasta and mash it. Add the pasta (fusilli). Add some egg yolks scrambled with milk, a grind of black pepper, and a sprinkle of cayenne. Stir in some chopped tarragon. Eat and smile.

The ham/tarragon combination was a random idea based on the contents of the fridge. It's quite nice.

Nanorestaurant Review: Erlkönig (Basel)

Two smiley faces.

• Food: There were a couple of small problems, but it was overall very good. The idea of serving the sides (a potato/carrot gratin and some winter vegetables) family style is a nice one.
• Service: Just fine: they were there and friendly when we needed them.
  
• Atmsophere: It feels like you have to walk through an industrial wasteland to get to the building, but once you're inside it's all gemütlich with high ceilings and wood paneled walls.
  

Thursday: White Beans with Ham

There were still some unprepared beans leftover from the batch I cooked last weekend; last night I finished those off.

2 big cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 onion, fine dice
3 cups cooked white beans, with liquid
200 gm smoked ham (this was actually Rippli, from the rib region), cut into bite-sized pieces
bay leaves, thyme, rosemary, black pepper
good olive oil and parsley for serving

Cook the garlic in olive oil over medium-high heat until it starts to brown. Add the onion and cook, stirring, for a couple of minutes.
Add the beans, ham, and herbs and mix. Add enough liquid that things are almost covered.
Cook over medium-low heat for about 20 minutes, until the beans start to melt and everything is hot.
Serve topped with fresh parsley and some good olive oil.

Very, very good foood.

We ate this with sauteed cauliflower and a big green salad.

Wine: Château Musar 2003 Cuvée Reservée. I wanted to try the cheaper version of a Musar wine before moving to the higher end. This is a very interesting bottle of wine on its own; I can't wait to try the real Château Musar.

Tuesday Night: "meatloaf"

Last night we tried the meatloaf I made with the "crust" from the consommé. I sliced the pieces fairly thickly then browned them on both sides in peanut oil. At the end I melted a bit of Erquel cheese over each pieces. This wasn't particularly interesting. The experiment, though not a failure, certainly is not raving success.

We also had some braised red cabbage and a big green salad.

Wine: Kanonkop 2003 Kadette; this wasn't spectacular, but it had enough of those darker pinotage notes to be enjoyable.

Sunday Dinner : Spaghetti with Pears

Another recipe from Le Menu. My big deviation here was to use tomato paste and some cayenne instead of curry paste. On reading the recipe, the curry paste seemed a bit too fusion-y for my tastes. Now that I've tried it, I can imagine it being ok... but my way worked nicely too.

300 g mixed ground beef and pork
clarified butter
1 Tbs flour
1 med. onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, mashed then minced
3 pears, cored, 1cm dice
1-2 Tbs tomato paste
cayenne
beef boullion

Lightly brown the meat in the butter. Sprinkle over the flour and cook for another couple of minutes. Add the onion and garlic and cook for 2-3 more minutes. Add the pear and cook for a couple minutes. Add tomato paste, a sprinkle of cayenne, and enough beef boullion to make a bit of a sauce. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Adjust seasonings and serve over spaghetti.

This is the third savory pear dish I've made from Le Menu. I'm still having the same stupid reaction each time: I imagine the flavor and it seems good, then I make it and my reaction is "this is weird, ooooo, it's goooooood." I should learn.

Sunday Consommé

Trying to make consommé has been on my culinary todo list for a while. Yesterday (and Saturday) I checked off that item. :-)

I followed the recipe/instructions in Techniques almost completely.

Saturday I made 3 l of beef stock from 1kg of bones, one onion, and some spices. After skimming the fat today, I combined it with 1 kg ground beef, 6 egg whites, a chopped leek, a chopped carrot, a can of tomatoes, chopped celery, parsley, tarragon, and some other spices. I brought this mess to a boil over high heat (stirring frequently), then let it simmer for an hour without stirring. After resting for 30 minutes, I ladled off the stock and strained it through a cloth.

The resulting broth is completely clear and an intense gold/amber color.

