Ungrateful Cat #2

Ungrateful Cat

Get in it and use it and it will start to smell like you!!! So much for rejected presents!!! That is the "Deluxe cat bed" grumble grumble grumble...

Winter begins with Pomegranates

It seems somehow appropriate to eat pomegranates today. I woke up and really thought to myself - why get up? It's gray. Cold. Raining. The end of October in Germany. Slumping my way through the apartment this morning, not even 5 cups of coffee was going to make me into a gym enthusiast. But eventually I made it. Small victories. I knew that I would return home a few hours later to shower and then work in preparation for the big meeting on Friday. One thing made me a little happy: my pomegranate.

Coming home from the blasted gym yesterday on my bike, I passed one of my favorite fruit stands. At almost any time of the year, this Turkish guy sells me some seasonal goodie that makes me happy. Honey-flavored figs, sweet Italian tomatoes, and yesterday - a pomegranate - filled with hundreds of ruby fruits. I had no idea what I would do with it, but it was really irresistible. He had a little mountain of them in his stand and they reminded me of Istanbul. He'd cut a few of them open really beautifully so that the seeds shone like facets of a huge gem just as the merchants had in Istanbul. All that was missing was the Turkish sign: "Nar." I remember the fresh squeezed pomegranate juice still...

So I bought one of these red globes and brought it home and knew there was enough in the fridge and freezer to make something good out of it. A quick peek revealed - yup - some frozen lamb. And lamb would be easy to pair with pomegranate.

When I got home, I had narrowed recipes down in my head to three. A perfect trio. Marinated lamb kebabs, Israeli couscous with pinenuts, and a pomegranate, mandarin orange, and fennel salsa to top it off. What was particularly nice was that all three recipes were fast and easy so I would be able to work as well. I marinated the lamb before jumping in the shower (pomegranate juice, thyme, garlic, cinnamon, toasted cumin, ground ginger, salt and pepper) and then slept for an hour. After the nap, and after working, the couscous and salsa also came together quickly.

It's winter, and the curse of Persephone approaches menancingly...but at least there are pomegranates.

Numbing Goodness (Dan Dan Mian)

A couple weeks back I saw a recipe (keep in mind, this happens almost daily when you scroll through the RSS feed of Foodgawker (user-submitted photos of dishes - very visual...until you click further to find out the details) for a Szechuan Chinese noodle dish. I kept the recipe on my desktop for a couple weeks because I had wanted to make it sooner rather than later...but then it got buried under other documents and finally filed away a few days back with a sigh. I would try it another time.

Another time turned up a lot sooner than anticipated. Last night, while eating dinner with Urmi at an Asian restaurant near work, she asked at the end of the meal, "Do you know a restaurant with good Szechuan dishes somewhere in Munich? And I had to admit, I didn't. But I promised to ask my friend Christian, who along with his wife Anna, is the authority on all things Chinese in this city.

I asked - "why Szechuan?" and she said it was simply her favorite kind of Chinese food. Ok. I've always been intrigued by Szechuan Chinese. In general I like spicy, and Szechuan fits the bill. But in particular, I have always been intrigued by Szechuan peppers. More on them in a bit. So Urmi was the catalyst behind tonight's dinner. I had most of the ingredients, and finally enough of a push to dig that recipe out of the folder again.

What makes Szechuan cooking unique? Wikipedia tells us...

Szechuan cuisine, Szechwan cuisine, or Sichuan cuisine (Chinese: 四川菜; pinyin: Sichuancai or Chinese: 川菜; pinyin: chuancai) is a style of Chinese cuisine originating in Sichuan Province of southwestern China famed for bold flavors, particularly the pungency and spiciness resulting from liberal use of garlic and chili peppers, as well as the unique flavour of the Sichuan peppercorn (花椒). Peanuts, sesame paste and ginger are also prominent ingredients in Szechuan cooking.

And that recipe I had downloaded a few weeks back could be neatly categorized as classical Szechaun: Dan Dan Mian - otherwise knows as "street peddler's noodles." Put the word "street peddler" in front of almost any dish and my ears will start to glow in anticipation of finding out ancient secrets of the kitchen/simple and delicious food....Dan Dan Mien fits nicely into that category of simple and delicious. Noodles, with a few spoonfuls of spicy meat, some flash-scalded greens, all swimming in a peanuty broth, topped with scatterings of coriander and scallions, and a couple shakes of chili and sesame oil. Truly yum.

