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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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So the other day I was walking around the produce section and minding my own business, when my eyes fell on a particularly unattractive fruit. It kind of looked like a grapefruit that has been abused by life or maybe manhandled by the store employees, who knows. It turned out that the fruit was called Ugli, which prompted me to buy it immediately, because I like honest fruit. I liked the fact that it wasn’t lying there and calling itself Preeti. It clearly recognized and came to peace with the fact that it was simply Ugli. So I picked out the prettiest Ugli (which I now regret, I should have gone for the ugliest of all Uglis) and headed home. Once there I started googling the Ugli and tried to find out what I could do with it. It turns out that Ugli is a cross between a grapefruit and a tangerine and it has a sweet and juicy pulp. I couldn’t actually find too many recipes involving the Ugli fruit, but then my eyes fell on something that had me screaming: Perfect! What is a time-tried solution to dealing with ugly? Alcohol, of course, lots and lots of alcohol… So this is how Kitchen Crush has acquired its first drink recipe: The Ugly Ugli Mojito.
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Tim’s parents are going on a trip to Andalusia in April, so for Christmas, we got them a book on Andalusian cuisine and culture. It’s a beautiful book full of sumptuous and vibrant photos and recipes that make you slobber just by looking at them. It is actually authored by a German and it seems not to have an English equivalent (I knew there must have been some benefit to learning German). Anyway, this book is seriously awesome and if it wasn’t horribly rude (and easy to figure out who it was), I would have stolen it from Tim’s parents, at the first chance I got. Instead, the little freak that I am, on our last visit in Saxony, I spent a full hour photocopying various recipes. The one I wanted to try out first was Peras en grenadina or Grenadine Poached Pears. I’ve always found poached pears rather cool and sophisticated, and didn’t really realize that it was just boiled pears, which in turn means, that it is a pretty easy dish, not to mention, a pretty pretty dish, as well.
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I am one of these people who are highly susceptible to the marketing ploy that are flavored condiments. To give you an example: right now in my fridge there are seven different kinds of mustard, each flavored with different spices (there’s horseradish mustard, honey mustard, tarragon mustard, and so on). If you look further you’ll see a bunch of oils (rosemary oil, chili oil, garlic oil) and right next to the oils, there are the vinegars (raspberry vinegar, apple vinegar, pomegranate vinegar…). You get the picture. Put anything flavored and nicely packaged in front of me and I’ll compulsively buy it. But, in the meantime, I have a vague feeling that I am being scammed. The husband just raises his eyebrows when he sees me putting yet another olive oil or vinegar in the shopping cart while explaining frantically why I really, really need to buy them. (Sometimes I sneak them in when he isn’t looking and make an innocent face at the cash register when the cashier rings it up). I think he thinks I’m an addict… a flavored condiment shopaholic. He’s right. So, in order to appease my addiction without feeling like a gullible advertising monkey, I decided to make my own herb-flavored olive oil. And let me tell you, I was shocked, shocked by the outcome. It was as easy as can be.
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