Spargelzeit! (My way)

Not to be a bad German or anything, but I just cannot get behind the sudden enthusiasm this country whips up for white asparagus this time of year. I guess its exciting because its a local vegetable, unlike the imported mealy tomatoes and sad waxy peppers of winter, but just because its ours doesn't mean its awesome.

No, true to my American roots, I like my asparagus green and skinny. As though it has been exposed to sunlight and gone through the process of photosynthesis. Something about covering white, stalky "Spargel" with white, creamy Hollaindaise sauce just does not scream "Spring" to me.

I think a real Spring dish exploits the first greens and pumps it up with some citrus and those wintry standbys, onions and garlic. Something like this simple, weeknight Lemon-Asparagus Risotto. Or an asapargus sautee with tons of lemon and red peppers and tofu. You get the picture. And as for Spargelzeit, I'll jump on the next German food bandwagon... lets say rhubarb-zeit or mirabellen zeit.

 ****************


Asparagus-Lemon Risotto

1 Quart of your favorite vegetable broth method
1 Tbsp. Olive oil + 1 tsp. vegan margarine
1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, diced
1 C. Arborio Rice
1 Glass decent white wine
A fistful of Asparagus, trimmed and cut into quarters
Salt, pepper, Thyme
Juice and zest from one lemon

1.) Heat several cups of your vegetable broth (or water + bouillon) and put on the backburner.
2.) In a large pot, heat olive oil and margarine over medium heat. When sizzling, add in onions. After 1-2 minutes, add in garlic. Stir and cook for about 4 minutes or until translucent.
3.) While this business is getting underway, heat another frying pan with a drizzle of oil on medium heat. When hot, add in your asparagus and a pinch of thyme and cook, stirring occasionally, until it reaches your desired state of "done-ness". (I like them a bit undercooked and crunchy, but to each her own.) Finish off with a dash of salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon and remove from heat.
4.) Once onion and garlic are ready add in your rice and stir so that it gets coated with oil and butter, and season with salt and pepper. Cook for 1-2 minutes, and then add in your glass of wine. Stir slowly, until wine has been absorbed.
5.) Now comes the "spoon and stir" portion of risotto for which it is famous. Ladle a spoonful of warm broth into your pot. Stir slowly until it has been absorbed by rice. Repeat this until mixture has significantly increased in size and rice is cooked through. (If you run out of broth, you can use water, no one will know.)
6.) At the end, when rice is fully cooked, stir in your asparagus mixture, lemon zest, and squeeze the rest of the lemon juice on in. Turn off the heat and cover and let sit for five minutes, then taste and adjust seasoning, if necessary. Serve with crusty bread, baked tomatoes, or whatever else strikes your fancy.

*****

Song of the Day: David Bowie- Modern Love

The Incredible, Edible Eggplant

Still on a big Jerusalem kick over here, skipping happily over to the big Turkish market nearby to pick up bulgar, sumac, pomegranate molasses and more ingredients necessary for lovely middle-eastern meals. According to the book, "stuffed" veggies are huge in the city, and from my own knowledge of Jewish cooking I can see how this is the perfect melding of Ashkenazi traditions and Middle Eastern/ Mediterranean traditions. Stuffing veggies makes the most of scarce ingredients and also presents beautifully. Just look at these stuffed eggplants! Gorgeous!

In this recipe, a simple bulgar salad with plenty of fresh herbs and spices is spooned into an eggplant that has been cut in half and smeared with a heady Moroccan-style mixture of preserved lemon, garlic, and plenty of olive oil before broiling. On top is soy yogurt that I thickened a bit by letting sit in a cheesecloth over a colander for a few hours. (Its more like Greek yogurt this way, although I understand in the US "Greek-style" soy yogurt is now available in a lot of grocery stores.) This recipe is also super versatile. For my bulgar salad I soaked the bulgar in boiling water for about five minutes until it was "cooked" and then mixed it with a squeeze of harissa, a drizzle of pomegranate molases, and plenty of chopped mint and raisins. You could also use red pepper paste or tomato paste, some chopped green onions or finely chopped onion, or cilantro if you have them on hand. I think the spices on the eggplant could also be switched up for endless combos.

