Tastebud Tickle

Wordless Wednesday: Morocco

2011-07-27T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Melk, Austria

2011-07-20T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Morocco

2011-07-13T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Arizona, USA

2011-07-06T06:07:00.002+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Signs of Life

2011-06-29T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Volubilis Morocco

2011-06-22T06:07:00.001+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Korcula, Croatia

2011-06-15T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Arizona

2011-06-08T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Morocco

2011-06-01T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Moo from Flagstaff, AZ USA

2011-05-25T06:07:00.000+02:00

Worless Wednesday: Rome

2011-05-18T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Arizona, USA

2011-05-11T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: The Road

2011-05-04T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Signs of Life

2011-04-27T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Morocco

2011-04-20T06:07:00.000+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Death Valley, CA USA

2011-04-13T06:07:00.002+02:00

Wordless Wednesday: Signs of Life

2011-04-06T06:07:00.000+02:00

I have a thing about funny signs. You'll probably see lots of them on this blog.

Wordless Wednesday: Croatia

2011-03-30T06:07:00.002+02:00

Monday Reads

2011-03-28T13:57:00.000+02:00

I'm starting something new here.

Every Monday, I'm going to try to list a few of the interesting things I've found on the Internet to read. It's a way for me to go through my boomarked recipes to remind myself to cook them. Perhaps you'll beat me to it? Let me know if you do. Otherwise, it's things that have come across my Google Reader or were passed along to me by others.

Have a great week!

Nicole

Melinda from One Green Generation lists 20 Uses for Baking Soda. The rest of her blog has lots of useful tips for how to live a bit greener, a bit simpler, and save some money, too.
Is that antique silver tableware sitting in a drawer somewhere under a special polish cloth never getting used? This lovely little post might get you rethinking about how you think about your silverware. Antique is the new green.
Travel head pillow. Be prepared to laugh.

Recipes I'm drooling over & hope to make soon:

Asparagus & Arugula Salad I saw asparagus just the other day at the grocery store!
Rhubarb Crisp
Asparagus & Egg Breakfast Tart
Spinach Quinoa Muffins Spinach has disappeared from the grocery stores and probably won't show up for a while, but these just look so tasty that I'm tempted to make them with frozen spinach.

The first basils and cilantros are here!

2011-03-24T11:31:00.010+01:00

I went grocery shopping this morning to pick up some things for a green smoothie post that I'll be doing and what did I see? Organic Austrian basil and cilantro! I wasn't expecting them to show up in the shops for another month at the earliest. You can find fresh basil in Vienna all year round, but it's been shipped from Sicily or Spain and is definitely not organic. Cilantro, now that's a different story. It disappears. It usually shows up in late April and hangs out until October, when poof it disappears. There's not even relief by growing it yourself on the windowsill, there aren't enough daylight hours in Vienna. I've been craving Thai food with cilantro, salsa, homemade pesto, caprese salads, the list goes on. Leaving the cilantro out an substituting dried for the fresh basil, just doesn't cut it. I don't have to wait much longer. I know that chilies and really good tomatoes will be coming along shortly. Oh why didn't I start some in February?

See how green they are?

How happy?

I feel like the cilantro is waving at me.

Yes, today is going to be a good day indeed. To celebrate, the sun even came out.

Omu Rice Deconstructed

2011-03-22T15:53:00.014+01:00

I've been thinking about Japan lately, and who hasn't? The events are devastating.

I have two old friends from university who live there. I've heard from one that she is alright; the other I don't know how to get in touch with. We've lost touch over the years, but I hope she's alright and wonder how she is. Two other friends from here in Austria were in Tokyo when the earthquake struck, but are now back in Vienna. Thank goodness.

So I've been thinking about Japan--the people I know and about the times I spent with them. Both of my friends I met on semesters abroad, but not at the same time. A ~~few years ago~~, uh, way back in 2000 (God, has it really been almost 11 years?), I spent a semester abroad in China with one of the girls, the one I've had contact with, and she introduced me to omu rice. It was one of the reliably good vegetarian options available as delivery on Peking University's campus. On the way home from that semester, I stopped in Japan and stayed with the second friend, the one I've lost touch with, for about a week. I told her about my new found love for omu rice, and she showed me how to make it. I'd like to share it with you. It's easy, quick and completely surprising.

What comes to mind when you think of Japanese food?

...

Sushi. Raw fish. Noodles. Miso soup. Am I right?

I would bet that you didn't think of omelets. I originally didn't either, and I still wouldn't if I never had been introduced to omu rice while studying in China.

I was told omu rice (by the way it was spelled OmRice on the Chinese restaurant's menu) is basically an omelet with fried rice. And that it was, but the rice was pink. Yep, pink. I didn't think too much of it and figured it was some type of sauce. I loved the stuff though and every time we ordered in, I always ordered OmRice. It wasn't until I learned how to cook it that I learned what that secret pink/red sauce was....

Any guesses?

Ketchup.

I know! I was in shock, too. Here I thought I'd been eating some great new foreign Japanese rice sauce, and it turns out to be plain, ole ketchup.

You probably won't believe me, but I swear ketchup and fried rice is delish and that this is actually how the Japanese eat it. Omu rice is a staple on children's (and some grown-up) menus in restaurants around Japan and in Japanese homes as it's made quickly from things you already have on hand. I don't know how omu rice got to be a staple, quick food for the Japanese, but it has made it's way from their kitchens into mine.

Omu rice (or ome rice, short for omuraisu, a.k.a. omelet rice) is a crêpe style omelet wrapped around fried rice seasoned with ketchup. Sometimes things like vegetables, cooked chicken, hot dogs, onions, etc. are fried with the rice. There is also often a big blob of ketchup on top of the omelet.

Trust me on this one, it's really great. And kids especially will love it.

Here is a clip from the Japanese movie Tampopo (Dandelion), where a guy makes omuraise with chopsticks. I wish I could fold an omelet like that!

It's supposedly a Japanese comedy filled with food, a love of life and cultural differences. I think it sounds like my kind of movie.

I don't speak Japanese, but according to YouTube the dialogue is as follows:

- You're not eating much, sonny. Can I fix you something? What do you want?
- A rice omelet.
- Rice omelet. Hmm. Okay, follow me.

I'm going to give you two versions of omurice, both with quinoa (perhaps we should change the name to omukinoa?). It's what I had on hand when I thought of omurice; I'm certain other grains work just as well. I've also added a bit of chili powder as I like things spicy. We don't eat much ketchup in our house so we rarely have it, and I'm not about to go buy a bottle of ketchup just for one recipe. If you do have ketchup, feel free to use it to replace the sweetener (optional) and tomato paste.

This is a really easy recipe and great to have on your fingertips for those times when you open the fridge and don't know what to make or you have a bit of left over rice and don't know what to do with it.

Omukinoa
(printable version)
Notes: Yes, I made that name up. As for the sweetener, honey, molasses, maple syrup, white, brown sugar are fine; they all work. I've also just left the sweetener out. I think a bit of Mirin would work nicely, if you have it. I use whatever vegetables I need to use up so take this recipe as a starting point.

Prep time: <5 min
Cooking time: 5-10 min
Servings: 1-2
Ingredients:

1 tablespoon oil
small piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
1-2 cloves of garlic
1 2-inch piece of zucchini, chopped
1 small carrot
1-2 savoy cabbage leaves, shredded
1-2 cups left-over quinoa (substitute rice or other grain)
2-3 tablespoon(s) tomato paste
approx. 1 teaspoon sweetener (optional, see note)
1-2 teaspoons cayenne pepper or chili powder
½ - 1 teaspoon soy sauce
salt & pepper
toasted sesame oil
2-4 eggs
milk

Instructions
Heat oil in medium skillet.
Add ginger and garlic. Heat until fragrant. Add vegetables. Fry until they start to brown. Add quinoa. Stir with a spatula or wooden spoon. When the quinoa starts to fry, add the tomato paste, sugar, cayenne pepper, soy sauce. Mix in well. Salt & pepper to taste. Sprinkle with toasted sesame oil. Set aside.

In a small bowl, combine eggs with a splash of milk. Scramble them lightly with a fork. Pour them into a hot, well-oiled, skillet. As you pour, move the pan back and forth, keeping the eggs moving over the bottom of the skillet. Then (I like to use a rubber spatula, but a fork is good) swirl the eggs constantly. Best results come from moving the pan and stirring all at the same time. When the eggs have set and are cooked to your liking, carefully tip the pan and slide them onto a plate.

Fill the omelet no more than half full with the quinoa mixture. Fold the omelet in half and arrange the remaining quinoa around the omelet.

The following version is good for a quick breakfast or big snack.

Omu Rice Deconstructed
(printable version)
Notes: This is what I made for breakfast one day. Amounts are not really exact. Feel free to play around with them. As for the sweetener, honey, molasses, maple syrup, white, brown sugar are fine; they all work.
Prep time: <5 min
Cooking time: 5 min
Servings:

Ingredients:
small piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
left-over quinoa (substitute rice or other grain)
1-2 eggs
olive or peanut oil
1-2 tablespoon(s) tomato paste
1 teaspoon sweetener (optional)
1-2 teaspoon(s) cayenne pepper (substitute chili powder)
Seasoning (some suggestions are salt & pepper, a pinch of Japanese green tea ground between your fingers, toasted & shredded nori, a sprinkle of soy sauce, or a mix of all of the above)

Instructions

Heat oil in medium skillet. Add quinoa. Stir with a spatula or wooden spoon. When it starts to fry, add the tomato paste and sugar. Add cayenne pepper. Mix in well. Add a pinch or two of crumbled Japanese green tea, salt & pepper to taste. When fried, put into a bowl.

