Half the Sugar Bowl

Nee Noo Nee Noo... Firetruck On Its Way!

2011-11-13T22:55:00.000+01:00

I made this cake for a little boy's second birthday, using chocolate cake layers, vanilla buttercream, a whole lot of homemade marshmallow fondant, white chocolate for the ladder, silver luster dust for the metallic effect, and the interwebz for inspiration.

Fresh Fig Ice Cream

2011-10-23T23:05:00.000+02:00

It was such a gorgeous and sunny day today that it almost feels appropriate to post an ice cream recipe, despite the fact that we're deep into fall and you are probably thinking more about hot drinks and hearty stews than a scoop of the cold stuff.

Nonetheless, if there was ever an ice cream suited for fall, this one is it.

Figs are, to my mind, an unusual fruit - sweet, but always in a subtle, earthy way. When I found some beautiful Black Missions at a farm stand, I bought a whole bag full - and then thought long and hard about how to best use them. A rustic tart? Roasted with honey and olive oil, over a salad? Served simply with a bit of goat cheese and fresh bread on a platter?

I wanted them to last a little bit longer than one meal, though, which usually means... jam. Or ice cream! I've said before that The Perfect Scoop is the only ice cream book you'll ever need, and this recipe proved the truth of that once again. The fruit is first cooked down into a lovely jammy mush, skins and all, then pureed with cream, and finally frozen. The more purple the skins, the more vibrantly pink your final product will be. I'm not usually a big fan of seeds in ice cream, but in this case they add a pleasant textural note and a little bit of crunch. And true to the figs themselves, this ice cream is not too sweet and would be perfect alongside a scoop of vanilla, or even topping a rustic apple tart.

Fresh Fig Ice Cream
from The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz

1 kg fresh figs
125 ml water
1 lemon, preferably unsprayed
150 gr. sugar
250 ml heavy cream
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice

Remove the hard stem ends from the figs, then cut each fig into 8 pieces. Put the figs in a medium, nonreactive saucepan with the water, and zest the lemon directly into the saucepan. Cover and cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the figs are tender, 8-10 minutes.

Remove the lid, add the sugar, and continue to cook, stirring frequently until the figs are a jamlike consistency. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature. Once cool, puree the fig paste in a blender or food processor with the cream and lemon juice. Taste, then add more lemon juice if desired.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Supper in Zurich, Underground

2011-09-03T15:08:00.009+02:00

From the silence around here, you might think that underground is where I have been for the last six months, but it's really only my blogging inspiration that's been MIA. The rest of me has been healthy and well, getting settled into a new job and doing plenty of summer traveling and cooking... and eating!

Eating was definitely in mind when I signed up for a dinner last Saturday with One Night Stand - Zurich's first underground supper club. Supper clubs began appearing a few years ago in cities like San Francisco and New York, and have since spread around the world. One Night Stand was started by Mike Goguen, a good friend of mine and the owner and chef at Melt Catering, with the help of his wife Nicolette. "I wanted to start something spontaneous and creative in Zurich where people could have a chance to meet new people and try different and creative food in an interesting location," Mike explains.

Supper clubs are often run by cooks who work out of their home kitchens and don't have official licenses to sell food to the public - thus the necessity of remaining "underground." As a trained chef, Mike has all the necessary credentials, but keeping the element of surprise and secrecy is part of the appeal. The only way to find out about upcoming One Night Stand dinners is to join the Facebook group or by word-of-mouth. The menu is not revealed ahead of time (though you can mention dietary requirements when you reserve), and the location and directions only emailed out a few hours before the dinner begins.

Mike has made good on the promise of interesting locations and creative food. Previous events have included an "eclectic Californian" night and a cocktail evening with a professional mixologist, and there is often more to dinner than just dinner. In April, when One Night Stand was held at artist Michelle Bird's studio, we ate surrounded by easels, brushes, and half-finished paintings. After dessert, Michelle gave a painting demonstration accompanied by her husband Stefan on the hang - a type of steel hand drum invented here in Switzerland.

At a restaurant, you usually already know who will be at your table, but supper clubs are different - getting to know your 20 or so fellow diners is another part of what makes the evening so much fun. When Matt and I arrived at Blumen am Stauffacher, a tiny flower store in the heart of Zurich, everyone was already chatting over crab cakes and champagne and exclaiming over the beautiful tables that Petra Faller, the owner, had created for us.

In addition to colorful flowers and candles in the center of the tables, place settings were adorned with their own miniature arrangements, each one unique and special. The many vases of blooms and greenery, and a riotously colorful wall of orchids and butterflies, only added to the elegant atmosphere. Petra explained to us that she loves color and does not sell white flowers, except for one special all-white week in January to "cleanse" the store for the new year. I love to linger in flower shops - small oases of beauty that leave me feeling refreshed - so it was a real treat to be allowed to spend a whole evening in one.

Swiss/Canadian sommelier Christian poured the first wine of the evening as we took our places - a Laurenz V Singing Grüner Veltliner from Austria that went beautifully with the chilled melon soup starter. By day, Christian is a teacher at Marathon Sprachen, a language school geared towards professionals in Zurich. Off the clock, he puts his great passion for wine into practice by partnering with Mike and organizing other gourmet events in Zurich.

After the melon soup came a spinach salad with fresh figs and crispy pancetta, followed by delicately seared tuna slices with a macadamia-nut crust. The tuna just melted in my mouth and was accompanied by a papaya salsa that was the perfect acidic counterpoint to the silky fish.

In keeping with our surroundings, Mike carried the flower theme through to his menu, decorating each dish with edible flowers or even incorporating them into the food itself. The main course of ricotta and beetroot ravioli was accompanied by stuffed fresh zucchini flowers, while dessert proved to be a heavenly duo of white chocolate-lavender crème brûlée and orange-orange blossom sorbet, with a sweet white port to drink. Mike's cooking style and tastes are right up my alley - there wasn't a single dish the whole evening that I didn't love!

Great food often leads to great conversation, and I had the pleasure of getting to know a number of interesting people at my table. I quickly discovered that Leeanne, a 28-year old Californian who moved to Switzerland a year ago for work, was just as excited to rattle on about cooking and chefs and restaurants as I was. Down the table, Matt chatted with a woman who turned out to be on the board of trustees at our school, and Petra told us all about what it's like to own a flower shop in downtown Zurich.

As the evening wound down and we finished our last glasses of wine, Petra urged us to take our little table decorations home with us and invited us to come back anytime we needed an especially colorful bouquet or flower arrangement. On Monday morning, our special dinner location would be back to being the corner flower store, and the next One Night Stand would already be in the works...

Daring Bakers in February: Green Tea Panna Cotta and Black Sesame Florentines

2011-02-27T00:10:00.001+01:00

The February 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mallory from A Sofa in the Kitchen. She chose to challenge everyone to make Panna Cotta from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe and Florentine Cookies.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I like to occasionally foray into Asian cooking - particularly dumplings, both sweet and savory. Part of the fun is sourcing and experimenting with ingredients that are a little bit off the beaten path. While neither matcha nor black sesame are extremely obscure, they're still not something I'm going to find at my local grocery store, and it's fun to surprise my dinner guests with flavors they aren't expecting.

Matcha, if you aren't familiar with it, is a fragrant and vibrantly colored powder made from the highest-quality green tea leaves. The price of even a small can reflects this quality and thus, it is a special and precious ingredient.

I recently had the combination of green tea and raspberry at a Japanese restaurant in Christchurch, New Zealand and was struck by how well they worked together. When I read that this month's challenge was to make panna cotta, I knew immediately what flavors I wanted to use. Panna cotta literally means "cooked cream" in Italian and is essentially milk and cream, sweetened with sugar, and firmed up with gelatin to a pudding-like consistency. This base provides an excellent blank slate for really anything you might want to create. In this case, I cooked the milk with vanilla bean seeds and the scraped-out pod, and then whisked in the green tea powder just before pouring into glasses.

The recipe for the delicate, crisp florentine cookies provided to us was made with oatmeal, but I decided to use an almond-based recipe by Nick Malgieri instead and sprinkled the cookies while they were baking with pinches of black sesame seeds. They lend an earthy quality (and lovely visual contrast) to the sweet cookie that goes very well with the herbal green tea and tart raspberry jelly.

I was very pleased with how this dessert turned out and would definitely make it again. You can find my adapted recipes here (PDF).

Daring Bakers in January: A Late and Leaky Joconde Imprimé

2011-01-28T16:24:00.002+01:00

It's been awfully quiet around here lately, I know. Two reasons. 1. I went on an awesome, amazing, wonderful holiday to New Zealand for nearly a month. 2. I was starting to resent the hours and hours of time that blog posts were sucking up. From the baking to the "submit" button was more often than not taking upwards of four hours, what with the photographing and the editing and the photo-collage-making and the uploading and the writing and the reviewing...my perfectionist tendencies were in overdrive and blogging was starting to feel like a whole lot of work and not a lot of fun, so I decided to take a break.

