varina Food Journal

Which is why, at ten-thirty last night I was finishing up making my truly wonderful vaguely Moroccan almost vegetarian dinner.
It all started with the chickpeas, I blame the pumpkin too. Several months ago I felt like making hummus so I bought a packet of dried chickpeas, cooked the whole thing and froze the rest (natch). I've mentioned before how much meat my host family eats, and how meat-centric their diet is, so while normally chickpeas don't last long in my freezer, being my very favorite legume and all, I hadn't recently had occasion to use them. Every time the freezer was re-arranged they managed to end up in some prominent place as if to say, eat the damn chickpeas already(!) in the most Swiss, passive-aggressive manner possible. Then I bought a Moroccan cookbook and saw a recipe for Harira, a chickpea, tomato, and lamb stew and I thought that sounded incredible. It also had something called crêpes aux mille trous (crepes with a thousand holes) that was a loose-battered, yeast raised, flat bread and sounded incredible, especially with a rich flavorful stew. Of course, since there was no lamb about and I'm hardly going to pay Swiss prices for some I thought, well I have this pumpkin already cut into chucks and peeled, but pumpkin isn't good with tomato (or so says I), so that had to go. Also I had to take the kids to Lausanne yesterday after school and then drop them, so I got to spend some time in Lausanne, have a sizable goute (okay, normally I would consider a shwarma a meal, but I did eat it at four and then have dinner at 10:30), and of course stop by Globus (where I'm always getting into trouble) where I discovered a very intriguing spice mixture and some lamb stock. The spices were called "Bed of Roses: a Moroccan Kasbah experience with saffron and rose petals" (which are of course the last ingredients). After I came to accept that the marketing was hokey especially since, as everyone knows, a kasbah is just a walled city and there's really no reason to get all romantic about it, but that didn't mean it wouldn't be delicious. I knew that this would make my stew, which indeed it did. I'm explaining all this to say I was gripped in the creative process and I had to cook this. So, when I finally had the house to myself at 8:30, even though I knew it would be at least ten when I could start the crepes, there was no stopping me, I'm just that ridiculous.

Anywho, the results were delicious. The crepes were a bit difficult to do well (not helped by the pyshco stove) and came out irregularly shaped, but completely delicious, especially with honey-butter (surchoix butter and fluer de foret honey). Due to a bit of a translation error, I made mine with fine grain polenta (semoule de mais) instead of semolina flour (semoule, see anyone could make that mistake;) which gave a light corny taste and pleasant grittiness to the final product. Also with a bit of practice they will be easy. You just mix a loose batter (no kneading), let rest they fry up. The chickpea-pumpkin stew was transcendentally good and extremely hearty and warming with layers of complex flavour and a nice unctuous sauce.

Crepes aux mille trous a la petite betise
100g fine grain polenta or corn meal
200-250g white flour (enough to make a very loose dough that nonetheless comes together, basically pancake batter consistency)
1 packet instant or active dry yeast
20 g sugar
1/4 t salt
6 dl of water
honey or honey-butter

Mix all ingredients (except honey) together vigorously with a wooden spoon until it forms a loose dough, let rest for one and a half hours at room temp. Dough will be frothy and vaguely alive looking.
heat a non-stick skillet at med-low, add a little bit of oil, drop in enough dough to cover the pan with about a cm thick pancake and gently spread over pan into a round. Let cook for 2-3 minutes until the top is hole-y and mostly cooked through then flip and cook an additional minute.Transfer to plate, spread with honey butter, repeat.

Vaguely Moroccan almost vegetarian chickpea, pumpkin stew
2-3 T butter
Same amount of olive oil
2 small or 1 large yellow onions, roughly chopped or sliced into half moons as you prefer
3-5 cloves garlic, grated
1-in fresh (frozen actually) ginger, grated
2 T triple concentrated tomato paste
a shot of red wine
2-3 T Bed of Roses rub (I will eventually try to mix my own similar spice mix, listed ingredients are, in order: ginger, roasted garlic, sea salt, caraway seeds, sugar, roasted sesame seeds, cumin, paprika, cassia, chilies, coriander, black pepper, turmeric, mint, nutmeg, grains of paradise, rose petals, saffron)
.5 L cooked chickpeas in cooking liquid
about two handfuls of un-cooked pumpkin, peeled and chunked
1/2 jar fond d'agneau (lamb stock), or enough to cover (replacing with veg stock would make it less unctuous but probably just as delicious)