In the same pan (add a bit of oil if necessary), cook ginger until fragrant, but not browned. Crack the individual eggs, keeping the yolk intact, over the ginger. Fry the egg.

Top the fried quinoa with the fried egg. Sprinkle some blackened sesame seeds, a bit of toasted sesame oil, and toasted nori over the top. Voila! Breakfast is served.

If you liked this one, here are some other omuraise recipes on the web(warning: not all are vegetarian):

Just Hungry's Omuraisu
Just Bento's Special Occasion Omurice
Just Hungry's Tampopo Omuraisu

© 2011 Nicole

"Chicken" a.k.a. tempeh enchiladas

2010-09-22T12:10:00.001+02:00

That's tempeh the food, not a mispelling of the city in Arizona.

I've introduced M to Mexican food and while he doesn't quite get the difference between enchilada, fajita, burrito, etc., he loves it all. His favorite is still tostada night when I make some refried beans, salsa and guacamole, cut up some tomatoes & lettuce, grate some cheese, and put out sour cream. This time I thought I try something new - enchiladas. And while I love cheese enchiladas, sometimes you need something a bit heartier and so when a friend pointed out a chicken enchilada recipe, I decided to change it up a bit.

To replace the chicken, I used tempeh, which is a fantastic substitute for chicken in most recipes and for people who just don't like tofu. It's originally from Indonesia and is made with soy beans instead of curd like tofu. It has it's own taste, unlike tofu, and is firm, sort of chewy and has kernels of soybean in it. You'll want to boil tempeh for 10 15 minutes before including it in most recipes.

You'll need a few ingredients that aren't that easy to find in Austria. For one, soft corn tortillas. I have yet to find a place that sells them. I make them from scratch. A corn tortilla recipe is coming soon; I promise! You'll also need green chilis. Luckily, I've found the pointy bell peppers from Hungary or even, in a pinch, the jarred, whole green chilis are a decent substitute.

I managed this whole thing in one evening including making tortillas and the sauce, but I would recommend making the sauce and tortillas ahead of time. Both can be frozen and can be used as the basis of many different Mexican recipes.

"Chicken" a.k.a. tempeh enchiladas

Adapted from: Green-Sauced Chicken Enchiladas
Notes: Make the tortillas and sauce first if you haven't already. You can chop the onions and shred the cheese while the sauce is simmering. If you can at all find them or make them, corn tortillas will turn out much better than flour tortillas. Flour tortillas will tend to get a bit mushy. Please try to find a good quality cheddar cheese - from Ireland if you're in Europe. Most of the cheddar cheese that's sold in Austrian grocery stores is a poor cousin to good cheddar cheese. You can substitute however a mix of Vorarlberger Bergkäse and Emmental.
Prep time: 10 min (not including time for the sauce)
Cooking time: 15 min; in the oven.
Servings: 4
Ingredients:

Tempeh enchiladas
8 6-inch or 10 5-inch corn tortillas

green enchilada sauce (see below for recipe)

1 1/2 cup / 200 g / 7 oz. shredded cheddar cheese
200 g / 7 oz. of tempeh

olive oil or similar to grease your cooking pan

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 177°C / 350°F.

Chop tempeh into dice sized cubes. Bring a small pot of water with the tempeh to boil and boil for 10 to 15 min. Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile on a very hot, dry cast iron griddle or non-stick pan, heat the tortillas on each side until warm and pliable; about 1 min.

Spread about 1 to 2 tablespoons of enchilada sauce, enough to cover each tortillas completely. On top of that add about 1 tablespoon of shredded cheeses. Roll up the tortilla and place it, seam side down, into the corner of a greased casserole dish. Repeat until all of the tortillas are used up. You should have approx. half of the cheese and a bit more than half of the sauce left over.

Crumble the drained tempeh with your fingers over the top of the rolled up enchiladas. Spread the remaining sauce over the tempeh. Cover with the remaining cheddar cheese.

Bake at 177°C/350°F for 15 min.

Green-chili enchilada sauce
Adapted from: Green Enchilada Sauce
Notes: The original recipe called for roasting fresh green chilis in the oven and removing their skins. While that probably tastes delish, it takes forever and fresh chilis weren't available in the grocery store. I replaced it with jarred peppers that I drained and quickly browned on a dry non-stick pan. It worked out just fine and saved me a lot of time.
Prep time: 15 min
Cooking time: 20 min; simmering on the stove.
Servings: 3 cups / 700 ml
Ingredients:

600 g jarred green chilis
2 small or 1 large onions
2 medium tomatoes
6 garlic cloves

1/2 cup / 120 ml water
3/4 teaspoon salt

InstructionsDrain the jarred chilis. On a dry non-stick pan over medium high heat, brown the chilis. Set aside to cool. Finely slice or chop the onions. Chop the tomatoes. Mince the garlic. Chop the cooled chilis.
Place all of the ingredients in a medium sized sauce pan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer for 20 min. Using a stand mixer, blend until it is a thick sauce.

Tomato Provençale

2010-09-20T11:43:00.005+02:00

I served these tomatoes with my spoon bread I made other day. They are really easy, but need a while to sit around and soak up seasoning and drain. It worked out well as spoon bread needs an hour in the oven, but I might be tempted in the future to skip the whole draining thing or at least shorten it.

Basically this is breadless garlic bread. So if you're still trying to go low-carb, this might be for you. I don't have any amounts listed because it really depends on how many tomatoes you are making and your individual taste buds. I LOVE garlic. I probably eat too much of it, so unless you're off fighting off vampires, you'd never probably put as much in as I would. It's also heading to the end of basil season around here so I was very generous in how much basil I used just so that I use up everything on my plant before the winter kicks in.

Tomatoes Provençale

Prep time: 10 min + up to 1 hour draining
Cooking time: 15 min

Big, ripe tomatoes
Fresh Provençale herbs - basil is a must, then maybe rosemary, lavender, thyme, etc.
Dried Oregano

Garlic
Olive oil or melted butter
salt and pepper

Instructions
In a small bowl, press the garlic, add a pinch or two of oregano and enough olive oil to brush on all of your tomatoes. Set aside for a moment.

Wash and cut your tomatoes into thick, horizontal slices. Set them on a rack to drain; salt and pepper both sides generously.

Wash, remove from the stems, and finely chop the fresh herbs.

Brush each tomato slice on both sides with the olive oil mixture. The on one side, add a layer of herbs on each slice. Top with any remaining garlic or olive oil. Let the tomatoes drain on the rack for up to one hour, at room temperature.

Preheat oven to 177°C/350°F. Place the tomatoes under the broiler for a few minutes until brown, turn the heat back down to 177°C/350°F and bake for 15 min on the middle rack. Serve immediately.

Spoon bread à la Nicole with tomato provençale

2010-09-16T11:42:00.015+02:00

On Sunday mornings in Harlem, New York lines wind around several street corners for those waiting to get into the Abyssinian Gospel Church. One of the times my friends and I lined up to go to this church, the church filled up before we got in. So what did we do? We went to a great little restaurant serving Southern brunch. Despite having lived in Texas, that was my first taste of spoon bread - not at all a bread, but a cross somewhere between a soufflé and cornbread and polenta.

Spoon bread is one of those home-cooking recipes that has as many variations as there are families living in the South. It seems everyone has their secret ingredient or method of turning out a truly fantastic crusty, yet soft spoon bread. I didn't grow up in a spoon bread eating family, but after last night. M's & my family will be.

At its most basic, spoon bread is cornmeal, milk and eggs. However, there are lots of variations with things like buttermilk, corn, or onions and cheese thrown in. Besides being easy, this is the great thing about this recipe. It's a great way to use up leftovers. In fact the original recipe, called for 1 cup of cooked rice or millet. It seems I always have at least a cup of rice left over after I cook and I never know what to do with it. Now I do!

I really encourage you to be creative with this recipe. Make it à la Mexican, à la Italian, make it plain & serve with a green salad for hot summer days, pour a hearty mushroom sauce on top in the winter, fry some in a pan for breakfast the next morning. I think some green chilies, Monterrey jack cheese and a salsa poured on top would be delish!

I served mine with Tomato Provençale--otherwise known as breadless garlic bread. That'll be the recipe for the next post.

Spoon bread à la Nicole

Inspired by: Joy of Cooking, 1975 ed., Rice or millet spoon bread, p. 629, and the little voices in my own head.
Notes: This is a very flexible batter; add to it as you want or leave it plain with just corn and cornmeal. Feel free to substitute other cooked grains than rice or millet. If you use buttermilk instead of regular milk, add in 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda.
Prep time: 5 - 10 min; depending on if you want to chop some veggies and onions
Cooking time: 1 hour; in the oven.
Servings: 6

Ingredients:

Basic spoon bread & cooked grains
1-2 cups / ~200-400g of cooked rice or millet
1/4 cup / ~40 g cornmeal
2 cups / 0.5 L milk
1 teaspoon of salt
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons of melted butter or olive oil
spoon bread à la Nicole
1 bunch of green onions
1 medium red bell pepper
~1/4 cup / 50g mozzarella

Instructions
Preheat your oven to 177°C / 350°F.

