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So, it’s late Friday PM. I have not mustered a post until now, which I am beating myself down on more than my readers would, I know. It’s been a busy week, but my days are always busy – and I don’t have the excuse of an infant or a 9 – 5 job. Frankly, I have no idea where the time flies.
If I had to tell you what I did this week, I’d be scrambling. I wrote a few blog posts, of course, but mainly for THIS blog, while neglecting the gardening one that I started earlier this year. Today I spent most of the day completing some articles for a German-language photography blog I am a regular contributor to.
My excuse otherwise is, of course, that I am DOING it – I AM gardening – so I have no time to WRITE about it. Yeah, right. I do have all the pictures. What IS correct is that I have no energy left at the end of the day, so I’m focusing on the food side of things.
Today, I got my first real harvest from the aforementioned garden, a bunch of rainbow radishes in white, pink and purple (see photo). I AM SOOOO EXCITED!!! I am hoping for lots more veggies etc. to harvest, mainly so I can take pictures of them. Talk about being OBSESSED. 
Tomorrow I get to host my first ever webinar. We’ll be learning about Lightroom 2. If you are a (food) blogger and would like to join, please register at this URL. We are starting at 2 PM EST sharp.
Other random thoughts for the day/night – since my brain is CLEARLY fried:
- Innovation in America has always been driven by amateurs, the Wright brothers being a good example. I don’t see why food blogging shouldn’t fall into the same category. Anybody claiming otherwise should be stabbed with their own fork.
- Strawberry shortcake beckons. I will heed the call tomorrow.
- White wine is a God-send. No further comments.
- AAAAANYWAY.
I’ve said it a few times here ad nauseam, but let me say it again: I LOVE CHEESE. Pretty much any kind of cheese, with VERY few exceptions. It’s not surprising, then, that every once in a while I make it a meal pretty much in its own right. A couple of nights ago it HAD to be baked brie. I do own a brie baker, but it’s generally misused for other things. That night it could shine – not only does it hold a small brie perfectly, but it was also hand-made by a local potter, Emily Moorefield Mariola. (Have I mentioned that hand-made pottery is another weakness?)
And this recipe couldn’t be easier. Just sauté some side ingredients, stick everything in the oven, about 15 minutes or so later, voila, here’s dinner. Try it with a couple of slices of home-made white bread and a good glass of red wine.
Do you like baked brie? If yes, what is your favorite way of making/eating it?
Recipe type: Lunch, Side, Quick Dinner
Author: Sofie Dittmann
Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 15 mins
Total time: 30 mins
Serves: 4
This recipe couldn’t be easier. Just sauté some side ingredients, stick everything in the oven, about 15 minutes or so later, voila, here’s dinner.
- 227 g (1/2 lb) mushrooms, cut into small pieces
- 1 small brie (227 g or 1/2 lb)
- 1/2 cup (125 g) yellow and red peppers, cut into small cubes
- 1/2 onion, cut
- 6 gloves garlic, minced
- 1/8 cup (30 g) maple syrup
- 1/8 cup (30 g) hot sauce (Tabasco or Frank’s Red Hot)
- 1 tsp (10 g) salt
- 1/2 tsp (5 g) black pepper, ground
- Preheat the oven to 190 C/400 F.
- Sauté the mushrooms until most of the water has evaporated. Set aside.
- Sauté the onions and peppers. Add the mushrooms, garlic and other ingredients for two or three minutes. Let cool a little.
- In the meantime, spray a brie baker with cooking spray. Set the unwrapped brie into the baker, cover with the mushroom mixture and close the baker.
- Bake for about 15 minutes or until the brie shows visible signs of melting inside and the contents are steaming hot.
- Serve with white bread and a salad.
2.2.6
Before I dive into the actual post… {*drum roll*} The winner of last week’s giveaway of “Artisan Breads in Five Minutes a Day” is, well, actually TWO people. I can never stick to my original plan of giving away just ONE thing. No, it has to be TWO. I would like to be able to give EVERYBODY something, but I have to win the lottery first.
Anyway.
The winner of this giveaway is Jessica from “Oh, Cake” – she gets a brand-new copy of this book. The other one is Beth M. who left me a wonderful message on my FB fan page – she will receive a gently used, almost-like-new copy of it. Both will be notified via email.
Stay tuned for next quarter’s giveaway, and thanks to all who left comments!
 One book which I had in my collection until recently was “Inside the Jewish Bakery”. I had originally acquired it when I felt inspired by some enthusiastic posts from some fellow bakers on “The Fresh Loaf”. For many it seemed like this book was a walk down memory lane, and when you read through it, it is indeed not just a recipe collection, but also a recollection of memories of Jewish life, holidays, holiday baking, traditional Jewish bakery and more.
My motivation for buying it was to supplement another Jewish cookbook I had bought years ago in Germany. That one was much thinner, more of an overview over Jewish cuisine in general, and I was eager to get my hands on recipes that would have been featured in a true Jewish bakery.
