On culture and cheese

I'm determined to stay with the blogging at the moment but let me explain why I haven't posted for two weeks. Last weekend we had a three day trip to Vienna which was amazing. A beautiful city filled with fabulous buildings and museums, a bustling Christmas market, comfy coffee houses with tasty cakes and a delicious food market filled with many cafe's. After our stay, the feet were very sore from all the walking, the bellies full of the delicious tarts and sausages and the senses overloaded with their plethora of museums.


Then this weekend has been filled with dinners and meeting friends with at the top of it all, a scrumptious cheese fondue in a friends vineyard this afternoon. It's a small plot of land that first her father and now her brother work as their hobby. We walked up there around 3.30 in a snowy winter wonderland. Once we got to the little house they have, we cooked the cheese on the wood stove and drank their white wine....the most perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon if you ask me! The way down was a bit more challenging as it had started snowing again and there was a fierce wind making it very exciting in the dark.


Finally, a little bit of crafting with this year's dinner table light decoration. Still sticking with a natural theme like last year but using a different plant. And the little leaves swing happily around if you have some candles lit on the table.

Cheese Fondue a la Bischof
(calculate between 150-200g cheese per person depending on the appetite)

600g of cheese (equal amounts of Gruyere, Vacherin Fribourgeois and Appenzeller - or what you have at hand)
3 cloves of garlic (making for a fairly garlicy taste so reduce if you don't like it too strong)
300 ml of white wine (and plenty more for drinking!)
grated nutmeg
2tsp cornflour
a small glass of Kirsch (again, have some extra on hand to sip as it aids the digestion)
black pepper
a pinch of bicarbonate soda
plenty of your favourite bread (we had potatobread with walnuts and also half white)

Chop the garlic roughly and put it in the pan, add the cheese, wine and cornflour and place on the heat. Stir until all is dissolved and then stir in the kirsch, nutmeg and pepper. Mix well and just before serving add the bicarbonate soda and mix well. Serve with the bread whist stirring in the shape of eights - this prevents the cheese from burning at the bottom and makes for a fantastic "Grossmutter". This is the crust that forms at the bottom and make sure you have some room left as it's the best bit of the whole fondue.

A wintery pizza

Another brief post as this week we are in Ireland visiting Barry's family. We're getting all are family visits sorted now as we won't see them for Christmas. The reason?? We're going on a 4 week holiday to Melbourne and Tasmania! I'm so excited as we haven't had a holiday all year and we've been saving days for this one! Anyway, more about that in a later post.

With all the traveling, socializing and getting presents organized, the cooking has been somewhat limited recently but I still wanted to share this recipe with you. Its another one from my friend Simone who is a source of great recipes that are often easy but totally delicious! For this one we were lazy and bought a ball of pizza dough at the local store, which here is as good as home made, topped it with thinly sliced potato and Taleggio cheese. After baking it in the oven for about 20 min at 220°C on a pizza stone the cheese was melted and golden. Topped with some truffle oil to give it a nutty earthy smell, it was an incredibly tasty dinner that we'll be making much more this winter. I also think my little bottle of truffle oil won't last very long (even though a little goes a long way) as we've already been using it on this pasta and I think it would work well on something like a mushroom bruchetta.

Prickly pears!

With a name like that, don't you have to try some?! When I moved here (one year ago already and I've never blogged about them) I was fascinated with these prickly pink, yellow and/or green beauties. I suspected they were cactus fruits and after a bit of browsing on the web I discovered I was right but that their alternative name is prickly pear or opuntia, which is so much more fun. So I bought some, tried some different recipes and was hooked. I love the light fruity taste of them that you can use both in savory or sweet dishes. Last night, we ate some with grilled tofu and a variety of grains (wheat, buckwheat and quinoa, emptying all the left over packages!). To make the sauce simply fry a chopped onion in some olive oil until soft, then add 4 chopped tomatoes and 3 peeled and chopped prickly pears (I'd recommend wearing washing up gloves as I was picking needles out of my finger for the rest of the night - sometimes this doesn't happen but some pears are more prickly than others). Fry for another 5 min till you have a nice sauce, add chopped parsley, season with salt and pepper and enjoy. The pears do contain a lot of seeds but I think you can easily eat around them (think pomegranate or passion fruit). I think it would also be really nice to use in a cold tomato soup, as a sweet jelly or in baking.