Wash the vegetables. Chop off the roots of the green onions and coarsely chop the remainder along the diagonal. Remove the top of the bell pepper and clean out the ribs and seed inside, discard. Chop the pepper into small pieces. Shred or dice the mozzarella. Combine vegetables and cheese with the remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Stir to combine well. Pour into a large oven-safe dish. (I found the 2 tablespoons of olive oil enough to not have it stick to my glass dish, but you may want to lightly grease it first.) Stir again so that the ingredients are evenly spread.

Place in oven, uncovered for 50-60 minutes until the top is crispy and brown. Cool slightly before serving.

Serve with Tomato Provençale, a mushroom sauce, a green or tomato salad.

Steamy sides: Vegetable Knödel "dumplings"

2010-04-01T21:02:00.002+02:00

I think if there is any common denominator to all cuisines, it would have to be the dumpling. Whether you call them dumpling, gnocchi, matzah balls, sambusa, tortellini, pierogi, wontons, jiaozi, potstickers, Knödel, Spätzle, Knöpfle, momo, or gyoza, they are all basically the same - "cooked balls of dough," to quote Wikipedia. Some are based on potatoes, some on flour or meal and still others on bread. You can do almost anything with dumplings - fry, bake, boil, steam, heck you could probably even grill them if you got creative.

Considering they are such a basic aspect of so many different cuisines, it might come as a surprise that dumplings scare me to death. They are one of the culinary mysteries that I sort of shunned for a long time. My first dumplings were probably of the Italian variety - gnocchi, tortelloni & co. , all of which I didn't originally realize were dumplings and have at least in the case of gnocchi have a reputation of being difficult to make. The first dumplings I ran into, that I knew were dumplings, were Chinese dumplings. In the 5 months I studied abroad in Beijing, I literally devoured my weight in dumplings. It doesn't hurt that one orders them by the jin, 500g or a little more than a pound. They were beautiful and delicate and intricate. The women in the university cafeteria and different restaurants could be seen quickly pressing the dough together and forming different shaped dumplings. No way could I ever match that. Turns out mine aren't as pretty, but M & I can make pretty mean Chinese dumplings if given a free Sunday afternoon. But that's for another post.

When I moved here to Austria, I became introduced to a whole new sort of dumplings - Spätzle, Knödel, Nockerl, Knöpfle, etc. Some like Spätzle and Knöpfle are almost pasta-like - dough you drop into boiling water and wait until they rise. This seems to be another common denominator when boiling dumplings. You plop them into boiling water and wait until they come back up. Other Austrian dumplings are formed into ball some as small as golf balls, others as large as a baseball. Sometimes the filling is in the middle, especially for sweet deserts, other times they are mixed all the way through.

I don't know why I hesitated so long in making Knödel. I had heard horror stories about them falling apart in the boiling water and just thought no way can I make them as well as my father-in-law. Well, I haven't attempted my father-in-laws baseball-sized versions, but I made my own veggie friendly beautiful and cute little dumplings. They were so easy and not a single one fell apart in the boiling water, all were thoroughly cooked and all were devoured! Go me!

Knödel are very typical Austrian so I used some very typical Austrian ingredients: Gelbe Rüben - yellow Austrian carrots and Bärlauch - in English: wild garlic or bear's garlic. Bärlauch, by the way, is easy to grow, plant some seeds under a shady tree in the fall and wait until spring. It will come back year after year. The smaller leaves are more flavorful than the large ones.

Here I must apologize for the bad pictures. M & I were having a pick-nick on our living room floor, because it rained so much and before I remembered to take pictures, we had devoured all, but a few!! Trust me, they were beautiful. The green of the wild garlic and the purples, oranges and yellows of the carrots mixed well.

How to serve Knödel: Oh! the possibilities are endless, just like dumplings themselves. One option is to melt some butter over them & serve with a salad. Another is to chop them into large chunks after cooking and then fry them in oil with some scrambled eggs and chopped onion. If you are a carnivore, pour some gravy on top and serve as a side to meat. Really whatever you like. They also freeze well if not yet cooked. When ready to cook, just plop the frozen Knödel in boiling water and wait for it to float up to the top. Are you seeing a pattern here?

Vegetable Knödel adapted from Adamah Organic Veggie Box Recipe Flyer KW 13/10
Notes: When choosing your root vegetables, choose some that you would eat raw as they are only getting cooked for a short time or pre-cook them. Carrots and parsnips are great choices. This recipe calls for Topfen (Austrian)/Quark (German). This is a cheese curd, sort of a cross between yogurt and cream cheese, but a bit sour like sour cream. Quark is sold in some gourmet groceries in the US, but you can also substitute plain cream cheese, but it will be less tangy or mix 4 parts ricotta with 1 part sour cream. If you're adventurous, you can try making your own Topfen - I haven't tried it though since Topfen is readily available in Vienna. As to the flour, feel free to substitute with white flour.
Prep time: 7-10 min + 20 min resting period
Cooking time: 5-7 min
Servings: approx. 18 golf-sized dumplings

5-6 small-medium carrots or other root vegetables
1 large garlic clove
1 small onion
1-3 tablespoons fresh herbs, chopped
2 egg yolks
150 g /~1 cup Quark or Topfen, drained if necessary
3 tablespoons milk
130g / ~1 cup sifted, whole wheat flour
Salt & pepper

Finely grate the carrots or chop them in a food processor. Finely chop the garlic and onion. In a large bowl, combine carrots, garlic, onion and herbs.

In a separate bowl, mix the egg yolks, Topfen/Quark and milk. Add to the vegetables and mix well. Salt & pepper to taste. Add flour and mix well. Everything should be covered, but it won't be like a dough. Set it aside for 15-20 min. Whole grain flours will need the full 20 min. This allows the flavors and the liquid to penetrate the flour all the way through. In the meantime, grab yourself a glass of Grüner Veltliner and say thanks for the wonders of fermented grapes.

After the resting period, start boiling a big pot of salted water. Adjust the dumpling dough as necessary by adding a bit of milk or flour as necessary. The dough should stick together easily, be a bit sticky, but still manageable. Form the dough into balls about as big as a golf ball. When the water is boiling, lower the temperature to just higher than a simmer - still boiling, but not full speed. With a slotted spoon drop those babies in the water, don't fill the pot too full. Step back and wait for them to pop back up. Most of my Knödel were finished in about 5 minutes. Take them out with a slotted spoon. Serve with melted butter. Enjoy!

Red onion, pear, swiss chard and walnut pizza

2010-03-16T14:37:00.004+01:00

So last week I did a bit of a healthy makeover of a grilled cheese sandwich. This week pizza is up to bat.

I love pizza. I could literally devour an entire large pizza smothered in yummy, delish, slightly browned and melting cheese. Probably not the healthiest thing to do though. Did you know that one slice of pizza is a serving size? And we're not talking those slices you get in NY city - those are almost a quarter of a pizza.

Pizza doesn't have to be all unhealthy. To tackle the portion size issue, I make my pizzas into little individual pizzas - nothing like lying to yourself that you've just eaten a whole pizza. I feel like I've indulged, but I haven't had more than the equivalent of 1-2 slices. For the dough, try to find a whole wheat dough or make your own and swap out at least half of the flour for whole wheat. Use a healthy and tasty oil like olive oil. Then, load up on the veggies. Be creative, here in Austria corn and an egg, sunny-side-up, are favorite toppings. Corn is delish! Then comes the hard part. Put less cheese on there than you think you need. I promise it won't be missed.

Now to putting salad on your pizza, try out some of your winter greens - Swiss chard, kale, spinach. There a bit tougher and can hold their own against the heat. More sensitive greens like arugula/rocket should be added at the very last few minutes of oven time.

To make this recipe, I mixed in a handful of baby spinach in with chard, which worked really well. I thought I had prepped too much greens and sort of panicked when I looked at the 7 cups of chopped greens. I'm happy I made so much though, they really wilted during the cooking.

For the pizza bottoms, you'll need 6 rounds of approximately 6-7 inches each. For a quick meal, grab the pre-made ones from the store or try making them from scratch. Here's the pizza dough recipe I use the most.

This is a beautiful and delish recipe. It goes pretty fast, so be ready with everything before you begin. That's why I separated the vegetable prep in this recipe. This is great for a family dinner or when you want to make something casual, but still special for when a guest comes over. It will even keep for lunch the next day, wrapped in foil, in the fridge. Reheat in a hot oven.

What do you serve with salad on pizza? Well a salad and red wine of course! Try a baby spinach, walnut and pear salad with an olive oil, mustard and apple-raspberry vinegar and a bottle of Austrian Zweigelt. That's what we did. Enjoy!

What are your favorite pizza toppings?