Melt butter with olive oil in pot over medium heat. Add onions and cook until slightly softened, add ginger and garlic and cook until completely soft, then add tomato paste and let caramelize a bit (about 1-2 minutes), then add the spices and cook until very fragrant, then deglaze with a shot of red wine. Add chickpeas and pumpkin, toss to coat with aromatics and spices, then add just enough lamb stock to barely cover, bring to a boil, then leave shimmering for awhile. Why not just leave it on the back burner until you are done with the crepes (if you start the stew as soon as your crepe batter is done it will simmer for about an hour until they are done), obviously as a minimum the pumpkin needs to be done through. I think this would be amazing in a slow cooker.
pile up a stack of sticky crepes, spoon out a bowl of stew, then enjoy, preferably with Moroccan mint tea in front of a nice episode of Good Eats (I have my sources).

...Or how I learned to relax and love the carne.

This may come as a shock to you, dear readers, but I used to be a vegetarian. Okay, maybe not a huge shock, but it should be obvious from this blog that a) I love meat and b) I am an unrepentant hedonist. Well, I was in college and you know how it is when a girl from a relatively sheltered environment* leaves home to go to University in another state. They experiment with vegetarianism, but it isn't meant to last. Sooner or later they'll go back to the more conventional way of life and leave that extremist "lifestyle". No but seriously, my sophomore year I had lived off campus and didn't have enough money for meat (well, it was meat or decent olive oil and the occasional bar of great chocolate so you know which way I went) so I only ate meat when we went out or ordered Chinese food, and both of my companions for Gilmore Girls and Chinese food night were vegetarians and I couldn't help but notice that I would save a lot of money if I ordered veggies or sesame noodles, so eventually even then I was a de facto vegetarian. I didn't become a real vegetarian until I was home for the summer spending Fourth of July with my East Texas relations and reading Fast Food Nation. You want to know the worst time to read Fast Food Nation is? On a weekend when you are a two-hour drive from the nearest vegetable and eating nothing but barbecue (nothing like reading about poor oversight in the meat industry while eating slightly undercooked chicken to make you want to never eat meat again). So I was a vegetarian not because I ever thought eating meat is inherently wrong, because I don't, but because the way most meat gets from "farm" to table in America (and other parts of the world) is disgraceful and wrong.

The thing is though, I love meat, the smell of it cooking, the taste, the texture, the color of a beautifully browned piece of meat, everything. It was easy enough to be veggie when I was surrounded by other veggies, but then I went to China. First of all, while there are excellent vegetarian restaurants in China, most people only eat vegetarian on special occasions, or when they are praying for something, and then only Buddhists (who may or may not officially be atheists) so most food is not vegetarian, usually only because of meat stock or little bits of meat. Also, my mandarin was never very good, so I couldn't inquire about a dish or make a special request. Also,staying strictly vegetarian would would have involved cutting myself off from any number of new foods and cultural experiences, even late night noodles would have to be skipped. Intellectually this became a real problem for me. Could it be right to glide through a completely different culture without actually experiencing so many of it's food ways? Could I really leave China without trying a chicken foot? Not to mention the fact that I couldn't ever go out to dinner with people. My real downfall though was the Uyghur Lamb kebabs. I love lamb more than all other meat. My reaction to a perfectly cooked, well marbled piece of lamb is almost erotic. I love lamb. So every night after work I was tired, very hungry since usually "dinner" had been a sesame ball eaten five hours earlier, and usually some degree of upset and I walked by a Uyghur guy grilling lamb kebabs on my way into the metro station. At that moment they always smelled like the greatest thing in the world, as if with that simple injection of well browned perfectly flavored protein and fat would make the world just seem a little more bearable. I resisted as long as I could, maybe three times, until giving in. I am here to tell you, Uyghurs know lamb, and lamb is good. So while I always get meat that is ethically raised or at least fed decently and not, say on it's own little friends and I research my food as much as possible (including my vegetables, one of the things that vegetarianism can sometimes lead to s a smugness about one's diet that allows for buying tomatoes grown half a world away while covered in chemical fertilizer), and when on my own I eat meat only occasionally,I know I can never go back to being a vegetarian. The lamb will always call me back.
So here is a recipe for one of the greatest lamb dishes I have ever made from one of my favorite cookbooks:

