Saturday at the Grill

Last night we had friends over and did some grilling.

Our contributions were grill bread (recipe from Let the Flames Begin), grilled plums with spicy hoisin sauce (License to Grill), and grilled peaches with a balsamico and black pepper glaze (License to Grill). I had chicken breasts ready to go on with a olive oil/garlic/basil sauce (intended to go with the peaches), but our friends brought loads of meat so that wasn't required.

The grill bread was good but suffered from a lack of salt (cook error); salting it while eating was effective, but not the same. The grilled fruit was excellent.

Wines:

1. Gerard Bertrand 2006 L'Hospi Viognier, we had this with the rabbit on Thursday and it was ok; last night Andrea didn't much care for it.
2. Dourthe No. 1 2006 White Bordeaux, this is a quite nice and grapefruity wine. It worked with the food.
   

Nanoreview: Cantina Don Camillo (Basel)

This Basel Geht Aus recommendation is on top of the old Warteck brewery in Kleinbasel.

One and a half smiley faces.

• Food: Good! Pretty creative and carefully done.
  
• Service: Our waitress was friendly, but scattered and forgetful.
  
• Atmosphere: It's a great place to sit outside on a nice summer evening. I'm not sure how pleasant the inside would be.
  

Thursday: Rabbit

I've had "do a rabbit recipe from FSToS" in my head for a while now; last night I finally got around to it.

I made the basic stewed rabbit (rabbit chausseur) recipe, and I stuck to it pretty closely. My only deviation was to used halved shallots instead of pearl onions (no pearl onions to be found). The resulting dish was good, but not fantastic. The serving pieces of rabbit were a bit small and fidgety to eat, as well as being a bit dry. The flavor was good, and the sauce was quite nice so there is potential here.

The real highlight last night was the roasted potatoes. For those I diced (1cm dice) some festkochende (waxy) potatoes, mixed them with a bit of butter, some olive oil, coarsely chopped rosemary (not too much!), a couple crumbled bay leaves, salt, and black pepper and then roasted them, stirring occasionally, at 200C until nicely crispy and lightly browned. The flavor combination of the butter, the bay, and the rosemary was very very nice.

We also had sauteed zucchini and a green salad.

Biokiste 18

This week's biokiste includes a note from the farmers asking our understanding of the smaller quantities of some things (particularly tomatoes) and the amazing dirt level of the lettuce. The floods last week hit them too.

Wednesday: Blackeyed Peas

Tuesday night I found a bag of blackeyed peas in the drawer; that provided the main ingredient for Wednesday's meal.

After soaking the beans overnight, I boiled them with onion, garlic, and some bay leaf until they were just about done. In the meantime I browed some diced bacon in a skillet, added chopped onion, garlic, and hornpeperoni and cooked with some additional olive oil until the peppers softened. After adding the cooked beans, some vegetable boullion, black pepper, a pinch of cayenne, and some of the bean cooking liquid, I covered this and let it simmer 10 or so minutes, until the beans were completely cooked. I served the beans topped with chives.

We also had a big green salad.

Tuesday: Spaghetti with vegetables and pesto

In marked contrast to the last time I did a similar dish, this time it was pasta with vegetables and not the other way around. :-)

For vegetables I used zucchini and carrots cut into matchsticks as well as finely chopped onion. I sauteed these in olive oil until the vegetables were tender then served them with pesto (basil, pine nuts, garlic, sbrinz, olive oil) over spaghetti.

We also had a leftover cervelas from the weekend and a green salad.

Sunday at the Grill

Andrea's parents came through town yesterday, so we did some grilling.

We didn't have anything fancy: Cervelas (er, sorry, "Bebbi Klopfer"), Grillschnecken (a sausage like Nürnberger bratwurst that's rolled into a spiral and fixed with a skewer; this is another sausage from canton Vaud), and pork chops (bone-in, seasoned with plenty of salt and freshly cracked pepper).

I also made a room temp potato salad (slow-cooked potatoes, sherry vinegar, mayo, and chives) and some quick pickles (daikon, cucumber, and celery salted for a bit in the pickle press then rinsed and mixed with cracked coriander and rice vinegar). Of course we had a green salad as well.

Simple food, but good food.

Nanoreview: Glacebar Glatscharia (Basel)

This ice cream place is relatively new and about 10 minutes walk from our flat. Not only is the ice cream is excellent, but they have interesting flavors (ginger-prosecco! chocolate-chili!), and it's made from bio-milk by a small company in Engadin. So not exactly local, but it wins on all the other fronts. :-)

I think we finally found our ice cream source... too bad it's so close.

Jerk burgers with chipotle-orange mayo

This is a pretty substantially modified version of a recipe from Bon Appetit. It made more sense to me to integrate the solids into the burger and there was no way in hell I was going to use the quantity of sugar they call for.

For the mayo: Finely mince a couple canned chipotles and add them to 1/4 cup mayo along with a few tsp of the adobo. Add a couple Tbs orange juice and mix well. Taste for heat and orange juice. Note: this would be better if the OJ were reduced first so that you can add more without overly thinning the mayo. That's for next time.

For the burgers:
500g ground beef
salt
1 small red onion, chopped
1 habanero, chopped
1 Tbs fresh thyme leaves
1 Tbs peanut oil

Combine the onion, habanero, thyme, and oil in a minichop and process until minced. Mix gently but thoroughly with the beef and salt (not a full portion, there's soy sauce in the marinade). Form burgers.

For the marinade:
2 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs peanut oil
1 Tbs prepared mustard
1 tsp sugar
10 allspice berries, ground

Combine everything and mix well.

Spoon the marinade over the burgers and let them sit for 20-30 minutes at room temperature before grilling.

This was spectacular food.

Grilling again!

We've been saying for months now that we ought to get a grill, but somehow it hasn't happened. Friday's Splendid Table "Griller's Chronicle" recipe for Jamaican Jerk Burgers with Orange Chipotle Mayo was the straw that broke the camel's back. Yesterday we determinedly set out and returned with a nice-looking kettle grill (on the tram... what fun). Last night I put the new toy, er, I mean tool, to the test.

I made some pretty substantial modifications to both the recipe and the technique, so I'm going to do a standalone post for the burgers.