What I liked about the book is that it is the first one I bought here that had all recipes listed in any measurement system you can think of – metric, US, imperial AND baker’s percentages. THIS IS HOW ALL COOKBOOKS SHOULD BE PRINTED!! It was also organized in a way that would combine different recipes into a larger final one. For example, the poppy seed bars require a short dough crust, a poppy seed topping, streusel AND simple syrup. The downside of this is that you are thumbing around in the book quite a bit over the course of baking one thing.
I didn’t mind this trade-off, however, because it’s actually how I like to work. I figure out what the foundations and rules of something are, then expand on it to create something else. I should have read some details about “Inside the Jewish Bakery” first, though, because the two things that made it NOT work for me were a) some of the ingredients used and b) the fact that my family didn’t care for most of what I created out of it.
The first reason was really only rooted in the fact that the authors were trying to make things work for observant Jews who wanted to keep Kosher. The second one is a matter of personal taste, but somehow related to the first. Instead of butter, many recipes use shortening and butter flavor, for example – and we don’t do processed ingredients at our house if we can help it. I also was trying to follow the baking challenge posted at “The Fresh Loaf”, and therefore I was making some recipes I would have otherwise skipped, like “Jewish Honey Cake” (Lekach) – and which my family basically didn’t eat. That doesn’t make the recipe bad, it’s just something I should have considered.
The only real criticism I do have is that the book should have received more scrutiny BEFORE going to print as far as accuracy in the recipes went. There is a several pages long “errata” document that was created right after the book went on sale, and we kept finding more as we went. One of them being the amount of egg in the cream cheese filling – which I realized too late, and which completely ruined the entire batch of pastries for me when making cheese pockets.
In the end, I decided that this was a book that somebody else would probably enjoy more than I did, and I ended up listing it on PaperBackSwap, where it was promptly snatched up by a lady from NYC.
Bottom line: if you are into authentic Jewish baking, with all there is to it, this book is for you. Just be sure to have an errata list nearby and be vigilant – if it seems like there is too much egg listed, there probably IS too much egg listed.
What is your favorite cookbook? Why?
 
One of the really cool things about the (food) blogosphere is that you “meet” other like-minded people whose acquaintance you otherwise would not have made. One such blogger friend is PolaM of “ An Italian Cooking in the Midwest”. I featured her as part of my “Bloggers I Follow” mini-series a few weeks ago, and she was also instrumental in creating an ethnic food blogger group called “World on a Plate” (our last post was “picnic food”).
When a comment on my pancake post from Ramona of “Curry and Comfort” prompted a discussion on “ethnic fusion” posts between us, we decided to do a spin-off on the topic. We are calling this effort “Cooked in Translation” (thanks, PolaM for the title idea – I LOVE IT!).
Here’s how it works: On the second Sunday each month, we are posting a blog hop, hosted by a selected blogger. This month that is PolaM, next month it will be me – but we’re hoping for lots of participants in the months to come. The host picks an authentic ethnic dish the month prior to the blog hop. That can be anything from “mac & cheese” to chicken curry to German cheesecake and beyond. The host posts the recipe/dish as it is typically made, the others interpret the dish from a different culinary perspective. More details see here.
This month, PolaM (being Italian) picked tiramisu. I LOVE that dessert, and it just so happens that I had an original recipe that I created last year for a big event here in town: orange/dark chocolate tiramisu. The executive chef of a well-known local restaurant had invited me to participate in a charity event, and I made 10 half-sheets of it. It was a HUGE success, and developing the recipe must have made me gain at least 100 pounds.
Tiramisu has two parts to it: ladyfingers biscuit cookies and a mascarpone crème. Traditionally, the crème is made with raw egg to make the dessert light and fluffy. However, that means that the dessert basically has to be eaten the day it was made, and I have a certain apprehension to using raw eggs from chickens I don’t know personally. Or better, where I don’t know how they were kept.
Since this was to be plated originally, I made it like a cake and not in a deep dish. Also, I don’t have ready access to ladyfingers, so I had to make them myself. You have two options for the biscuit: pipe them as cookies or make the biscuit as one continuous sheet. Since they are used as a cake base, the question is: why bother piping? So I didn’t. You can see the two versions here:
There are two schools of thought on how to make biscuit: either you beat it to death with a hand mixer in a normal bowl to make it thick and creamy before you fold in the egg whites, or you do the same thing in a double boiler. I have tried both (you see a double boiler in these pictures), and in my estimation it doesn’t make a lick of a difference.
Bottom line: a half sheet of biscuit will give you a quarter sheet of tiramisu. Dig on in! (Of note: this freezes really well apparently!)
Have you had tiramisu? What is your favorite one?
| Orange/Dark Chocolate Tiramisu (Eggless) #cookedintranslation |
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Recipe type: Dessert
Author: Sofie Dittmann (Ladyfingers from “Die Neue Große Schule: Backen”)
Serves: 6 – 8
Interpretation of a classic Italian dessert.