A couple years ago, when coming back to Munich from Singapore, I smuggled brought back Szechuan peppercorns with me. I had actually never cooked with them, but I was convinced that there was no way I was going to find them in Munich (not true - they are here), I knew they were not available in the US (From 1968 to 2005, the United States Food and Drug Administration banned the importation of Sichuan peppercorns because they were found to be capable of carrying citrus canker) and I wanted to bring any obscure spices with me because I didn't know when I would be back in Asia.

Now you need to know that Szechuan peppercorns are kinda cool. Also from Wikipedia:

Sichuan pepper (or Szechuan pepper) is the outer pod of the tiny fruit of a number of species in the genus Zanthoxylum widely grown and consumed in Asia as a spice. Despite the name, it is not related to black pepper or to chili peppers.

Sichuan pepper has a unique aroma and flavor that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chili peppers. Instead, it has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy-alpha-sanshool) that sets the stage for hot spices... "they produce a strange tingling, buzzing, numbing sensation that is something like the effect of carbonated drinks or of a mild electrical current (touching the terminals of a nine-volt battery to the tongue).

It looks like this:


How could you not want to try to cook with it?

Ironically, I still hadn't until tonight.

For Dan Dan Mian, you toast the peppercorns in a pan until they begin to brown and become aromatic. And they were VERY aromatic - somewhere between spicy and pungent. But not like chilies, which will make your eyes burn if you are not careful. Generally when I start toasting chilies, the cats go running out of the kitchen. Was not a problem this evening.

There are a ton of different recipes out there, and who knows what the really AUTHENTIC version is, but I had the feeling that I was at least close. The last time I ate Dan Dan Mian was actually not so long ago - when I was in London in August. I had been out with a friend from Singapore, Nichole, who lives there now with her husband and daughters. We met up and caught up, ducking into a Chinese noodle restaurant after a glass of wine at a pub near my hotel. Admittedly, my first attempt tonight was not as good as that restaurant's, but the rich flavors and tingling, numbing peppercorns on the tip of my tongue tell me it's worth trying again....

Here's the recipe I used. (I had to adapt a bit, as I did not have black vinegar (used rice wine vinegar) and also did not have Chinese sesame paste and had to make due with middle-eastern tahini. And went with spinach rather than pea shoots)





P.S. I *did not* make my own noodles, I bought fresh Chinese noodles at the Asian grocer near work - JUST FINE.

Whole Lotta Squash

Pumpkin pie bake-off?

Need to save money...

...am growing own avocados from now on.
Any idea how many years I have to go until I get some fruit? :-PPP

Auer Dult

Headed here for a few hours today.

Looking forward.



Trust me, you do not need to understand what the German speaker is saying. Just look at the nice video.

My interpretation to come later.
_________________________________
About 10 hours later now.
Ok, so all-in-all....a bit disappointing. It was sort of like a Christmas market 6 weeks before it should happen. Worth walking around for an hour or so...but not so much more. Granted, had I been in the market because I needed a lot of kitchen goods, it probably would have been more exciting.

Still, I did manage to pick up a couple totally random things that I have wanted/needed and which are not easy to find. Things like...an egg "pricker" - one of those little devices that you prick an egg with before you boil it so it won't explode. And a vacuum cleaner head that my cleaning lady has been asking for - especially good at picking up cat hair. And a couple super thin leather strings for some beads that have been sitting in my closet unused because I couldn't find anything thin enough to string through them. And a loaf of bread. Which I could have gotten anywhere, but hey, it looked like a really nice loaf of bread.

Meanwhile, the stroll through the market still interesting - there was an antique section, a kitchen section, the requisite gluewein and bratwurst, etc. food section, the kids ride area (no luck getting them to let me on a pony...), the works. Anyone want a hand-painted personalized ceramic beer glass, please let me know. The market is open for a week.

Finished off the day nicely, though - mid-day reading, haircut in the afternoon, and Vietnamese dinner out with the Schmidkonz clan (new place, very yum). My bachelorette weekend so far.