In addition to the burgers, I grilled some zucchini planks and a hornpeperoni. We also had a nice green salad.

It's great to have a grill again... it was dumb to wait so long. :-)

hmmm

I feel a rant coming on about cookbooks and the importance of mise en place for home cooking... we'll see how this develops

Lentils and Sausage

This was a straightforward one but oh... so... good.

I started by sauteeing finely chopped onion, minced garlic, diced celery, and diced carrots in some olive oil until everything started to soften. I added green (French) lentils and some vegetable boullion, fresh thyme, bay leaf, and fresh savory and cooked until the lentils were about 3/4 done. Then I added some sliced saucisson Vaudoise and let it simmer until everything was done.

I suspected that the addition of savory was going to lead to something nice and I definitely was not disappointed.

As a side I made sauteed cauliflower. And we had a green salad. All veggies (except garlic) were from the biokiste.

Thursday: potatoes with cheese sauce

Andrea wasn't home for dinner last night, so I went for something quick that helped use up the last of the veggies from last week: potatoes and salad.

After boiling the peeled potatoes, I served them with a cheese sauce made from Emmenthaler to which I added chopped parsley and chives.

The salads were shredded carrots with blended salsa and diced cucumber with salt and vinegar.

simple and nice.

Biokiste 17

I'm guessing that the missing tomatoes this week are due to the absurd amounts of rain we've been getting, but that's just a guess. The newcomer this week is celery.

Tuesday: Veal in an herb sauce

I planned to make this dish with chicken, but veal was on sale so I used veal instead. It has happened before, it will happen again...

As to the dish: I started by lightly browning 300g of veal geschnetzeltes in olive oil. I set the meat aside and added a finely chopped red onion, a couple minced garlic cloves, and a good sized carrot (diced small) to the pan. After cooking for about 5 minutes, I added a zucchini cut into chunks. This cooked for a minute or so, then I added a small amount of stock (bouillon), the veal, a Tbs of capers, and a Tbs chopped fresh herbs (rosemary, thyme, and lemon thyme). This cooked, covered over low heat, for about 20 minutes, then I added a few Tbs of cream and let it cook, uncovered, another couple minutes. Just before serving I added a pinch of cayenne, a couple grinds of black pepper, and a good quantity (~1/4 cup) chopped parsley and basil.

As a side we had the leftover pseudo-succotash from Monday and some rice/wild rice.

Oh yeah, and a green salad.

Monday: Tomato soup and "something like succotash"

Last night I did another cold (room temp, really) tomato soup variation and used the sweet corn from last week's biokiste to make something resembling succotash (without lima beans it can't be real succotash and I haven't found lima beans here).

The tomato soup was simplicity itself: I put the tomatoes through the food mill (medium disc); added some new mexican chili powder, a bit of chipotle powder, salt, and cream; mixed well; and then let sit for a while for the flavors to meld.

For the pseudo-succotash I cooked a chopped red onion, some minced garlic, and a few chopped hornpeperoni (long green peppers) in olive oil with lardons (smoked bacon). When the peppers started to soften and the bacon was cooked, I added the corn kernels, some soissons beans, and a bit of chicken bouillon and then let the whole thing cook gently for another 5-10 minutes, until the corn was cooked.

Both the soup and the succotash were very good.

We also had some bread and a green salad.

Wine: Valley of the Moon 1999 Pinot Blanc. I'd been afraid to open this bottle because I thought there was no way it would have survived 7-8 years. Luckily that was incorrect. It's totally different than when it was young, but it was still quite nice.

Sunday: Abendbrot

I bought too much stuff for our breakfasts this weekend, so last night we had the remaining ham, salami, and fleischkase as abendbrot. We also had the last bit of vegetable tart from Saturday night and a nice green salad.

Saturday's Vegetable Tart

For this I more or less followed the technique (if not the recipe) for eggplant tart in BittmanWorld. As vegetables I used onion, garlic, zucchini, and two kinds of peppers (red bell and green "hornpeperoni"). I complemented the basil with a bit of fresh thyme and used grated sbrinz as the cheese.

My crust, naturally, ended up being ugly. I'm normally not quite so bad with pie crust, but this was a larger, deeper, pan than our usual tart pan and, and, and. Still, the crust had nice flavor and acceptable texture.

As I said, the result isn't pretty, but it sure was tasty:

Saturday's Rösti

There were biokiste potatoes to be used, so this time I didn't do rösti from a bag... I started from scratch. Since things turned out rather well, I'll do some detail.

After peeling and grating the potatoes (I used the standard box grater we brought from the US, but I think a coarser grater would be better here), I wrapped them in a kitchen towel and wrung them out very well to get out as much moisture as possible. I think this really helps to get a crisp result.

I started by cooking some thinly sliced smoked bacon in peanut oil over medium-high heat in a non-stick pan large enough to hold the final rösti. When the bacon was cooked (but not browned), I added the potatoes, a few pinches of salt, mixed everything well, and then pressed down the mass (with the lid from a smaller pot) to form a cake. After cooking for 3-4 minutes, I stirred everything up, seasoned a bit more, and then pressed it down again. After doing this a few times, the potatoes started to look cooked, so I pressed the whole mass down again and let it cook undisturbed for about 10-15 minutes (until the bottom was clearly nicely browned). I then flipped the thing over (using a plate! the sides of my saute pan are too high to actually flip it), added a bit more oil to the pan, and let the other side cook for 10-15 minutes or until it was nicely browned. Just before serving, I cranked the heat up and refreshed the top (first cooked) side so that both sides were nice and crisp.

This was a very successful rösti and is a pretty straightforward (if time consuming) technique.

Dinner party

Last night we had a couple of friends over for dinner. The theme of the evening was "Summer's Bounty" (a.k.a. "use up vegetables!").

Dinner was:

1. A vegetable (zucchini, peppers, onion, herbs) tart
2. Rösti with bacon
3. Chard stewed with olive oil, butter, and a bit of balsamico
   
4. And, of course, green salad
   

We had gone to the Saturday market to get fruit, so for dessert we had fruit, nuts, and cheese:

1. two kinds of plums, as well as mirabelles
2. some very small variety of pear
3. dried apricots and dates
   
4. toasted walnuts
5. toasted almonds with cumin and salt
6. Emmenthal and Bundner cheeses

The food was very successful (aside from the crust on the tart being ugly, er, I mean, rustic). I'll do separate postings for the tart and the rösti.