Salad on Pizza

Notes: Any tougher greens - spinach, kale, radish and beet tops, etc. can be used in place of or with the Swiss chard. Vorarlberger Bergkäse can be bought in the USA at Murray's in New York. While in Austria it's possible to get Bergkäse made without animal rennet, Murray's only carries one with animal rennet. Substitute any slightly stronger, but not overpowering cheese.
Prep time: 20 min (mostly washing and chopping vegetables)
Cooking time: 10 min + 4-5 min per pizza
Servings: 6

1/4 of a yellow onion
1-2 cloves of garlic
Swiss chard, 1 medium-sized bunch, washed and dried
3 pears, medium or 1 can of pears, unsweetened and drained
1 red onion, small
4 tablespoons shredded Vorarlberger Bergkäse (Austrian Mountain Cheese)
5 tablespoons walnuts
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
6 6-inch pizza rounds
salt and pepper
rosemary, dried and crushed
Instructions
Preheat your oven to 220°C / 425°F.
Vegetable prep
Peel and chop the yellow onion and garlic. Wash the Swiss chard, remove the stem and center rib. Retain half of them and chop into small pieces. Add to the onion and garlic (remaining stems can be used in other recipes). Roughly chop the green leaves. You need approx. 7 cups of greens.

Peel, core and chop pears into large chunks. Add to the greens. Peel and cut the red onion in half and slice into thin half-circles. Grate or crumble cheese. Chop the walnuts. Set each aside individually.

Cooking pizza
Brush one tablespoon of olive oil on all of the pizza rounds (in total; not one tablespoon per pizza round). Slightly salt and add a pinch of dried rosemary. Place in the oven until toasted, approx. 3 min for pre-cooked rounds; 7-8 for uncooked rounds. Remove from oven and set aside.

In a large pan, heat remaining 2 tablespoons of oil over medium-high heat. Add onions, garlic and chopped Swiss chard stems and heat until onions are translucent, approx. 1-2 minutes.

Lower heat to medium. Add greens and pears. Cook until greens wilt and pears are soft, approx. 4 minutes. Season with salt, pepper and dried rosemary.
Layer a bit of cooked greens on each pizza. Top with remaining red onions and cheese.

Return to the oven for approx. 4-5 minutes, or just until the cheese is melted. Top with walnuts and serve.

Gourmet grilled cheese

2010-03-12T06:00:00.044+01:00

Here's another quick recipe for a great lunch or a low-key evening dinner when everyone is running around crazy with a million things to do. If Camembert is a bit too much for you, try out some Brie. And by all means, if you are set on cheddar, then use that. Just make certain any cheese you use is ripe; in the case of Camembert and Brie, you don't want it hard, you want it soft and a bit runny.

I recommend serving the sandwiches with a mixed lettuce salad, tossed in a light vinaigrette. The cheese makes these sandwiches quite heavy in the stomach. You'll need something light and fresh to even it out. If everyone's really hungry, cream of tomato soup is what Mom always made us with the traditional cheddar cheese version of grilled cheese sandwiches.

Get someone to help you assemble all of the sandwiches and then one after the other grill them in a pan. Put them under a broiler so that they are all warm at the same time and the cheese can finish melting. I'll admit these are even good cold the next morning when heading out the door to work.

Gourmet Grilled Cheese Sandwiches loosely adapted from Saving Dinner: Winter Vegetarian E-Book
Notes: If not using sliced bread, slice your whole grain loaf as thin as you can. In the pan, the cheese won't melt all the way because there is so much loaded up on there. That's what's the broiler for at the end. If you have it, ghee or clarified butter, will give you really top results. Ghee has a higher smoke point than normal butter and will give you more even browning. Butter or any other healthy oil will substitute just fine. If you've got an indoor grill or sandwich maker, this recipe would be a prime candidate to try it out.
Prep time: 15 min
Cooking time: 10 min per sandwich
Servings: 5-6 sandwiches

1-2 cloves garlic
salt & pepper
Sundried tomatoes, in oil (reserve 2 teaspoons of oil)
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
5-6 walnuts, shelled
10-12 slices of whole grain bread, thinly sliced
1/2 a round of ripe Camembert
1 jar roasted red peppers
2-3 tablespoons chopped chives
Enough hard cheese to make 5-6 sandwiches, my suggestions Gruyère or Vorarlberg (Austria) Bergkaese (mountain cheese).

Preheat the broiler in your oven.

In a mortar and pestle or food processor, mash the garlic, sundried tomato oil, walnuts, mustard, salt and pepper into a paste. Adjust seasoning as desired. Take one slice of bread and spread a bunch of Camembert on it. Load it up with a layer of roasted peppers. Add some chives. Top with the hard cheese. Top with one or two sundried tomatoes. Spread a bit of the garlic and walnut mustard on a second slice of bread. Top the sandwich with the second bread.

On high heat, melt ghee or butter in a pan. Carefully grill each side of the sandwich until brown, flipping one time. Place all of the sandwiches on a baking pan lined with parchment paper and broil until all of the cheese is melted.

Curried pumpkin and carrot soup

2010-03-10T12:16:00.002+01:00

Curried soups were one of my first "special" cooking skills I learned. Somewhere online I found an article on making better soups and it included a 5-in-1 soup recipe - or something along those lines. I remember being so proud of myself for making such a good and creative soup. Over the years, this method of cooking became a fall-back routine for me, but as my cooking improved and the techniques and recipes I had been exposed to grew, this well-deserving recipe fell out of use. It wasn't that it didn't taste good to me, but it had lost the original excitement for me.

Then, just 2 days ago, I was staring at a whole bunch of carrots in my fridge and half of a Hokkaido pumpkin - leftovers from a walnut pumpkin lasagna. Soup came immediately to mind. So I pulled out a few of my many traditional Austrian recipes for pumpkin soup, thinking I'd just add some carrots to it. I opened my spice cabinet and my eyes fell on my curry jar. Memories of that first time I made really good soup came back. I called into the living room to ask M what he would prefer - traditional pumpkin soup or one made with curry. I held my breath. He chose curry. I jumped on it.

This way of making soup is super versatile. I don't remember what vegetables exactly the original recipe was for, but it had a carrot soup version and a cauliflower version, never a pumpkin version and never a mixed vegetable version. I believe good recipes are there to be used as inspiration. My good ole friend of a recipe didn't let me down this time. As I cautiously tasted the soup, I remembered why I used to cook vegetables this way so often. Try this out, not only with pumpkin, but also with just carrots or with cauliflower or red beets or or or.

The secret is the pan roasting of the vegetables first. It caramelizes the sugars and locks in the flavor. If you just plop veggies in a broth and then puree, you'll end up with something akin to baby food. Great for babies, boring for adult taste buds. So you really want to make certain your veggies end up golden brown, but certainly not burnt.

A few tips when cooking with pumpkin. Hokkaido is my favorite for soup, but others such as butternut squash are also good. My sister-in-law gave me the tip, that at least for Hokkaido, there is no need to remove the outer peel of the pumpkin. Which is a BIG pain in the butt. Just wash it super well. Cut the stem and base away as well as any obviously knobby parts. Then cut your pumpkin into cubes and plop them into the pot.

This recipe is best with a bit of Styrian pumpkin seed oil, but a really exquisite olive oil can be substituted. Serve this with a really crusty, heavy whole grain bread.

Enjoy!

Curried Carrot and Pumpkin Soup
Notes: It is better to use a flavorful vegetable broth. If using bouillion powder, go right ahead and add an extra (half) teaspoon. I am also a fan of really thick soups. Add a bit of broth if it's too thick for your taste. If you are a curry fan, add an extra teaspoon or use a stronger version of curry powder. If you are not a curry fan, try this recipe without the curry. Mix into the soup a bit of crème fraiche and serve with a spoonful of sour cream plopped on top. Nomatter how you make it, serve with a really good crusty whole grain bread.

Prep time: 15 min
Cooking time: 20-30 min
Servings: 4 large bowls of soup

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
small piece of fresh ginger
500g / 1 pound / ~1/2 a medium Hokkaido pumpkin
2 medium carrots
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt & pepper
2 teaspoons curry powder
700ml vegetable broth
2 teaspoons lemon juice (optional)
roasted pumpkin seeds or fresh chives (garnish)
pumpkin seed oil (garnish)
Prep the vegetables. Wash the carrots and pumpkin well. As long as they are organic, there is no reason to peel or cut away the shell. Cut away both ends of the carrot and chop the rest into thick coins. Cut the pumpkin in half and with a spoon scoop out the seeds and stringy bits. Chop into roughly the same size cubes as the carrot coins. Peel and chop onion. Peel and mince the garlic and ginger.

Heat oil in a large soup pot. Add onion, garlic and ginger. Sautée, but do not burn, until fragrant and onions start to turn translucent. Add in carrots and pumpkin. Stir occasionally, but allow them to brown (approx. 8-10 minutes). Add curry and salt and pepper. Mix to cover evenly and cook for a few minutes until curry is fragrant. Then, pour in the broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the vegetables are able to be pureed (approx. 10 min).

Remove pot from heat. Puree the vegetables with a hand held mixer or in batches in a blender. Adjust consistency by adding broth. Taste and adjust seasonings, adding up to 2 teaspoons lemon juice for flavor.

Serve with chopped pumpkin seeds or chives and a few drops of pumpkin seed oil.