As life would have it, those tendencies get a nice whack on the head today as I present to you my very late and very imperfect Daring Bakers Challenge for this month.

The January 2011 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Astheroshe of the blog accro. She chose to challenge everyone to make a Biscuit Joconde Imprime to wrap around an Entremets dessert.

Biscuit joconde imprimé literally means 'printed sponge cake' and involves the technique of baking designs into a thin layer of sponge cake, which is then sliced into strips and used to line the inside of a mold.   This is done by first piping the designs onto a silpat with a thicker design paste, freezing the designs until hard, and then quickly spreading sponge cake batter over the top before baking. When you peel off the mat after baking, the beautiful patterns have magically baked into your sponge cake! I loved this technique and would definitely use it again - the creative possibilities are endless and it looks so elegant.

While the biscuit part of the challenge turned out quite nicely and I was pleased with my patterns, the rest of the cake assembly didn't go so well. The mousse I made as a filling was too runny and as the cake came to room temperature for eating, it all leaked out the side. I managed to snap a couple awful pictures with my point-and-shoot before it turned into a chocolate mousse and sponge cake puddle.

See the random papers and plants in the background? I brought the cake to work for a colleague's birthday. Once the Great Chocolate Mousse Flood began I just snapped the pics and threw pretty backgrounds and lighting to the wind!

Ah well. We ended up scooping it into cups and eating the messy mush of mousse, cake, and ganache with a spoon.   Plenty imperfect, but plenty chocolatey and delicious nonetheless.

Happy weekend to you all!

Pumpkin Grand Marnier Cheesecake

2010-11-22T19:44:00.007+01:00

It's been quite some time since I posted a non-Daring Bakers recipe, but I promise it has been worth the wait. This cheesecake goes way back in my family. My mom found the original recipe in a magazine, I believe, but the clipping has been long since lost and the recipe typed and shared and re-typed again.

Some of my fondest memories revolve around slices of this cheesecake, and for good reason: it was the only dessert my sister and I were ever allowed to have for breakfast. My parents entertained quite a lot, and though I usually ~~chattered everyone's ear off until I was sent away~~ went to bed pretty early, when fall rolled around I didn't mind as much since I knew I would wake up to a slice of leftover cheesecake! My mom used to rationalize it by talking about all the calcium-containing cream cheese, nourishing eggs, and vitamin-filled pumpkin and orange juice in it. Somehow she forgot all about the brown sugar, cookie crumb crust, and generous splashes of liqueur in both the cake and topping...

...which take it from just a run-of-the-mill cheesecake to something really amazing. Orange and pumpkin are a wonderful combination anyway, but three kinds of orange (juice, zest, and liqueur) combined with the smooth cream cheese and tangy sour-cream topping make this a very special fall dessert indeed.

The recipe calls for pumpkin puree (I like butternut) - the better quality your squash is, the better your final cheesecake will be. Likewise, instead of using plain store-bought butter cookies for the crust, I made my own spiced whole-wheat graham crackers and crumbled them up instead - a marked improvement that adds a lot of flavor. Along with the booze, of course.

Pumpkin Grand Marnier Cheesecake
My Mom's Recipe

1 cup sweet biscuit crumbs (preferably homemade, I made Heidi's graham cracker recipe and had plenty of extra crumbs left over for my next cheesecake)
60 gr. butter, melted

500 gr. (1 lb 2 oz) cream cheese
¾ cup brown sugar, firmly packed
5 eggs
2 cups cold pumpkin puree (make your own, it's easy!)
¼ cup Grand Marnier
2 tbsp. orange zest
¼ cup freshly-squeezed and strained orange juice

300 gr. (10.5 oz) sour cream
¼ cup Grand Marnier
¼ cup powdered sugar

Combine biscuit crumbs and butter. Press over base of 23 cm. springform pan; refrigerate 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180 (350) degrees. Beat cream cheese and brown sugar until smooth in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Beat in eggs one at a time, then beat in pumpkin, Grand Marnier, zest, and juice, scraping down the sides to ensure everything is mixed evenly.

Pour pumpkin mixture through a sieve over the base, pressing lightly to make sure all the liquid is drained through but discarding any chunks left in the sieve. Bake for 50 minutes or until set around the edge. Combine all topping ingredients. Quickly remove cheesecake from oven, spread with topping and continue baking for 10 more minutes. Let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate overnight. Decorate with whipped cream and cinnamon just before serving.

A Pair of Fall Festivals, Part 2: Pumpkin Party

2010-11-19T18:23:00.005+01:00

My mom tells me that 35 30.5 years ago, when she first moved to Switzerland, pumpkins were all but impossible to find - she had to grow her own plants in my grandmother's garden! My, how times have changed. On a day in September that was so warm it felt more like summer than fall, we drove 45 minutes north of Zurich to the tiny village of Berg am Irchel and the Baur family farm holding their annual pumpkin festival. With over 150 varieties grown at this farm alone and every grocery store and seasonal menu full of them, it's hard to imagine autumn without pumpkins.

The first order of business when we arrived - lunch, of course! There was more than just pumpkins on the menu - choices included burgers and sausages made of the farm's own veal, but it seemed inappropriate not to eat pumpkins at a pumpkin festival. I went with a hearty bowl of the spiced soup.

After lunch, we started at the very beginning and walked out to the pumpkin patch behind the farm.

A highlight was the Calabash Tunnel, where light-green gourds hung from thin stalks entwined around wire mesh. I could hardly believe that the stalks didn't break under the heavy weight, but they were much tougher than they looked. When dried, the hollow fruit is often used to make rattles.

Back near the farmhouse, there was more pumpkin fun to be found. A competition to guess how many pumpkins in the container...

...educational displays of the different families of pumpkin...

...a tasting station, where you could crunch on small pieces of raw pumpkin and observe with your senses the differences between Acorn, Marble, Butternut, and Jack O'Lantern varieties...

...and meet lots of grinning faces along the way!

Finally, we headed over to the market area and began the process of deciding which of the multitude of varieties to take home. It was very, very difficult. Even the cheat sheet the farm provided was little help - too many choices and too many fun names, in nearly as many languages as there are pumpkins! Yukigeshou, Lungha di Napoli, Crioula Pataka, or Citrouille de Touraine, anyone?

In addition to normal food-pumpkins, there were crates and boxes of small funky zierkürbisse, decorative pumpkins not meant for eating.

A few other products rounded out the little market area - pumpkin seeds, cider, and grape juice from this year's harvest.

We packed our purchased pumpkins into the car and took a last turn around the farm, enjoying the sun and the festive atmosphere.

I was especially happy to have bought a few of the farm's butternut squashes, whose rich color and aromatic flavor boasted a much better quality than the dry and unripe specimens at the grocery store. Now the only question left was what I should make out of them... stay tuned for even more pumpkin coming up soon!

Pumpkins, On My Honor

2010-10-30T19:54:00.006+02:00

Driving home from the cheese market in Huttwil, I had my favorite singer Sandra McCracken turned up loud and my eyes peeled for children, cats, and other animals that are likely to jump out onto tiny country roads without warning. Suddenly I hit the brakes, but it wasn't because something leaped out onto the road.

Flashes of of orange and green had caught my eye. Pumpkins! What from the side looked like just another old barn showed itself to be a rustic and colorful farm stand, one of the nicest I've ever seen.

Farm stands are nothing unusual in Switzerland - you can hardly go for a drive without passing homemade signs listing the seasonal produce available directly for sale. Usually it's a table with a few bags of apples and pears and pumpkins, or a refrigerator at the end of a driveway containing eggs and sausages and milk, or occasionally a covered wagon by the side of the road with bushels of vegetables.

The thing I absolutely love about these stands, apart from the satisfaction of buying quality farm-fresh ingredients, is that they all run on the honor system. A padlocked iron box in the vicinity, labeled "Kasse" and usually taped up with a price list, has a slot for your coins and bills - but there's not a human in sight. Choose your items, add up the total, drop your money in and drive away. Nobody will check. Nobody will see. It's absolutely up to you to do the right thing. Many people, as above, will peel the price sticker off more expensive items and stick it to the box as a tally for the farmer so he has an approximate idea of how much should be inside.

The system works for more than just pumpkins. Anita has written about how flower-picking works the same way, as does berry-picking. Train tickets on short stretches are on your honor, and even big chain supermarkets like Coop have caught on with their Passabene system. From what I've read, there is the occasional theft, but it's not enough to stop vendors from using the system. It's so culturally different from the "everyone is just trying to rip me off" mentality of many other countries, and makes me proud to be Swiss.