Thursday: stuffed eggplant

After scooping out the insides of a couple medium sized eggplants, I cooked some finely chopped onions and garlic in olive oil until the onions were translucent. Then I added the (finely chopped) eggplant insides and a good pinch of salt. I cooked this over medium heat for 10-15 minutes, until the eggplant had nicely broken down. In a separate pan I browned some ground pork and beef (with salt, of course), which I then combined with the cooked eggplant mush. After seasoning with allspice, a bit of fennel, some cayenne, and black pepper, I squeezed in some lemon juice and then filled the eggplant halves. These baked at 180C for about 30 minutes, until the eggplants were soft.

As a starch, I made a batch of soupy rice using risotto rice and chicken stock (from the carcass of the roasted chicken). I added a slug of white wine and bit of butter at the end to liven it up.

We also had the last of the gazpacho from Wednesday along with a green salad.

Biokiste 16

Not just red salad tomatoes this time; there are also a few plum tomatoes, a green tomato, and some nice orange grape tomatoes. And two ears of sweet corn. Sweet corn! Oh, and chard and the other usual suspects.

Wednesday Gazpacho

To go along with the leftover roast chicken, I made a batch of gazpacho from the recipe in La Cocina de Mama. I used the food mill again to start things out, but this time I only pureed/emulsified about 1/3 of the tomato with the onions, garlic, bread, oil, and vinegar. After making the emulsion, I stirred it into the remaining tomato. This produced a nicer texture than the fully pureed variant.

I served the gazpacho topped with chives and freshly toasted almonds that I slivered just before serving.

Monday: Roasted Chicken

I have to periodically roast a chicken just to remind myself that I'm not particularly good at it. Last night was the time.

I seasoned the chicken simply by rubbing the pulp from a preserved lemon quarter as well as some slivers of the rind under the skin of the breast. In the body cavity I put a some onion chunks and the rest of the preserved lemon quarter. 15 minutes into the roasting I added chunks of potato, carrot, and onion to the pan. When the bird was done I pulled it and roasted the vegetables, along with some chunks of yellow summer squash, and additional 15 minutes. All vegetables were from the biokiste.

This turned out quite nicely. The thighs weren't cooked quite as far as I would like, but that's a problem that will solve itself when I reheat them (yesterday we just ate the breast). The vegetables were very good (I have no problem with roasting vegetables).

We also had a green salad.

Friday Tapas

This is what happens when I leave work earlyish and walk home so I have loads of time to think about what to make for dinner:

1. Dates stuffed with bacon and broiled (warm)
   
2. Almonds sauteed with cumin
3. Peppadew peppers stuffed with manchego
4. Elbow macaroni with a tomato-sour cream-sherry vinegar sauce (room temp)
5. Potato salad with bacon, chives, sherry vinegar, olive oil, and fresh rosemary (warm)
6. Summer squash (yellow and green) stir fried with finely diced (brunoise) carrot and served with "spanish pesto" (basil, toasted almond, manchego, olive oil), served hot
   

Loads of food, but very good food. All veggies were from the biokiste except the rosemary and basil, which came from our balcony.

Wine: Baron de Schiele Cremant d'Alsace. I almost bought a bottle of cava, but then I saw this bottle and tasted it in my head.

oh, and 7. green salad

Thursday: Vegetables and pasta

Given the quantity of vegetables that we needed to eat in order to clear out the fridge for this week's biokiste, tonight was definitely vegetables with pasta and not the other way around.

We started with a tomato-ginger soup. For the soup Andrea put some tomatoes through the food mill (medium disc), added microplaned ginger, salt, pepper, some mirin to balance it, and a bit of cream to bring it together.

Our main course was a bunch of vegetables cooked with diced smoked bacon. I started the bacon in olive oil until it started to brown, then added onion, garlic, and some chopped fennel. When those softened, I added zucchini (cut into planks), seasoned it, added a few dried piri-piri peppers, tossed well, and covered the pan. After the zucchini started to soften, I added some coarsely chopped basel and cooked until the zucchini was finished. We ate this next to Hörnli (elbow macaroni).

As a side, I "pan steamed" some green beans (cooking them covered over medium heat with a bit of oil, a few sprigs of savory, white pepper, and salt). I poured in some cream a couple minutes before serving and cooked until that was reduced away.

Wine: R. Gilliard 2006 Fendant de Sions (Les Murettes). quite a nice Swiss white.

Biokiste 15

mmm, eggplant. And tomatoes. Loads of tomatoes!

Wednesday Simplicity

Simplicity was the "theme" of last night's meal, which consisted of:

1. Lemon sole (Echte Rotzungen) fillets sauteed in butter
2. steamed new potatoes
3. steamed vegetable threads (zucchini, carrots, long green pepper)
4. a blended salsa (tomatoes, lime juice, habanero, red onion, garlic, cilantro, salt)

all vegetables except the onion and garlic were from the biokiste.

We also had a green salad.

Sunday Mexican

While in Zurich on Saturday we went to a shop Andrea found that sells Mexican ingredients. It's in Zurich, so the place is super overpriced, but it was still nice to find things like decent corn tortillas and dried Mexican chilies.

To celebrate, last night I made Mexican. I started by making a pot of black beans cooked with onions and garlic; I added some toasted cumin and coriander at the end. Then I made a bowl of fresh salsa: biokiste tomatoes, red onion, garlic, cilantro, lime juice, habanero (or the same family) peppers, and salt.

Shortly before eating, I cut up a yellow summer squash and cooked that covered over medium heat with some olive oil, onions, and garlic.

Our main course was thinly cut pork chops (nierstuck) that I seared in a pan and then topped with the salsa. Next to that we had the squash and the black beans topped with fresh cilantro and sour cream. Warm corn tortillas were on the side.

What a nice meal it was. I need to make salsa more frequently as long as we're getting tomatoes.

Of course we had a green salad as well.

Friday Night Pesto

Tonight I made a nice batch of pesto using basil from our terrace (Basel basil, ha ha ha ha), pine nuts, good olive oil, parmesan, black pepper, and a small clove of garlic. We ate this over spaghetti. It's been quite a while since I made "plain" pesto, and this was a very nice example of the species.