Swiss chard chips

2010-03-05T10:21:00.005+01:00

This is a quicky. I served these up for some friends we had over last Saturday night. I told my guests they were my guinea pigs - frankly I've never followed the rule about not serving new things to guests. I pretty much serve guests exclusively new recipes. Usually recipes that are too complicated or time consuming than what I would prepare during the week. This one though was the opposite. Can you add dressing to a salad and know how to turn on your oven (and maybe use that timer as well)? Then you can make this recipe.

This is a crumbly finger-food so probably better for casual get-togethers or for a healthy alternative, and personally more delicious one, than potato chips in front of the TV.

This is becoming a staple in our house. The chips after a cautious look and little nibble from the guests disappeared immediately. I had left over French bread, cheese, spread and crostinis, but not a single crumb of chard chips. There are tons of recipes floating around and different presentations. Some with lemon juice, some with less oil, some with more. I found the cayenne, as one guest noted, added an almost Asian note to the chips. I overdid it a bit with the cayenne, but I definitely recommend trying at least a few with cayenne.

There are tons of "recipes" for kale chips all over the Internet. It's so easy it's odd to call it a recipe. All are about the same,toss the green, leafy part of the kale with some olive oil and salt, put it in a low-heat oven and wait until crunchy. I changed it up just a bit by using Swiss chard and adding cayenne pepper, but I think all variations would be great! Healthy, tasty and easy, what more can I want?

Chard chips adapted from Epicurious
Notes: Save the ribs for stir fry or for quiche. Replace Swiss chard (mangold) with any other leafy winter green, such as kale. This might be beautiful with some of the rainbow varieties of Swiss chard out there.
Prep time: less than 5 min min
Cooking time: approx. 30 min

1 head of Swiss chard
olive oil
salt & pepper
cayenne pepper

Preheat your oven to 120°C / 250°F.

Wash and dry the chard thoroughly. Cut away the leaves from the ribs and large stems of the chard. Reserve the ribs for another recipe. Toss the leaves with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper generously and add cayenne pepper to taste.

Either tear the leaves into chip size or leave as are. Lay them in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake in the oven for approx. 30 minutes or until crispy.

Let them cool and enjoy!

Other kale chip recipes on the web (really there are 100s and each has its own temperature and amount of oil, be creative!):
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Baked-Kale-Chips/Detail.aspx
http://arugulove.wordpress.com/
http://meghantelpnerblog.com/2009/04/23/crispy-crunch-kale-chips/
http://www.foodista.com/recipe/S7MV2NFR/kale-chips
© 2010 Nicole

Walnut Pesto

2010-03-03T13:58:00.004+01:00

Family is great. My in-laws have a great big walnut tree. When I told my father-in-law that I loved walnuts, he looked at me quizzically and said, "what do you do with them?" I started listing off: as a snack, in a salad, make a pie, add them to cookies or lasagna... On their next visit to Vienna, my brother-in-law and his girlfriend came to visit and brought me a giant, Santa Claus red bag of walnuts. I didn't weigh it, but I think it was around 5-7 kilos of organic walnuts. So thanks to my father-in-law, I have more yummy, nutty, crunchy walnuts than I know what to do with.

Since then, I've been cooking away with walnuts. Below is an adaptation of a walnut pesto that appeared on 101 Cookbooks. This is great because basil isn't exactly in season at the moment and my little potted basil is too little to provide enough for pesto.

Got some issues? Pent up aggression? Shell some walnuts. You'll feel better I promise.

Lay them out on a baking sheet and toast them. With a clean towel, rub to remove most of the skin. I had a lot of trouble with this. It took forever. Make certain your walnuts are well toasted, but not burnt.

Grind your walnuts in a food processor or mortar and pestle.

Add in the olive oil, herbs and cheese. I don't know if my walnuts are a special oily version, but I used a lot less oil than the recipe called for and I still think it was a bit too much. Go slowly with the oil, mix often and stop when there's enough. As to the cheese, I used a vegetarian Parmesan and a Allgauer Bergkäse, a Swiss mountain cheese, you'll want a dry, slightly spicy cheese - Italian hard cheeses work well.

This pesto will keep, but not long if either M or I come by to visit. When you add it to the pasta, use the pasta cooking water to thin the pesto.

Use a short pasta, one with lots of nooks and crannies. By the way, do you know your pasta shapes? Here's a handy little quiz.

How many did you get right? My score? 16 right.

Walnut Pesto Rigatoni, adapted from 101 Cookbooks
Notes: Add the olive oil a little bit at a time. It's easy to end up with too much oil. For the fresh herbs, my suggestions are thyme and marjoram. Use a short noodle with lots of nooks & crannies.
Prep time: 20 min
Cooking time: 30-40 min
Servings: approx. 6-8

140g / 1 1/2 cup walnuts, shelled
1 clove garlic, peeled
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
115 - 160ml / 1/2 - 2/3 cup olive oil, extra-virgin & cold pressed
5-6 tablespoons fresh herbs, chopped
30g / 1/2 cup vegetarian Parmesan, grated
10g / 3 tablespoons Allgauer Bergkäse (Swiss mountain cheese)
salt & pepper
450g / 1 pound whole-grain rigatoni
Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C.
Toast your walnuts by laying them on a baking sheet and toasting them in the oven until golden brown, approx. 8-10 minutes. Remove the skins by rubbing them, while still warm, with a clean kitchen towel.

Start heating a big pot of water for the pasta.

In a food processor or mortar and pestel, grind or pound the garlic and salt into a paste. Add the walnuts and continue to pound or grind. Then transfer the mixture to a medium bowl and add in the herbs and the cheese. Finish by slowly adding the olive oil, mixing often, until the desired consistency.

To cook the pasta:
When the water is boiling, add a generous amount of salt and add the pasta all at once. Cook until al dente. Drain the pasta, reserving about a cup of the pasta cooking water. Do not rinse. Add the pesto to the pasta, mixing well and adding the cooking water to thin the sauce.

Leftover pesto can be kept in the fridge in a sealed container.

Other Walnut Pesto on the web:
http://kissmyspatula.com/2009/06/04/walnut-pesto/
http://www.recipezaar.com/Basil-Walnut-Pesto-45348
© 2010 Nicole

Hot breakfast: Okayu

2010-02-23T13:55:00.012+01:00

There's nothing like standing outside your locked apartment, with slippers on and having forgotten your keys and cell phone inside. I'm that kind of morning person.

As a teenager I got up very early to ride my horse and then would pour myself a bowl of cereal and plop down in front of the television to watch really old reruns. Now, I hide myself under the comforter from the offending sunshine coming through my window. I'm no longer a morning person.

Most days, breakfast is a bowl of yoghurt with home-made muesli, maybe a slice of whole-grain bread with cream cheese. However, about a year ago, my traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) doctor told me that cold breakfast was the equivalent of trying to "start my car engine on a cold morning." This was right after he had picked me up from the floor after I had passed out at his suggestion that I ate too much dairy - Is that possible?! Cut back on cheese?! His suggestion for breakfast was Grießbrei (Cream of Wheat), which is right up there in my book with oatmeal and chunky cottage cheese - okay on taste, but really inedible due to texture. At my screwed up face, he suggested warm baby porridge. That's when I realized, while my TCM doctor might be a good doctor, he is probably a lousy cook.

I left his office, still weak from the thought of life without cheese, but determined to find yummy, warm, non-mushy breakfast alternatives. Yesterday I ran into okayu on Healthy Green Kitchen. Okayu, the Japanese cure-all rice breakfast, fights off the flu and hangovers from too much sake.

I changed this recipe up quite a bit from the original because I didn't want to go grocery shopping before eating breakfast. Do you blame me? I've listed some substitutions below for ingredients you may not have.

Dinkelreis (pearl spelt) - literally translated it would be spelt rice. Actually it isn't a rice. It's hulled or pearl spelt. I've had a box sitting in my pantry forever. Readily available in Austria. Substitute any short grained rice, brown or otherwise.

Mushrooms - I didn't use any and I'm kicking myself for letting M use our super cool Japanese Buna-Shimeji mushrooms in a pasta sauce last night. They would be great here. Oh well, next time.

Dashi Kombu - Optional -dried kelp, a basic in Japanese cooking, used to make the stock in miso soup. A tiny bit goes a LONG way and it keeps forever in a sealed container. Great source of iodine and umami. Substitute dashi powder or leave it out.

Toasted nori strips - the green sheets used to wrap your maki. Fold the strip up and cut away. Also a good source of iodine.

(I'm lovin' my orange finger nail polish.)

Purple haze carrots - a heirloom variety of carrots with a purple outer ring. Substitute a regular carrot.

Gelbe Rübe - Oddly in Germany, Gelbe Rübe (lit. yellow beet) is a term for a regular orange carrot, but in Austria these are a distinct vegetable in the carrot family. They look a lot like carrots, but are yellow and a little bit sweeter. Substitute a regular carrot.

Frozen peas - Authentic? No, but I didn't have any edamame. They were great.

Green tea salt - (Optional) The original recipe called for matcha salt. I didn't have any so I just mixed a bit of sea salt with crumbled up Japanese green tea. Substitute with plain old sea salt.

I highly recommend the additional fried egg. If I had had fresh ginger, I would have added it somewhere in this dish as well.