Back to the farm stand! A lot of care had obviously been put into setting it up, with decorated wagon wheels, pumpkins carefully sorted and arranged into baskets and troughs, and strings of lights and dried corn.

I had a lot of fun inspecting all the different varieties and practicing my photography, and of course I didn't leave empty handed. In my market bag already brimming with cheese, I somehow still found room for some cute little pumpkins for the dining room table and a couple liters of fresh cider made from Grafensteiner apples.

What experiences have you had with the honor system, both good and bad?

Daring Bakers in October: Boston Creme Doughnuts

2010-10-27T00:54:00.018+02:00

The October 2010 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Lori of Butter Me Up. Lori chose to challenge the Daring Bakers to make doughnuts. She used several sources for her recipes including Alton Brown, Nancy Silverton, Kate Neumann, and Epicurious.

After a year and three months, Matt is really starting to get into this whole Daring Bakers thing. On the first of October he actually remembered and asked about the new challenge, and upon hearing "doughnuts" he cocked his head to the side with a thoughtful look. "A good one! I like doughnuts. Boston Creme Doughnuts! But the cream has to be the real vanilla custard kind, not that yucky too-sweet whipped white frosting, and make sure you put a nice chocolate glaze on top too." A ~~demand~~ request for chocolate-and-vanilla was no surprise at all but in the face of such unabashed certainty, what else could I do but laugh and acquiesce?

We were given the choice between two recipes, one yeast-raised and the other a more cake-like buttermilk doughnut. With Boston Creme in the cards, though, yeast-raised was the only option to create a light, puffy round of dough.

I used Dorie's awesome pastry cream to fill the donuts and a simple chocolate glaze for the topping. Though deep-frying is my least favorite cooking method because it makes me and the whole apartment smell like grease, sometimes it's absolutely worth it. On their own, these doughnuts are just barely sweet, but combined with the silky vanilla filling and the chocolate on top, the end result was both heavenly and husband-approved.

You can find a printable version of both Daring Bakers recipes, plus a bonus pumpkin doughnut recipe, here.

A Pair of Fall Festivals, Part 1: Cheesy Affairs

2010-10-13T20:25:00.468+02:00

When you think of Swiss cheese, what do you imagine? If you don't live here, you probably see in your mind's eye something like the enormous hole-y hunk above. That's because what the Americans and most of the rest of the world call "Swiss" cheese is really only one kind of Swiss cheese, the kind above - Emmentaler (aside: I would really like to know what someone had planned for that 1.5 kg piece). I find it very difficult to not correct poor deli workers when I'm in the States who innocently ask me what cheese I want on my sandwich.

Banish all thoughts of too-touristy Cherry the Cow over in Gruyère - if there was ever a place to get an education on what are really the thousands of kinds of Swiss cheese, the 6th annual....

...Swiss Cheese Market is the place to go. Huttwil is a small village in the Emmental near Bern - though not worth visiting on a normal day, the weekend of the cheese market set the whole place abuzz as thousands of people poured in to get their cheesy fill. The two main roads were lined from end-to-end with market stalls, and what seemed like every dairy in the country brought their specialties to display and sell.

Fresh, soft, mild, medium, aged, raw-milk, cow-milk, buffalo-milk, sheep-milk, goat-milk, organic, mountain-made, crumbled, grated, herbed, spiced, smoked, salted, cured, blue, hemp-wrapped, wineleaf-wrapped, wood-wrapped...the variety was absolutely staggering. The best part? The endless free samples, no question. But once you tear your fingers away from all those beckoning cubes, you start to notice how fun the names are, too. Gondelichäs (cable car cheese), Durchblickkäse (see-through cheese), der kleine Berner (the little Bernese), Sommerhimu (summer sky - a blue cheese), Ämmitaler Müntschi (Emmentaler kiss), Flösserkäse (rafter's cheese) and Füürige Giovanni (fiery Giovanni - with chili) are just a few of the creative and eye-catching cheeses I saw.

Once I got tired of sampling, for lunch there was a choice of... cheese. A Militärkäseschnitte is a thick slice of whole wheat bread spread with a sticky cheese-herb mixture and then deep fried until the outside forms a crispy crust and the inside cheese is all gooey. Yes...you read that right. This was not a low-fat lunch, not even close - nor did I want it to be. The day was quite chilly so a belly full of hot cheese, a glass of crisp white wine to cut the grease, and a seat at one of the communal tables in the town square with some friendly locals was just the thing to warm me up.

Alternately, I could have had en Chäsbrätu, which is, well, more cheese on bread. But different! Select your flavor of raclette from the case (chili, herb, garlic, smoked, pepper, bacon, or plain) and watch a slice of it be melted on the spot and poured over the bread, which you then eat with your hands like an open-faced sandwich. It's always whole wheat - white bread is simply not flavorful or sturdy enough to stand up to a cheese cascade of this magnitude.

Speaking of raclette and fondue, in addition to the classic ingredients and gourmet mixes on sale, there were a couple twists on those two traditional Swiss cheese dishes that I had never seen before. One stall was selling ingenious fondue bread loaves studded with bacon, the squares already scored and ready to be torn off and dipped in the pot.

Another stand boasted raclette-for-one kits that could be easily snapped together and heated with two tea-light candles - perfect for your melted-cheese cravings on the go.

There were a few hunks of the non-cheese variety as well....

...ahem. Though cheese was obviously the main theme of the market, a secondary focus was on products aus der Region - from the region. A special tent housed local non-dairy craftsmen and producers selling everything from wood carvings and calligraphy to liqueurs, jams, mushrooms, sausages, and sweets. On a stage set up in the main square, folk-music and -dancing groups entertained the crowds.

There were even some special guests aus der Region accompanied by a demonstration of how their milk is processed to turn it into cheese. The kid's face just cracks me up!

With way too much cheese in both my stomach and my shopping bag, I reluctantly called it a day. Lasting only a weekend, the pleasure and the pain of festivals like this one is that you have to wait a whole year for them to roll around again. Luckily, dairies are as common as cows here so I don't have to wait nearly that long for my next taste of scrumptious Swiss cheeses!

A Very Pink Princess-Castle Cake

2010-09-30T16:16:00.003+02:00

A good friend asked me if I would consider making the cake for her daughter's 4th birthday party, and specifically requested a yellow cake with pink buttercream - with the theme of "princess castle."

This was my first time attempting a cake of this complexity and multi-layered-ness (yes, that's a word). After quite a lot of research online looking at different castle cakes and their construction, as well as scouring both Migros and Coop for pink sprinkles/sugar/candies, I made a game plan and got started. The Swiss really aren't very into cake decorating as a hobby and so we don't have wonderful cake-supply stores like New York Cake or CakeArt available to us. No matter - I used what I had and in the end I was very, very pleased with how it turned out.

The towers are ice cream cones dipped in white chocolate, then covered in two coats of pink meringue buttercream and rolled in white sprinkles. The door and windows are sugar cookies decorated with royal icing (yup, extra Daring Bakers cookie dough!), and then glued onto the cake at the last minute with more pink buttercream (the cookies could not be refrigerated overnight with the cake since royal icing does not hold up well in the fridge). The piped white butteream dots serve not only to make the edges look more "finished" but also anchor the ice cream cones a bit more firmly on to the cake for transport. I made the little flags out of paper and toothpicks which read "Happy 4th Birthday Princess Iona."

The downside of making cakes for other people is that you don't get a chance to see how they look when they're cut, or try a piece to make sure that the final product tastes as good it looks! However, my friend assured me that her daughter was thrilled and that the cake itself was delicious. Despite the time investment (about 15 hours total), I had a lot of fun making it!

Daring Bakers in September: Decorated Sugar Cookies

2010-09-27T22:33:00.005+02:00

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of What the Fruitcake?! Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

"Sugar cookies?!" I can hear you saying. "What's so challenging about sugar cookies?" Ah, but these are not the haphazardly-smeared-on icing kind. These are the fancy, delicate, painstakingly piped kind, and as such were definitely a worthy challenge for ever-intrepid Daring Bakers!

I happen to own two of Peggy Porschen's books, Cake Chic and Pretty Party Cakes. Each of these books is an absolute feast for the eyes, showcasing not only her stunning cakes but also wonderfully detailed sugar cookies in all shapes and styles, decorated with royal icing. The Daring Bakers were given the theme of "September" for our cookies - whatever that might happen to mean for us. I was excited to read about this month's challenge, not only because I've spent plenty of time ogling the chapters in Peggy's books, but also because a very special event happened this month, one particularly well suited to cookie-adaptation.

Some of the prettiest and most elegant cookies I've seen in this genre are dress cookies - like the ones above, or these, these, and these. The pure whiteness of royal icing and the delicate lines and piping are the perfect medium for recreating the elegance of wedding dresses in miniature. No, no, not my dress. Our wedding was in July, and two years ago to boot. The absolute highlight of this September was flying to the States two weeks ago to be one of the maids of honor in my best friend Julia's wedding.