Lamb Curry Kashmiri style, from The Curry Book
1 T paprika
1t each: ground fennel, ground ginger, salt
1/2 t each: ground coriander, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon
1/4 t each turmeric and cayenne
3 T vegetable oil or ghee (recommended)
12 whole cloves
5 cardamon pods
1T fresh ginger, grated
3 cinnamon sticks
2T garlic
2 C onion
3 lb/ 1.5 kg lamb shoulder, bone in
3/4 C plain yogurt
2 1/2 c water (if you can not find lamb with the bone in replace this with 1/2 fond d'agneau, half water)
1 bunch cilantro

It's useful here to set out your mis en place: combine all ground spices, chop onion and set in bowl, prepare and set together your garlic and ginger, bring out your yoghurt so it will be at room temperature, and sut the lamb into four or five big pieces. My set-up looked like this:
Now heat the oil over medium in a wide deep pan. A dutch oven would be excellent but I might specify a enameled one like le cruset because a more porous one may smell like curry forever. Add whoe spices and cook for 1 minute, add ginger and garlic and cook until fragrant then add 1 cup of the onion and cook 3-4 minutes or until softened. Increase heat to medium high. Brown lamb in batches and set aside. Don't be wousy here, get a nice deep sear on the lamb.
Reduce heat to medium, add a splash more oil then the ground spices, cook 30 seconds or until very fragrant, add yogurt, stir well and bring to a boil, add browned lamb and toss to coat then add water and the rest of the onion. Bring to a boil then reduce to simmer for 45 minutes-an hour, or more if you have the time. This would be excellent in a slow cooker.
Take out lamb and remove bones then cut into bite sized pieces, return to pot, garnish with chopped cilantro and serve over a nice simple rice pilaf or flat bread. Yum!

*Assuming my house can count as that. I did learn how to hot wire a car when I was eight after all, and I lived in Austin where every year a homeless drag queen in a thong runs for mayor and once nearly won.

Last week in Ikea I finally broke down and bought a muffin tin, this obviously required celebration. Of course I could whip up some flashy new cupcake, but fall is here and with it comes the parade of wonderful bakeable produce: apples, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, nuts of all kinds, etc comes to the marketplace. These warm comforting fall foods cried out for something more homey, more rich, something I could eat for breakfast. Yes, fall is the season for muffins. On of my favorite things about fall in Switzerland is the sudden appearance of all the roasted chestnut (Marrons chaud) stands where ice cream stands were just a few weeks ago. Practically every time I pass one I can't help but stop and get a warm pyramid of hot, caramelized chestnuts. However, When I was growing up as a kid in Washington, it was apples that dominated fall for me. Forget the changing of the leaves (after all, most trees in the northwest are evergreens), it was the arrival of the apple press where we could make our own apple cider(!) in school that meant fall to me*. Not to mention making apple pies, which has been my personal thanksgiving responsibility since I was eleven. So, in honor of my adopted country and my homeland, I decided to make these apple muffins with a chestnut filling, combining the best of fall from each place. Initially I was going to use Marrons glaces, but it turns out they are really expensive, so instead I bought some chestnut paste. The result is a lovely appley muffin with a gooey, satisfying, chestnut filling.

Apple Sweetheart Muffins
1/2 C/ 50 gr Butter
2 large or 3 medium apples (see note)
1 1/2 C/ 355 ml AP Flour
1/2 C/ 120ml Whole Wheat flour
1 t/ 5ml baking powder
1t/ 5ml baking soda
1/4 t/ 1.5 ml salt
1/2 T/8ml Tea Masala
1 T/ 15ml Cinnamon
1/2 C/ 120ml Sugar
1 large egg
1 C/ 225 ml yogurt
about half a can Chestnut spread

preheat oven to 375 F/ 190 C
Line or grease a 12 muffin tin
In a saute pan over medium heat melt butter, turn heat up to medium high, saute apples until they are slightly softened and have yielded up some juice, about 5 minutes. Add tea masala and cinnamon, coat over apple mixture and cook an additional 30 seconds or until fragrant. Allow to cool

Meanwhile, combine all dry ingredients (everything between apples and masala in list) and whisk to aerate and combine. In a separate large bowl combine egg, sugar, and yogurt, and whisk until sugar is dissolved, then add cooled apple mixture, making sure to get all the juices. Dump dry ingredients on top of wet and whisk to combine until the mixture has just come together.

Fill all muffin cups a third of the way with batter, then drop about a tablespoon full of chestnut spread in the center of each one. Fill the rest of the way with batter. If desired sprinkle top with raw sugar for a pleasant crunch.