Final verdict: To be honest, I'm a bit torn on this recipe. The taste is phenomenal. I gobbled down 2 servings and was contemplating making another batch. While it is very versatile, as a breakfast, the cooking time is way too long - 1 hour. I wouldn't put it past me, in my morning stupor, to turn on the stove, walk away to get ready and then head right out the door with a pot simmering on the stove. One solution would be to make it the night before, but I don't know if it wouldn't get mushy. I ate every last grain of "rice" or I would be able to tell you if it can be reheated the morning after. Sorry. Until I know, I'm going to keep this recipe for days like Tuesdays when I work from home and can start breakfast a bit later. In other words, when I can be trusted with things like knives and stove tops.
UPDATE: I made this again on the weekend and had 1 serving leftover. At least with spelt, this was still not mushy the next day. It heated right up and was great in a few minutes.

Okayu with heritage carrots and peas, inspired from Healthy Green Kitchen: Okayu

Notes: See the blog for notes about the less common ingredients. This is a very flexible recipe, add and subtract as you wish. Maybe some toasted tofu bits, flax seeds, cabbage or fresh ginger? At its most basic, okayu is white rice in stock.
Servings 4
Prep time 10 min
Cook time 1 hour

Ingredients
1 cup /200 g Dinkelreis (pearl spelt)or brown rice
4 cups / ~ 1 liter vegetable stock
1 one-by-four cm piece of dashi kombu (optional)
2 cup / 240 ml water
1 small purple haze carrot
1 small gelbe Rübe (sweet Austrian yellow carrot)
1/4 cup / 15 g frozen peas
small strip of nori
toasted sesame seeds, for garnish
soy sauce, Japanese, for garnish
sesame seed oil, for garnish
matcha or Japanese green tea salt, for garnish (optional)

Serving suggestion
1 organic free-range egg, fried

Directions
1.   Rinse spelt, or rice. Place spelt, stock, dashi kombu and water in a large soup pot and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to simmer for 45 minutes.
2.   Meanwhile, cut the carrot and gelbe Rübe into long thin strips. Toast and cut the nori into strips as well.
3.   Add carrot, gelbe Rübe and peas to the rice and simmer for approx. 10 more minutes. Add water as needed to get the desired amount of soupiness.
4. Optional: fry egg.
5.   Remove the dashi kombu (keep for making miso soup). Place some rice and vegetable mixture in each bowl. Top with a good sprinkle of matcha salt. Sprinkle lightly with soy sauce and sesame seed oil. Garnish with the sesame seeds and nori strips. Serve with a fried egg in the bowl. Enjoy.

Other Okayu recipes on the web:

Healthy Green Lifestyle - Okayu with edamame, mushrooms and matcha salt
http://japanesefood.about.com/od/rice/r/okayu.htm

http://www.deliciouscoma.com/archives/2006/10/okayu.html
© 2010 Nicole

Red beet risotto with lime marinated tofu and celeriac straw

2010-02-22T18:37:00.005+01:00

When I was making my grocery shopping list a few weeks ago, a picture of a gorgeous red risotto caught my eye. My skeptical eyes ran down the list of ingredients - lime marinated shrimps, red beets, celeriac, red wine and araborio rice, but then it fell on the picture again. It was dazzling. I thought, hmm, not such a big beet person. Looked at the picture and fell a little bit in love.

While my eyes had been convinced, this was a recipe to try, my mind was stilling mulling around the risotto part of it. Risotto - it's one of those dishes that can be exquisite or can really flop. I am always tempted to order it in restaurants, just like gnocchi Gorgonzola but I rarely do. A bad risotto is bad indeed. Will it be one of those horrid flops? Truth be told, I'm pretty certain I've had more bad risottos than I've had good. The disappointment of mushy rice, or worse rice not thoroughly cooked, in some sort of creamy sauce is only made worse by the expectations and hopes of what risotto can be. A creamy, delightfully mild and sensuous dish.

Determined however, I took a look at the recipe, opened my fridge and let a bit of experimental fancy take hold of me. The result has reminded me why I love a good risotto and how the unexpected can add just that something special to a dish to make everyone go "WOW!"

This is definitely a recipe to keep, to try and to offer guests.

Risotto is a finicky dish. It can only be made with a medium- or short-grained rice. That long-grained Uncle Ben's variety will never achieve risotto greatness. Arborio, Carnoroli and Vialone Nano are probably the most common rices, but feel free to use others. I used a whole-grain round rice.

On a personal note: I have found that my kitchen is a parallel dimension when it comes to risotto. It doesn't matter which recipe or which type of risotto rice I use, my cooking time and water amounts will be about double or triple of what the recipe calls for. This however doesn't seem to apply to other types of rice like sushi or basmati. This recipe was no exception. I've left the liquid amounts and the times alone in this recipe, because if I put in my weird risotto-other-dimension cooking times, you'd end up with burnt rice and blame me. But for the curious, I used about 800ml of liquid and cooked the rice about 35 min.

This recipe is definitely one to try. Who doesn't like cooking with wine? You can then serve the rest of the bottle with dinner - that is if you haven't finished it off yourself while cooking.

Red beet risotto with lime marinated tofu and celeriac straw, adapted from Bio Maran grocery flier, 20/01/10

Notes: I used a whole-grain version of risotto rice. Marinated tofu cubes can be made up to a day in advance, but fry them right before adding them to the dish. Celeriac straw should be made at the last minute. You are using the lime zest so it's very important that you use organic here. If you can't find pumpkin seed oil, use a high quality olive oil.

Prep time: 30 min

Cooking time: 30-40 min

Ingredients

300 g / 10.5 oz extra firm or smoked tofu
1 lime, organic

soy sauce, just a few sprinkles

50 g / 2 oz ginger, fresh
2 cloves of garlic

2 medium shallots (or small onions)

450 g / ~1 pound red beets

60 ml / 4 tablespoons / 1/4 cup pumpkin seed oil

300 ml / 1 1/4 cup red wine

300 g / 10.5 oz. risotto rice (short-grained, round rice)

700 ml / 3 cups vegetable broth, hot

salt, pepper

250 g / ~9 oz. celeriac (celery root)

oil for frying (i.e., peanut or safflower)

fresh thyme for garnish

paper towels

Ingredients

1. If your tofu is wet or not so firm, line a plate with paper towels, place the tofu on the paper towel, and place another plate on top of the tofu to press out the water. Set aside for 10 to 15 minutes.
2.   Meanwhile, using a small grater, zest the lime peel and set aside. Cut the lime in half. Squeeze out the juice from the lime and mix with the lime zest. Add a sprinkle of soy sauce.
3. Peel the ginger and finely grate. Add half to the lime and soy sauce mixture. Set aside the rest.
4.   Cut the tofu into circa 1 cm cubes and stir carefully into the lime, soy, ginger marinade. Set aside.
5.   Prep the vegetables: Peel and mince the garlic and shallots. Peel the red beets (you'll probably want to wear gloves) and cut them as well into 1 cm cubes. Peel the celeriac, cut into long thin strips, set aside.
6.   Over medium heat, heat the pumpkin seed oil in a large pan. Add the shallots, garlic, the remaining ginger, and the red beets. Sautée for approx. 1 min. Add the red wine. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the rice. Stir. Add the vegetable broth, a bit at a time, salt-and-pepper. Lower heat and continue to simmer until the rice is cooked, stirring occasionally, approximately 10-15 minutes.
7.   Meanwhile, heat the frying oil in a deep pan or wok. When hot, quickly fry the marinated tofu until golden brown. Dry on paper towels.
8. Fry celeriac strips until crispy and golden brown. Dry on paper towels.
9. Arrange the risotto on each plate, add a few bits of fresh thyme, layer the lime tofu on top, and finish with a garnish of celeriac straw.
© 2010 Nicole

back from a break

2010-02-22T18:32:00.003+01:00

I'm back...been off getting married so I had to take a bit of a break, but more is coming I promise. I've been taking lots of pictures while cooking so I've got a bit of a backlog to catch up on.

Skillets and woks for dinner

2010-02-04T20:30:00.003+01:00

So I need to confess. M has a very expensive fantastic cast iron wok. I washed it, several times. I scraped it with a metal spoon and I washed it, many times, with soap. I truthfully didn't believe him that you shouldn't use soap. It very quickly started to be less than non-stick and turned a bit gray down in the bottom. Then I got my own cast iron skillet and read the maintenance manual and realized what horrors I'd inflicted upon his wok. No wonder I couldn't fry tofu anymore.

Luckily this is pretty easy to fix. You just have to re-season it and unless your cast iron skillet, wok, or whatever is over 60 years old and full of family seasonings from years past, you may want to repeat this step about once a year or any time you notice it starting to stick a bit or gray or rust looking patches appear. If you properly maintain it - we already know I don't - and it's decent quality, you may never need to re-season your pan. This will also let you season a pan for the first use if you've just bought one and it isn't pre-seasoned.

(Re-)seasoning a cast iron skillet/wok
from Joy of Cooking, 1975 edition
1. Preheat your oven to 350°F/175°C.
2. Clean your pan with soap (heaven forbid!) and scrape away any left over cornbread, stuck on tofu stir-fry, etc.
3. Smear a good coating of vegetable shortening on both the inside and outside of your pan.
4. Pop it in the hot oven and let it sit there for at least an hour, preferably two.
5. Let your skillet cool with the oven open before handling it.
6. For good measure go whip up something extra fatty or oily, like fried eggs. Supposedly bacon is really good for this step - I wouldn't know.