Celebrating summer

Summer's finally here but for how long nobody knows, so we made the most of it by having a barbeque on our balcony on Saturday. I felt like having Eastern Mediterranean food so made lamb koftes by spicing lamb mince with a mix of harissa, chili, cinnamon,ground ginger, nutmeg and fresh coriander then binding it together with a beaten egg and some flour. To accompany this was a roasted garlic tzatziki where you mix the classic grated cucumber, yoghurt and mint with a few cloves of roasted garlic and a grilled aubergine, pomegranate and tahini salad. This is based on a Claudia Roden recipe from a newspaper article that I couldn't find anymore. I roasted the aubergine, let them cool and cut them into chunks, they were then mixed with pomegranate seeds, tahini, pomegranate molasses and some za'tar spice mix.

But the star are these new flatbreads that you bake on the BBQ. I got the recipe from a free Harvey Nic's magazine when I was in London last May and they are so easy, all you need is a bit of time, but if you start this before you make all the other bbq stuff it should be plenty of time. They are absolutely delicious and you can vary the topings/contents endlessly to make them go with whatever you're having. So far, we've used sea salt, rosemary and a mix of nigella (black onion) and cumin seeds and I've been thinking about sweet toppings or perhaps even fillings like in the Peshwari naans.

Flatbreads (about 16)
2 tsp dried yeast
450 ml water (luke warm)
750g strong white flour
2 tsp salt
black pepper
50 ml olive oil

Dissolve the dried yeast in 50 ml of the water. Put the dry ingredients and oil in a bowl and mix well. Add the dissolved yeast and then the rest of the water and kneed this for about 10 min, either with dough hooks but I prefer doing it with my hand. Cover the bowl and leave to rise for about 1-2 hours, if you want to speed up this process, you can fill the sink with lukewarm water and place the bowl in there. When fully risen, knock it back and divide into 16 balls. Roll them out on into thin pita shapes. Leave to rise for another 30 minutes then bbq on coals for about 1-2 min each side till brown.

To add flavours, either kneed what you want to add into the dough or wet the dough just after rolling it out, sprinkle over the topping and press it into the surface.

London eats and summer noodles

Ok, it's been a while ago but at the end of May I went to London to meet up with two close friends, we had traveled together through Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and India two years ago but hadn't seen each other for ages. It only took about 2 min and we were back to our normal chatting, tea and cake routine! We had a great weekend full of shopping food and musea starting on Friday with Portobello road, books for cooks and the spice shop (a true treasure trove). Books for cooks was amazing, first we had lunch in their cafe part, then I spent about 2 hours browsing (whist the girls were chatting) and they had to stop me from buying too much as I had to carry it all back in the handluggage. On the way back, we stopped for afternoon tea (we were in britain after all) at the Tea Palace. It was amazing, I had lovely kuchicha tea with an almond and blood syrup cake with Chai Masala ice cream. It was lovely, moist from the syrup and crumbly from the almonds. The ice cream was rich, creamy but not too sweet. After this, we went back to Sharon's flat where she cooked us our favourtite dinner, potstickers and buddah's delight.

On Saterday we went to Borough market, again the buying had to be stopped due to weight restrictions but we did sample lots of nice things. Then we walked along the Thames to the Tate modern, spent a few hours in there and visited the Japan centre where I stocked up on lots of foodstuffs that I just can't get here. In the evening we reminised about our travels over a great Vietnamese meal at Cay Tre (301 Old Street, London). We had many old favourites, fresh spring rolls, Bun Cha and Fish in Caramel sauce that came complete with flaming plate!

