Remember these simpatico neighbots of mine I mentioned in one of the posts? I used to greet them almost every day in summer. Out of curiosity they did run towards the fence and even allowed to pet them... Now that's whre they end. I am so happy I don't eat meat.
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I used to love Berlin a lot but since I left it and moved to a dreamlike cutest little city in South Germany I don’t miss it too much. I don’t miss it until I come to visit it and discover treasures like Meyan. This little cafe opened recently (guys, why didn’t you open it two years ago as I lived just around the corner???) in a street where every second entrance leads you to a nice bar, cafe or a restaurant. Still if I would walk down this street now and then I would go there and only there.
Imagine the combination of three factors: LOVE, TASTE and CREATIVITY, and you get an approximate description of Meyan, which means liquorice by the way. LOVE stands for the interior design, delicately oriental and elegantly urban at the same time. You can’t oversee that every single thing has been selected, no chosen with love. There is something old, and something new, and something handmade, all together creating an absolute harmony. East meets West, personal meets urban, vintage meets modern. TASTE stands for the yummy food, so fine and spicy at the same time, accompanied by a black tea in narrow-waisted Turk glasses or a nice glass of wine. CREATIVITY comes from people that run the place, open, friendly and authentic. You come in, you greet them, you chat, you feel welcome... What can I say more? Just go there and see for yourself. And if you like it as much as I do, you can take one little bit of Meyan home: jus buy there a colourful oriental bowl or a handmade soap. The second would support a women project in Turkey. Just like on any other weekend this Sunday I was looking for new breakfast ideas, something special and still easy to make. Besides I wanted a vegan recipe. Not an easy task... but on this page I got lucky:
http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/member-recipes I took this recipe by Maria Sorokina and I was really happy with the result. So happy, that I will make them again righ tomorrow! Here is the recipe: 70 g flour 110 g brown sugar (I took 70g and they were still realy sweet. I think I'll take only 40-50g next time) 1 tea spoon baking powder 1/3 tea spoon salt 1/3 tea spoon ground cinnamon tiny pinch of ground nutmeg 1 tea spoon vanilla 70 g vegetable oil (rapeseed oil works great) 45 g orange juice 90 g rolled oats 60 g raisins, small sized or chopped (optional) (I took dried cranberries & dates) 30 g walnuts, chopped (optional) Mix together the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and spices. Add oil, orange juice and vanilla and mix till combined. Mix in the oats and raisins and walnuts if using (highly recommended). Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes. (I didn't chill it at all and it was no problem) Using your hands and a tablespoon form balls around 3 cm in diameter and place them on a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Leave 5-6 cm distance between the balls to let them rise. Bake at 175C for 10-12 minutes. Take out of the oven. Leave on the baking sheet for additional 5 minutes and then let cool on a rack. These are all yours now. And here are the pictures: Even though I have been trying to eat more and more vegan lately, there are things you can not say NO to... Cheese is definitely one of these things. France is not that far away from where we live which means that we get a great choice of tempting French cheese on the farmer markets. Today we visited a farmer market in Constance which resultet in this very late and extremely decadent breakfast: French Weinbergkäse (cheese), fresh German peppercress, flower salt, brown button mushrooms, cocktail tomatoes and Italian bread... la Deutsche Vita! Or may be la vita europea? Zum Bearbeiten hier klicken .
Baumkuchen is a traditional Christmas dessert in Germany. It is a kind of layered cake with characteristic rings that appear when sliced resembling tree rings. That gave the cake its German name, Baumkuchen, which literally translates to "tree cake". Traditionally, Baumkuchen is made on a spit by brushing on even layers of batter and then rotating the spit around a heat source. The traditional version of Baumkuchen requires special equipment normally not available in an average household. So a simpler horizontally layered version of the cake also exists and can be baked in a conventional household oven that has a broiler inside. It has horizontal layers instead of circular rings. More information about on Wikipedia. Baumkuchen is not very difficult to make but it is extremely time-consuming. That’s why people rarely do it at home. That’s why it is an impressing gift! I did it on the weekend to pamper my dear who loves Baumkuchen and he was extremely happy with the result. So was I. I managed to make 16 layers but I am pretty sure to achieve 20 the next time. You will need: 12 eggs 500g butter 500g sugar 250g ground almonds 2 vanilla sticks 250g flour 1,5 tablespoons rose water 1,5 tablespoons cherry brandy 0,5 teaspoon ground cardamom 1,5 tablespoons cacao powder 1,5 tablespoons rum For the icing: ½ glass of apricot jam (only the liquid, no pieces) 400g chocolate to your taste. I think dark chocolate is the best but feel free to experiment. I took one with 70% cacao and almond crocant. The bumps you see on the chocolate surface in the pictures are the crocant pieces. 4 teaspoons cacao-butter And go! 1. Separate yolk from the egg white. Put 6 yolks into one cup and another 6 into another. Put egg whites aside. You will need 2 equal parts of dough in 2 separate bowls so in the beginning you will have to do everything twice. 2. Put 250g butter and 250g sugar and stir until the mass gets creamy. One after one add 6 yolks. Stir. Add 125g ground almonds and 125g flour. Add vanilla from one vanilla stick. Repeat the whole thing to create the second portion of the dough. 3. Add rose water, cherry brandy and cardamom to the first portion of the dough. Stir. 4. Add cacao and rum to the second portion of the dough. Stir. 5. Beat the egg whites and fold in half of it into every portion of the dough. 6. Put some baking paper into a baking form to cover exactly the bottom of it. 7. Put a very thin layer of one dough onto the bottom of the form and bake (preferably in the grill mode) until firm. Take it out, apply a very thin of the second dough and bake until firm again. Repeat until you are out of dough. 8. Let the cake cool down in the form then extract it with caution. I put a cutting board on top of the form and turn it around. You will see that the layer you made first is pretty hard. No wonder, it has been in the oven all the way through. No problems! Heat the apricot jam and apply it on the top and the sides of the cake, preferably with a brush. Be patient and let the cake suck up most of the moisture (2-3 hours or overnight). Cut the cake into pieces. I did cut it into 8 pretty big pieces but you can also make them much smaller. Just keep in mind that you will probably need more chocolate to cover smaller pieces. 9. Heat the chocolate in a bain-marie. Don’t boil the water! Chocolate shouldn’t get too hot. Ideal temperature for the chocolate to melt is between 38 and 41 grad Celsius. Melt the chocolate together with cacao butter (helps the chocolate to keep shiny look afterwards but doesn’t really add to the taste, so you can skip it when you want). Let the chocolate cool down to 30-32 degrees Celsius and apply it onto your Baumkuchen pieces with a brush. You can keep the Baumkuchen for up to several weeks. You can also bake it long ahead. In this case freeze it for as long as you need without applying jam & chocolate and cover it after you defrost it.