As a side dish, I steamed some carrots and zucchini [both biokiste] and then tossed them with brown butter and salt. These I served topped with chopped chives. The combination of the zucchini and brown butter was almost magical.

With a green salad, this was a very clean, fresh, and nice meal.

You see, this is why I don't bake

For Andrea's birthday I made a "Kirschkuchen Hässlicher Art":

Biokiste 14

The summer squash is starting now for real; excellent!

Wednesday vegetables: Zucchini and carrot "spaghetti"

We've done pretty well on finishing up this week's biokiste, but there were still a few zucchini remaining, so tonight those needed to go. While flipping through Kamman for ideas, I found a nice solution. I thinly sliced some zucchini and carrots lengthwise with the ceramic slicer, then cut the slices into "spaghetti" by hand. These I cooked n batches in the bamboo steamer. As each batch finished, I moved them to a pan where I had lightly browned some minced garlic in olive oil.

I'm not nearly hard core enough to do this the way Kamman suggests: holding the vegetables in my hand over the steam(!), but using the bamboo steamer and gently turning the batch with tongs worked just fine. The result was delicious. We had it as a "main course", but it would also be a very nice accompaniment.

As a side, I toasted some walnuts and added them to the Ebly-salad from last night.

And we had a green salad.

Tuesday's Salads (and "Pie")

It's hot again, so cooking can be less than completely fun. Last night we just had salad to go along with the leftover pork chops. In addition to the standard green salad, I made an Ebly-salad from cooked hartweizen, thinly sliced fennel, thinly sliced onion, fresh basil, sherry vinegar, and olive oil.

We also had, wonder of wonders, dessert. With so many cherries, something had to be done. Pie, as suggested by BrianS, is definitely a good way to do something, but I didn't want to make a crust. So I used the leftover puff pastry from last week's potpie. I started by lining a couple ramekins with pastry and blind baking that. After filling with cherries I topped with another layer of pastry and then baked the whole thing until nicely browned up top. We ate this at room temp topped with quark:Nice dessert!

Monday: Pork chops with preserved-fruit relish

The idea for this came Sunday night when we were having dried dates and apricots as part of a salad. I guess at heart it's also inspired by the "power pack" idea from the Schlesinger and Willoughby cookbooks.

For the relish I mixed finely diced dates, dried apricots, preserved lemon, and red onion. To this I added olive oil, black pepper, and a bit of white wine to plump the fruit some. I let this sit for an hour before serving it.

The pork chops were simplicity incarnate: I seasoned them and then browned them in a cast iron skillet. After resting the pork, I topped it with the relish.

We ate it with relish. :-)

We also finished off the panzanella from Sunday and had a green salad.

Sunday's salads

It was super hot today, so the motivation to cook was pretty low. Luckily we had tons of good bread left over and a bunch of tomatoes from the biokiste. Panzanella was the order of the day.

I used an idea from A Tuscan in the Kitchen that ended up being massively modified based on what we had in the kitchen. No big deal, the ideas on Tuscan in the Kitchen are meant to be modified. :-)

I sliced the bread thick and let it dry out for a while in the sun on our terrace. Then I tossed it with some vegetable boullion, red wine vinegar, and capers. I added chunks of tomatoes, thinly sliced fennel, and thinly sliced red onion, olive oil, and a good grind of pepper. This steeped in the fridge for a couple hours before serving. As a piss-take, I plated this using a ring mold.

I also made a side-salad plate with mozarella, basil, toasted walnuts, toasted almonds, dried dates, and dried apricots. The date + walnut + basil combination is one to remember for the future.

Quite a nice meal this was!

Wine: Mauritson's 2004 Sauvignon blanc.

oops forgot: Saturday crepes

Yeah, we had crepes for breakfast yesterday morning. I used the batter recipe from Bittman and we had grated cheese (Gstaad Bergkase) and cherries with quark as fillings.

mmm, crepes

Saturday Lunch: Wurstsalat

For lunch yesterday I did a wurstsalat with wienerli (instead of cervelas), emmenthaler, a bit of garlic, and a sauce made from quark, mayo, mustard, basil, chives, and parsley. I forgot the pickles, but it was quite good anyway.

Today the I'll remember the pickles. :-)

Cherries, cherries, cherries

After last weekend's success with cherries, I said: "Maybe next week we can get another kilo or two and a pitter and try canning some cherries". Yesterday we made maybe a certainty. :-)

After much searching we ended up finding the last cherry pitter in the city of Basel (at least it seemed that way), and that a display model. At the market Andrea must have been quite charming to the farmer (or maybe it's just the end of the season :-), because she asked for 3 kilos and he gave us a flat with 5-6 kilos. We got sour cherries because they were the only thing available, but they are what you are "supposed" to use for preserves anyway... so no problem there.

At home the work started. The pitter actually made things pretty painless.

The pitter design is very simple: the cherries fall one at a time over a hole with a plastic gasket at the bottom. The plunger comes down and pushes the pit through the gasket:when the plunger comes back up, it lifts the pitless cherry over the lip that was holding it over the hole, and the cherry falls into your collecting bowl. Super simple, very effective, and you can do a lot of cherries pretty quickly:
After pitting the cherries, I mixed them with a kilo of gelierzucker (sugar + pectin) and slowly brought them almost to a boil:Before "canning" the cherries, I ladled off a lot of the liquid to be canned separately as "jelly" (I checked that it actually would gel first). Here's the final result of our work:That's 6x300ml jars with primarily cherries, 3x500ml jars with a higher ratio of liquid to cherries, and 4x300ml jars with "jelly". If these things survive, we'll have makings for all kinds of nice food. I'm particularly looking forward to Wildzeit (when game is available)... there was something in the flavor of the cherries that just screamed "venison!!!". I say "if", because I'm I'm always a bit wary of preserving and there's added uncertainty this time since I haven't used the plastic-foil sealing method before. The jars are definitely still holding some vacuum, so we'll see.

The total processing time, including cleaning and pitting the cherries and doing the canning, was about 2 hours.

Saturday Grilling

Last night we did a barbecue with some coworkers. Our contribution was skewers with chunks of lamb, red onion, and red pepper. Ok, really it was skewers with lamb and onion and then other skewers with red pepper... the cooking times of the peppers and the lamb are too different for them to share a skewer.

