Thanksgiving Table Roundup

We threw our annual Thanksgiving potluck bash on Saturday evening, and truth be told, I cooked my little butt off.  I made six different things in a 24-hour period without any excessive stress or panic, and I must say that I'm really proud of that.  All that time I spend in the kitchen seems to be paying off - I'm much better than I used to be at preparing multiple things at once, cleaning as I go, doing what I can in advance, and generally finding my way around all sorts of recipes.   It's a good feeling.

So, with the pat on the back out of the way, on to the food! 


White Bean Dip with Mint and Cumin from Donna Hay - Flavors


Spinach and Sundried Tomato Pinwheels, made with leftover homemade puff pastry.


Sweet Potato Stuffing with Bacon, Thyme, and Peaches, adapted from a recipe in
Bon Appétit, November 2009.


The turkey, naturally!  My first roast turkey ever, using this recipe recommended by my friend Cathleen.


Triple Ginger Cookies, from Bon Appétit magazine, December 2009. 


And finally, this beautiful Maple Nutmeg Cream Pie, which is basically a densely flavored custard baked into a tart shell, shining like a small sun on the dessert table.   Not surprisingly for a recipe from Smitten Kitchen, this dessert was a hit and prompted one creme brulée lover to proclaim it on his list of Top 10 desserts, ever.

The contributions from our guests were just as varied and delicious, from sweet potato-plantain-apple mash to grilled aubergines to pineapple casserole to chocolate fudge cake with raspberry sauce. It was quite the fantastic spread, and with 50 people helping themselves to seconds and thirds, we didn't end up with many leftovers at all!   Most of the table pictures didn't come out well due to the low light and necessity of the unflattering flash, but here is kind of a funky one of some of our guests.  I like how Keith is in focus and everyone else is in action around him. 



Hope your Thanksgiving, if you celebrated, was equally fun and delicious!

Thermal Baths and a Stroll around Rheinfelden

The thermal baths scattered all over Switzerland are treasures that are rarely seen by visitors.  They're usually quite off the beaten path - so off the beaten path, in fact, that even people who live here don't know where they all are.  There are lovely baths in Vals, Yverdon-les-Bains, Lavey-les-Bains, Baden, Bad Ragaz, and many more; if you live in Switzerland, there's guaranteed to be one reasonably close by.

We recently took a Friday off from work and Matt planned a surprise excursion to Rheinfelden, a medieval town on Switzerland's northern border with Germany, about an hour's drive from Zurich. I had no idea there was much of anything in Rheinfelden, but to my delight our first stop was at the Sole Uno thermal baths, one of the largest and nicest facilities I've ever been to. The water is piped from 200 meters under a nearby salt mine and mixed with fresh water so it's mineral-rich.



There is an amazing selection of outdoor and indoor pools, both hot and cold, as well as scented steam inhalation rooms, wet and dry saunas, a Turkish hamam area, adventure showers (one is like a tropical rainstorm complete with light and sound, another like an alpine waterfall), and a large nude section with both finnish and russian saunas.  My favorite pool was this underground one, with a heavenly temperature of 36 degrees and very high salt content of 12%.  

Daring Bakers in November: Vanilla and Chocolate Cannoli

The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts, and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia's Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michele Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.



When it comes to desserts, my dear husband and I are flavor opposites.  He'll go for the Coupe Danemark (vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce), the chocolate mousse, the chocolate cake (with no nuts).  Are you noticing a pattern here?  He likes the classics to be exactly that - buttermilk pancakes, brownies, and chocolate chip cookies with no adaptations or tweaks! I, on the other hand, usually head straight for the most unusual and creative flavors and textures.  Lavender sorbet with hibiscus gelee, mango white chocolate bread pudding with a bourbon sauce, orange blossom water Dobos torte, and violet macarons. That's me!

Sometimes I feel a little guilty when I play around and add cinnamon to a batch of chocolate chip cookies or nutmeg to Saturday pancakes, because even if I think it's delicious it will be ruined for him.  To assuage the pangs of guilt, I made a resolution before this month's challenge was revealed: if allowed by the recipe, I would flavor it so that Matt would enjoy it.  Chocolate or vanilla, those were the choices.  How about both?  Perfect.

American Baking in Zurich, Part 3: Everything Else

In my first post I talked about flour, and some sources and solutions for what to do if your recipe calls for cake flour or bread flour.  Then, essential ingredients - where to find some and what to substitute for others. This third and final post in my series about where and how to find American baking ingredients in Zurich will list places to look for many other ingredients and a couple sources for equipment.

As before, if you find any mistakes or have any sources of your own that are not listed, please leave a comment!

Cleaning Up From Lunch...

Matt: "Does this need to be refrigerated?"

Romy:  "No."

Matt: "Should we refrigerate it anyway because I am American?"

I almost spit out my last bite of lunch from laughing. American visitors are always surprised and/or horrified to see that milk and eggs are not in the fridge at grocery stores here, thanks to UHT and pasteurization.  Europeans in general are more relaxed about not refrigerating everything immediately. This used to freak Matt out, but since he hasn't died of E. coli poisoning in the last ten years, he's gotten to the stage where he can at least crack jokes about the paranoia.... as he's putting things back in the fridge.

American Baking in Zurich, Part 2: Essentials

In my first post about sources for American baking ingredients in Zurich, I focused on flour and various protein percentages available, and a great method I came across for turning regular European flour into as close to cake flour as you’re going to get. 



In this second installment, I’ll summarize sources for what I consider the essential ingredients in American baking.  Some I discovered myself, and some are culled from forum posts and other random locations.  If you find any mistakes or you have a secret source of your own, please, by all means, leave me a comment and I’ll update accordingly!

Happy 80th, Grosmueti!

My dear grandmother, who has been mentioned a few times around here thanks to all the wonderful things she has taught, fed and shown me over the years, turned 80 last Tuesday.  In her honor I'd like to share with you some pictures of her life that I discovered recently in old photo albums.

Marie was born on October 27, 1929, along with her fraternal twin Rose.  Their father worked as a rope-maker, and from what I gather the family didn't have a lot of money.  Food was sometimes scarce, and to this day my grandmother cleans her plate to the last scrap, and won't eat chicken because she had to watch them being slaughtered as a child.

The Zaugg family ca. 1933.

The picture below makes me laugh because it's kind of a random shot. "Here's Marie as a teenager, sitting on a chair in a snowy, slushy road." She laughed too, when I pointed it out, and said she has no recollection of who took that picture or why. 

She and Rose spent a lot of time together growing up, evidenced by the many pictures of them together in the photo album of her childhood and young adult years. Here they are dressed up for their older brother Fritz's wedding.

Marie met Hans through a mutual friend.  I love the look they are giving each each other in this picture and how he is rocking back on his heels (to be silly?).

They got married on Valentine's Day, 1953.  A seamstress by profession, my grandmother made her own wedding dress!



This is where my photo record skips a few things, like my father's birth, to... my first birthday!  You might be able to spot a small hint of my sweet tooth...



And here she is at the party last week, with Fritz behind her, looking very happy indeed.  It's hard to get a good picture of her smiling so I was particularly pleased to have captured this shot.  Lots of family members attended and it was a great time of celebration.



Happy Birthday, Grosmueti!