Tea Parties, etc

My tea time, when I've got the time and desire to partake, tends to occur around four-ish or five-ish, and lately it's been latte-time instead of my beloved English Breakfast tea. However, that didn't seem to stop any of us from a plans-just-got-cancelled-let's-drink-tea-at-8-pm fete last night. I brewed up some excellent black tea, which in reality was a gift to me from a dear friend, that she had bought in Paris. None of us can quite put a finger on what makes it so special, but it's got petals and bits of lemon and orange rind in it. No matter what kind of hocus-pocus was involved, it is fantastic. It also goes well with yoghurt cake, a new recipe (for me) that I tried out to go with the brew. I wanted to try the lime-olive oil combination, but went with plain vegetable oil and lemon zest instead. Somehow, and call me crazy, I didn't think that lime and olive oil would be the best match for black tea. I didn't use any kind of glaze or icing, mostly because I was lazy, but the cake didn't need it. I would, however, use lemon juice next time. I like my lemon flavoring to kick me in the head, not to just be a subtle background note. I would have taken a picture, but the cake is gone now. So!

Yoghurt Cake (I got the recipe from a Dorie Greenspan column, but after some digging around, I believe it is a typical every-day french recipe)
1.5 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup sugar
zest/juice of one lemon OR lime
3 eggs
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
1/4 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup vegetable oil OR extra virgin olive oil

Toss sugar with zest, add eggs, juice, vanilla and youghurt. Stir in flour and baking powder, then fold in oil. Pour into a buttered loaf pan lined with parchment paper, and bake at 350F or ~185C for about 50 minutes. I'd go on the shy side of 50 minutes, as my cake was fairly well done, but my oven more in the direction of 'firy pit' instead of 'home appliance'. I think the Balrog lives inside. If you don't want to use a loaf pan, don't. I've seen this done as a bundt, cupcakes, and I'm betting a normal round cake pan would do well.

I really want to try some different combinations when spring/summer start up. Example: lemon with blueberries, lime with nuts or maybe white chocolate somehow, flavored yoghurts, vanilla with almonds, vanilla with chocolate chips (although that may defeat this very light cake), maybe some kind of spicy apple incarnation, etc. This is about as versatile as it gets, but I must admit the blueberry/lemon combo cries out to my soul.

Aside from that, it's been a pretty decent week in the kitchen. I made a sort of brownie cake on Monday for my roommate's birthday, which is surprisingly low on the fat and carbs. I wanted to try throwing in some cayenne pepper (because in case you didn't know, chili makes dark chocolate soar), but she wanted to stay traditional with the flavoring. Next time....I shall have my way. Now how did it go...

4 tbsp butter
1 cup plus 1/3 cup chocolate [please do us all a favor and don't use milk chocolate, because it tastes awful(don't even act like you won't add extra)]
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
4 egg whites
1/4 cup flour
about a cup of dried fruit of nuts, if you want to go all weird-hippie on us
cayenne pepper, cinnamon, etc

melt the butter in a deep pan, add 1 cup of chocolate chips and melt whilst stirring. Add the sugar, and promptly remove from heat while a-mixin' away. Add the vanilla and/or other flavoring, stir in the egg shites 2 at a time, and end up with the flour. Stir in the extra chocolate chips, throw 'er in a small buttered pan, and roast at 350F or ~185C for about 30 min. Be nice to yourself, and eat with vanilla ice cream. It's the right thing to do.

My Only Consistency is Inconsistency

or, Things Recently Learned

Firstly, I would like to say that I think I have figured something out. The easiest, and most effective, way to learn about other people, cultures, and countries is through the kitchen. Need to find a way to break the ice with a French woman? Tell her you don't know what bechamel is. She will already assume you don't know a fresh head of salad from a whisk, and in no time will she take pity upon your poor, uncultured soul and you'll end the night off making crepes. While French cooking is all fine and good (or easy- see: raw oysters), I would have to say that my heart will always and forever belong to Italy. Don't get me wrong, I love ratatouille as much as the next person, but after having tried Nonna Luigi's Pesto....well, let's just say there is no going back. That was even before I had the risotto. Then, came the marscapone sauce with warmed, slightly toasted panetonne.

Girl, you don't even know.