Depending on the state of your skillet you may need to repeat this process.

Maintenance:
For the future, don't wash your cast iron skillets and woks. Rinse them out while still hot with water and use a plastic scrubby or wooden spoon to scrub away anything stuck on them. For particularly stuck on stuff try boiling water in them. Most important: Dry your skillet and wok! Water+iron=rust=not so non-stick. After drying, rub a light coat of oil over the skillet.

That's it! Actually not so high maintenance after all when you think of all the wonders you can cook with cast iron skillets and woks! P.S. there seems to be evidence that cast iron gives you an added iron boost to your diet. For most people great news.

So next time, anyone asks what's for dinner, you can say ....

Blood Orange Tart

2010-02-04T12:39:00.004+01:00

“If I see everything in gray, and in gray all the colors which I experience and which I would like to reproduce, then why should I use any other color? I've tried doing so, for it was never my intention to paint only with gray. But in the course of my work I have eliminated one color after another, and what has remained is gray, gray, gray!”
-- Alberto Giacometti

I think God hired Giacometti to paint the city. About this time of year I start going a bit daffy. Giacometti's paintings are like January in Vienna. A hazy, impenetrable gray dome pushes down on a gray, wet and usually cold city. The buildings, already mostly gray, take on a paler hue from the strange lighting. And after three months, everything starts to blur into another - the sky, the sides of buildings, the sidewalks, even the people. Summer tans are replaced by pale faces hidden under black or gray jackets. Even the food starts looking a bit the same - white cabbage, parsnips and those pale poor imitations of a tomato the grocery store tries to sell you.

Gray is the color of ashes and metal, the color of mourning and repentance. Some sources list it as a solid, conservative, dependable color full of wisdom and intellect. It's also an expectant color. A color of change to come. A foretelling that dawn is breaking, spring is on its way, it's the transition from black to white.

View from the East bedroom in my apartment.
I know, I know, really bad Feng-Shui to have gray in the East.
Those are my dead flowers from summer and my dirty windows.

This time of year, I start pouring over seed catalogs stretching the limits in my imagination of what is possible to grow on 4 windowsills. I gaze at photos of reds, deep blues, bright happy yellows. Yes, gray makes me look forward to spring or maybe gray is just a bit too conservative for me and I need something a bit wild in my life. A bit of pizazz. Drum roll please - Enter winter citrus - the blood orange!

Filled not only with Vitamin C, to keep that nasty scurvy at bay, AAARGH!, but also anthocyanin, which has antioxidant and mild antibacterial properties. Best known are blueberries for anthocyanin, blood oranges are extremely healthy for you. They also show up in grocery stores about this time, just when you are about to shave your head and paint it orange just to have another color to look at, or maybe that's just me. They are tangy and bitter more like a grapefruit than an orange. Many varieties look just like a regular orange, but when you peel them a deep, orangy-red is revealed. Definitely the antithesis of conservative, dependable gray.

I must not be the only one who finds January, well so, gray. This lovely tart has popped up on a couple of food websites and blogs recently and I just had to make it. It was a moment of unstoppable desperation.

I will admit, this isn't the healthiest way to consume blood oranges, but it sure is delicious. It has a sweet and flaky crust, which counters the moist, chewy tanginess of the oranges.

So here's my take on this recipe. I will give a bit of a warning. It's not a quick or short recipe and it is messy. There's nothing all that complicated, but it takes a while. This is one to serve for special occasions or to cook on a free Sunday when the weather isn't all that inviting to go outside. And let's be honest, when is it in January?

You'll need a super sharp knife for this because you are going to supreme - best pronounced with a French accent...suprème...don't you feel more sophisticated? I do. - a whole lot of citrus. Yep, that's right you'll be removing the pith and releasing those individual segments. It's a pain, but worth it. If you've never supremed before - which I hadn't - this is a great recipe to learn. You'll have lots of citrus to practice. I had juice EVERYWHERE! Wear an apron and enjoy making a mess and having squishy oranges between your fingers as only a child can.

Here's a jazzy video about how to supreme citrus and eat the segments with chopsticks.

Here's a second one to learn how to do everything to an orange you'll ever need to know, at least in the world of cooking.

You'll first be making the pastry bottom, whose calories we all know go straight to the bottom. The original recipe called for the dough to be mixed in a food processor. I found it to be a bigger hassle than help, but if it works for you, go for it. I prefer to mix the butter in with my finger tips.

The original baking instructions were a bit unclear as to whether the tart goes directly on the oven rack or not. I baked it on a cookie sheet, the juice ran out and made everything soggy, so I ended up having to move a hot tart from my hot cookie sheet onto the hot oven rack - it was interesting :) I recommend leaving the frozen tart on a small piece of parchment and setting that on your rack. You'll want to put some foil down below to catch drips.

I also found the cooking time to be a bit over the top, but I have a small oven. Watch your tart closely starting at about 50 minutes.

Serve with a caramel sauce. I used the caramel sauce posted on Lottie+Doof, but I only made half of the amount listed there and had tons of caramel left over.

Blood Orange Tart, adapted from Food&Wine
Notes: Cooking time may be a bit much, watch the tart closely. Feel free to substitute white sugar for cane sugar.
Prep time: 45 min + 4 hours in freezer
Cooking time: 1 hour 15 min

Ingredients
125g/1 cup all-purpose flour, plus a little extra for dusting
5 tablespoons demera or cane sugar, divided
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
115 g/½ cup/¼ lbs. unsalted butter, chilled & chopped (for the pastry dough)+
1 tbs/15g unsalted butter, for the oranges

3 tablespoons ice water
7 blood oranges + 1 lemon
1 free-range organic egg yolk mixed with 2 tablespoons of water

Caramel Sauce, for serving (see below)

Instructions
1. In a large bowl mix well the flour, 2 tablespoons of the sugar, baking powder and salt. With your fingers work half of the butter (¼ cup/55g) into the flour mixture until it has the texture of coarse cornmeal. Then add the remaining half and work it until the pieces are approximately pea-sized. Sprinkle the ice water onto the flour mixture, lifting with a fork to let the water wet the flour below. Mix with your fingers. Stop handling when the crumb is moist enough to form into a ball. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, incorporating any left over pieces. Knead quickly and form into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, slice both ends of the lemon and the lemon peel away, removing any pith. Thinly slice the lemon cross-wise, into small round slices. Remove any seeds. Repeat the process with 2 blood oranges.

3. Segment, or supreme, the remaining oranges. Set aside the citrus segments and slices.

4. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out on a floured surface to an 11-inch/28 cm circle. Transfer the dough to a small piece of oven-proof parchment paper and put it back in the fridge for 15 minutes.

5. Take the dough & paper out of the fridge and arrange the segments on the center of the pastry. Leave approximately 2-inch/5 cm all the way around. Dust the segments with 2 tablespoons of sugar and dot the segments with the remaining butter.

6. Fold the edges of the pastry up. Most of the segments should be visible. Brush the dough with the egg wash. Layer the lemon and orange slices over the segments, overlapping slightly onto the dough. Sprinkle the entire tart with the remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar.

7. Freeze the entire tart until solid, minimum 4 hours.

8. Preheat oven to 190°C/375°F. Place oven rack in the center position and place a baking/cookie sheet lined with foil in the lowest position to catch any drips.

9. Take the tart directly from the freezer and place it with the parchment paper on the oven rack (don't put it on a baking sheet or it will get really soggy). Cook for 1 hour and 15 min or until dark, golden brown.

10. Cool the tart on a cookie rack & serve with Caramel Sauce.

Caramel Sauce, from Lottie + Doof
Notes: Can be kept in the fridge. Poor hot caramel into a heat-proof container. Reheat by placing the container in a bath of hot water over low-heat. When adding the cream to the hot sugar, it will have a tendency to spatter and spurt, be careful!

Cooking time: 10 min

Ingredients
200g/1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons salted butter
125 ml/½ cup whipping cream

Instructions
1. Melt sugar in a large, heavy pot, stirring often.
2. Add the butter in the sugar, melt and stir to combine.
3. Remove the pot from heat and slowly, very carefully add the cream. Stir to combine until smooth. If some of it has hardened, you can put it back on low heat.

Savory Sour Cream Cabbage Strudel

2010-02-02T13:24:00.004+01:00

Cabbage is a highly underrated vegetable. Other than the occasional red cabbage in a salad, I can't remember it ever crossing my dinner plate as a child. I do remember crinkled up noses at the mention of sauerkraut - which still, even living in a country which adores it, makes my nose crinkle. M however loves cabbage. He goes on and on about how versatile a vegetable and how delicious it is. I however have very few ideas of how to cook it.

Meanwhile, my regional vegetable box comes and bring one head of cabbage after another. Did M have any suggestions on what to do with it? nope. So even after heading online, scouring through Austrian cookbooks, I reached the end of my cabbage recipes pretty quickly, but still the cabbage kept showing up at my front door. I had yet come to appreciate it for what it really was. It was being patient with me and determined. Sure I knew it was wonderfully healthy and I really didn't have anything personal against the vegetable, unlike celery, which I dislike. I just didn't really appreciate what the Austrian national obsession seemed to be with cabbage.