A Flog (fall blog) :-)

My mom sent me a one-liner email a few days back – she must have been a little frustrated. Simple and to the point: „What’s happening with your blog?“ Which I interpreted to mean...“Julie, your blog writing has become almost non-existent lately, and when you bother to write something it’s kinda...uh...boring.“ Who knows what she actually meant, but meanwhile, during the course of the day, I started to at least consider what I could write about. Always the problem with blogging – you need to keep up regularly or you just lose it.

So I started to write this long, involved and nostalgic blog post about fall here in Munich. You know – typical clichés of rejoicing over brilliantly hued fall leaves, the smell of fireplaces being ignited for the first time in the year, the hearty soups that begin to appear on menus around the city, the cozy sweaters you can cuddle up in on the sofa. All well and good. But who really cares about my opinion? Even collected a couple fallish photos. See.



The beauty of a four-season fall - buckeye chestnuts everywhere (we have a couple trees right next to our apartment and they are very beautiful. I just wish they were edible chestnuts!), scarlet ivy flaming across building walls, baskets of every kind of pumpkin imaginable crowding the farmers' market stalls (although yes, I know those are just Hokkaidos. Shut up). Beautiful. Yawn.

On the other hand, I thought I might be able to craft a short kind of Ruth Reichl piece a la “Tender at the Bone” (a novel/biography with recipes – she’s a great writer and a great tweeter too - she does these sort of food haikus...that make you wish you were eating what she is eating at that moment.) Anyway, the idea was jot down a few little vignettes, each with a recipe. And I started. But along the way I realized that I wasn't inspired enough to really do a bunch. One would have to do. At least for now.

And really as I crunched my way through the fallen leaves on the way to work I realized that mostly I had been missing Sukkot - the Jewish harvest holiday. My parents (HI MOM, HI DAD! xoxoxox), used to make this beautiful party celebrating the holiday every year around this time. It's a relatively minor holiday in the Jewish calendar, but the way we used to celebrate it was far from minor. Just for background, in case you are interested, you can read a few words about Sukkot here. (Thank god for Wikipedia...) We lived in this house with sliding glass doors in the back and my dad would build the Sukkah (yes, you will need to read the Wikipedia article) directly next to these doors. Very practical. Because my parents would then proceed to invite 200 guests over for an afternoon and evening party to celebrate. All food would be served from this little three walled hut filled with our artwork and hanging fruits and leaves. (Come on, Mom, aren't you itching to make one of these for the boys next year? You even have the sliding doors still...) My dad would CRANK his favorite ABBA albums (yes, ABBA - I don't know why) and Israeli albums (ok, those make a little more sense), to the highest decible he could stand and my sisters and I would all go careening around the house screaming with excitement.


Rather than making things complicated around food, my parents had devised this brilliant plan: serve Israeli street food to everyone - FALAFEL. Really awesome stuff when smooshed into a pitta with humous and tahini and tabouli and eggplant and salad. When I was working in London in August, I must have gotten one of these at least once or twice a week for lunch. There was an Israeli place around the corner from our office that makes the best falafel I have had in years and years. Put tears in your eyes to eat one of their sandwiches.

Anyway, moving along.

We invited all the neighbors and the aunts and uncles that lived nearby, a bunch of our school friends - everyone was welcome. Mostly it was a pretty laid back party. My grandmother would come some years weeks in advance and bake cakes and cookies with my mom in preparation for the party. I remember having dozens of sweets to choose from...

But next to the falafel, running around with friends in the backyard, flying kites, playing with newspaper footballs, the thing I will never forget is a special sweet that I think I have not eaten since I was little. I couldn't remember exactly how it was said or spelled and it took me some time to find it a couple days back. The way I remembered it was "Tadelach." And that was what I looked for. But it turns out, it is actually spelled and called "Teiglach." Which is a Yiddish word (which I more or less understand now that I speak German) coming from a Schwabian word which is "Teigle." Which literally means "Little dough." Cute. Isn't that cute? Here in Bavaria, they would probably call this sweet "Teigchen." (Bavarian diminutive form: "chen" rather than "le" added to the end of the word.) Teiglach is a cookie that is boiled in honey with ginger and other spices. So if you can imagine it, my mom would have a huge vat on the stove filled with boiling honey and she would drop these cookies in there (filled with nuts/raisins) to boil for awhile. When it was all done and cool, we would be allowed to fish one of these cookies out of the gooey honey and eat it and lick our fingers clean of the gingery spicy honey afterwards. Pretty heavenly stuff. I never got my mom's recipe for them, but I started to poke around the web to see what I could find. And I found a recipe that seems like it could be pretty close to what I remember from my childhood. A bit different in how the honey syrup is handled at the end, but the rest seems pretty close.