We ate the consommé as a starter with a bit of minced shallot added. It's very rich and has a flavor that's subtle, but deep.

This stuff took a long time to make, but it's not a massive amount of work and the results are impressive. It's easy to imagine doing it again for a dinner party or something.

Following a suggestion in Techniques, I made a meatloaf/terrine using the "crust" from the clarification. I added a couple egg yolks, some bread crumbs, and a big spoon of grainy mustard. I put this mass in a loaf pan, covered it with foil, weighted it down, and baked it at 160c for an hour. After cooling I removed the weights, wrapped it in plastic, and stuck it in the fridge. We'll see what the verdict on this is when we eat it later this week.

Saturday: Beans and Escarole

Yesterday I soaked some white kidney beans, cooked them, and then made escarole and beans. I used smoked bacon, piri-piri chilies, sweet paprika, and leeks instead of onion.

I think this is one of my favorite foods.

We also had a green salad.

Wine: Los Vascos 2003 Grande Reserve Cab

Nanorestaurant Review: Zum Isaak (Basel)

The Kornhaus does this better.

• Food: well prepared and good, but not hugely exciting
  
• Service: bad, he was slow and forgetful. Doing stuff like bringing my aperitif after the apps came out is pretty much unforgivable.
  
• Atmosphere: the nonsmoking room was quite nice and fairly quiet (in completely contrast to the main room, which was a zoo!)
  

Thursday Night: Sauerkraut

I had more elaborate plans for last night, but then after a long day at work I wanted to do something basic. So I made a pan of sauerkraut (from the market) with onions, bacon, potato, and celery root seasoned with juniper berry, bay leaf, parsley, white wine, and a bit of chicken boullion. We had bratwurst and a green salad with that.

Not fancy or elaborate, but good good good.

Wine: Baron de Hoën Beblenheim 2005 Gewürztraminer. This would probably be a great pair with a curry.

Wednesday Leftovers and Baked Apples

To go along with the leftover mashed potatoes, veal, and mushrooms from Tuesday, I sauteed some chard stems in olive oil and butter. We also had a big green salad.

For dessert I baked a couple of Boskoop apples that I got at the market on Saturday. After coring the apples, I filled them with layers of crushed walnuts, raisins, butter, and honey, then baked them at 160C for about 45 minutes.

The results were pretty and very good:


Boskoops are great apples for this because they're tart and they get very "melty" on being baked.

Tuesday Night: Veal with Mushrooms

Saturday I bought a couple of very nice looking veal steaks at the butcher and set them in the back of the fridge to age a bit. Last night was the time to actually prepare them.

I adapted a recipe from How to Cook Meat for broiled veal chops with mushrooms, bacon, and sherry to what I had on hand. So I didn't coat the steaks with garlic, oil, and oregano before broiling them (I put the garlic in the sauce) and I used a mixture of brown mushrooms and dried porcinis. I broiled the steaks in my cast iron skillet, following an idea from Bittman.

To go with the steaks, I made mashed potatoes (remembering to use the food mill this time, which makes damn nice mashed potatoes) and brussels sprouts sauteed in butter.

And we a had a green salad.

Wine: McLaren 2001 Linchpin Shiraz

Sunday Soup

We got up to watch the stupor bowl last night (boring mismatch, but not with enough score differential to stop watching... the worst kind), and we wanted to have something to eat while watching, so earlier in the day I made some soup.

I browned a two chicken legs and two thighs, toasted some cumin and coriander, added onion and garlic, stock, a spoonful of mole paste, and some polenta to add body. After cooking for a good couple of hours, I let it sit until we were ready to eat at midnight. Just before serving I added a squeeze of lemon to each bowl and a shot of hot sauce.

good stuff!

Another batch of granola

This time the mixture is:
5c oats
1c soy flakes
1c coconut
50g ground almond
75g each sesame, sunflower, pumpkin, flax seeds
1/2c + 1Tbs honey (more or less)
200g raisins

Saturday Apero

Before eating the fondue, we wanted to have some "Apero" snacks.

