My last birthday was all kinds of special, primarily because it was the last birthday of my roaring twenties. It was also the day of Kitchen Crush’s official launch and finally it was a birthday when I made out like a bandit in terms of culinary gifts. Among the things I received were: the cutest heart-shaped crème brûlée ramekins and a kitchen torch (thank you, Axel), a gourmet meal at Dusseldorf’s Monkey’s West restaurant (thank you Mimi and Ned), a book on the history of taste
For the past two months, I have been completely obsessed with rice pudding from the store across the street from our house. Actually, I have been also obsessed with the store itself. Not only is it right across the street, but during the week it is open till midnight and on Sundays it is open till 8pm. This is a big deal, you see, since I live in Germany, a country which is currently at war with consumerism. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that all stores, even grocery stores, are closed on Sundays. So if you run out of butter or milk or coffee, or any necessity really, you’re in a big doodoo. I begrudgingly started accepting the doodooesque Sundays, when something wonderful happened: a store called Frischwerk opened. The opening of Frischwerk, which, I’m not sure if I already mentioned it, is right across the street from our house (!), was a big event for me. In fact, it was one of the best things to have happened to me since my arrival in this country. And then, something even better happened. I discovered their rice pudding… creamy, perfectly balanced, with a hint of cinnamon and just enough sweetness, in short, heavenly, addictive stuff that inspired me to cook something equally divine at home. Now, I often have a feeling that when I describe particular dishes on this blog, I make them sound super easy, and for the most part they are easy to cook. Sometimes, however, I tackle a dish that gives me trouble. I make it and remake it and make it again, till it looks and tastes just as I want it to. Such was the case with the deceptively simple rice pudding (how can something with only three ingredients give one so much trouble?) At first I cooked it according to the recipe in the Andalusia book, the same book I once contemplated stealing from my parents-in-law. My first reaction upon trying the pudding was: Holy cow, do these Andalusians have a sweet tooth! I tried it again with much less sugar, but then I didn’t like the consistency, as it was supposed to be finished off with whipped egg yolks (and more sugar) and it turned into a sickly sweet and weirdly sticky mess (this was even before stirring in whipped cream, as recommended). Finally, when I almost gave up on making my perfect rice pudding, I came across a rice pudding recipe in a Polish cook book that my mom gave me for Christmas. I combined it with the other recipe and what came out was pretty damn good, not quite as good as the original, but I will keep on trying.
I have been bad, very, very bad… After a strong start, I have neglected Kitchen Crush and my readers. My only excuse is that a lot has happened in the past two weeks. There was a trip to Greece to visit the best of all husbands. Among other things, we went to Athens, walked through the city, climbed up to Acropolis and dined in a lovely Cretan restaurant called Alatsi (a review of the place and the food will follow shortly). After Greece, there was Poland, where I visited my family and I got infected with a vicious stomach flu, which not only put me off cooking and food for a good week and a half, but also resulted in a two kilogram weight loss. [While I generally wouldn’t recommend stomach bugs as a weight loss solution (I will spare you the gruesome details), I think that we’re even, that virus and I]. After a week at home, where my hopes to cook and photograph some delicious Polish foods with my mom have been dashed, I went to Warsaw, to visit my very, extremely, super-pregnant friend Gośka (hang in there, only four days to go). And then, I came back to Düsseldorf and started my new… tam-tam-tam-tam: job. That’s right, a couple of weeks ago a job offer was made and I accepted. Thus, I am no longer a lady of leisure or as my husband claims ‘bum extraordinaire’, I am now a member of the working class. I do not know what this will mean for Kitchen Crush… undoubtedly less time to cook and missed rendezvous with the perfect photographing light during the week. But on the bright side, I will have a whole week to come up with the most delicious and beautiful foods to cook on the weekends. This Easter weekend has already given me a head start. I have a bunch of beautiful recipes waiting to be posted. So without further ado, here’s the very elegant and delicious Red Wine Fig and Gorgonzola Cream salad.