The lamb was a boneless leg that I bought and froze back in the spring. I started Friday night by trimming it a bit and cutting it into chunks, then marinating with preserved lemon (finally finished!), fresh rosemary, garlic, bay leaf, black pepper, a bit of cumin, and olive oil. Yesterday afternoon I made a complementary "sauce" with a bit more preserved lemon, rosemary, garlic, parsley, and white pepper. I grilled the lamb skewers on a hot grill so that they were nicely browned outside and still a bit pink inside. They were quite, quite nice.

I've known this for a while, but it's now somewhat urgent: we need a grill.

Thursday Pot Pie

There's a recipe for chicken pot pie in FSToS that I've been meaning to make for years. Last night I finally did. Kind of. Given the number of changes I made, I guess I should say that I made a dish inspired by that recipe.

The modifications started when I noticed that veal was on sale at Coop. So it became a veal pot pie instead of chicken. Then there were green beans in the biokiste; since green beans and veal go together so nicely, I had to use them. So green beans instead of peas. I used small onions from the biokiste cut in half instead of pearl onions. I skipped the mushrooms. I skipped the thyme since I used a very aromatic stock (the last of the aspic). I added some white wine. I thickened the sauce a bit with cornstarch.

In the end I combined browned veal cubes, roasted potatoes, onions, garlic, carrot, and green beans in a light sauce, covered it with a piece of blätterteig and then baked it. It was quite good, but could have used a bit more sauce.

We also had a mozzarella, tomato [biokiste], basel salad as well as a green salad.

Wine: Buess 2005 Maispracher: this white wine from the Basel area went well with the food.

Biokiste 13

This week's box has the first thin green beans of the season as well as a bunch of tomatoes and basil. Not visible is a goodly quantity of potatoes, onions, and carrots.

There was one particularly interesting "twin carrot":

Wednesday Leftovers

Last night we finished off most of the sauteed vegetables from Monday. To go with them I cooked some green beans with salt, olive oil, savory, and garlic (medium heat, covered pan) and made some boiled new potatoes with butter and parsley. The beans, savory, and potatoes were all from the biokiste.

yeah, and a green salad.

Monday Vegetables

Last night I did a standard sauteed vegetable prep using smoked pork (Schweinehals), zucchini, fennel, carrots, tomatoes, onions, and garlic (all except onions and garlic from the biokiste). As herbs I used bay leaf, rosemary, and savory. I started by browning the cubed pork, added the onions, garlic, and diced carrot to brown for a bit. I added the chopped fennel for a minute or so, then added the rest of the ingredients along with a small amount of chicken stock (aspic) from this weekend. This all cooked, covered, for about 30 minutes before being served topped with chopped parsley and chives.

We ate the vegetables with lightly browned spaetzle and some romaine lettuce cooked in butter. Nice food.

Of course we had a green salad as well.

Cherries

We picked up a kilo of half-sour local cherries at the market yesterday (the full-sour ones were just nuts). We couldn't find a pitter, but Andrea "volunteered" and took care of the whole batch in "no time at all". I combined the pitted cherries with some gelierzucker and gently cooked them for a bit until everything looked nice.

We tried these over quark as dessert and were quite happy with them.

Maybe next week we can get another kilo or two and a pitter and try canning some cherries.

Saturday's Cooking Festival

It wasn't too hot yesterday and we didn't have too much other stuff that absolutely needed to get done, so I ended up doing a lot of cooking.

In addition to the poulet en saucisse that we had as a main course, I made a batch of gazpacho, some potato salad, and sauteed greens.

For the gazpacho I followed the recipe for Gazpacho Andaluz in La Cocina de Mama pretty closely aside from using a long green pepper instead of a red bell pepper (that's what was in the biokiste). I used a slightly different technique though: I started by putting the tomatoes through the food mill to get rid of the skins. I pureed the other ingredients (garlic, pepper, bread, sherry vinegar, olive oil) separately with the stick blender, added them to the tomatoes and then mixed a while longer with the stick blender. The result, garnished with chives and finely diced cucumber, was a really nice soup (though I wished for a bottle of tabasco to lend it a bit of heat). I like the addition of cumin to the dish, though I wouldn't do that all the time.

The potato salad ended up being a real star. I started from an uncharacteristically vague recipe from this month's Le Menu for a potato "sauce" to be served with the Pouletbraten recipe (that inspired me to make ballottine in the first place), but I think I ended up far from where they intended. Since the final result was so good, I'm not too sad about this. :-)

I started by cooking some whole potatoes from the biokiste. I did this very slowly in order to get to the persistent firmness stage (thank you Harold McGee for this trick!). After cooling the cooked potatoes, I peeled them then grated them into a bowl (this is where that persistent firmness thing was needed). To this I added a minced clove of garlic, some mayo, quark, chopped basil, chopped parsley, some veggie bouillon, salt, and black pepper. After mixing well I let the salad sit for half an hour before serving.

I'm not sure what it is, but there's something very "Swiss" to me about this potato salad. It's not exactly light, but the flavors are very clear and fresh. Fantastic stuff.

Ballottine/Poulet en Saucisse

I really like galantine- and ballottine-type things but I'd never made one. I watched my friends John and Kara make a turducken once, but that was entirely another order of magnitude in terms of size of undertaking. This month's Le Menu has a recipe for a roast made from stuffed and rolled chicken breasts that sounds pretty good and that got me thinking about galantine. Techniques, as expected, provided step-by-step instructions.

I figured that boning the chicken would take a while, but it turned out to only be about 30 minutes. With practice it would be much faster. Here's the boned-out bird:
I more or less followed the recipe, though I skipped the liver and extra fat in the meat filling (mistake) and added some rehydrated porcinis to the mushroom mixture (good move):
We couldn't find cheesecloth per se yesterday (and we live in the land of cheese... how could that be?), so I ended up using "gauze cloths" from the baby department of Coop. Funny place to buy it, but basically the same thing:
After browning this (through the gauze... weird!), I poached it in chicken stock for 1.5 hours. My only deviation for the poaching liquid was to use a bit of fennel stalk instead of a rib of celery.