Still having some leftover eggplant and salad, I made a quickie baba ghanoush, baking the eggplant until totally black and mixing the soft flesh with garlic, lemon peel, and olive oil. Great lunch for one of the first sunny days in ages!
 

Song of the Day: Two Door Cinema Club- Something Good Can Work

Weeknight Delicacies

Don't get me wrong- I definitely don't miss being unemployed. But working sure puts a cramp in one's cooking style. It's one thing to whip up a fabulous dinner when you have all afternoon to putz around, boiling beans, caramelizing onions, or picking up exotic ingredients from lazy walks to the market. Now that I have a moderate level of employment that takes up the better part of a day, its sometimes a struggle to make something for dinner that is not totally half-assed. Luckily, this is where other people's hard work on recipes comes in  handy!

Sweet Potatoes and Onions with Garlicky Tahini Sauce

I just recently got a really lovely new cookbook from Berlin's biggest English bookstore, where I like to spend aimless Saturday's reading England's best-sellers, which include more than a few books about Downton Abbey as well as one too many books about World War II. As far as cookbooks, they usually have a bunch of Jamie bloody Oliver and Nigella Lawson picture books and use the metric system and its just not appealing to me. But this time they had a really huge and gorgeous cookbook called "Jerusalem" from Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi and I fell in love. Its not vegetarian, but its packed with vibrant combinations and fresh techniques and quite a few of them would only need some tweaking to make it suitable for vegans. The above recipe, the first one I tried, is broiled sweet potatoes and onions covered with a simple tahini sauce and spices... its pretty much a starter, but it was so delectable that I'm totally thrilled to try to the rest of the recipes, especially when Spring comes and we can get a decent tomato up in this joint.

Manhattan Glam Chowder

Another recipe genius I don't mind exploiting is Isa Chandra (Miss Moskowitz if yr nasty) who has a veritable treasure trove of quick and tasty (yet still exciting) weeknight meals. I've been particularly enjoying her soups lately, and especially those ones imitating fish soups. Last week I tried the Bouillabaisse with Roasted Yellow Squash as well as the Manhattan Glam Chowder from Appetite for Reduction (pictured.) Both rich, tomatoe-y and soul-satisfying, I would recommend both. (The Bouillabaisse was particularly surprising- who knew roasted squash was such a flavor booster? Not I.)

Spaghetti and Bean-balls with nooch

Also from Isa is the famous mock-meatballs "Spaghetti and Beanballs" from V'Con. Never tried this recipe before despite having worn out the book from cover to cover, and discovered it was an easy and crowd-pleasing weeknight supper, especially if you have your own favorite tomato sauce recipe down-pat.

Sweet Potato and Mushroom "Quesadillas"

I also came up with another simple after-work supper- Sweet Potato Quesadillas. This would be as flexible as the ingredients you have on hand. I sauteed some mushrooms, peppers, onions and garlic for a nice sofrito, while boiling a huge sweet potato, peeled and cut into chunks. When the sweet potato was fork-pieceable, I drained it and mashed it with a bit of soymilk, margarine, cinnamon and cumin.

To assemble and cook, you preheat an oiled frying pan to medium high heat and throw a tortilla in there. Plop some sweet potatoes in there and spread out a bit from the center, then add in the sofrito. Cover with the next tortilla and press gently to spread out the filling. After a 2-3 minutes, flip and fry on the other side until nicely browned. You could serve this with salsa or sour cream- I served it with smashed avocado and lime.

Domestic dominance and work aptitude? CHECK!

 Song of the Day: Two Door Cinema- What you know

Sweet Potato, Spinach, and Black Bean Enchiladas

I've gotta admit: I'm not that into guacamole anymore. I've just been burned too many times, you guys.