...Guten Appetit!... Whenever I see any vegetables I have never seen in a supermarket, I just have to by them! There wil be enough time afterwards to figure out how to cook them, I think. Well, here it is - black salsify, also called winter asparagus. It turned to be pretty tricky to clean but it was worth it. More about this veggie on wikipedia.
Yesterday I went to a little Christmas Market in the neighbour village. It was small, and cute, and all improvised and handmade. There was one lady, who started making cookies in her home kitchen by the end of October. Every evening she was coming home from work just to spend her free time making another recipe. She managed to create 36 arts of cookies!!! Wow, just WOW!!! Of course I had to buy them. Surprisingly they are so yummy...
On Sunday I got inspired by two wonderful vegetarian recipes on this mouth-watering blog http://lamiacucina.wordpress.com
The recipes are called Green Onions Iced with Marsala Wine and Rosemary-Polenta-Terrine With Olives and I swear, one day I will do it right! I was missing Marsala, green Onions and black olives and the stores were closed. Ugh!!! So I followed the recipe replacing green onions with normal ones, Marsala with port wine and black olives with sumach fruits. Every cook would have probably killed me for that but you know what? I don’t regret it as it turned out very tasty and totally different from what we normally eat. Here is the recipe as posted by Robert Sprenger in the blog mentioned above. ROSEMARY-POLENTA-TERRINE Ingredients for 4 persons, for 1 cake or terrine form 4.5 dl milk (1 dl = 100 ml) 4.5 dl water salt 270 g fine corn flour (polenta) 3 twigs rosemary 60 g black olives 40 g grated parmesan (1) Mix milk and water, bring to boil, add salt. Add corn flour, cook 10 minutes while stirring. Reduce the temperature and cook ca 30 minutes while stirring from time to time till you get a pretty thick polenta. Take the pan of the cooker. (2) Cut the rosemary fine, pit the olives and cut them fine. Mix rosemary, olives and most oft he parmesan with the polenta. (3) Cover the terrine form with backing paper and put in the polenta pressing it gently so that it fills the form. Put the rest of the parmesan on the polenta and put it aside for 30 minutes. (4) Heat the oven to 170°C. Bake the terrine in the mid of the oven for ca 30 minutes. Take it out of the form, cut into 2 cm thin pieces and roast them with some oil in a coated pan until gold-brown. ICED ONIONS Ingredients 1 bunch (some 9 pieces) Cipolle di Tropea green onions or ordinary green onions. 2 tablespoons sugar 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1-2 tablespoons good butter 1-2 tablespoons good Balsamic vinegar salt, pepper (1)Wash green onions and cut along the thicker ones into two halves . (2) Put sugar and lemon juice into a pan and caramelize until light brown. Take of the fire and put the onions in as fast as you can with the cut side down. Press them gently with a fork. Don’t get frightened by the loud fizzling and use kitchen gloves not to burn your hands. (3) Spice the onions with balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, cover the pan with a lid and steam them for ca. 15 minutes. Turn the onions over after 7 minutes. Add some water if they get to dry. The sauce should be thick though. When ready you can add some butter as to your taste. And here is my variation of these tasty recipes: Today is St Nikolaus day and the guy was really sweet to me! Just look at than orange chocolate and chocolate orange sticks made by Läderach confiserie (http://www.laederach.com)!!! Ok, it's swiss, not German but OMG, it was difficult not to eat all of it while taking the pictures. :-) And the beeswax candles are adorable and smell like honey.
This weekend I tried out an old German Cheesecake recipe and it turned out to be a great one. Just the perfect thing for a relaxed and papmering Sunday breakfast! It was everything but light so I ate myself fill with one piece but it was so yummy that Peter just couldn't stop eating. If anyone wants to get the recipe, please leave a comment and I'll post it here. And since there are the rests of my birthday flowers in this cake picture I decided to show what it looked like as I've just put it together.
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