We had a sheet of puff pastry from earlier in the week and Andrea had the great idea to use that to make little snacks. When we were down in Provence one day we got a box of mixed savory things wrapped in puff pastry; this provided the inspiration.

I did three different fillings:

1. Smoked bacon cut into thick lardons and cooked crisp
2. Sun-dried tomatoes (packed in oil), cut into strips and wrapped in fresh basil
3. Fresh sauerkraut, cooked briefly with white wine, juniper berries, and a bit of bacon rind.

To make the snacks I cut the pastry into strips, then put a small quantity of filling on the strip, rolled it up, and cut it.

I baked the finished snacks on parchment at 180C until they were nicely browned.

These were very good, somewhat elegant/fancy, and not a huge amount of work.

stupidly I neglected to take pictures.

Saturday Fondue

Last night we had a couple friends over and made fondue (we have to do this every so often or they'll toss us out of Switzerland). I followed the recipe from Le Menu pretty exactly since I hadn't made fondue "from scratch" before.

Here's the recipe, including the cheese mixture we used:
1 clove garlic
800g grated cheese (400g Gruyere mild, 400g Tilsiter rot)
4 tsp cornstarch
1 Tbs lemon juice
350ml white wine (Mont sur Rolle "Le Charmeur" Chasselas)
1 shot glass Kirsch
black pepper
nutmeg

Rub the garlic clove around in the caquelon. Mix the cheese with the cornstarch. Put the caquelon on the stovetop over medium heat. Add the cheese, lemon juice, and wine. Heat, stirring vigorously and frequently, until the cheese melts and everything integrates. Add a grind of black pepper and some nutmeg. Add the kirsch and mix well.
Serve.

gooooooood food

Notes:

1. For bread we used a loaf of Buurebrot (crusty half-white farmer's bread)
2. I'm amazed by the amount of liquid that goes in this, but the viscosity was definitely right. I guess the cornstarch helps hold it all together
3. This quantity is nominally for 4 people, and we did eat it all, but it was a lot of food.
   

I also made a big green salad with frisee and bitter greens; that was a good counter to the richness of the cheese.

We also had a bottle of Pride Mountain Viognier with the apero (mmmmmmmmm apricots) and we drank an Alsatian bubbly (Crémant d'Alsace AC Baron de Schiélé brut) with the fondue. The bubbly was a good pairing.

Nanorestaurant Review: Kornhaus (Basel)

two smiley faces

• Food: creative, carefully prepared, very good
  
• Service: very good
• Atmosphere: good
  

Thursday Night: Pasta with Peas, Ham, and Cream

Andrea suggested that we ought to use up the last of the unprocessed spinach pasta from our lasagna the weekend before last. I wanted to use up the remaining ham from Wednesday's pears on puff pastry. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of ham and pasta is: mix it with peas and serve it with cream; so that's what I did.

1 onion, finely chopped
1 clove garlic minced
olive oil
2 dl cream
4 slices cooked ham, cut into thin strips
the rest of the bag of frozen peas (200g?)
2 Tbs coarsely chopped fresh basil

Cook the onion and garlic with a pinch of salt in olive oil over medium heat until the onion becomes transluscent.
Add the cream and a grind of pepper and bring to a gentle boil.
Add the ham and 1Tbs basil; cook for a while until the cream reduces enough to be a nice sauce.
Meanwhile cook the peas in salted water until they're tender.
Add the peas and the remaining Tbs of basil to the sauce, stir well and serve over pasta, topped with parmesan.

For pasta I rolled out the last of the spinach pasta and then cut it into linguine.

This dish is sooooo nice. It's comfort food.

On the side we had the requisite green salad.

Wednesday: Pears on Puff Pastry

Ok, stupid name, but this is a dish from Le Menu and the direct translation from German "Pear Blinds", sounds even worse to me. The dish is super simple: on top of a piece of puff pastry (Blätterteig) you layer a piece of ham, a slice of raclette cheese, and a sliced pear half. You season the thing, brush the pear half with melted butter, then bake until it's brown and bubbly.

The dish is both very pretty:
and very good. This will certainly be made again.

We also had a big green salad.