A homemade life

Last weekend, I felt the need to indulge myself. So I went to the bookstore to pick a book to read explicitly and purely for the joy of reading. But however much I tried in the novel section, I found myself drawn again and again to the cookbooks. Finally, I found a happy compromise in A Homemade Life, by Molly Wizenberg. I had read about this cookbook cum memoir some time ago in Sunset Magazine, and I am awed by the clean beauty and lovely writing on Molly's blog, Orangette. This, I think, is one of the most well written blogs I know, every entry is flawless and professional (although sometimes a bit on the long side, for my personal taste). So I was looking forward to reading an actual book by this very same author.

I really enjoyed her writing, as always. It's just beautiful. She put in an essay that she wrote in high school, about how she started cooking, and, I swear to god, she wrote better in high school than I will in my whole life, ever. The story is uplifting- In a nutshell, she grows up in a food centered family, falls in love with France (duh! :)), and, when she finds herself unexcited by her anthropology graduate studies, drops out, moves to Seattle and starts a blog about food, Orangette. Much to her own surprise (not to mine, when you look at the blog), Orangette quickly develops a following (these days, any one of her posts will generate several hundred comments). To make the real life fairy tale complete, she meets her lovely prince and future husband through the blog when he contacts her about one of the recipes. The book ends with a recipe for wedding cake, of course.   

Although I liked the book as a whole, I wasn't too excited by the format of mixing recipes in with the memoir part. Although I enjoy reading cookbooks per se, I find that recipes embedded within a story, like here, somehow interrupt the flow of the tale, and thus take away some of the joy of immersing myself in it. So I ended up skipping over the recipes while I was reading, although many of them are gorgeous by themselves.
I doubt that I will use it much as a reference for cooking (there are too few recipes for me to consider & use it as a "cookbook"). This is too bad, because the recipes sound quite tasty. In my perfect world, Molly would have written two books, one a memoir to read, and one a cookbook to devour. Perhaps the cookbook is still out there, who knows?

Spring

One of the ways to tell that spring is here is if there are people besides you in the community garden. Last weekend, we finally met some of our old gardening friends whom we have missed all winter. They were preparing their beds for spring planting, and we ended up being presented one of their phenomenal red cabbages. I had been admiring those cabbages all winter, asking myself why they were so much bigger and prettier than ours. I'm still not sure, but since they planted earlier, my guess would be they simply got more of the late summer warmth.

Red cabbage, when made the traditional German way, is very good, but always reminds me of Christmas, which is when it is usually served with an apple stuffed roasted goose and potatoes. In order to get around that association, I usually spice up red cabbage when I make it outside of the holidays.

Today, I made honey, beer and mustard braised red cabbage.

I apologize for the vague recipe, but it's one of those improvised dishes that I've never measured the ingredients for.

one head of red cabbage, central stem removed and sliced into fine strips
one large red onion, halved and sliced into thin strips
butter
about 1 tablespoon honey
about 1 tablespoon mustard
about one tablespoon dark raisins
about 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
about 1 cup of beer (you can substitute chicken broth)

melt butter in a large pan over low-medium heat, add onions and slowly cook until translucent, but not browned, about 10-15 minutes. This takes a little time, but it's well worth the patience- the onions will turn slightly sweet. Add shredded cabbage and other ingredients, turn, cover the pan with a lid, and keep braising over low-medium heat for about 25 minutes. There should always be a little bit of liquid at the bottom to prevent things from sticking, so if you opened the lid too frequently and too much evaporated, just add a little more beer or chicken broth. Season with salt, pepper, and chili flakes if you like it hot (I do). Goes well with beer, of course.

What to do with kale

I didn't know what to do with kale when I first planted it. Of course, there is the traditional German way of making green kale, if you have an hour or three to spare. But a) I usually don't, and b) I wanted a way of cooking them that preserved the vitamins (kale is one of these so called "superfoods").

This dish became one of my weeknight standards:

Heat pasta water, start frying a pack of Italian sausage mix over medium heat (I usually don't add fat to my nonstick pan- the sausage mix has enough. You can substitute cut up sausages, bacon, or strips of roast chicken breast, if you like). Cook the pasta (I used my first ever home made tagliatelle today, but spaghetti is my standard) according to the package instructions. Meanwhile, wash a bunch of kale (the last of my red Russian kale today- lacinato is also great), cut in thin strips, and add to the boiling pasta two minutes before pasta is done. then drain everything through a colander, toss with sausage mix in the frying pan, and serve with salt, pepper, and grated parmeggiano.

Birds!

Today, I finally planted the lettuce seedlings that I had been nursing along for the last two months. They were magnificent plants, a mix of endives, radicchio, and various heirloom lettuces. I went home for a delicious lunch of just-picked cauliflower, steamed and sprinkled with butter roasted almonds. When I got back to the garden two hours later, my lettuce was gone. I could still see a few stalks here and there, but except for that, it had been razed.