Did I mention that breakfast in Italy means coffee, cookies, and sometimes cake? There is just no beating it. I have hated coffee (the smell, the taste, the effect of caffeine, the way it stains my teeth, usw) forever, but after 5 days? I'm ready to invest in my own stove-top contraption. That said, I would like to disclaim that I've only really had northern Italian, in the Milan area, so I can't really draw any conclusions about the other regions of Italy. However, one thing is for certain. I'm going back, and I'll be writing much, much more down.

Chocolate (again)!

Hey dudes! This time, I have an actual post, about actual food, with actual photos. That's right, after about five minutes of internet cafe time, I finally figured out how to open my camera on this darned maschine. So, let's get down to business.

One Sunday afternoon, I had a lot of free time. I wanted to do something. I eventually decided to make brownies for my class-group, after gnawing on a block of chocolate I had bought to make cocoa with. Don't worry, I cut off the bits I had chewed on. No, I'm not joking. Continuing on, I didn't have many problems making the actual batter. That was all fine. My one hurdle was the pan. All of the utensils, pans, etc, in this kitchen have been donated over the years by the inhabitants of my apartment. In this building, it's a 'communal' kitchen concept, and everyone is allowed to use any object (NOT THE FOOD) whenever they want. Oddly enough, there aren't any rectangular pans, there aren't any cake pans, there aren't any square pans, etc. There is only...a loaf pan. The commercial loaf pans over here are different, they are longer and thinner. So, what's a girl to do with a huge bowl of batter, and only one loaf pan?



Invent the brownie loaf, naturally.

It took two rounds of baking, and I added the powdered sugar later. Everyone liked them, and my instructor asked for the recipe, but I think they were only so-so. There wasn't enough chocolate flavor. I always have that issue with scratch brownies, though. I am too fond of the boxed mixes.

Now, this happened before the brownies were made. I wandered around on a hill for a few hours that Sunday morning, somehow getting myself lost on nature trails while trying to find a 433 meter tall lookout tower on the top of said here. I don't know how I did it. The view (on an exceptionally hazy day) looked like this.


The spiral staircase to the top was really scary. You should all be proud of me.

Afterwards, I decided to treat myself to some cake in a cafe. I had heard about a good place, called Cafe Max. I accidentally found it, and decided to pop in. What I ended up ordering, somehow, was more of a tort than a cake. To inform those who don't know, these people seem to like their tort. A tort is more of a...pudding-y thing than a cake. The bottom layer (I swear) was pie crust, topped with a thin layer of yellow cake, and then...some kind of custard, which contained some kind of alcohol-soaked...things. I don't know what they were, but I don't think they were fruit. It was odd. Then, it was topped with whipped cream, and some chocolate shavings. It also looked like this.

It wasn't half bad.

And that, folks, is it.

Schokolade

I live near a chocolate shop, called (not so inventively) Chocolaterie. The sign for the shop is an unwrapped chocolate bar, with chunk bitten off. It reminded me of that cupcake sign for the bakery in Stranger Than Fiction.

Said chocolate shop sells beer bottles fashioned out of said material, labels and all. They also have chocolate chips.

Marzipan

Germany waves hello, dudes!

Germany would also like to say that it will give opinions\reviews of certain regional specialties (mostly cakes and confections, because these guys throw meat in juuust about everything) as they come.

p.s. die Mandeln means almonds, as well as tonsils.

p.p.s. To Whom it May Concern, there are bakeries here that only use whole-wheat flour; this includes cakes and pastries.

Pesto 1

Well then, time just flies, doesn't it? Anyways, today I'd like to talk about pesto. This was inspired by a pasta-dinner box I saw at Target one night, long ago. It was for chilled pasta salad, something I had never heard of before. Then, that weekend, Ina Garten made lukewarm/chilled pasta salad on her show The Barefoot Contessa. I usually enjoy her recipes (hold the New England blue-blood), and a couple weeks after this I decided to give it a go. I've made pesto before, with limited success, and this wasn't much different. However, it is a good option for dinner on a hot summer night after you've either been popping popcorn or running up and down stairs carrying vaccum cleaners all the live long day. It is also very, very simple.