Here's the finished ballottine, ready to be sliced:
The end result is tasty, but it does take rather a long time and I would make some changes before doing it again:

1. I overfilled the bird a bit, so it kind of fell apart on slicing.
2. Just using seasoned ground pork as the filling was a mistake. The liver and added fat (to make a pate de compagne there in the middle) would have made this much better.
3. I didn't reduce the stock enough to get an aspic for serving. This didn't make Andrea (an aspic skeptic) unhappy, but I will still go ahead and reduce the stock some more tonight.

Update, 9 July: After reducing the stock by a factor of about four, I ended up with something that made a nice, clear, shiny aspic. The ballotine itself was also a lot more tractable after spending a night in the fridge so we actually ended up with something that looked like it was supposed to:

Nano review: Pata Negra (Basel)

This Spanish place has been on the list of places to try for a while.

One smiley face.

• Food: quite good but not especially creative, distinctive, or absolutely stellar.
• Service: very good
• Atmosphere: very nice (mabye a bit empty, but that's hardly their fault)

Biokiste 12

Given the quantity of tomatoes in this box, I think there will be some gazpacho made this weekend. oh yeah.

Tuesday: Veggies veggies veggies!

Tonight was one of those "oh crap, there are loads of vegetables left and we get a new biokiste the day after tomorrow" nights.

We had penne topped with caramelized vegetables and toasted-almond pesto and cauliflower mashed with bacon. That worked through a lot of the remaining items from the box. :-)

For the pasta sauce I diced some carrots and onions very small (brunoise size), chopped up a fennel bulb into small bits and sauteed the whole thing with a pinch of salt in olive oil and butter until it started to brown. I then added a ladle of pasta-cooking water and another knob of butter to get a sauce.

The pesto is similar to one I made the other night, but I skipped the garlic and added some piri piri peppers and sbrinz cheese. The combination of toasted almonds, cumin, and basil is really, really nice.

The cauliflower was a model of simplicity: I cooked the whole head in acidulated water until tender, rinsed it well, and the separated the florets. I browned some diced bacon in a bit of olive oil, then added the cauliflower and cooked until it started to brown a bit and was heated through. After transferring this to a heated bowl, I mashed it using a potato masher.

Of course we had a green salad too.

Idea: There's a pesto is a sauce for grilled meat just waiting to happen: I bet putting the garlic back in along with a shot of sherry vinegar (maybe leaving the cheese out?) will produce something fantastic.

Sunday: The Coulis Makes the Meal

I came up with the idea for this on the train back from our hiking trip. My goal was something relatively easy and quick since we were both tired. After planning the meal and thinking the logistics through, I came up with an estimate of 30 minutes to prepare dinner. It actually took 35. Damn! :-)

The meal centered around a simple tomato coulis that I made by pureeing some peeled and seeded tomatoes [biokiste] with a clove of garlic, fresh savory[biokiste], sweet paprika, salt, and good olive oil. I served this at room temperature. It's a very nice sauce.

For the meal's protein component, I gently mixed ground beef with salt and minced onion. I loosely packed this into small patties and then pan fried them. Since we can get good ground beef (Switzerland++), these were very tasty. Next time I'm going to take the "leave it out" principle one step further and skip the onions.

I also boiled some green beans (a flattish variety) from the biokiste and then finished them by sauteeing in olive oil. These also went beautifully with the coulis.

To round out the plate we had some rice (rice/wild rice mix).

Of course we had a green salad on the side.

Friday Night Spanish

I was out of town Wednesday and didn't get back until late Thursday, so there's been no cooking.

Tonight I did a Spanish theme. Well, quasi-Spanish at least.

The plan for the meal started with the zucchini fritter from CPV. I intended to make these with the zucchini in last week's biokiste, but other dishes intervened. This week I wasn't going to let anything get between me and my fritters! :-) I'm really glad I took that position because the fritters are great.

To come up with a main course to accompany the fritters, I consulted La Cocina de Mama again and decided on a recipe for fish with tomatoes and capers. I deviated pretty substantially from the recipe: monkfish instead of fillets of trout (boring when farmed) or sardines (unavailable), tomatoes cut in 8ths instead of cherry tomatoes, fresh thyme instead of dried oregano, sbrinz instead of manchego or parmesan. The result was still quite nice.

I also cut some potatoes into small (1/4cm) dice, boiled them for a few minutes until they just started to get tender, then finished them in a saute pan with olive oil and salt until they were nicely crispy. Beside the potatoes I served a "pesto" I made with fresh basil, almonds (toasted in olive oil with salt and a bit of cumin added at the last minute), garlic, and a bit of olive oil. The result is fairly coarse (I didn't process it particularly long) and dry (just enough oil added to start to hold things together). This pesto is a real star and needs to be made again.

Biokiste 11

Andrea did this photo, so it's more nicely organized than my usual "dump the vegetables on the work island" story:

Tuesday Spanish

We needed to use the green beans and potatoes from the biokiste, so last night I started to plan an improv meal involving those and some chicken. Then I remembered all those new cookbooks that are begging to be used. A couple of minutes looking in La Cocina de Mama yielded two recipes that provided the core of last night's dinner.

The green beans were prepared in "Caceres style" by boiling them until tender, then sauteeing them with some smoked bacon, paprika (smoked and sweet), and red wine vinegar.

For the chicken I made "Pollo al Jerez" by browning a chicken (cut-up into serving-sized pieces, breasts halved) in garlic-flavored oil then finishing it in a mixture of stock, sherry, garlic, and saffron. My only deviation from the recipe was to pour off the fat before adding the liquid to the chicken (not at all clear to me why Casas doesn't call for this, it seems automatic). I also thickened the sauce a bit before serving.

We did the potatoes by peeling them, cutting them into chunks, then boiling them. Once cooked and drained, I added salt, butter, and parsley.

With the required green salad, this was quite a nice meal.

Sunday Asian

My cold is still in effect, so I made something with very strong flavors to break through.

I cooked ground beef and pork with some peanut oil, fish sauce, soy sauce, minced lemon grass, keffir lime leaves, finely chopped Thai chili, minced ginger, and enough water to provide a bit of liquid (no idea how I forgot garlic... I definitely should have added garlic). When this was about done, I added some tamarind paste, the juice from half a lemon (we had no limes), and adjusted the acidity with some sugar. Just before serving I mixed in some more minced ginger.