Julia's favorite color is purple and for years I've looked forward to the day I would wear a purple dress in her wedding. Each of the five bridesmaids were given our choice of neckline, and as you can see we all chose quite differently. With all these pretty dresses fresh in my mind, both cookie and real, the choice for my Daring Bakers theme was a no-brainer!

I began by drawing and cutting out templates to use as cookie-cutters for the dresses.

I traced around the templates with a clean X-acto knife on the rolled-out cookie dough and once baked, followed the simple recipe for royal icing - just powdered sugar, egg whites, and lemon juice. The coloring was a bit more difficult since I didn't want to use an entire bottle of purple food coloring to get the color as dark as the actual dresses... at least the white turned out right! First, I piped the outlines of the dresses using a thicker consistency of icing and a very small tip, then used a technique called "flooding" to fill them in. The same color icing in a thinner consistency is piped inside the outlines, which act as a barrier to stop the liquid from dripping off the edge of the cookie. With a little help from a toothpick and some taps on the counter to settle it into place, the thinner icing forms a smooth layer. After it dries, the outlines are re-piped with the thicker icing to provide definition and detail.

Though you can't see it in the photo, Courtney and I both had ivory-colored sashes and double hems to mark our maid-of-honor statuses, while the other bridesmaids had dark-blue double hems.

I really enjoyed this challenge and was particularly pleased by how well Julia's dress-cookie turned out. The method is incredibly time- and material-heavy (cookie cutters/templates, piping bags, tips, food colorings), though, especially if you choose a design with lots of different colors - you could truly spend all afternoon just decorating and adding details to one batch of cookies. If you'd like to try your hand at it, you can find the complete recipe in printable version here.

Even more wonderful than cookies, of course, was the chance to be part of Julia's special day. After many years and many, many conversations between us about boys and our futures, my dear dear friend is finally married to the man of her dreams and I wish them many sweet and happy years together!

Congratulations, Julia & Ben!

A Helvetic Hike, With Dessert

2010-09-19T20:12:00.015+02:00

Today was a quintessentially gorgeous Sunday in Switzerland: the sun shining, families pushing baby carriages and riding bikes along the river, church bells calling the faithful to worship. And yet, the first hints of fall are unmistakable. The morning air has a distinct chill to it and the tips of tree branches are starting to take on a faintly yellow tinge. My magazines are arriving with brown-and-orange covers, full of nut-and-spice recipes. Pumpkin and apple displays at the grocery store are getting more and more elaborate by the week, and restaurants are slipping their fall menus into place: venison, boar, chestnuts, lingonberry jelly, and rich mushroom sauces abound.

And yet, I just couldn't let summer go without one last hike! A few weeks ago, on a day just as beautiful as this one, Matt and I drove to the Vierwaldstättersee (aka, Lake Lucerne) in central Switzerland and caught the ship in Brunnen. Our destination was the Rütli, a meadow on the other side of the lake accessible only by water.

The Rütli meadow is perhaps the most historic and symbolic place in all of Switzerland, considered by many to be the heart of the country. It's where the three founding cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Nidwalden swore an oath of mutual defense on August 1, 1291. Over the next centuries, the nearby independent cantons and tribes joined the pact, eventually resulting in today's Switzerland. In 1991, for the 700th anniversary of the founding of the Swiss Confederation and with the Rütli as the starting point, a 35-kilometer long path around a U-shaped section of Lake Lucerne was designated The Swiss Path, or Weg der Schweiz. 35 kilometers is quite an intimidating distance for the casual hiker, but fortunately the path is divided up into 8 very manageable chunks that can be accomplished at different times and on different days. The ships provide an excellent means of transport between towns should you decide not to make like Maria von Trapp and start at the very beginning.

The meadow is a 10-minute walk uphill from the boat dock on a well-signed gravel path.

For one of the most meaningful places in Switzerland, arriving at the Rütli can feel somewhat anti-climactic. Though it affords beautiful views of the lake, a shady spot to picnic under a large tree, and a very small museum consisting of dry information placards, it is, after all, just a meadow. The land was officially purchased for the federal government in 1860 with money donated by schoolchildren across the country, with the stipulation that it never be built upon. There are no actors in costumes, no tour guides, no interactive displays, no monuments or anthem playing or other ostentatious shows you might expect in other countries. A simple flag pole is all the patriotism you'll find on most days of the year, with the exception of August 1st, when it's the site of traditional fireworks and a speech by one of the seven federal councillors.

The first section of the Weg der Schweiz is an hour-long climb from the Rütli to the town of Seelisberg, perched on a cliff almost 400 meters above the lake. Each Swiss canton is assigned its own representative stretch of the path in the order it joined the confederation. The length of each stretch was determined by the population of the canton in 1991 - each person counted for 5 millimeters of path.

We passed Uri, Schwyz, Nidwalden, and were well into Luzern by the time we reached Seelisberg. The divisions were marked along the way by carved stones.

Once in Seelisberg, we refreshed ourselves with cold water from a fountain and the hard-earned view, both across the lake...

...and down on the Rütli.

After Seelisberg the path wound inland for a little while, through grassy fields and past the small lake (seeli) for which the town is named. And no, that's not a bird, plane, or spot on my lens - it's a cable car!

Further along, the trail leveled out through a forested area perfect for picnics and leisurely strolls. A signboard provided casual visitors with information about the Weg and each line of the Lord's Prayer with a short commentary was mounted on a series of plaques along the path as food for contemplation.

As we emerged out of the forest into the sunlight, the path began a long descent back down to the lake. Along the way we passed offers of a place to spend the night - in a pile of fresh straw at a farmhouse! This is a very popular pasttime here in the summer and really deserves a blog post of its own. Until I get around to writing it you can visit this particular farm's website for more information, or find out about all the other farms all over Switzerland offering nights sleeping in straw here.

Three hours and 8.8 kilometers after leaving the Rütli, we rounded a corner and came upon the tiny village of Bauen nestled in an inlet.

Almost the first building we encountered was the one I was looking for. Surprisingly given its out-of-the-way location, Restaurant Zwyssighaus is a well-known stop in this area for gourmets. The kitchen was not open until later, but they were still happy to serve us one of their special desserts (which, of course, is all I really wanted anyway). The elderflower-caramel custard with marinated local apricots and blackberries was just heavenly, as was the pretty view from their outdoor terrace.

The food is not the only thing that makes this restaurant special - it is also the birth-house of the composer of the Swiss national anthem, Reverend Alberik Zwyssig. A monument to him stands just out front.

With our last bit of energy from the custard, we walked 50 more meters to the Bauen dock and caught the last ship back to Brunnen at 17:24 - if you are tempted to stay for dinner after your hike, you will be staying the night as well. The other 26.2 kilometers just will have to wait for another day!

Blackberry-Lime Sorbet

2010-09-03T18:53:00.000+02:00

This summer, I've told you about strawberry-sour cream, fresh mint, and peach ice creams, each of them a creamy, luscious expression of long sunny days and my love for my ice cream maker. Though part of me rebels at the very thought (August just ended!) the first display of pumpkins at the grocery store means that our grasp on those summer days is tenuous.

Tenuous, but not quite gone. This blackberry-lime sorbet is my last ode to those endless containers of fat berries I ogle at Vevey market. It's best eaten a little soft, at that glorious slushy moment when it's not melted but not cold enough to make the spoon stick to your tongue. The hazard of making your own really, really good ice cream: in your eagerness to take a bite, freeze-burning your tongue on a sub-zero spoon one too many times.

David's recipe as written was just a bit too citrus-tart for my taste, overpowering the blackberry flavor, so I decreased the lime juice and increased the sugar by a bit. This recipe can't get any simpler, so whip it up quickly and then get outside and enjoy those last balmy days...

Blackberry-Lime Sorbet
Adapted from The Perfect Scoop

1 cup (200 grams) sugar
1 cup (180 ml) water
4 cups (450 grams) fresh or frozen blackberries
1/2 cup (125 ml) freshly squeezed lime juice

In a small saucepan, bring the sugar and water to a boil, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

Puree the blackberries in a blender or food processor with the sugar syrup. Press the mixture through a strainer to remove the seeds, then stir the lime juice into the sweetened puree.

Chill the mixture thoroughly, then freeze it in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions.

Daring Bakers in August: Brown-Butter Peach Petit Fours

2010-08-27T21:50:00.015+02:00

The August 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Elissa of 17 and Baking. For the first time, The Daring Bakers partnered with Sugar High Fridays for a co-event and Elissa was the gracious hostess of both. Using the theme of beurre noisette, or browned butter, Elissa chose to challenge Daring Bakers to make a pound cake to be used in either a Baked Alaska or in Ice Cream Petit Fours. The sources for Elissa’s challenge were Gourmet magazine and David Lebovitz’s The Perfect Scoop.