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool, enjoy. These stay good for a few days, and really are better completely cooled.

A note on Apples. I would stay away from the larger apples as well as "Red or Golden delicious" which are fine for eating but bake poorly, Rome beauties, Gravensteiners, Galas, etc are nice. I used what I had which was 1 Rome, 1 granny smith, and yes, 1 golden delicious. Sure are purty together.
A note on Chestnut paste. My American friends who can not find such a thing are advised to try the muffins with a nutella center, or, even better, break off pieces of pecan praline.

Excuse the poor Anastasia reference, but a) despite the fact that it's main premise is that the Russian Revolution was caused by evil bats not widespread discontent, hunger, and communism, and I was a History major, I freaking love that movie b)I've had the song from the above reference stuck in my head ever since I made beef stroganoff this week.

One of the biggest personal challenges of my job is making food the kids like that I can stand and enjoy making. They don't like a wide range of things, including garlic, onions, and all spices, and even if I make something they like, there's the high possibility that I will do it the "wrong" way. Wrong of course being defined as at all different from what they are completely used to, and of course I have no idea what that is for the most part. I'm getting better at this, and they are getting used to the idea that I might do things differently from their previous nanny.

This week I had a true triumph in feeding them with beef stroganoff. They liked it, since I didn't put creme fraiche in their portions, and I freaking love it. This was probably some of the best stroganoff I have ever had. I used the recipe from Alton Brown's brilliant I'm Just Here for the Food as a sort of template, with the idea of using veal fond from Seriously Good, then making a few changes as I went along, got lazy, or had to adjust for ingredient availability/desirability. The finished recipe reflects this bizarreness but is good and really quite easy.

Beef Stroganoff
600 gr. (about) inch thick cut chuck steaks or similar
flour for dredging
salt (I used Jura) and pepper
sunflower oil, or similar
3 T butter
2 shallots, minced
some mushrooms, up to about 400 gr I actually used a can, it was surprisingly good
about a glass of red wine
1/2 T dijon mustard dissolved in a few tablespoons fond de veau
1 cup, ish water
1/2 a jar of fond de veau
a splash of granulated vegetable bullion
creme fraiche, or sour cream if available

Heat a good, wide, deep non-non stick (so, sticky) skillet over medium high heat, pour in enough oil to cover surface of pan. Season meat liberally with salt and pepper (really, liberally) then dredge in flour. One, or two, maximum, at a time, sear meat in pan until it is crispy and a deep brown, on both sides, naturally. Now cut into pieces the size which you wish and set aide. If during this process you get a bunch of little crispy bits stuck to the bottom of the pan deglaze with a few tablespoons of wine then scrape them out of the pan and reserve with the meat. Since the flour on the beef provides all the thickening you don't want to lose any of your coating.

Add some more oil and the butter, melt, then toss in shallots and mushrooms, if you are not feeding intolerably picky children add a few tablespoons garlic here as well. Saute until brown then deglaze with a glass of wine, coat, add mustard preparation, then add fond and enough water to barely cover everything and sprinkle on some vegetable bullion, just a bit. In fact it's probably not even necessary, strictly speaking. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer and cook for about 45 minutes-ish. If you, for instance, need to leave the stove unattended to pick up kids at school, set in a 100C/250F degree oven while covered. Off heat stir in a good amount (I've found taste are highly personal on this one) of sour cream, or if that isn't available, creme fraîche. Then serve over egg noodles, fusili is good too.

There are many unique joys available to the expatriate foodie, but every once in awhile you get a positively proustian craving for a taste of home. It may even be something inferior to what you now enjoy in your adopted country. I talked to a fellow expat the other day who had a craving for kraft singles; I did not judge him. From a culinary perspective Switzerland is great, I mean the cheese alone is worth moving here for, to say nothing of the local produce or the breads from my village bakery (and come on, I have a village bakery!), but sometimes living abroad, you just want a pit smoked brisket, or nanner puddin. I was reading Homesick Texan (a recipe for this sort of thing really) and I saw a picture of what I was sure was fried pickles and it was almost like a punch in the gut. I wanted fried pickles from Katz's and I wanted (want, really) them right then. I don't even think I could make them. All of the pickles I have encountered here lack the vinegar-y dill-y punch of the cornichon juste, if you will, and all the corn meal is either too fine or too coarse and polenta-y for this. So tonight when I was left to my own devices in the kitchen for dinner I knew what I had to make: an elvis.