Here is Germany, ripe avocados aren't nearly as common or delicious as what I was used to growing up in Virginia. A lot of times you bring a few home excitedly only to find them totally rotten on the inside. Or you scoop up a few to ripen at home, only to find that they NEVER RIPEN.

I mean, I can't complain too hard. Its not exactly like I'm living in Barbados here and its somewhat to be expected that the less-than-tropical shores of 'Schland-land do not grow the world's best exotic produce. (And hey, just try to find such a variety of potatoes elsewhere.) I just bring it up to point out: when I do find an avocado, I don't think of making a big bowl of guac. I think: GARNISH. For ENCHILADAS.

This time, mixing it up from my usual combo of plantains, mushrooms and black beans, I went for a filling of sweet potatoes (cubed, sprinkled with cumin + cinnamon, baked), spinach (roughly chopped and sauteed with plenty of garlic until wilted) and black beans (rinsed, drained, and added to spinach.) Served with a drizzle of soy yogurt (its spicy, y'all!) and some creamy avocado, its enough to momentarily make me forget that Germany isn't a paradise.

Song of the Day: Aluna George- You know like it

Markthalle Neun

Inside the Markthalle, via http://www.markthalleneun.de/

Anytime you live in a neighborhood long enough, you are sure to witness some surface and demographic changes. Here in Berlin, those changes seem to take place at lightening speed.

Take my corner of Kreutzberg. When I moved in, it was a sleepy street with one cafe and a grubby burger stand, along with an abandoned betting office and barbershop. A few years later, the two closed storefronts became two insanely popular restaurants (pizza and tapas) that clog the sidewalks in summer time with mamph-ing tourists, street performers angling for change, and clumsy children playing dangerously close to traffic while their parents chug red wine. Not everyone is happy with the practically overnight shift- as exemplified by plentiful "Fuck tourists!" graffiti and the occasional screeching neighbor yelling out her window at drunken passerby, "Go back to America, Touristen-Schwein!"

There are also, obviously, more thoughtful critics of gentrification and rising rents, who point to the fact that long-time residents get pushed out by newcomers willing to pay higher rents, and shops hawking precious olive oils, soaps, and innovative forms of yoga.

I'm on board with debating about the issue, but I sometimes think that the tendency to blame foreigners for what are, essentially, real-estate and urban planning issues is a bit short sighted, and in the worst cases a cover for plain old xenophobia. I mean, really, isn't it a bit of a chicken and egg issue, blaming foreigners for raising rent? Like anyone comes to a country and wishes to pay more than locals do for housing? Shouldn't we rather be enlisting newcomers into neighborhood politics, instead of a knee-jerk reaction to alienate and blame them for long-standing political problems?

That brings me to Markthalle Neun, either one of the worst examples of yuppie gentrification OR an awesome urban renewal project, depending on who you talk to. (You can guess which side I stand on.)

A few years ago, a building on Eisenbahnstrasse was home to a discount grocery store and a tacky drugstore, both of which were crowded in the corner of a voluminous space that once housed a rowdy neighborhood market before the wall fell. After years of failure, the government decided to auction off the mostly empty space in 2009, until a gang of foodies decided to occupy it for their own purposes: to start a weekly market showcasing local produce and food artisans. Surprisingly, they won! (Score one for direct action!)

Although the first few years were shaky, with poor attendance and bad sales, Markthalle Neun has suddenly exploded. Now you have to wait in a line to get house-smoked local Barbeque, sample Spanish chickpea stew, or grab a giant slice of gluten fee cake. To me, the rambunctious atmosphere is refreshing after years of stifled potential inside of this picturesque building. If you are so inclined, you might view this hall, with all its young hip Italian and Spanish people hawking organic and gluten-free wares to hip young neighborhood parents with 5 bio-babies, an annoying example of gentrification. From my side though, I'm seeing a vibrant community meeting place, supporting small ethical businesses inside a once-abandoned building that could have just as easily been sold off to a corporation or made into lofts.