1) Boil some pasta. Spiral/Rotini is the best to use, because it holds the pesto sauce in the...wedges? Whatever you call it. Anywho, I rinsed mine very fast after it was done, but I retained some of the liquid for the sauce.

2) Cook some peas, or other vegetables. I like peas, and I would have included broccoli, but we had none. I'd say you should stick with greens, for both taste and aesthetic purposes. Don't get me wrong, I'm not the pesto police, so do what you want.

3) Make the pesto. If you haven't made pesto before, here is how it goes. Take a lot (1 1/2 cup) of basil leaves, 2 tbsp pine nuts, a crushed clove of garlic, olive oil, and put this all in a food processor. Process 'em. The garlic is important, because if you forget it, you'll realize it while sitting in the break room a few days later as you eat the leftovers for dinner and you will feel silly. Grate a whole bunch of parmesan cheese into the pesto, and keep adding olive oil if it's too thick. If you want something creamy, really amp up the cheese and add the olive oil until you have the consistency of peanut butter.

4) Mix the above together. It is pretty tasty.


There will be another entry regarding pesto, once I upload the photos. Until then, here is a photo of my birthday cake. If you know me, this will be kind of funny. I don't know who put the hear there, it was most likely my sister. She likes those kinds of things. I thought it was pretty neat. The things they can do with bundt pans these days!

Never too many vegetables

My dear friend, the clever Molly Wible, gifted me a Vegetarian cookbook this past Christmas. I have made a few of the recipes in it, but today's experiment deserves a blog all of its own. It was a toss up between the Eggplant Lasgna and the Pasta Primavera for dinner, but I decided upon the latter. It sounded easier (and faster) to make. I've been trying to walk more, and the need to pick up some fresh vegetables at my (very) local grocery store was also enticing. So, off I toddled with my totebag to procure some zucchini, asparagus, and penne pasta (whole-wheat, for those who-know-who-they-are). Upon returning home, I discovered that the vegetable stock I thought resided in the pantry was actually a figment of my imagination. I busied myself with preparing my other ingredients before setting out once again. I got some excellent vegetable stock, and fresh thyme. I figured, heck, if I'm going out, I might as well go all out!

Now that I was finally ready to get cookin', I will lay out the original recipe for you folks:

1 1/2 cup vegetable stock

2 sprigs fresh thyme

salt

1/2 cup peeled and diced carrot

1 cup asparagus tips, each about 1 inch long

1/2 cup diced zucchini or summer squash

1/2 cup shelled fresh or frozen peas, or snow peas

1 lb penne pasta (or other cut pasta)

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil or butter

freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 1/2 cups freshly grated parmesan cheese

While boiling the pasta, one is supposed to cook the vegetables in the boiling stock in a sequential order. Once the pasta is about done, you add in the olive oil, remaining stock, and toss it all together with the parmesan.

I would like to note that I purposefully went easy on the pasta and heavy on the vegetables. Here is what I did:

a bunch of stock ('Imagine' brand, no fat or MSG), because the large amount of vegetables I had needed more liquid

2 dealies of fresh(?) thyme

no salt

4 small carrots, peeled and sliced

the tips from 2 bunches of asparagus

one whole diced zucchini

a package of frozen peas

a bunch of broccoli

12 oz. of whole wheat penne

a bunch of olive oil

no pepper (I like pepper, I just didn't add any)

a lot of freshley grated parmesan

one bottle-cap-full of lemon juice (I just felt crazy!)

I would like to say here and now that the vegetable stock was delicious. The broccoli florets absorbed much of its flavor, and that was a good thing. The cooking sequence goes: boil stock with thyme (ha!), add carrots for a couple of minutes, add asparagus (and broccoli) and cook for a bit, add zucchini and (surprise!) cook for a bit, and end with the snow peas. You aren't supposed to end up with a lot of stock left over, and I kept adding more because a) like I said, my amounts were all wacky and b) I like sauce. Depending on how long it takes your pasta to cook, take the veggies off the heat until the carbs are done. Finish them up on the heat with olive oil and some more stock for a few minutes. Toss together, add cheese, and voila! You will feel rewarded for the one hour of walking you did over the course of two trips to the grocery store.



This is what it looked like in my bowl, shortly before death by mastication.



In the words of another, hunger is the best spice. This stuff was tasty.