For the uninitiated, the Elvis is simultaneously the greatest and most horrifying sandwich in the known universe. It is a peanut butter and banana sandwich sandwiched fried in butter while pressing, much as you would a grilled cheese. It is salty, sweet, crunchy, and melty delicious. Ideally it should be eaten at midnight or when hungover (and really what would you expect from something called the Elvis).

My basic method is to take two medium thick slices of challah or buerre tresse/ zopfe and spread a medium layer of peanut butter (cashew butter is also fantastic) on each, then a thin layer of honey on one and a layer of medium thin sliced bannanas then press both sides together very well. Heat a saute pan to medium high and melt about a half tablespoon (or more) butter and heat until it smells nutty and is lightly brown then toss in sandwich and press some more. When sandwich is golden brown on one side, slide it back onto a plate and melt some more butter, repeat. Then (this is key) it must be cut diagonally twice and eaten immediately with much gluttonous enjoyment. Appropriate accompanying beverages include sweet tea, coke, or DP. You will know you have achieved Elvis nirvana if your bread is toasty and delicious, your bananas are slightly cooked, and a little bit of peanut butter/honey gets all over your hand while eating.

In this month's issue of "Delicious", a British food magazine, roughly comparable to Gourmet but slightly less pretentious, Gordon Ramsay had this quote for the ladies

"There are huge numbers of women out there who can't cook to save their lives. When they eat, they cheat -- it's ready meals and pre-prepared meals all the way"

Oh the misogyny and utter cluelessness, let me count the ways:
1. Let's start with the mot obvious, the many brilliant female chefs out there, who have managed to become brilliant chefs despite blocks put up by assholes like Gordo here, for instance: Julia Child, Sara Moulton, Delia Smith, Anne Willan, etc

2. From the quote, its pretty obvious Gordy here is thinking of home cooks, otherwise known as women who usually work, and due to the prevalent "second shift" also cook the majority of family meals, and then clean up after them. It should be (but clearly isn't) obvious that these women don't have a lot of free time, either to cook or to learn about cooking. Maybe if men, other than professional chefs, did more of the day to day cooking then more women would cook better (assuming, as Gordon Ramsay does, that they don't cook well as is) or, if they don't like cooking, they wouldn't cook at all. The fact that the vast majority of day to day home cooking is done by women, still, means that there are many women in the kitchen who would rather be elsewhere. Makes sense that they would use shortcuts, especially after a long day at wok, and before the washing up. So a lot of good food can be made quickly, but if you have neither the time nor the inclination to learn that, well what are you going to do? Which brings us to:

3. The implied assumption that more women ought to know how to cook. They are somehow "cheating" when they use store bought tortellini or a package of rice-a-roni, naughty wench, back to the kitchen with ye! Forget that many men also can't cook to save their lives. We think its cute when men can't cook, and dub the culinary fumbling of unmarried men "bachelor chow". How insulting! As if somehow possessing testicles and lacking a wedding ring makes one incapable of lifting a freaking saute pan. Not that being unmarried is an excuse for women. Anyone ever heard of "spinster* chow"? I didn't think so. We don't expect men who are not chefs to be able to turn on the stove, but god forbid a woman pop a Stouffer's lasagna in the oven to feed her family.

Or maybe Gordo here is fighting against the stereotype (which has clearly held him back) that women are naturally better cooks than men. Or does he just not want what he does, fine haute cuisine, be mistaken for "mommy in the kitchen" (like every female chef ever).

And while we are on the subject, how come men in the culinary world are supposed to be foul-mouthed edgy alpha males, like, well, Gordon Ramsay, Anthony Bourdain, or Marco Pierre White, usually portrayed inside their professional kitchens always in their whites and checks, but when you see a female chef on TV, in a food magazine, or on a book jacket, she's wearing comfortable vaguely feminine clothes, serving a family dinner or for a dinner party, and talking about the pleasures of home cooking. Literally, in this one issue of one British magazine, while all the male chefs are in uniform (oh, one exception, a chef talking about growing food in his garden, who is wearing gardener gear), every female chef is wearing a soft feminine shirt and perhaps a cute apron, which is all so extremely "mommy in the kitchen".

Alright, Gordon Ramsay maybe didn't say or imply everything above, but his quote just so encapsulated everything that ticks me off about gender in the food world that it spawned a rant talking about, hmmm, most of it.