- Ladyfingers
- 5 egg yolks
- 120 g (2/3 cup) sugar
- 15 g (1 tbsp) orange flavor (optional)
- 40 g (2 tbsp) hot water (2 “real” tablespoons)
- 5 egg whites
- 180 g (1 cup) sugar
- 125 g (1 cup) all-purpose flour, sifted
- Orange/Dark Chocolate Tiramisu (Eggless)
- For the cream:
- 250 g (1 cup) heavy whipping cream
- 50 g (1/4 cup) sugar
- 3 g (1 tsp) cream of tartar
- 453 g (1 1-lb container) mascarpone
- 250 g (1 cup) milk
- 150 g (3/4 cup) sugar
- 200 g (about 1 cup) dark chocolate, melted
- 1 shot = 40 g orange liqueur (Grand Marnier or something similar)
- 15 g (1 tbsp) vanilla flavor
- For drizzling:
- 340 g strong coffee
- 40 – 80 g (1 – 2 shots) orange liqueur
Ladyfingers
- In a bowl, beat the egg yolks with the first measurement of the sugar and the hot water and flavor (optional) until thick and creamy. The mixture should look white and cream-like.
- Slowly drizzle in the remainder of the sugar and keep beating for 2 – 3 minutes for a total of up to 10 minutes.
- Beat the egg whites until stiff. Spoon 1/3 of the egg whites onto the egg yolk mixture, sift the flour on top and fold everything in. Add the remainder of the egg whites and fold these in as well.
- Preheat your oven to 355 F. Line a half sheet pan with a piece of sheet liner and thoroughly spray everything with cooking spray. (It is easiest to use a sheet extender for this, but it is not crucial.)
- Evenly spread the biscuit batter on the sheet and bake for 15 – 20 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Turn the biscuit out onto a kitchen towel sprinkled thickly with sugar and let cool.
For the cream:
- Beat the whipping cream, first portion of the sugar and cream of tartar until stiff. Let rest in the fridge.
- Melt the chocolate by breaking it into pieces, then just about covering it with boiling hot water. Let stand for a few minutes, then drain as much of the water as possible.
- In the meantime, mix the mascarpone, rest of the sugar, vanilla, orange liqueur and milk. SLOWLY pour in the melted chocolate. Keep beating until thoroughly combined and creamy. Let rest in the fridge.
- Fold in the whipping cream with the mascarpone cream.
Assembling the dessert:
- Cut the biscuit in half. Drizzle half of the coffee/liqueur mixture onto it evenly.
- Cover the biscuit with half of the mascarpone cream. Cover with the other half of the biscuit and repeat.
- Optional: decorate by drawing a decorating comb across the top of the dessert and sprinkle thickly with cocoa.
- Let rest in the fridge for at least 2 hours before serving.
2.2.6
This is a blog hop!
This potato salad is one of the picnic memories I have from growing up. We would take it for example to the Baggersee (literally translated, “backhoe lake”), one of the many man-made lakes around my hometown where gravel and sand were “harvested” at some point, and that were open for swimming in the summer. We’d pack this and a couple of other dishes into baskets strapped to our bikes and rode a few miles through the adjacent forest to get to our favorite one. The ride usually seemed endless as we couldn’t wait to finally get into the water.
It’s a simple salad and best after resting for two or so hours, but also best eaten on the day it was made (it will keep for a few days in the fridge, however). Even though it’s made with mayonnaise and eggs, the hot summer temperatures didn’t seem to harm it – and it didn’t typically last long anyway. A good slice of bread with it, butter or not, is really all you need for a great, simple picnic lunch.
Do you have a favorite picnic food?
| Mom’s Potato Salad with Mayonnaise, Eggs and Pickles |
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Recipe type: Side, Lunch
Author: Sofie Dittmann
Serves: 4 – 6
It’s a simple salad and best after resting for two or so hours, but also best eaten on the day it was made (it will keep for a few days in the fridge, however).
- 6 – 7 medium potatoes
- 6 hardboiled eggs
- 1 small jar or about 8 small kosher baby dills (473 g) plus 2 tbsp (about 40 g)
- 150 g (2/3 cup) mayonnaise
- 100 g (1/2 cup) olive oil
- 60 g (3 3/4 tbsp) white balsamic vinegar
- 10 g (1 2/3 tsp) salt
- 2 g (1 tsp) black pepper, ground
- 2 g (1 tsp) nutmeg, ground
- Boil the potatoes until tender (they should be done but still have some “bite” – mushy potatoes won’t work). Red skinned, firm-cooking potatoes work best. Shock with cold water and let cool until they are cold enough to peel.
- Boil the eggs for about 10 minutes or until they are completely firm. Shock with cold water and let cool until they are cold enough to peel.
- Mix all other ingredients thoroughly to form a dressing. Fill into a salad bowl. Cut the pickles into thin slices, discarding the end where the stem used to be and add them to the bowl.
- Peel the potatoes and cut them into thin slices, directly into the bowl.
- Peel the eggs and put them through an egg slicer. Add them to the bowl as well.
- Mix thoroughly and let rest for 1 – 2 hours. Depending on the ambient temperature and relative humidity, the potatoes may absorb more liquid, so you may have to make more dressing. The salad should have enough dressing but not be overly wet.
Tips for boiling eggs: Do not use super-fresh eggs – they are impossible to peel. Make sure the eggs are at room temperature before boiling. This will prevent the shell from cracking when they are inserted into the boiling water.
2.2.6
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