Sigh.

Well, at least they left my savoy cabbage and kale seedlings alone. For now.

Guess I'll seed some more lettuce, then. They will have a better chance of survival later in the season, I hope, when the rest of the gardening community remembers that they have a plot, and my lettuce isn't the only fresh yummy greens in the whole garden. Or maybe I should listen to my husband and make some wire cages, just to get them through the worst...

Leftovers

One of the lessons I learned when I made Tortellini for the first time is that you need a lot less filling than you would think. We ate the remaining roast Garlic/Butternut Squash/Goat cheese mash today in an omelet. Quick and scrumptious. Perfect weeknight food.

For those fledgling cooks amongst you

To make an omelette, open eggs into a bowl. Depending on appetite, plan for 2-3 eggs per adult. Add a small shot of milk, salt, and pepper, and whisk until blended.

Meanwhile, heat about a tablespoon of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Pour in egg mixture. Immediately put your filling on top of the still liquid omelet. Fillings could be anything from plain grated cheese to cooked veggies, hummus, avocado dip or any other tasty spread. Put the filling in a line in the center of the omelet, so that it looks like a circle (the omelet in the pan) bisected in the middle by a vertical line (your filling). Careful not to tear the thing, push a spatula under the sides of the omelet and fold them over towards the center. They should overlap each other in the middle to form a tube with your filling running along the center, so aim at folding over about a third of the total width of the omelet. If the sides of the omelet are not completely set at this point, that is perfect, because they will stick together better once it is done. Now keep cooking until the underside is golden brown, turn around, cook again until the folded sides are golden brown, and let it slide onto a plate. The whole process is very quick, about 3 or 4 minutes per omelet, and there is hardly any wash up, just the bowl, the whisk, the spatula, and the pan.

More Pasta Love

Again inspired by the beautiful food photography in my friend’s Jamie Oliver cookbook, I went all out today and made Tortellini from scratch. I used the same dough recipe as before, but I folded some of our own chervil leaves in while rolling out the dough, for optical effect. As filling, I mashed up a few cloves of roasted garlic, some roasted butternut squash (our own- the next-to last one), goat cheese, and just a bit of salt and pepper.


It took a bit of tweaking to figure out the right size for the dough squares, and how much filling to use so it doesn’t squeeze out when you close the square. Also, I had no idea how to fold the things, and my first attempts were more reminiscent of preschool pottery than Tortellini. Here’s where I wished I’d had a Nonna. This is exactly the kind of thing you learn simply by hanging around the kitchen as a child, just because you’ve seen someone else do it before. I guess I can’t complain too much, though... my „Nonnas“ taught me how to bake German christmas cookies and roll rouladen instead.

Anyhow, I can’t wait to eat them. I think I might serve them to the friend who loaned me the machine, sometime when she doesn’t have to work the next day.

Jaime!

My friend has one true love. No matter what others there may be in her life, she has always loved, and will love forever, Jamie Oliver, the naked chef. I hadn't paid much attention to him previously (c'mon, if you have to undress to get attention, what does that imply about the quality of your food?), but little did I know. Recently inspired by Hank Shaw to try something new and make my own pasta, I borrowed a pasta maker and consulted her, the undisputed queen of homemade pasta in our food loving circle of friends.

I got several practical tips from her, which have helped me a lot with my first batch of pasta, which I had for lunch today and which is pictured above. Some gems from her, and the above links- use semolina or 00 flour (I used half semolina and half normal baking flour, which is what I had on hand)- knead until your arms fall off- let the dough rest at least 30-60 minutes- work in small batches, so your dough soesn't dry out too much- freezing of fresh pasta works better than drying- get the right consistency (like the inside of a woman's arm, according to Hank) by rolling the dough through the pastamaker on the widest setting and folding after each turn. This also helps to get some nice square pieces of dough (which actually isn't all that important when you're making tagliatelle, anyways).

In the middle of explaining, she pulled out her Jamie Oliver cookbook (Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook) to illustrate a finer point she was making. I started browsing (it's hard to resist the great layout and food photography), and despite my prejudice, I have to admit that I liked it. It has a lot of recipes that, number one, sound very yummy, and, number two, sound like something I realistically could do on a weekday night (ok- I'm not saying every weekday night here). Number two usually determines whether the cookbook will be used by me or not. I have the most gorgeous cookbooks and never use them because the recipes are just too involved for my current level of commitment to cooking. I'd rather just improvise something with under six ingredients. So now I'm debating whether I should buy the Jamie Oliver book or not. Basically, I could just get all the same recipes from his website... but it is a gorgeous book. Here's a recipe for egg pasta similar to the pasta I made above.