I went there this weekend with S. and was surprised to see new stalls, more people, and plenty of interesting vegan food on offer. But my favorite thing has been there since the beginning: Vegan Burger, a small stand featuring several types of smoothies and juices, and one kind of burger. The 'Sunday Burger' is a few slabs of marinated and grilled tofu, cucumbers, beets, sprouts, lettuce, and three homemade sauces (chipotle, peanut, and mango) all on a sturdy whole wheat bun. While chewing my delicious burger, sipping on a carrot-orange juice, and watching cute grubby kids play and grab at organic produce, I can't help but think that this is a giant improvement over cold empty space.

  

 Song of the Day: Blumfeld- Status Quo: Vadis

Red Wine Stew with Leek Dumplings

Not to sound complainy or anything, but I have never lived anywhere with such gleefully bad weather as Berlin. (And I've lived in Brussels, where it rains approximately 363 days a year.) Wintertime is really a struggle- no one wants to leave the house, everyone is getting sick or getting over being sick, and the few hours of daylight are dominated by bone-chilling temps and gloomy gray skies. Plus your bike freezes all the time, and all the stores close early because they think you ought to be inside anyways. (They are correct.)

HOWEVER. I am in an oddly upbeat mood and it annoys me deeply that the weather won't bother to even try matching me. (The Secret is bullshit people. You do not manifest your own reality.) Luckily, bitching about the weather only takes up, like, 50% of my mental energy. The rest is dedicated to devouring new books about alchemy, Yugoslavia, Victorian female authors, or whatever else peaks my promiscuous curiosity, and thinking about what to eat for dinner.

Yesterday I decided to create a thick, wintry stew containing three things that cheer me up in these dark times: lots of red wine, crispy leeks, and plenty of herbs. And why not some easy dumplings? It was excellent, and I'll give you the "recipe" but its gonna be pretty fast and loose and should be more of a idea-sparker because a) it was quite improvisational and b) might have drank a bit of the wine myself....


Red Wine Stew with Leek Dumplings
Stew:
Olive oil
1 onion, chopped
1 leek, white and white-ish parts, chopped
2-3 cloves garlic, diced
circa 2 c. mushrooms of any sort, sliced
4 medium potatoes, loosely chopped (about 2 cups)
4 carrots, peeled and sliced into rounds 
3-4 plum tomatoes, chopped
1/2 or 1 teaspoon each of the following (that you have handy):
      -smoked paprika
      -thyme
      -sage
      -rosemary
2 cups drinkable red wine
2 cups veg broth (or water and a veg bouillon cube) 
1 T. white miso
 1 14oz. can white beans
3 T. flour

Dumplings:
1 leek, white and inner green parts, chopped
1 c. flour
3/4 tsp. baking powder
pinch salt
3/4 c. soymilk

1.) Set up your stove with one frying pan and one large pot or Dutch oven. Set the frying pan to medium-low and drizzle with olive oil. When hot, add in leeks and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally, until they are wilted and some are browning a bit. Season with salt and remove from heat.

2.) While leeks are cooking you can already get going on the stew. Set large pot to medium heat and drizzle with olive oil. When hot, add in onions and the other leek, and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add in garlic and cook for a few minutes more before adding in mushrooms. Let the mushrooms brown for a bit (5-7 min.) and then add in the carrots, potatoes, tomatoes and herbs. Season with salt and pepper, and stir to coat vegetables with spices. Add in wine, broth, and miso paste. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer and let cook, stirring ocassionally for about 30 minutes.

3.) After stew has reduced, taste for seasoning and adjust if necessary. In a small bowl, spoon out a bit of the broth and mix together with flour until no lumps remain. Add back into stew, and cook for 5-10 minutes while you prepare dumplings.