We ate the meat by wrapping it in lettuce leaves with sticky rice and sriracha. yum!

As a vegetable side I crisped some thinly sliced garlic in peanut oil, then added pieces of broccoli. After a couple of minutes sauteeing, I added a bit of water and some dark soy sauce and then covered it with an undersized lid (to allow evaporation).

Also on the plates were sliced tomato and cucumber strips (cut with the ceramic slicer) that I salted and tossed with rice vinegar.

All of the vegetables except the lemon, tamarind (duh), and garlic were from the biokiste.

The cold is powerful, but I actually did taste something from this.

Saturday Geschnetzeltes

Andrea's parents are in town this weekend, so last night I made Geschnetzeltes Zuricher Art ("Veal Stew with Cream and Mushrooms" from FStoS) as a certain crowd pleaser. I served the veal over mini farfalle.

I made caramelized fennel and zucchini roasted with green onions (all from the biokiste) as sides.

I have a head cold (stupid summer cold!), so I'm not a good one to comment on overall quality of the food, but it received good reviews. As I said last time: I need to make more recipes from FStoS.

Friday: Pork steaks with herb sauce

This was an improv'ed main course to go along with the rest of the vegetables "al a grecque" from earlier in the week.

I started by seasoning a couple of schweinestotzen plaetzli (I believe these are cut from the hams, but I'm not sure) with salt, pepper, and coriander and browning them in a bit of peanut oil. After setting the meat aside to rest, I deglazed the pan with vermouth and added some stock (cooking stock from the vegetables) and chopped fresh herbs (parsley, basil, tarragon, thyme, and chives) and some chopped capers (salt-packed, rinsed and drained). I let this reduce some, then thickened with a bit of potato starch and served on top of the steaks. Good stuff.

We also had a big green salad.

Biokiste 10

Wow, these are really starting to get huge...

Thursday: Fish and Vegetables

Wednesday night I made a batch of vegetables inspired by the Fennel a la Greque recipe in CPV. I started by simmering a couple of peeled and quartered onions along with a few mashed garlic and a bay leaf cloves in a mixture of flavorful chicken stock and olive oil. When the onions were tender I removed them and added some thin carrots. After removing the carrots I cooked fennel slices and then potato pieces the same way. I poured the remaining stock over the cooked vegetables and let everything sit overnight in the fridge. We ate it as a cold side dish on Thursday and were very pleased.

As a main course I toasted some walnuts in clarified butter, then sauteed pieces of rotbarsch in the walnut-flavored butter. We ate the fish topped with the walnuts, chopped chives, julienned fresh basil, and a drizzle of walnut oil.

I also cooked a halved head of a bitter lettuce that we had as a second vegetable side.

All vegetables were from the biokiste.

Of course we had a green salad too.

Monday Chinese

Last night I made Sweet and Sour Pork following the recipe in Land of Plenty. I stuck pretty closely to the recipe aside from using pork shoulder steaks instead of loin (for flavor and because they were on sale).

To accompany the pork, I stir fried some sugar snap peas (mange tout) from the biokiste. I started by sauteeing splinters of smoked bacon and garlic, then added the peas and some rehydrated chinese mushrooms (shitake cut into strips and black ear). When the peas were almost cooked through, I added a splash of dark soy sauce and sesame oil. We ate these drizzled with a bit of chili oil.

Of course we ate both dishes with rice. Both were really good. As promised by the author, the sweet and sour pork has pretty much nothing to do with the grisly (and gristly!) crap I associate with the name.

We also had a green salad.

Wine: Bucaneve 2006 Bianco de Merlot. This white merlot from Tessin wasn't half bad.

Paris Restaurant Nanoreviews

We were in Paris for a wedding this weekend. Due to the wedding festivities we really only ended up eating out twice:

Chez Georges
This was a double recommendation that was a let down. Andrea's two dishes (cold tomato soup with chevre, roasted leg of lamb with flageolets) were pretty good, but mine (eggs poached in wine, rib roast) were disappointing. The restaurant itself was nice and the service wasn't bad.

Liza
We had brunch at this "contemporary" Lebanese restaurant. The food was very good, as were both the decor and service. Two smiley faces.

Biokiste 9

more zucchini, more cukes, fennel, and... amazingly... tomatoes

Thursday's random vegetables

Today's biokiste had tomatoes and basil in it leaving me no choice but to make tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella. Luckily Coop has nice Italian buffalo mozzarella, so this is no problem. I'm surprised by the tomatoes, which actually had some flavor. It seems early in the season for that.

Another biokiste item (from both last week and this one) was smallish thin carrots. I took some of those, scrubbed them, cooked them in stock until just tender, and then mixed them with freshly ground cumin, black pepper, salt, a pinch of cayenne, olive oil, and a splash of sherry vinegar. After letting these marinate for a bit they made a very nice side.

We also had leftover sauteed vegetables and leftover potatoes with cheese sauce.

Wine: Cantino Giordano 2006 Primitivo Rosato. What a lovely "white zinfandel" this was too. :-)

Dessert: frozen raspberries macerated and served on top of quark mixed with sugar and yuzu.

Wednesday: course corrections midstream

The plan for last night was sauteed salt cod with braised lettuce and bratkartoffeln. Unfortunately, after poaching the salt cod I realized that what little flavor it had wasn't particularly pleasant; so I tossed it out.

We still had some mild gruyere in the fridge, so I decided to make a cheese sauce to top the boiled sliced potatoes [biokiste].

I started the sauce by toasting some walnuts in butter. I had the heat a bit to high, so by the time the nuts were nicely toasted, the butter was well on its way to beurre noisette. Nothing wrong with that... I fished the walnuts out and reserved them, whisked some flour into the butter and cooked for about 5 minutes. I added some coarsely chopped tarragon, a pinch of cayenne, and some black pepper and then whisked in the stock. Once the sauce was thickened and heated through, I whisked in the grated cheese.

I served the potatoes by topping them with chopped chives and the cheese sauce. The walnuts were on the side.