As you can see, I chose to make the petit fours, and filled them with a homemade peach ice cream. When I saw this month's recipe called for cake flour, I thought, "perfect!" I wrote a few months ago about the challenges of finding cake flour in Europe, and I've long been wanting to test a batch of Swiss-made Kate Flour against commercial cake flour to see how it measures up... pun fully intended. I brought a package each of King Arthur Flour's Queen Guinevere Cake Flour (bleached - 7% protein) and Unbleached Cake Flour (9.4% protein) back from my recent trip to the States and made three half batches of the brown butter pound cake, each with a different kind of flour.

Any guesses as to which cake is which? In front is the Kate Flour, followed by Unbleached Cake Flour, and then Queen Guinevere Cake Flour at the back. They don't look all that different from one another, do they? I couldn't decide if I was happy with those results or not. On one hand I was hoping for more pronounced differences in the texture of the crumb so that I could learn about and describe the precise characteristics of each type of flour. On the other hand, they are all forms of cake flour, so it makes sense that they turned out similarly, I suppose. The one thing I did notice was that the batch made with Kate Flour had many good-sized surface air bubbles - not noticeable in the picture above, but you'll have to take my word for it.

Because I only made a half batch of each pound cake recipe, the resulting layer was quite thin (I cut the square of pound cake in half and stacked the rectangles to create the double layers above). Perhaps any textural difference would be more noticeable in a thicker cake? I'm not sure.

In the end I was rather underwhelmed by the results. Browning the butter before it goes in the batter creates a tasty and nutty cake that smells heavenly coming out of the oven, but freezing it (and all the butter in it) mutes that lovely flavor quite substantially. I also found the chocolate-coating procedure to be quite difficult since my cake-and-ice-cream layers kept falling apart in the glaze. Plus, the tepid glaze caused the surface of the ice cream filling to melt and the chocolate to slide off...what a messy business! Matt kept laughing at me with chocolate all over the kitchen and my face. As I arranged the cakes and set up my camera, the gloomy day's light was quickly fading and so I only have one halfway decent shot to show you this time around. Despite my feelings about the cakes themselves, the fun of using brown butter and the experiment of trying the different flours made this month's challenge a worthwhile one.

You can find a printable version of the halved pound cake recipe here.

Sweet Rice Dumplings with Palm Sugar and Coconut

2010-08-03T18:03:00.001+02:00

I've always enjoyed the cuisines of Asia, but never really thought of trying to cook any dishes myself until about a year ago, when a few select cookbooks crossed my path and piqued my interest. I'm not referring to authoritative tomes on the complete cuisine of this or that nation, and thank goodness - the intimidation factor with these sort of books is extremely high! Instead, the cookbooks I'm talking about are aimed toward the intrepid western chef who, enjoying many of the tastes and flavors from their local Thai or Indian or Indonesian restaurant, decides to take baby steps toward them in their own kitchen as well. Though perhaps not ultra-authentic, they are certainly more accessible to those who have never tasted tamarind or oyster sauce or even more than a tablespoon of a spice at a time.

For me, this has meant reading Leela's creative Thai recipes at the wonderful blog She Simmers, studying and practicing Pim's Pad Thai for Beginners, following Juanita's pandan leaf experiments with interest, copying pages out of the Wagamama Cookbook and an Indonesian cookbook my friend brought home from Bali, deciding that a ziplock of homemade jiao-tze should be a fixture in my freezer for lazy meals, sourcing Asian ingredients and shops all over Zurich, and exploring many of those new flavors and ingredients through Andrea Nguyen's comprehensive book Asian Dumplings and her matching blog Asian Dumpling Tips.

Most recently I made the recipe for Onde Onde, or Sweet Rice Dumplings with Palm Sugar and Coconut: a soft rice-flour based dough is flavored with pandan leaf, wrapped around a small ball of palm sugar, then briefly boiled and rolled in fresh grated coconut.

I found rich and dark Indonesian palm sugar (called gula djawa) at Thanh Hung. Though packed into the plastic container, the sugar is moist and fairly easy to loosen with the tip of a knife. It can then be shaped into dense balls with your fingers or a measuring spoon.

Next, long and pointy pandan (also known as screwpine) leaves are washed and chopped up into 1-inch pieces with scissors and then zapped in a mini-chopper with some water to form a thick green mush. After straining the mush through a paper towel into a bowl, you are left with a fragrant and bitter dark-green liquid which will become the flavoring for the dough.

Mixed with glutinous rice flour, the resulting pale-green dough is only complete once it has gone through the "mother dough" procedure. A chunk is pinched off, flattened, and boiled for 2 minutes, then cooled and kneaded back into the larger mass of raw dough. This improves the elasticity and texture and allows it to be shaped around the palm sugar balls without tearing or crumbling.

Each dumpling is dropped in boiling water for 3 minutes and then dredged in grated coconut (I used frozen fresh as the recipe specifies - dried would be too crunchy).

Though Andrea's notes say that the palm sugar should turn hot and liquid in the center of the dumplings, mine only melted partially. Next time I might try boiling them for a little longer to see if they will "squirt lovely melted palm sugar into your mouth when you bite into it," as she describes.

Though a fair amount of work, these were a special and unusual treat and would be a lovely light dessert to finish off a Southeast Asian meal. Andrea has requested that bloggers not re-post her recipes without permission, so unfortunately I can't share it with you here, but I can say that if you are at all interested in varied and delicious pan-asian dumplings, both savory and sweet (many are also vegetarian and gluten free, made with tapioca and rice flours), then her book should find its way onto your bookshelf soon!

Daring Bakers in July: Swiss Swirl Chocolate-Mint Ice Cream Cake

2010-07-27T20:17:00.005+02:00

The July 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Sunita of Sunita’s world – life and food. Sunita challenged everyone to make an ice-cream filled Swiss roll that’s then used to make a bombe with hot fudge. Her recipe is based on an ice cream cake recipe from Taste of Home.

Greetings from the USA! I just barely got this month's challenge done before I hopped on a plane Sunday night for a week-long work conference in downtown Boston. I was literally taking pictures and editing an hour before leaving for the airport - since I skipped June's challenge I figured I better get my act together for July, and not only because it has "Swiss" in the name!

I followed the given recipe pretty closely this month, only switching out the ice creams for two from David Lebovitz (Chocolate and Fresh Mint). The recipe called for making the ice creams, freezing them completely, and then softening again to layer them into the bombe. I was pretty worried that softening and then re-freezing would result in a crystallized, crunchy ice cream texture - growing up in Egypt where everything melts in the blink of an eye, I ate a LOT of yucky melted-and-refrozen ice cream. However, I only let it become just barely soft enough to spread in the mold before popping it back in the freezer, and the final result showed no signs of crystallized texture.

This dessert turned out very nicely, perfect for summer, and it's quite fun to cut into the bombe and see all the pretty layers and combination of flavors.

You can find the original recipe here. One step I would add is to freeze the cake roll until firm after the whipped cream filling has been added, and then slice with a bread knife. This makes it much easier to slice and layer into the mold without the cream filling squishing around everywhere.

Couchsurfers: Meet Pete and Meg

2010-07-21T21:29:00.003+02:00

Pete and Meg flew in on Sunday night from Tel Aviv for their first-ever visit to Europe, and their first ever couchsurfing experience. Originally from Philadelphia, this couple has been on the road for two months - first in Africa, and then in the Middle East. The stories of their adventures in Africa were amazing. Six-inch slugs and being pursued by an angry hippo while in a tiny rickety boat, anyone? It was particularly wonderful to hear about how they had visited their Compassion sponsored child, James, while in Kenya - see their very touching blog post all about it. Matt and I sponsor children too, in Thailand and Bolivia respectively, and would love to visit them one day. After Kenya, Pete and Meg continued on to Uganda and Rwanda, where they spent a chunk of time building a school with a project called Sanejo.

We hit it off immediately and found that we had a lot in common - Christian faith, Sandra McCracken's music, love of traveling, love of good wine and food, and Matt and Meg even share a birthday! Monday being their only full day in Zurich, they spent the morning on a walking tour around all the classic downtown sights, and then I met up with them later for a box of Luxembürgerli and a relaxing rest of the afternoon at a grassy beach down by the lake. Tuesday morning we sent them on their way with a breakfast of pancakes and best wishes for their continuing travels to Germany, Spain, France, Scotland and England. If we are ever passing through Philadelphia you'll be sure to find us visiting Pete and Meg!

Meertrübeli Tarts

2010-07-05T14:44:00.001+02:00

Football, city festivals, time off work, barbecues, sweltering sunny days, icy drinks, and fresh berries galore - summer is in full swing and I'm loving it! My friend Gisela gave me a basket of meertrübeli (red currants) from the overachieving bush in her garden, and I immediately set about baking them into these lovely little tarts. Enjoy!