One of the soups that I remember fondly from my childhood is the Sorrel Soup with a hard-boiled egg. Sorrel, also known as, Spinach Dock, is a leafy garden vegetable, cultivated across Eastern Europe and mostly used in soups and sauces. It resembles spinach but is much more acidic in taste. I have never seen sorrel in any of the stores in the West, but maybe only because I wasn’t paying attention. The other day, though, when I was leafing through an old issue of my German food porn, I saw the recipe and the accompanying luscious photo of the cream of spinach soup with a boiled egg. The yummy memories of sorrel soup came back to me in waves, and since I couldn’t find sorrel in the supermarket (I will now be on the lookout), I decided to make the spinach soup version. Although I am not a huge spinach fan (correction, I like it raw, but not cooked), it seemed like this soup had it drowning in white wine and cream anyway, and how could that ever be a bad thing? After I made the soup, it turned out that I was very right, wine and cream can do no wrong. This spinach soup must be one of the tastiest soups I ever made, it is very rich but at the same time, it is extremely satisfying. It sounds weird but when I eat this soup, I feel like it satiates some primal, deep-seated hunger in me.
After I had dinner at Kanzlei Restaurant last month, I vowed to recreate some of its food at home. It’s a fun thing to do, trying to make something you’ve seen elsewhere and adding your own little twist to it. This is something I do quite often, and not only as it relates to cooking. When I see something I like in somebody’s approach to life or in their house décor or in their kitchen, I adapt it myself. Is it idea theft? Sure. But that’s my way of learning and evolving. I learn by observing and emulating others, just like a one year old would. Speaking of babies, one of my friends who is a new mother, had just created a Gmail account for her newborn son with his firstname.lastname as the username. I thought this was brilliant and hilarious at the same time. Totally theft-worthy. And since I do not have any children of my own, I have briefly considered ‘reserving’ some potential baby name plus our last name combinations. Which is a bit insane, I admit. My small-time idea stealing or should I say inspiration drawing from German restaurants pales in comparison. Anyway, one could hardly call cheese wrapped in bacon a unique or proprietary idea. Everyone knows that wrapping anything in bacon makes it taste better, right?
I am writing this post from Greece, where I have been since Friday, visiting my better half. I have only been to Greece once before, in September of last year, when I came here to take part in the wedding of my Greek friends. I have to say that I fell in love with this country and its people at first sight. Sometimes you come to a place and instantly feel like you belong there, or at the very least, you feel good there and you know that this is your kind of place. Greece is one such place for me. My first trip here was quite magical. It was September, the weather was perfect, the islands were beautiful and the omnipresent vines of bougainvillea put me in the most poetic of moods. But most of all, I was charmed by the Greek people. They are very real, they love to eat and drink and dance, but above all, they love to talk, to laugh and to philosophize. And then, of course, they are obsessed with feeding you, in fact, they will attempt to feed you, till you burst. But it’s all good, you see, because the food is very good. One of my favorite Greek dishes (and the one which has made it around the world) is the Greek salad. It’s very simple yet very tasty. My Greek friend, Connie, tells me that the secret to a good Greek salad is to use very high quality, fresh, juicy and tasty vegetables… Well, that may be just the secret to making anything taste good… That may be just the secret to leading a meaningful life. In any case, here’s my tasty, Greek salad, with authentic Cretan olive oil and some Greek oregano.
Thinking of things to cook and to feature on this blog is a lot of fun. It makes me think about food and about the role food plays in my life. It makes me think about what I do and do not like. Sometimes when I cannot remember why I do not like a particular food, it makes me want to try it again, in order to define the why. After all, as we say in Poland, taste changes every seven years, so I may actually end up liking something I thought I didn’t. But my favorite part about thinking about food is trying to remember the first time I had it and trying to recall what impression it made on me. With some foods this is quite difficult but then there are others, which bring back very vivid memories of the exact place, year and the company I was with. Hummus is one such food and black olive tapenade is another. In fact, when I was writing the black olive tapenade post, I wrote about how my friend Tom made beautiful little tapenade and goat cheese sandwiches. And of course, the mere fact of remembering and writing about them, made me lust after them, a feeling which hasn’t left till they were recreated and eaten. So here they are, the very delicious Black Olive and Goat Cheese Crostini.