So now waiting for the mother to appear with her recipe. I have plenty of time this weekend to experiment, even without a Sukkah to eat the teiglach in.

Impressed!

Ok, check it out. Notice anything different about this tram shelter ad???

No? Well I did. Unfortunately, I only noticed it at the last second before my tram pulled up. There in the lower left corner is a QR code that you can aim your phone at, click a picture and then get more info about the service. In this case it's an insurance company advertising....not sure what - retirement/pension funds? Retirement insurance? Need to check.

What's awesome about it is the fact that just a few weeks back I was complaining that this was missing from an ad at the very same tram stop. And there it is. What's funny is that a fairly conservative and old fashioned company is using the technology and their target audience unfortunately probably has no clue what a QR code is. But as we say in German, "immer hin." ("always in the direction" or in English, "baby steps.")

So cool stuff.

When I get home tonight I will check and see what the QR points to...would be interesting to see how well the company handles that part...

Duck duck roll

Our pitch team had a long, but productive day today. The plan was to be home by about 6:30 and work a little more on another blog post I started writing yesterday. But I have to put that one off for at least one more day. Therefore just a quickie here in its place because even I have noticed that the blog posts have become too infrequent...(hey mom! more coming soon...!).

This morning, as I sliced through a frozen bread roll for breakfast and popped it in the toaster, I noticed that we were down to almost no bread...anywhere...and somehow I kept forgetting at the last moment to go by the baker before or after work to pick some up. Got home late this evening because of the longer day - perhaps around 7:30 - bakeries closed - and in no mood to cook. As I rounded the last street corner before approaching the apartment, I did the mental inventory in my head of what was in the fridge. Duck - I had picked up a cooked boneless duck the other day at the chinese grocer near work and thrown it in the fridge. These cooked ducks, I have discovered, are incredibly versatile. Pre-cooked and seasoned, I have chopped them up for quick noodle and veggie dishes a couple times in the past. But I knew I didn't have much in the way of veggies at home either...and no rice noodles...(Argh!)

But...yesterday, I had bought some really delicious apples...(here is the mental inventory coming...), and I knew I had at least half a big cucumber, finding an onion wouldn't be a problem, and maybe there was a wrinkled red pepper that would still be edible, I definitely had some hoisin sauce, and I almost always have a package of rice paper skins lying around. The ah-ha moment when you know you are saved and something will be found in the fridge to eat.

So I ended up with a Chinese spin on the classic Vietnamese spring rolls. Nice and super fast too because the duck was already done. Simply saute an onion until it is soft and a little brown. Chop up a half an apple and some cucumber and red bell pepper into sticks. Grab a handful of cilantro. Boil your water and start softening the rice paper skins (I've discovered that if I roll them up on a clean cloth towel, the skins will stick and hold easily. On a plate, it's all a slippery mess because the water slips and slides around rather than draining). For each one, put a dab of hoisin sauce in the middle and rub it around, a few pieces of duck go in next, some "twigs" of cucumber, apple, red pepper and onion, and finally tuck in some cilantro sprigs and roll up your duck rolls.

Nice light supper.

Back to the other blog entry now...and more on that tomorrow.

Free Adonis

I just walked back in from lunch to see a whole bunch of people giggling around my desk. Breaking through the crowd, I noticed a post-it note on the desk...next to a USB drive. Hmm - nothing funny there. It was just from the graphic designer who had beautified the presentation for this afternoon's client meeting. No, can't be that that they are laughing at. Then I looked a little further - just behind the laptop - and saw a MAN. A GOLD SHINING MAN. WITH BEAUTIFUL abdominal muscles. Smiling shyly at me. Imagine.

Turns out the women I had lunch with had found a box of "free" stuff on the way back to the office (i stopped in the bakery on the way back to pick up a loaf of bread...so walked the last few meters back to the office alone). Including Mr. Beautiful Gold Adonis Cake Man. Wondering what kinda cake to make in him. Passion fruit cake? ;-)