Red Currant Tarts
Adapted from Delicious Days, Makes 6

1 batch sweet tart dough, well chilled (I use Dorie Greenspan's recipe)
200 grams fresh red currants, washed and de-stemmed
1 large egg
3 tbsp light brown sugar
50 ml heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Butter and flour 6 mini tart pans. Roll out dough into large rectangle and cut out circles large enough to fit into the pans (gather and re-roll dough scraps if necessary). Fit dough into tart pans and trim off any overhang. Freeze pans for half an hour. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cut out squares of foil, brush with butter, and then press shiny side down tightly against the dough. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until dough no longer looks raw but has not browned. Remove shells from oven and let cool.

Whisk together egg, brown sugar, cream, and vanilla in a small bowl with a pouring spout. Arrange berries on cooled tart shells, then pour cream mixture over until just at the top of the berries (don't overfill or it will leak out in the oven). Bake tarts again for 15-20 minutes, until custard is set and berries are burst and juicy.

Let cool, then remove from tart pans, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve. These would be excellent with vanilla ice cream or a dollop of crème fraîche!

A Flowery First Birthday Cake

2010-06-12T17:52:00.007+02:00

A friend asked me a few weeks ago if I would be willing to make some food and a cake for her daughter's first birthday party, and seeing it as a fun project and a chance to try some new recipes, I agreed. She asked for a "spring-y, girly" cake, possibly with flowers, but left the rest up to me.

I started with a vanilla cake (using Smitten Kitchen's great recipe) and added a strawberry jam filling and strawberry frosting. Deb is not kidding when she says this is the best yellow cake recipe ever. Oh, the difference two cups of buttermilk make! Moist and rich, with a really excellent flavor, this cake is a winner and has landed right in my file of go-to recipes.

Cakes like this are more work than you'd think. First, there's baking, trimming, cooling and freezing the layers. Then, preparing the frosting ahead of time so that it is cooled to the right consistency for spreading. I first made strawberry meringue buttercream from Martha Stewart's recipe, but despite the recipe notes saying it could be frozen, mine turned into a curdled, unsalvageable mess when I tried to whip it smooth again. Meringue buttercream has never behaved for me - I've made about 5 batches, each time hoping this will be the smooth and glorious ONE, and each time crying into my KitchenAid bowl over all the wasted butter and then throwing the whole disgusting mess away.

Which meant, despite my attempt to be prepared, I ended up scrambling to make another batch of strawberry frosting at the last minute. This time, no egg whites to make me cry. Just butter, enough powdered sugar to induce sugar-shock, and some strawberry puree for color and a lovely fresh flavor. And voila! Beautiful. I tinted a creamy white second batch to make the additional colors for decoration. I've moving on from egg whites and I'm not going back!

So, now I had frosting. Assembling the cake takes its own sweet time too - at every stage you should pop the cake back into the fridge for half an hour or so to firm up the frosting and provide stability for what's next (and give you a chance to clean all the gobs of errant frosting off your floor, bench, and face). With three or four stages (crumb coating, filling and layering, final coating, decoration) just the assembly of the cake can take a whole evening.

Despite the time investment, it's quite satisfying to create something like this. I've made layer cakes before, but this one stretched my decorating skills - I usually just let swirls of frosting speak for themselves. Methinks my flower-drawing and -piping could definitely use some more practice, but overall I am quite pleased with how this cake turned out, and I hope sweet little Aimee feels the same!

Daring Bakers in May: Amarula Croquembouche

2010-05-27T21:03:00.003+02:00

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

A croquembouche (french for "crunch in mouth") is a dramatic dessert made of an arrangement of profiteroles held together by a caramel glaze. I've been wanting to try my hand at choux pastry for a while now, so I was very excited to read about this month's challenge! Choux is an unusual pastry that is cooked on the stove top, and then piped into the appropriate shapes for baking (either balls, which become profiteroles when filled with cream, or longer stripes which turn into eclairs).

My pastry turned out quite runny and loose, which translated into groans of distress when my first batch of UFO-shaped puffs emerged from the oven. Some hastily added spoonfuls of flour later, the situation had improved substantially...

...and my beautifully rounded puffs meant that a croquembouche might materialize after all.

I made my pastry cream the night before and flavored it with a few generous splashes of Amarula, a lovely South African cream liqueur based on the marula fruit. Pastry cream keeps well in the fridge for a day or two and is much easier to pipe when cold, so it was the perfect make-ahead component.

After my puffs got their bellies filled with cream, it was time to glue them together into an elegant pile. I had to do some improvising to create a conical mold and ended up stuffing one of my small piping bags with paper towels, covering it in oiled foil, and taping it to a silpat-lined baking tray. Matt, who usually meanders into the kitchen every quarter hour or so to check on my daring progress, gave the cone a skeptical raised eyebrow and didn't ask.

After the tower was built and solid, I carefully twisted out the cone. I was too busy during the actual building process keeping my fingertips from being zapped by boiling caramel to take pictures, but the final result turned out quite nicely. There was a definite croque of hard caramel as you bit into each puff, and then the swish of Amarula pastry cream inside provided a creamy contrasting kick - not to mention the fun of cracking your bite off the main tower!

You can see some of that nice crunchy caramel on the bottom of this specimen!

This project took me the better part of an afternoon, but it would be a fun and impressive dessert for a dinner party, especially one where the food is heavy and nobody wants more than a nibble to finish off the meal.

One nibble, two nibbles... gone!

A printable version of the recipe, with my tweaks, can be found here.

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream

2010-05-16T21:41:00.005+02:00

Anybody who's chatted with me about food in the last month or so knows by now that... I bought an ice cream maker! (Yes, I am that excited about it.) I was going to go for an inexpensive one, but my dad, who has worked for an international food company for 30 years and knows a thing or two about making ice cream, wrinkled his nose at the little model I showed him. Of course, compared to a huge factory any home machine will look like a joke, but his promises of far-superior ice cream did convince me to invest a little more money and purchase a machine with a built-in compressor that self-cools (versus freezing the canister 24 hours in advance).

I wish I could be telling you about this ice cream in the middle of a warm, sunny, spring that would be appropriate to ice cream reading and eating. Alas, I cannot. Zurich hasn't seen the sun yet in the month of May and according to the weather forecast, it's going to be staying gray and rainy this week, too. Thank goodness I have an apartment that's always warm, no matter the time of year, so I can ignore the fact that it's only 12 degrees outside and sneak bites from the freezer with no ill effects.

Quite the opposite, actually. Despite the weather, strawberries from canton Thurgau have heralded spring at the store for a couple weeks now, and oh, how delicious they are. Combining them with sour cream to make this frozen delight helps them to stick around a little longer since any I buy last less than a day with my strawberry-gobbling husband around! I don't like store-bought strawberry ice cream because it always tastes so fake, but using real strawberries make it a whole different story, like a frozen smoothie. This ice cream is also a lighter than others since it doesn't require any egg yolks, and the sour cream adds a lovely tanginess that cuts against the sweetness of the fruit.

I fully admit this recipe is not mine - thanks, David Lebovitz! I couldn't buy an ice cream maker and not do a leetle Amazon ordering to go along with it, could I? David's fun and original recipes, great photos, metric conversions on every recipe (love this - he lives in Paris and understands how much easier this makes baking in Europe!), and quirky writing make his book The Perfect Scoop the absolute stand-out of the three I picked up.

Here's to spring and sunshine coming back soon!

Strawberry-Sour Cream Ice Cream
from The Perfect Scoop, by David Lebovitz

450 grams fresh strawberries, rinsed and hulled
150 grams sugar
1 tbsp vodka or kirsch (I used 3 tbsp kirsch... because I like kirsch.)
240 grams sour cream
250 ml heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

Slice the strawberries and toss them in a bowl with the sugar and vodka or kirsch, stirring until the sugar begins to dissolve. Cover and let stand at room temperature for 1 hour, stirring every so often.

Pulse the strawberries and their liquid with the sour cream, heavy cream, and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until almost smooth but still slightly chunky. Refrigerate for 1 hour, then freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions.

Easter Over Cappadocia

2010-05-10T21:39:00.008+02:00

Don't look at me that way, blog. I know I've been neglecting you. I realize that three posts in the month of April was really pathetic, and that Easter was a long time ago, and that I've only given you a sticky toffee pudding to survive on for weeks on end. I went on holiday, you see. And then I fell off a bike and was busy growing new skin for a while. And then spring sprung, and I spent my evenings drinking spritzers in the sunshine instead of sitting at my computer. And then I started my new job on Monday, and quit my new job on Wednesday, and went back to my old job on Thursday. And now I had a quiet weekend and a clean house and feel a little less shaken up, so it's finally time to share a wonderful adventure we had in Turkey with you. It's worth the wait, I promise!