Sunday morning, we said hello to the dinosaur at thenatural history museum, visited the V&A where we saw the Kylie exhibition. This was great fun, lots of dancy happy music, nice costumes and more, which was just what we needed as we were getting a bit tired with all the trips. Had lunch in their beautiful cafe, walked past Harrods, Harvey Nicks and met up with other friends at a great wine bar. Finally we had a quiet night in and went to bed early as we had to get up at 5 to catch our planes. All in all a great weeked and I came back with lots of nice foodies to eat. One of them were these beautiful pink somen noodles. The first time I had these was when I was living in Japan taking a cooking class with Elisabeth Andoh in Tokyo. It was a focus on cold noodles for the hot summer and these were one of them. As the weather picked up drasticaly this weekend it was the perfect opportunity to make them. The dipping sauce is very easy to make, keeps well and can be used for all sorts of things. We enjoyed them on the balcony with their dipping accompaniments (the shiso were the first harvest from the balcony)...but as i was telling Barry, now that they're finished I just might have to go back to London to get some more :-)



Thin noodles on Ice serves 4

For the sauce
3 tbsp seasoned soy concentrate (see below) thinned with 1/2 cup dashi (also see below)
200g thin noodles
Ice cubes
For the condiments:
1 tsp peeled and grated ginger
4-5 shiso leaves, finely shredded
2 tbsp freshly toasted white sesame seeds, coarsly ground

Bring a large pan of water to the boil but leave room for more. When boiling, add a cup of water and repeat this step. Test if the noodles are cooked. Drain and rinse them under cold water. Place ice cubes in a bowl. Put the noodles on top and add water till they are barely floating. Divide the sauce over 4 small, deep bowls and add condiments to your liking. Lift noodles out of the ice water, then dunk them briefly in the condiments and sauce mix before slurping them.

Seasoned soy concentrate makes about 2/3 cup

5-6 large iriko (dried small sardines)
8-10 square inches kombu (preferably a high glutamate variety)
1 dried shiitake mushroom or stems from 3-4 mushrooms
1/4 cup dried thick bonito flakes or 1/2 cup tightly packed katsuo-bushi (fine bonito flakes)
2/3 cup soy
1/3 cup sake
3 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp water
2 tbsp mirin

Remove the black internal organs of the fish. Place iriko, kombu shiitake, kombu, bonito (only think ones, if using fine ones add later) and sake in a small deep saucepan and leave to infuse for 1-24 hours. Add the sugar, water, mirin to the pan and place over low heat. When the liquid begins to boil, reduce the heat to keep it from boiling too vigorously. As the sauce simmers, it becomes quite foamy, rising in the saucepan. Keep from overflowing and reduce by about 1/4 till it becomes syrupy. Remove from the heat and if using the fine bonito flakes scatter them into the pan now. Wait 2-3 min for them to sink, thin strain the liquid through a paper lined strainer. Reserve the solids and leave the concentrate to cool naturally, cover and refrigerate for up to 1 month. Put the soy-drenched bits of kombu, fish and mushroom into a pan with 2-3 cups of cold water, bring rapidly to the boil, strain immediately and discard the solids. This will make the dashi.

The perfect pot

LIfe has been hectic recently....with stomach flus, midnight work and Barry's parents visiting, there has not been much time for cooking. I did however manage to cook in my new addition to the kitchen: this beautiful red cast iron pot! I'd seen it a few weeks ago at our local flea market . My eye was caught by a glimpse of bright red. Closer inspection showed it was a beautiful oval pot, the enamel was in pretty good condition with only a few chips missing at the edge and on the bottom was logo of a capital R with a crown.

But I thought I should be sensible, we have a small kitchen, I didn't really need another pot, specially as I already had one that's a similar size. So I walked away, went on with my shopping and tried not t think about it. But I kept thinking about it, regretting I left it and dreaming about the casseroles and stews I could make in it. And then after three weeks I went back and it was still there! I couldn't believe my luck. So I thought, I'd have to check how much it was, the owner would tell me it would be really expensive and I could walk away. But it wasn't! 10 chf = £5 = €7 so I had to take it home and I'm so glad I did as it's great. Every morning I'm greeted by the beautiful red glow and brimming with ideas of what to cook in it. As it's summer, and the weather has picked up again it's not really stew weather so I opted for this French summery stew. It's lovely and creamy but the Cider and vinegar still keep it light. It tastes great with pasta and some blanched summer vegetables.

Pork meat in Cider sauce
serves 4
500g pork meat cut into cubes
10 shallots
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp butter
1/2 bottle French cider or white wine
1 dl white wine vinegar
thyme and bay leaf
1 tbsp creme fraiche
salt and pepper

Heat half of the oil and butter and brown the meat quickly. You might have to do this in several goes. Add the rest of the oil and butter and brown the shallots. Add the cider and vinegar and deglaze the pan. Add the meat back in along with the herbs and seasoning and simmer for 1h 15 min. Reduce the sauce and add the creme fraiche.