4.) For dumplings, mix flour, salt and baking powder together in a bowl. Add in about a cups worth of leeks (eyeball it- you can reserve the rest of the leeks for garnish) and stir to coat with flour. Add in soymilk and stir together until "just mixed." Dough should not be too wet- add in more flour if necessary to make it sticky but not liquidy.

5.) Drop tablespoons-full of leek dough into simmering stew. (No need to be too precise, they won't turn out pretty anyways.) Cover, and cook for another 15 minutes or until dumplings are cooked through.

Serve a bowl of stew with a few leek dumplings and some extra crispy leeks as garnish. Oh yeah, and wine. Lotsa wine.

Song of the Day: Passion pit- Take a Walk

Migas in Portugal

Mama Celeste, a Portuguese cook

My Dad recently traveled to Nazare, Portugal for work, and also for part of his "making my daughter jealous tour." While there, he witnessed monster feats of surfing during the day and stuffed his face with homey cooking in the evenings. Ah, the life of a cameraman.

There was one dish, coincidentally vegan, that he really enjoyed at thought to share with me.

Mama Celeste in her element

He wrote the following:

"If you order fish in Nazare it comes with garlicky potatoes and Migas,.. it’s a mixture of cornbread, kale and black eyed peas that tastes great and is light and fluffy.

The cook, Mama Celeste, who feeds a ravenous band of surfer dudes every day at her restaurant that bears her name, shared her recipe.

Cornbread  sauteed in olive oil

Kale sauteed in garlic

Black eyed peas boiled and salted.

The whole thing gets stirred together in and heated for a moment in a black skillet."

The finished product!

Sounds pretty delicious and do-able, right? I'm going to have to add this to my repertoire of easy dinner dishes.

Frohes Neues Jahr!

Happy New Years,everyone!

That's my husband S, on our rooftop New Years Eve setting off fireworks to join the literally jillions going off all over the city in Berlin. New Years Eve here is completely crazy. IT IS CRAZY. Germans have NO FEAR of fire and shoot off rockets at each other for about a week leading up to the New Year, finally reaching a crescendo at midnight where the whole city momentarily seems to catch fire in a display that makes the 4th of July in the US look like a lit birthday cake. Its pretty terrifying, but everyone seems pretty used to it. (To wit, while standing on the roof, several rockets buzzed right pass our heads coming up from the park below and no one even paused from sipping their prosecco.)

Aside from a constant fear of death-from-above, I heartily enjoyed our New Years party which was mildly Southern-themed, complete with Gumbo-Z, black-eyed peas, cornbread, and dark-and-stormy cocktails (a heady mixture of dark rum and ginger beer.) For those that missed out on the food it probably just seemed alcohol-themed, but it was definitely a hearty entry into the new year with lots of good friends from Berlin and all over. By 6am it devolved into a wild dance party but, and this bodes well for the new year as well, our neighbors didn't care.

And as for 2012, good riddance! I am so ready to move into a new year, which is hopefully the year in which I get an awesome job, perfect my German, and learn to cook new exciting dishes, rather than repeat the same lasagna-stirfry-pumpkin soup pattern that is my wont. No, this year will be about shaking things up, remembering to take the vitamin B12 pills, and trying new things! 

Hope you guys are as excited as I am!

Hot Knives Mac and Cheese

Oh man, US Elections are so much more fun from the US! I was totally excited to try to stay up until 6 last week and watch how a close race played out in my home state of Virginia. I went to a local bar where they were broadcasting US news and serving pancakes all night long. However, by 3am I was pretty drunk and tired of standing around with Berlin's entire American and British population in a bar the size of my kitchen, straining for a peek at CNN. So instead I passed out "early" (ie, before any swing state came in) and the next morning while passing me the coffee my husband commented casually, "oh by the way, did you see Obama won?"

Aaaargh. Its a total drag trying to translate American pleasures to a foreign context.