***

The village of Göreme was still asleep when we were picked up at six am on Easter Sunday. The bluish blush of dawn brightened the landscape only enough to see outlines as our van took the one twisty road out of town. Ten minutes later we rounded a particularly large rock, and my usual morning grogginess suddenly vanished at the breathtaking sight of forty hot air balloons silhouetted against the morning sky. Some were already upright, others lay misshaped with their bellies still on the ground like colorful whales.

Cappadocia is a region in central Turkey known for its incredible rock formations - and for its hot-air balloons, much-beloved by visitors for the stunning views they afford of the volcanic valleys and cliffs eroded into other-worldly landscapes. After a cup of steaming tea, we clambered awkwardly into the chest-high basket of our blue-and-pink checkered balloon. I was so enthralled watching the preparations and take-offs of the other balloons that I barely noticed when ours left the ground. There was no sensation of movement or force, just an occasional roar as our pilot fired the burners keeping us afloat, and then absolute silence as we drifted through the air like magic.

Balloons can't steer - they go where the wind takes them, so the flight path is different every day and you never know where you'll end up. Dawn is the best time for flying in Cappadocia, when cool air that settled in the rock valleys overnight begins to stir and flow like a many-fingered river. We were one of the first to leave the ground, and as we drifted over the sand-colored peaks and dark doorways of the nearby Göreme Open-Air Museum, the rising balloons followed us like a swarm of bright bumblebees.

It was particularly amazing to see the landscape change minute by minute as the sun rose and the shadows of the fairy chimneys (as the pointed rock formations are called) shift and brighten. As we floated towards the town of Ortahisar, the texture of the land became more domesticated as farmers carved out small patches of arable volcanic soil among the curves of rock.

Ortahisar, too, was only beginning to awaken as the silent fleet drifted over its low houses, many of them hewn partially into the town's central rock fortress. Two women drinking tea together waved at us from a garden, and stray cats chased their breakfast into nooks and crevices.

All too soon our balloon touched down in a field and popped open its 'cap' to let out the hot air, while workers from the balloon company covered tangles of stray bushes with tarps to prevent the fragile silk ripping on the ground.

Our pilot Daria, who made up in bubbly personality what she lacked in English abilities ("I no speak English. I speak air."), nonetheless managed to proudly inform us that she was the first Turkish woman to become a balloon pilot twelve years ago and had to deal with a lot of grief from her male counterparts along the way. She amazed us by landing the balloon squarely on a tiny truck trailer, and commanded the ground crew with unmistakable authority from her perch on the basket. Under her knees you can see the ubiquitous Turkish charm against the evil eye, found on everything from keychains to car bumpers to balloon baskets.

A glass of celebratory champagne awaited us after the flight, as did the rest of our Easter Sunday exploring the beautiful cave churches of Cappadocia's ancient centers of Christian teaching. But to float weightlessly in a crisp glass-clear sky, watching the sun rise over a fairy landscape, with Matt's arm close around me and my heart singing songs to the risen Christ - a more glorious morning can scarcely be imagined.

Daring Bakers in April: Sticky Toffee Pudding

2010-04-27T17:50:00.003+02:00

The April 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge was hosted by Esther of The Lilac Kitchen. She challenged everyone to make a traditional British pudding using, if possible, a very traditional British ingredient: suet.

Umm...I did not use suet. I could not even bring myself to look up the German word for suet, much less go to a butcher and ask for some. I used butter. And sugar. And cream. LOTS of butter, and sugar, and cream. I made a classic British dessert: sticky toffee pudding. Contrary to the American meaning of the word, a British pudding is any dish, sweet or savory, which is steamed in a bowl mold in a pot of boiling water. You can see some pictures of the process (and a lovely chocolate pudding) over at My Kitchen Addiction.

I used a pyrex bowl instead of a traditional British ceramic mold, and it turned out great. I was actually quite thrilled with this dessert, and especially with the sticky toffee sauce - brown sugar, butter, cream, a scraped out vanilla bean, and a generous pinch of fleur de sel make a sauce that would turn even the driest cake into a sweet tooth's delight.

But this cake was not dry. Not at all. More brown sugar and a hint of ginger, combined with the humid cooking environment resulted in a light, sweetly spicy cake that complemented the toffee sauce perfectly. Even better, the recipe makes plenty of leftover sauce to pour over your serving or eat later from the fridge with a spoon (not that I know anything about that).

See a printable version of the recipe, and don't forget to check out the puddings of other Daring Bakers, too!

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 6: Thanh Hung and Nishi's Japan Shop

2010-04-18T18:12:00.008+02:00

The final installment! To tell you the truth I'm getting a little tired of this series - I'm ready to move on and tell you about our fabulous trip to Turkey and also some of the delicious things I've been making lately. Nevertheless, I hope you've found these write-ups to be useful and inspired you to venture beyond your usual Coop or Migros in search of tasty Asian ingredients!

See also *deep breath* Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

Nishi's Japan Shop
Schaffhauserstrasse 120
8057 Zurich
044 363 11 63
Mo-Fr 9-18:30 | Sa 9-16

The other stores I have mentioned, in particular Yumi Hana, also carry a number of Japanese items, but Nishi's Japan Shop is the only Asian grocery store in Zurich that specializes exclusively in Japanese food and housewares. The store is smaller than I had imagined, about the same in floor space as Yumi Hana, but without the restaurant section at the front. There are perhaps 5 shelves of dry goods (no real aisles) with a couple small-ish refrigerators and freezers at the back and in the middle of the store with prepared foods (no produce section). There's also a shelf full of Japanese pottery, dishes, and a few cooking implements.
I am really not very familiar with the staples of Japanese cooking, so I can't tell you what special ingredients only this store carries - except for some delicious mochi (not cheap at 9 francs for 4 pieces).
The ladies behind the counter were cordial but declined my request to take a few photos inside the store, hence I can only show you the facade above.

Maki also wrote a bit about this store, here's what she had to say:

There's only one totally-Japanese grocery store in Zürich, Nishi's Japan Shop, Schaffhauserstr. 120 (Tram lines 7 and 14, stop Guggachstrasse, or lines 7, 9, 10, 14 stop Milchbuck) It's small but stocks most of the basics, including rice from Japan and California. No fresh produce here except for the occasional nagaimo or something. All the fish and meat etc. are frozen, but that seems to be pretty standard for Asian groceries in Zürich. Recently started carrying real fresh tofu made in St. Gallen or Spain! (Previously they only had the hermetically sealed Morinyu type, which I dislike so much it lead me to making my own.) Also has a small selection of takeaway sushi and such.

Thanh Hung Asiatische Lebensmittel
Wehntalerstrasse 280
8046 Zurich
044 371 38 77
Mo-Fr 9-18:30 | Sa 9-16

Thanh Hung is the most inconvenient of all these store to reach - it is by far the furthest from the main station, involving a tram and then a bus ride to get to, and consequently it is not very well known. However, is is well worth paying a visit to this large and airy store with a selection that is perhaps even better than New Asia Market. The shop is divided into two large rooms. You enter into the frozen food and produce section. Here you will find a large variety of frozen seafood and meat as well as frozen Chinese buns (some homemade), and refrigerators filled with herbs, vegetables, fruits, tofus, dairy products, and curry pastes.

A connecting aisle brings you to the dry goods room, with four long aisles of anything and everything you could be looking to add to your Asian pantry. In addition to Chinese and Thai ingredients, they also carry some Japanese, Indian, and even British imports like Bird's custard powder. As with the other Asian stores there is a large choice of spices at very reasonable prices. In the drinks section you can try a whole host of strange-sounding sodas, and also your choice of sake, plum wine, and other choice beverages including imported beers. There is also a wall of dishes, cooking utensils, woks, electronics like rice cookers and steamers, and even customary items like the decorative red envelopes that are exchanged at Chinese New Year. I was able to find a number of items at Thanh Hung that I couldn't find elsewhere, specifically the various specialty flours and starches needed for certain dumpling wrappers in Andrea's book, and Malaysian palm sugar.

The Chinese grandma at check-out scrutinized me and then my purchases, asking me with a penetrating look what I planned to make with this bag of wheat starch and this can of bamboo shoots and that packet of banana leaves. Fortunately I was buying the items with certain recipes in mind and after a couple explanations, she gave me a broad smile and ceased questioning. I guess I passed the white-girl test!

Even though it's a bit further out, it's more than worth stopping in at Thanh Hung if you're looking for something special, particularly if you couldn't find it at New Asia Market. If you have a car it would also be a good place to do a stock-up of your pantry as they carry a number of items in bulk, particularly rice, and there are convenient parking spots right in front of the shop and in the surrounding neighborhood.