We ate the potatoes with the braised lettuce [biokiste] and a salad (lettuce and lettuce!). 'twas good food, even if it was all a bit random. :-)

mmmmm, bacon

I corrected Monday night's sauteed vegetables by adding some diced smoked bacon. That's just what it needed. mmmmmm

Monday's Sauteed Vegetables

We had some veggies in last week's biokiste that were screaming to be made into a batch of sauteed vegetables, so that's what I did last night.

The vegetables I used were: large diced eggplant, large diced zucchini, halved small onions, large diced fennel, small diced carrot, all from the biokiste. I also added coarsely chopped garlic, some country ham that we brought back from North Carolina, a few grinds of coriander, a pinch of herbs de provence, and some stock (from Saturday). 10 minutes before serving I added a can of tomatoes (diced just before adding them).

I served the veggies on a bed of Ebli and topped each portion with chopped parsley and some chive oil. The veggies were quite nice, but I was disappointed by the contribution of the ham; it would have been better with smoked bacon.

We also had a big green salad and the last of the cheese soup from Sunday. The soup remains fantastic.

Sunday's mixed bag

Yesterday I made a batch of chicken stock (well, mostly chicken, I also threw in some beef scraps that I had in the freezer). Tonight I used that stock in an attempt to make a cheese soup (inspired by Friday night).

I hadn't made cheese soup before and couldn't find a reasonable looking recipe in a few cookbooks, so I just winged it. I started by whisking a Tbs of flour into a Tbs (or so) of melted butter and cooking it for a few minutes. I then whisked a ladle of stock and cooked it until it started to simmer and thicken. After adding a few more ladles of stock, I let the soup base come to a simmer, then slowly whisked 100g of grated mild Gruyere. Once everything was hot it was ready to serve.

I accented the soup with drops of two herb oils I made by blending chives or basil into walnut oil using the stick blender. This probably would have been nicer if made with a mortar and pestle, but I don't have a suitable one; maybe I'll change that soon.

I added the oils to the soup after I had it in (warmed) bowls by dripping them in from a spoon. This was really quite nice -- particularly the chive oil. There was something very complementary about the chives, walnut oil, and cheese. The basil oil was good but probably would have benefited from being made with olive oil instead.

Andrea pointed out that the soup wasn't as smooth as the one we had at the Kornhaus. This is probably because it was a bit thinner. I should probably use a bit more flour for this quantity of soup (about 4 starter servings).

Still, this was a really, really good soup and I will definitely make it again. It tastes great, looks nice (with the spots of brightly colored oil), and is fun to eat.

To make an actual meal, I browned the boned chicken breast (skin on) in some olive oil, poured out the oil and then made a sauce with sherry vinegar, stock, a pinch of sugar, more black pepper, a bit of white pepper, and some cayenne. After reducing the sauce, I cheated and thickened it with some potato starch. We ate the chicken with some caramelized fennel [biokiste] made using a recipe in CPV. Quite good.

Weekend quark games

Last night and today I followed up on one of the ideas inspired by Friday's dinner and did a couple of different quark variations to go with some macerated strawberries.

Saturday night I whipped the quark with a bit of sugar and a splash of kirsch and then threw in the freezer to set up a bit. This was quite good, but I could have added a bit more sugar.

This afternoon I whipped the quark with more sugar and a splash of yuzu (Andrea's idea, based on her memory of the quark and grapes we did back in October). This was tasty enough to eat on its own... with the strawberries it was excellent.

It's a real testament to what violence Californian growers have done to the fruit that the strawberries we buy here in the supermarket are better than the ones we could get at farmers markets in the SF Bay area. We had some decent berries from our CSA box in CA, but they were the exception to the rule.

Reminder: Preserved Lemons started today

I started a batch of preserved lemons following the Paula Wolfert technique today. They should be done in 30 days.

Ideas from last night

Last night's meal at the Kornhaus was a two smiley face experience (just like last time). My feeling that we were in good hands was only reinforced when our waiter plucked a handful of basil leaves off the plant next to our table just after I ordered the "white tomato soup with basil pesto".

That soup itself is the first idea to remember: a light cheese soup with halved cherry tomatoes added just before serving, drizzled with basil oil. Using the cheese soup as a vehicle for other flavors in discrete packets (e.g. a tomato half or a drop of oil) is nice. One could even do multiple flavored oils in different colors (basil, chive, tomato, etc.)...

Next idea was from dessert: thinly sliced strawberries macerated in limoncello topped with a limoncello-mascarpone mousse. I'm guessing that quark whipped with some form of alcohol would make a very nice dessert topping.

Thursday Salad

We're getting loads of lettuce in the biokiste, so we need to step up our salad consumption... not a problem. Last night I made a big salad with lettuce, cucumber, and carrots. Inspired by a recipe in Lettuce in Your Kitchen, I made a dressing from mayo, tarragon, capers, pickles, quark, and yuzu (the quark and yuzu are the reason say "inspired by" and not "using"). Next to the dressed salad we had a chunk of good canned tuna (Spanish) drizzled with some olive oil and yuzu, and some breakfast radishes.
All the veggies were from the biokiste.

Wine: Chateau Musar 2003 Cuvee Rouge

Biokiste 8

now with even more lettuce!

Tuesday Indian

Last night I made a straightforward "Indian-inspired" meal with a chicken curry and mixed greens (cooked and frozen last month) prepared in a South Indian style.

For the chicken I cubed a couple chicken breasts then marinated them with salt, pepper, lemon juice, and some amchoor powder for about 30 minutes. I browned them well in peanut oil, then removed them from the pan, cooked some onion chunks until they started to soften, then removed them from the pan and cleaned it. After melting some butter into the pan, I added halved cherry tomatoes, curry powder, a dash of cayenne, and some chicken stock and mixed well, then added back the chicken and onion.

The idea of using the greens in an Indian dish was from both Andrea (last night) and brianS's comment on my post whining about having too much quark. I started with the usual step of cooking dark mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves, and dried chilis in oil until the mustard seeds started to jump. Then I added the greens, covered the whole thing, and let it simmer. Couldn't have been simpler.

We ate this with basmati rice, and it was all quite good. The chicken isn't the most interesting preparation in the world (it would have been way better with a self-made curry mix, but that wasn't going to happen last night), but it certainly was not hard to eat.

Wine: A 2005 Gamay de Peissy Rosé. This organic Swiss rosé wasn't particularly interesting.

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).