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.
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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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This chocolate cake is very special to me. Why is it so special, you may ask? Well, chiefly because this is the very first cake I ever made. And also because it’s the first recipe I ever tried from a food blog, which coincidentally happened to be the first food blog I ever visited, which, in turn, inspired me to start Kitchen Crush. And finally, because I strongly suspect that my husband married me in order to have constant access to this cake (since it’s so totally, unbelievingly delicious in its melt-in-your-mouth, chocolaty goodness). So, you see, if it wasn’t for this grand master of all chocolate cakes, I would be a blogless old maid, with a mustache and thirteen cats, and with no chocolate cake to make me feel better. It’s the truest of all truths, if you learn to make this cake, good things will happen to you.
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So if I started talking to you about milk marmalade you would think that I fell off of a crazy tree. If I continued to talk about milk preserves, you would also think that I hit every crazy branch on my way down. And, in turn, I would think that you’re most definitely not French. That’s right folks, French people have what is called confiture de lait, which is a caramelly spread made of milk and sugar. It’s equivalent in Latin and South America is called dulce de leche. Dulce de leche is what you make when you have any combination of the following: a) a lot of milk just about to go bad; b) a lot of free time; c) an obsessive compulsive disorder in regards to stirring liquids; d) willingness to taste something divine. I exhibited all of the above and thus embarked on my first dulce de leche making adventure. The process is a bit of a pain in the neck and it takes a long time but the result is one of those highly addictive foods which keep calling your name so loud that you can most definitely hear them through the fridge door. It gets eaten pretty quickly and I’m quite positive that it goes straight to your thighs. All in all, it’s so worth it.
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