Waiter, there's something in my...aubergine!

Jeanne is hosting this month's edition of Waiter, there's something in my stuffed fruit/vegetable. I opted for the veggie option by using these thai aubergines and stuffing then with a mix for nem nuong. Nem nuong are vietnamese pork balls that you grill and then assemble into wraps with salad etither in big lettuce leafs or rice paper. The first time I ate them was in Vientiane (Laos) when I was traveling with my friend Lisa. The owner of the small sandwich shop we were eating at recommended us this dish and we were very happy we took her up on her offer. She explained to us how to make the rolls and the ingredients so I could recreate it at home. The only distraction during this lunch was a Canadian girl eating outside and sharing her adventures with some friends. She was fairly loud and we were nosey so we listened in on the coversation. Little did we know that we would meet this girl, Sharon, the following day as we flew to Vietnam and would get on so well that we'd travel together for the next three months!

Last weekend I went to London for the long weekend and Lisa, Sharon and I met up (post to follow). We had a lovely time with lots of chatting and eating. It's amazing how you can not see each other for a year and then get right into the swing of things again. One of the highlights was a great Vietnamese meal which brought back lots of memories and stories. I'd however forgotton about the Nem nuong and when I got home and was flicking through this book, I ran into them again and WTSIM was the perfect event to recreate them in a different format. I like the thai eggplant as they have a slightly more bitter taste and love their small and dinky appearance. The combination worked well, the pork was moist and sweet and the slight bitter eggplant balanced this nicely. We ate it with rice cakes (from the chinese supermarket), stirfried veg and a Vietnamese dipping sauce. On the down side the aubergines were a bit fidley to hollow out and I had way too much filling. I filled 6 and could have probably done 24 at least! We decided to just grill the left over pork mince as little balls and have them with rice and salad tomorrow.

Aubergines filled with Vietnamese pork mince
24 thai
225 g lean pork
1/4 cup minced shallots
1/4 cup minced garlic
1 tbsp fish sauce
1/2 tsp sugar
freshly ground black pepper
30g minced pork fat
1 tbsp roasted rice powder*

Slice the pork and place it into a bowl with the shallots, garlic, fish sauce, sugar and pepper. leave to marinade between 1-24 hr. Before proceeding, transfer this mix to the freezer for roughly 30 min. In the mean time slice the top off the aubergines and hollow them out, cut the flesh into small chuncks. In a food processor, wizz the fat to a paste, then add the chilled slices of pork and process till it forms a ball of rubbery paste. Add the rice powder and the scooped out flesh of the aubergines and process this in very briefly. Scoop a ball of this into the aubergines, place the top back on and bake 30 min at 180°C.

* roast 1/4 cup of thai sticky or jasmine rice until golden brown. Grind down in a coffee grinder or mortar and pestle till a fine powder. This will keep well in a jar. Alternatively, I've cheated and just roasted some rice flower instead.

Vietnamese dipping sauce
1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup water
2 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 minced garlic clove
1 minced small chili
shredded carrot

Tapas

Barry went to Barcelona last weekend for his friends stagdo. But although his memories are pretty hazy of the whole thing, he did remember to bring me back a selection of nice meats including Chorizo, Jamon and Salchichon. So with the weather being nice again this weekend, we had a tapas style dinner on our balcony last night. We had some of the meats, some cheeses (Tomme de Savoie and Comte), Membrillo, marinated bell pepers, pickled onions. To go with this, we had spicy potatoes and I coated some baby squid and sardines in flour mixed freshly ground pepper and briefly fried these. A great meal and so simple, I think we shall be eating like this a lot this summer!

Spicy potatoes
500 g boiled potaoes
1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
2 green chilies
handfull parsley
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt and pepper

Dice the potatoes into smallish chunks and finely chop the rest of the ingredient. Heat some olive oil in a pan and fry the onion and garlic till golden. Add the rest of the ingredients, season to taste and fry for 10 minutes. If the mixture starts to get a bit dry or burning you can add some water or red wine. These potatoes taste great both hot or cold.