Don't get me wrong, I think it would be great is every working family was issued copies of Nigella Express and Fast Food My Way by Jacques Pepin and if Velveeta and hamburger helper disappeared forever from our culinary landscape, but I understand how the many pressures that society puts on women lead to a dependence on pre-packaged food, and I don't think that people should be made to feel guilty or inadequate about how they feed their families or themselves. Besides, I actually quite like the Stouffer's vegetarian lasagna, and Mrs. T's pirogies.

*Sorry I couldn't think of any more flattering and sexy term for unmarried women, a rant for another day I think.

I was looking through my page stats and noticed a lot of people wandered over here trying to find out what to do if their jam does not set up, which is something I did not address.

Okay, you have two options:
1) Except that failure is a part of life. Your jam will still be delicious and will be an especially good addition to cobblers, pies, tarts, ice cream mix, etc (this is my preference, I am lazy).
2) Buy more jars lids, open your jars, pour it back into the pot, and re-boil the whole thing. Now re-can, using new lids (if you are in America and using two-piece lids, you can re-use the rings, but must buy new lids every time).

I would also recommend the use of added pectin if it is available to you. It's not cheating; it's an insurance policy.

I mentioned previously that I had an excellent time in Germany last week. This is in no small part due to the fact that I had a wonderful, kind, and hungry host with a comfortable house and an open, even embracing, kitchen, with all the equipment I might want and plenty of room. In case you are wondering, while I can now say my host is a friend, I did not know this person before I went to stay at her house. See, I do couch surfing. Travelers and people with available couches (or in some cases, including my most recent, separate rooms with real beds) put up profiles, you find someone who sounds nice, see if they are willing to host you, and go. Once you stay with or host someone you leave a reference so surfers can know that their host is not an axe murderer, vampire, or Jehovah's Witness. It's a beautiful combination of idealism (the free giving of hospitality) and practicality (ie a safe place to stay for poor travelers). Anywho, for the first time in a long time I felt that I had free reign in a kitchen and an enthusiastic audience.

Technically I cook all the time, practically every day in fact, but somehow the daily cooking for mes enfants doesn't actually seem to count for me. Maybe because they prefer food that I find heinously boring, as they hate garlic, spices, vegetables, cooked fruit, and really anything that's not a starch. Their favorites are cous cous and, get this, barley, plain barley. However I suspect that it's becuase it is currently summer vacation and having two very active (very needy) children underfoot makes it harder to cook so I have been doing lots of instant stuff, or tortellini from a packet with some salad or something. Of course also their grandmother is visiting and she is queen of the kitchen, with excellent reason (She made yum nuea last night. I love that woman). Perhaps when school starts and they are away when I try to make lunch it will be better.

Anyway, what I cooked on my summer vacation: Oh, my host not only had a wonderful kitchen but a wonderful garden, bursting with tomatoes, herbs, berries, and zucchini. I believe that when you have berries that fresh, until you reach a critical mass of berries (jam mass is, I believe, the technical term), the only thing to do is each them out of hand so I did nothing with that. However with the rest I made the greatest pizza in the history of pizzas. It had a perfect crunchy, chewy, flavorful crust and heaps of interesting flavor. I took my standard pizza crust (no cook should be without one), covered it with fresh, fresh cheese-less pesto (I think it's better without cheese as it has a more concentrated basil flavor), strips of wonderful ripe tomato minutes from being picked, about a third of a brick of feta, and a drizzling of olive oil, shoved in an oven set to gas mark 8 (whatever temperature that is) and baked 20-30 minutes until bottom of crust is gb&d. I make pizza often and it's usually pretty good but at some point it gets soggy and this didn't. I think the reason is that I tossed the crust until it was quite thin and I used a dry sauce not a super wet tomato sauce, and the tomatoes I used were gutted before use so there was no excess moisture. Also feta is amazing on pizza. Of course I rarely use ingredients that fresh. Whenever I next settle and have a real apartment I must get a community garden plot, or a balcony covered with pots.
I also made chocolate and zucchini cake, which I had always thought a dubious combination despite my love of the same blog; but my host said it was her favorite and that she had way too many zucchini so as an act of appreciation for the extreme generosity I made it. I am very glad I did, it was incredibly rich, dense, and chocolate-y. Plus you didn't feel guilty having it for breakfast, after all it was full of vegetables. The other main thing I made was hummus, which I have made a million times before, but such is my love of the hummus. This time I added a hand-full of parsley, which was very nice. Man I love hummus. My host made chapatis to go with which are very nice hot off the griddle. It seems like bragging, but I have been told by multiple people that my hummus is the best they've ever had. It's much a matter of tasting and adding so I don't know if this recipe will work for you but here goes nothing:

1 lb/ 500 g dry chickpeas
or 1 can, you lazy bastard
5+ cloves of garlic
1/2 a lemon, possibly more
½ a tablespoon sea salt
a bunch of parsley (optional)
1 ½ + teaspoons cumin
3-5 tablespoons tahini
3-5 tablespoons olive oil

soak chickpeas overnight, add water if necessary to cover chickpeas plus ½ inch, bring soaking water and chickpeas to boil and simmer for 2-3 hours until extremely tender. Turn off pan and allow to cool, keep peas covered with water, place about a third of prepared chickpeas and 1/2 a cup of cooking liquid in food processor, freeze the rest (never make less than a full bag of beans, they freeze perfectly and you waste a huge amount of energy making only what you need each time, plus chickpeas are great throw-it-ins. I like especially in thai curries, peanut, red, or yellow).
Add the rest of your ingredients (actually it behooves you to place the garlic at the bottom so it will mince well, their is nothing less pleasant than getting a big bite of raw garlic), process until smooth. Add more water and oil if not blending well. Now taste and adjust. Add more garlic and cumin if not spicy enough, more lemon is it needs brightness, more salt if taste is flat, and more tahini is it is not rich enough. Add more chickpeas (and others) if it is too much of any one of these.
Pour into a pretty bowl (wide and shallow is best), sprinkle with paprika and oil then enjoy. My very favorite pack lunch is hummus, crudites, and tortilla chips.

I just got back from spending an awesome week in Germany. Prior to this trip I did my usual cursory amount of research that mostly involved finding a host and reading the section for Germany from Lonely Planet: Europe on a Shoestring. This was notable because this entry included the claim that German food is unexciting at best so you might as well go to the cheapest places, or eat out of grocery store delis to save your money. I found this statement to be ridiculously untrue. I had some of the best meals I have had in awhile there and, without question the best salad I have ever had, and I don't even really like salad normally. I'll give my usual rapturous descriptions of yummy things later. First I wanted to talk about why we come to believe things like this. That German food is heavy and bland, English food unmentionable; you don't even want to know what most Europeans think of American food. The truth is that in all these countries there is bad food, but there is also very good food and often the most traditional, basic foods are exceptional. Given that this is the case why do we seem to feel the need to reify or debase the foods of certain places. I don't have any answers to the why (although it seems like food cultures associated with poverty or cheap places bear the worst of it), but I will propose a solution. We all need to explore food more, try new things with an open mind and an empty stomach. Maybe traveling the world isn't practical for you, but what about your own town/ state/ country? Is there any place you've seen that you thought, "well that smells great, but looks a little dodgy", or "I've never heard anything good about Russian food". Try it. I've heard great things about Russian food. You may have some epically bad meals, but you'll have many good ones. Here are some tips I've found useful for discovering the good: 1)the most basic: does it smell good, this can fail you sometimes, but is usually a good indication? 2)is it busy, and do people seem to be enjoying there food 3) if it's an "ethnic" or regional restaurant are there a lot of people from that group eating there, because this is always a good sign 4) check out online reviews to find places you normally might not come across. If you are interested in, for instance, trying Ethiopian food, see if there is a Ethiopian expat group for you're town. This is how I found my favorite Indian place in Shanghai. 5) if you're reading this you probably like to cook: see what your local library's cookbook section has, or check out online recipes.

If I had simply believed the lonely planet people and eaten whatever was cheapest, or self-catered the whole trip I would have missed out on some wonderful food experiences, and it's not like I spent much, actually it was a very cheap trip, averaging 17 Euros a day, including some shopping (I did make a few of my meals though, and my host was ridiculously generous). At the train station (of all places) I had the perfect bratwurst, with a crisp, snappy skin, rich flavorful meat, and a chewy, delicious bun. At a biergarten in Heidelberg, I had perfectly seared fillet of pork (and yes, it's true pork in Europe is more flavorful than the American pig) covered in a rich, creamy mushroom sauce with hot buttered spatezle, and copper pennies, totaling a terrifying amount of delicious food for only 10 euros! The most memorable meal of the trip though is, without question, the salad I had at an alternative cafe in Marburg, it was a salad that would make Alice Waters proud. It was called "red bean salad" which sounded very uninteresting indeed, but that would be wrong, it was crisp red leaf tip lettuce layered with tender red beans, fresh sheep's cheese (reminiscent of feta but more flavorful), lots of fresh herbage covered with a simple oil and vinegar dressing and served with plenty of crusty bread. I would not have expected it to be good, but my host told me it was great so, keeping an open mind, I ordered it and it was simply the tastiest thing I've had in a long time, with layers and layers of flavor, a rich creamy texture, and a pungent aromatic finish. I must make this. I will figure out how to do so and post the results. You may have noticed that German food does not rate high on the fanciness scale, which is true, it simply is good, basic food done right, a lot of the time.