But its ok. I'm already looking forward to coming home over the holidays and partaking in the most American, female, East Coast possible activity- going to see Les Mis in the theaters the day after Christmas (of COURSE.) And until then, I have vegan mac and cheese. Did you guys see that Hot Knives posted a to-die-for new mac and cheese recipe with BEER? This may just replace my standard Vegan Yum Yum version. With leeks and carrots on the side its comfort food for the absentee voter.

Hot Knives: Perfecting Vegan Mac and Cheese

Song of the Day: Bombay Bicycle Club- Shuffle

Vegan Mofo: Green Goddess Dressing

So I've been on a garlic kick recently (like for the last 18 years or so). However, I am almost never on a salad kick. I don't know why, but salads just don't excite me the way that a good stew or casserole does. However! This is really dumb because I happen to live in a place where truly fancy salad greens like mache, arugula, butter lettuce, endives, ect are all totally commonplace and cheap.

Its kind of like how you can buy a stick of Brussels sprouts at Whole Foods for like $4.99, and a huge bag of them are like $.99 here in Berlin. (Chalk it up to being closer to Brussels, I guess.)

My point is, I should be exploiting this price difference to my advantage and eating my weight in fancy field greens! Yet, I often think of a salad as a pale side to a rich dinner.

Not today though! I've been working my way through Appetite for Reduction (insert obligatory gushing about Isa Chandra Moskowitz here) and she has a whole range of interesting salad dressings to try from. And her garlicky Green Goddess Dressing is truly a thing of beauty. With peppery parsley, creamy tahini and tons of garlic, its enough to even drive my salad-hating hubby to steal from my bowl.

This one is going in the permanent rotation.

Song of the Day: Taylor Swift- We are Never Getting Back Together

Vegan Mofo- Ginger Apple Cupcakes w/ Peanut Butter Icing

Guys, I know I should probably branch out a little from cupcakes. Aside from being calory-laden and packed with sugar, they are ubiquitous in the vegan world and beyond.

But the thing is, I'm so good at them! Its like the one dessert I have on lock! I make pies on very special summer days, I occasionally make cookies, and I've been known to make a real size cake when the mood strikes, but there's is nothing that I can whip up in 45 minutes flat like cupcakes. Cupcakes, once you get the hang of them, are ridiculously simple and can be altered to contain whatever is clogging your kitchen- plums, fig jam, cashews, wasabi.... (Well, I haven't tried that last one.)

Anyways, the obvious reason for my comfort and ease in the cupcake realm is because of the by now infamous tome 'Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World' by the Moskowitz/ Romero power house. I mean, it hardly bears mentioning since you ALL have this book. And like many of you, having familiarized myself with some of the basic cupcakes recipes, I can now invent cupcakes at whim with simple substitutions and combos.

So yesterday I felt the need for some fall-apple goodness, and decided to alter the Gingerbread cupcakes I love so dearly, subbing out diced crystallized ginger with diced apple. On top of this spicy, apple-filled cake I piped the luscious, crack-like peanut butter icing that is now taunting me from my kitchen.

They are very delicious. And now I have 12 11 of them. Maybe it is really time to step away from the cupcakes. Luckily, my good friend SMP has gifted me with an awesome ice cream maker AND a vegan ice cream cookbook, so now I have the perfect excuse to branch out into new arenas...

Song of the Day: Ronald Jenkees- Stay Crunchy

Vegan Mofo: Sweet Potato w/ Apple Corn Salsa

Hey guys! Just a normal Monday night, nothing too exciting but as its Vegan Mofo I will share my simple dinner. This was a baked sweet potato with some garlicky kale and "apple corn salsa" which is actually really good. You just saute some chopped red onion and add in a chopped apple and a handful of corn. Salt and pepper it up, then when everything is well-cooked add in a splash of balsamic vinegar.

The kale was also special because its super-rare in Berlin (at least, as far as I can tell.) I found a stand at the Farmers Market last week selling it so I bought a metric ton and froze it so I can have kale all winter!

Hurrah! Not every day can be exciting. :P

Song of the Day: Nie Mehr- CRo