The problem I had was that most American recipes have you use cabbage as some sort of salad, various variations on coleslaw - not really a thing to serve on a cold Austrian winter night. Austrian recipes on the other hand use cabbage all the time, usually as a side to a huge chunk of meat. Although there was one for meat wrapped in cabbage leaves that I might vegetize in the future using some brown rice instead.

Then inspiration hit. Somewhere along the line I had a craving for an American restaurant-style sour cream sauce and somewhere I found a recipe for savory fish & bread strudel. While fish and sour cream didn't sound all that appetizing to me, cabbage and sour cream sounded ~~good~~ delicious. Adding in the organic spelt wheat pastry dough available at my grocery store and I was drooling in anticipation. Tada! I had discovered how truly wonderful cabbage can be. This recipe has become a winter staple in my kitchen - which is good because the cabbage keeps on coming.

For this recipe, it helps to have everything ready beforehand. Then it goes rather quickly.

If your dough is perforated in little triangles, smooth it out gently with a rolling pin.

If you use all of the filling for 1 strudel, the best way to proceed is to cover the entire dough with filling, leaving a ½-inch border all the way around. Then roll up the strudel like a snail's home, press the long edge together and fold up the short ones. With 2 strudels you can proceed as above or as below in the recipe. Most strudel recipes call for the dough to be first brushed with something, milk or egg wash, before the filling is put in. Feel free to do this, but I haven't found it necessary. Puff pastry dough holds up pretty well. Actual homemade strudel dough would probably need it. I'm a lazy cooker and leave this step out - as well as the brush with milk step. I'm usually out of the kitchen by then and have forgotten.

This recipe can also be made in a casserole dish. Just put the cabbage in the dish, cover with the sour cream sauce and top with the dough - cook as below. This method works particularly well for dough pre-cut into triangles.

Savory Sour Cream Cabbage Strudel

Notes: If you don't have spelt puff pastry (Dinkleblätterteig), normal strudel or flaky pastry dough - you know, that blue can that goes POP! from Pillsbury - would work fine. If whole wheat is available, grab that. It has a nuttier flavor than regular pastry dough. Plain old white sugar or agave syrup are fine substitutes for cane sugar. To add a bit of interest and to use up the veggies in your crisper, feel free to chop some up and cook with the cabbage. I used pumpkin one time and it was strangely fantastic. But let cabbage be the star of this strudel!

Servings: 1 very stuffed strudel or 2 lightly filled strudels

Prep time: 15-20 min

Oven time: 30 min

Ingredients

235 ml / 1 cup water + an additional 120 ml / ½ cup

1 large shallot, diced

3 tsp rosemary, dried

2 heaping teaspoons vegetarian bouillon powder

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons demerara or cane sugar

5 teaspoons lemon juice

3 tablespoons flour

250 g / ~ 1 cup sour cream

400 g / 14 oz. cabbage, rinsed & chopped (white or green work best)

1 pckg. (~270 g/~9.5 oz.) spelt pastry dough

Salt & Pepper.

Instructions

Preheat oven to 205°C / 400 ° F

In a saucepan, combine water, shallots, garlic, rosemary and bouillon powder over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, reduce temperature, and simmer for 2-3 minutes.
Add butter, sugar and lemon juice. Reduce heat to lowest setting.
In a separate bowl, combine sour cream and flour with a fork until smooth.
Add sour cream mixture gradually to the water, stirring constantly until thickened, approx. 3- 5 minutes.
Add up to 120 ml / ½ cup water as needed. The sauce should have the consistency of Cream of Mushroom Soup.
Add cabbage (& any other vegetables). Stir until the cabbage is completely covered. Pepper generously. Salt to taste.
Roll out the dough onto a piece of oven-safe parchment paper and place the cabbage mixture onto half of the dough, lengthwise. (or see post above for another method.)
Fold the other half of the dough over the mixture and pinch all edges closed. Fold them up slightly.
Move the strudel & parchment paper to a baking sheet and cook uncovered in a preheated oven for 20 min. Reduce heat to 175° C / 350°F and cook for an additional 10 min. For a browner color, brush the strudel top with a bit of milk when you reduce the temperature.

Other cabbage strudel recipes on the web:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/dining/281vrex.html?_r=1&ref=dining
© 2010 Nicole

Mid-week Crispy Spinach Pie

2010-01-26T16:16:00.009+01:00

I get teased a lot. When I was 3, I sat on a bucket, naked at the beach. My father waited my entire life to be able to show my fiancee that picture. Nobody gets my jokes. My parents question my taste in movies. My parents also tease me about my grocery shopping habits. According to them, I come to visit, buy strange ingredients and then abandon them in my mother's cupboards.

(Hey Dad, I know a picture of me actually sitting on that bucket exists, but I'm not about to put that up here!)

I will admit my first adventure into the realm of phyllo dough was such an instance. I had come home from college determined to share delicious Greek spinach pies with my parents and left with half a package forlorn in my mother's freezer. I wonder if she ever did use it up.

While I can't claim that that attempt at spinach pie that evening won over any converts, my most recent attempt did. The original recipe is for four people. The two of us devoured the thing before it could even cool down. And did I mention you can whip it up in a matter of minutes? For those new to phyllo dough, this recipe is like sitting on the steps in the shallow end. You don't have to dive off the diving board yet. And to solve the problem of leftover phyllo dough, just make an extra pie and freeze it - that is if you can keep the others from discovering it first.

As you eat it, let the taste take your imagination on a trip to Greece with its sun and beaches and if on this trip to the beach your kid sits naked on a bucket, be nice. Don't take a picture.

Mid-week quick and easy spinach pie, adapted from BBC Good Food

Suggested substitutions: If fresh spinach is in season, wilt 200 g of it instead of using frozen spinach. A mix of Greek antipasti, such as roasted eggplant and bell peppers would be nice instead of the sundried tomatoes or almonds instead of pine nuts. Puff pastry or crescent roll dough, omitting the brushed on oil, can be substituted for the phyllo dough.

Notes: Go easy on any salt you add - Feta and sun dried tomatoes both usually have quite a bit. If you add too much, the pie will be overly salty.

Servings: 2 as main dish, 4 as side dish

Prep time: 10 min

Oven time: 30 min

Ingredients

~350 g / ~12 oz. frozen spinach, thawed & well-squeezed

100 g / 3.5 oz. sun dried tomatoes in olive oil

100 g / 3.5 oz vegetarian Feta, crumbled

100 g / 3.5 oz pine nuts, roughly chopped

2 organic, free-range eggs, slightly beaten

125 g / 4.5 oz phyllo pastry dough (approx. 3-4 sheets)

1 Tbs. each, Oregano & thyme, dried

Salt & pepper, to tase

22 cm / 9-inch round pie pan or spring form

Instructions

Preheat oven to 180°C/356°F

Mix spinach, sun dried tomatoes, cheese, pine nuts, eggs, spices, salt and pepper in a large bowl.
Carefully unroll the pastry and cover with a moist, but not soaked, cloth towel or kitchen roll. Take one sheet and brush one side with oil from the tomatoes. Place the sheet, oil side down, in the pie pan so that the ends are hanging over the edges.
Repeat with a second sheet, placing it oil side down on top of the first pastry sheet, just a bit further around the pan so that the edges don't match up but the sheets overlap. Continue with a third or fourth sheet.
Plop the spinach filling into the middle and pull the sides of the pastry to the middle, scrunch it together, making certain the filling is covered.
Brush the entire thing with a bit more oil and pop it in the oven for about 30 min. or until crisp and brown.

About me

2010-01-26T14:35:00.004+01:00

A bit of USA - a bit of South West, a bit of New York, a little bit DC - a bit of Mediterranean, a bit of Southern France, a bit of Austria and a bit of Asia - that's where I've lived and how I cook.

It all started when I was 3 months old. My parents took me and the family dog to the airport and flew across the country and the Atlantic to Southern France. Isn't that what all new parents do? Anyways, I have been doomed to suffer from wanderlust ever since. I stopped counting at 13 the number of times I've moved.

I like to think travel increases not only a person's ability to deal with waiting in line, but also increasing their openness to try new things, whether food or a new way of thinking. So I've let the food from the places I've been seep into my cooking and I've let traveling seep into who I am.

Until my wanderlust rears its head again and I find myself selling everything I own to buy a plane ticket, I'm living in Vienna, Austria - think Mozart, Danube & the singing Von Trapp family, not kangaroos and the beach - with my ~~boyfriend~~ husband, whose family actually lives in the Austrian Alps and had never heard of the Von Trapps until I came along. I came here to study and stayed for the strudel. Just kidding, really, well, maybe not. The strudel can be pretty damn good.

So what do I do as a warm-weather loving, cheese-loving, cookbook-and-recipe-addicted, (mostly) big-city vegetarian girl, with a hankering for organic, pretty vegetables and spicy salsa, in a country that has a love affair with all things sausage, an avoidance for all things spicy and has really cold winters? I cook and thank the gods for the wonderful cheeses and wines in Austria.

This blog is my attempt to weed through my several shelves of cookbooks, the massive binder of printouts and the many downloaded recipes on my computer. Eating food is about companionship and friendship. This is my way of sharing what's on my plate with my friends and family, which are scattered about the world.