When I was a kid in Tacoma, Washington every summer through fall me and my brother went out and collected massive hordes of blackberries and brought a decent portion of that back to my mom, who turned them into rows upon rows of truly epic jam. At the time I thought that the best thing about this set up was A) shoving as many blackberries into my mouth as humanly possible and B) learning to flick the bramble-y branches at my brother with my coat hanger (a necessary piece of blackberry picking equipage), but I was young and naive. I had only ever had home made jam. I had no idea how comparatively crappy most store bought stuff is. Well, now I know. I have since spent years fully enjoying my mother's jam and utterly failing to learn at the master's feet. She just never seems to be making jam when we are both on the same continent (probably more my fault than hers)

Admittedly here in Europe a lot of the jam is of better quality then most jam you can get at American supermarkets. Still, it's not as good as home made. Anyway the real reason I decided to make jam is that I got a hankering to do it. I was reading the book Plenty (great book by the way) and they talked about making jam and I thought, "gee, I want to make jam, and I have a vague idea of how to do it".
So, I read up at The National Center for Home Preservation and watched Alton Brown make jam and I decided to more or less wing it. So I went to get so preserving supplies. Here's a fun fact: apparently real Swiss bonne femmes (housewives) don't cotton to this new fangled pectin, so I'd have to do it without added pectin. Well, my first batch was all berries anyway, no problem. Apparently the basic technique of no added pectin jam is to use the right fruit (berries and stone fruits being best), add plenty of sugar, and then boil the ever loving hell out of it. Okay, so:

Step 1.
Chop or crush fruit and measure all indgredients:

Check!
Step 2.
Boil the ever loving hell out of it, while bringing a gigantic pot of water to a boil
For the gigantic pot, fill all the jars you are going to use each session with water, place in pot, then fill with water until jars are well covered, then take out jars, still filled with water. That way you have the right amount of water.
Also if you are water bath canning and processing for under 10 minutes you need to sterilize jars first. I have to process for ten minutes because I am at 1000 feet above sea level so I can skip the sterilizing.
Step 3:
Put in jars, wipe off the lips of jars and screw on lids (oh, in America you can use the two piece lids with a lid and a sealing ring. In Europe we only have one piece lids). place a towel in the bottom of pot of boiling water and carefully place in jars so that the jars are not touching each other or the sides or bottom of the pot (I believe this prevents exploding jam jars, so I'd be careful with this one)

Step 4:
Process the jars, how long depends on your altitude, at sea level for only 5 minutes. Start timing when water comes back to a full boil after you have placed in jam.
Step 5:
Take out of water (duh), let cool for 12 hours, label, and enjoy. Any jars whose lids haven't popped in need to be refrigerated and used immediately.

This time I made an obscene amount of apricot jam (why I thought 1 1/2 kilos of frozen apricots would make less I don't know) and some blackberry. Last week I made blackberry and rasberry. For some reason this time my jam didn't set up nearly so well as last time. Last time I made smaller batches so I wonder if that has something to do with it. It shouldn't. I boil the jam until it hit 218 F, which is supposed to be jam consistency. Maybe I should use the method where I see if it's falling in sheets or drips, but temperature just seems so much more scientific. Plus I'm not sure I know what a sheet is supposed to look like (or anyway what a sheet of jam looks like, obviously I know the other kind). Also I should have pureed the apricots because now I have apricot pieces suspended in apricot jelly. It's a bit weird, but probably still good. Anywho, now I officially have a ridiculous amount of jam for a single person. I will probably start giving away jam to practically everyone I meet. That should work. According to Will Smith rich people love jam (10 cool points to anyone who gets the reference), and it is Switzerland, so I've got plenty of rich people. It may only work for rich Americans. Eh, whatever I have delicious jam. I can make jam tarts with abandon. Just try to stop me.