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 5: Lian Hua and Barkat

2010-04-11T14:25:00.004+02:00

I've been on holiday in Turkey for the last two weeks so please excuse the fact that it's taking me longer and longer to finish this series (See Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)! There's only one more post to write after this one so I'll get there eventually!

Today's two stores are both within walking distance of Bahnhof Wiedikon, in Kreis 3.

Lian Hua Asia Laden
Birmensdorferstrasse 94
8003 Zurich
044 450 31 88
Mo-F 9-19 | Sa 9-18:30

Lian Hua is primarily a Chinese grocery, although they carry some goods from other countries as well. It's a medium-sized store with plenty of dry goods as well as a decent-sized refrigerated produce section and one wall of dishes and cooking implements. I didn't see too much at this shop that can't be found at New Asia Market, but as Maki at Just Hungry mentions in her writeup, they have a large selection of different tofus and unusual drinks both Asian and otherwise: for example, they carry A&W root beer. The ambiance here is rather scruffy, with boxes and palettes lying around at the end of aisles, and dust on lesser-used items.

One thing to keep in mind is that they offer a 15% discount on Saturdays, so if you're going to stock up it's worth fighting the crowds in the city to get there.

Barkat
Birmensdorferstrasse 143
8003 Zurich
043 811 54 90

About a 10-minute walk down Birmensdorferstrasse from Lian Hua, Barkat is a cash-and-carry store with cheap bulk food as well as plenty of imports. Maki also wrote about it here (with photos, scroll down) and here, and what she has to say is still accurate. When I visited on a Saturday, it was incredibly crowded and I was constantly jostled in the narrow aisles as I tried to note down some of the products. The imported food mostly focuses on India, Pakistan and the Middle East - I found some incredibly inexpensive Arab flatbread, as well as Turkish cheese, a large spice selection, and cooking ingredients like chapati flour. The produce section was very small and not particularly organized or fresh-looking - unlike Maki I didn't see any fruit or vegetables that I couldn't buy at Coop or Migros, and 20 kg bags of onions aren't on my shopping list very often. Barkat also has a small homewares section with very cheap (both in price and quality) items.

I'd probably only go back here if I was looking for a specific Indian ingredient that Aggarwal didn't carry, or else to grab a packet of that flatbread to serve with a mezze.

Go to Part 6: Nishi's Japan Shop and Thanh Hung

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 4: Aggarwal and New Asia Market

2010-03-28T18:24:00.007+02:00

Before I continue this series, a quick note to anyone looking for my March Daring Bakers Challenge. As you will have seen on other blogs, I was supposed to make an Orange Tian like this one, or this one. To be very honest, I just couldn't muster up the enthusiasm. This dessert is a sweet butter cookie, whipped cream, marmalade, orange segments, and a simple caramel sauce layered together. Though it's time consuming to make all those separate components, I don't feel that any of them are particularly challenging, and Matt isn't the biggest fan of citrus desserts anyway. So, no tian for me. I'm looking forward to finding out what April's challenge will be!

Onwards to the next two Asian Grocery Stores on my list, both located within walking distance of the Kalkbreite tram stop. See also Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Aggarwal Indian Food
Kernstrasse 27
8004 Zurich

Aggarwal actually has two locations in Zurich, both in Kreis 4. Most online resources I've read point you in the direction of the Langstrasse shop (Langstrasse 62), but I've been to both and this one at Kernstrasse is by the far the better of the two. The store is quite large and spacious, with a neat and organized fresh produce section and a good choice of other imported dry goods, mostly focusing on Indian specialties (despite the Guinness in the picture!).

[Update 16.7.2010.] For those interested in Indian stores, another mostly-Indian grocery can be found at Baslerstrasse 102, which is quite a ways on Tram 2 towards Farbhof. They have a fresh produce secton, lots of beans and legumes, bulk rice, and special flours. This is the only place I found jaggery (unrefined Indian sugar chunks). The store also serves a hot lunch, to eat there or take away, for the low low price of CHF 9.90.

I found fresh paneer here, 350 grams for 5 francs, as well as an impressive selection of lentils, beans, and other pulses at prices much cheaper than your local Coop or Migros.

They also have a great choice of bulk spices as well as various Indian spice blends. If you don't like using the little packets of baking soda you can buy at Coop, Aggarwal carries larger containers. They also have liquid food coloring for the bakers out there. Furthermore, all mango lovers, listen up - Aggarwal (and a few of the other stores I've written about) carries canned alphonso-mango puree. I am usually averse to using anything canned if I can buy or make fresh, but this mango puree is far, far better than anything you will be able to make yourself from the pale and tasteless mangos Coop sells, and is cheaper to boot. Making a mango lassi to go with that curry? It's totally worth your time to get a can (or three) of this puree - you won't be sorry!

Aggarwal would be my first choice of store if I needed anything to make some great Indian food. The sister shop on Langstrasse has a few items as well, but it's a lot smaller and mostly focuses on hot lunch service instead of grocery. Another smaller, more crowded, and less clean shop called India Supermarket can also be found at Josefstrasse 91, 8005 Zurich.

New Asia Market
Feldstrasse 24
8004 Zurich
044 241 80 00
Mo-Fr 9-18:30 | Sa 9-17:00

Just a few windows in a gray building on a street with not much else to recommend it, New Asia Market doesn't look like much from the outside, but I would say without hesitation that it is the biggest and best Asian grocery store in Zurich. With shopping carts available at the entrance, it feels like a real supermarket, and the long aisles are packed with an excellent selection of pan-Asian goods. In addition to food there is also a whole aisle of dishes, kitchen utensils, cutlery, and electronics to fully equip your kitchen.

One thing I really appreciate about this shop, besides of course the excellent range of products, is that many of those products are sold in varying sizes. If you are new to certain ingredients and hesitant to buy a whole liter of chinkiang vinegar, this is where you can find a smaller bottle that another store doesn't have the space to display. On the other hand, if you're looking to stock up, you can find very generous sizes as well. It's the same case with canned goods.

New Asia Market also has a fantastic selection of fresh produce and frozen items, the biggest of all the stores in this list. They also sometimes have specials on certain items. The first time I was there I was standing in line for the cash register and noticed that every person before and after me was holding a box of the sweetest-smelling mangos. Naturally I grabbed a box too (a total steal at 6 mangos for 10 francs), and for the next three evenings Matt and I each ate a fabulously fragrant Pakistani mango for dessert. They were all gone the next time I went, of course!

Don't forget to keep your eyes open near the cash register - sometimes you'll find freshly made snacks and desserts to munch on the tram ride home...

Go to Part 5: Lian Hua and Barkat

My New Job, and a Swap Surprise

2010-03-24T18:25:00.002+01:00

I know I've been a slacker and haven't posted last week's Asian Stores in Zurich post yet - but once you hear about what happened last week you'll understand that I was a little distracted! After job searching for 3 months without much luck, I submitted yet another CV and cover letter to yet another job ad. The very next morning (Friday), I got a call from the company. I went in last Tuesday for the interview, that evening had an offer, and the next day had a contract in my inbox. It was all incredibly whirlwind and exciting and preoccupying!

The long and short of it is... I have a new job! It's not that anything went wrong at my current one, but I've been there four years now and frankly it has become very monotonous. Late slips, attendance, lost iPods, report cards, all going around in an endless circle. I need a change. So! I signed the contract on Monday morning and start work at a small Zurich-based executive-search (headhunter) firm on June 7th.

In the middle of all this last week, I got a lovely package from Jennifer over at Make Tea not Warr in Australia. We were paired up through a blog-swap organized by Michela where each person sends the other a little package of pretty things to surprise them.

In the envelope I found a small pear-scented candle, cupcake-shaped knitted pincushion, postcard of Alice in Wonderland, a cookbook on eating healthy, and a friendly typewriter-typed (!) letter where she explained her thoughts on all the items. It was a lovely package to get in the middle of a hectic week - thanks so much, Jennifer! I hope you enjoy the package I sent you just as much!

Forget spring flowers....

2010-03-22T13:49:00.003+01:00

...I'm planting kittehs instead.

Blood-Orange Cardamom Baklava

2010-03-18T16:35:00.002+01:00

Books are one of my greatest pleasures. And more wonderful than just a book on its own is the time to get thoroughly, totally engrossed - without interruption and without distraction. At the end of January I went on a ladies' weekend to a small mountain town, and given the less-than-favorable skiing weather, I allocated the entire Saturday to reading one book. That book happened to be Molly Wizenberg's A Homemade Life, one of the most beautiful and poignant collection of essays about the intertwining of family and food and memories I have ever come across.

Molly is also the author of the blog Orangette and a column in Bon Appetit magazine. After I read her book (and put 'to try' notes on nearly every recipe), I went back and read all her pieces in my pile of back issues, and I found baklava. Orange Cardamom Baklava. With our trip to Turkey coming up in two weeks and blood oranges still in happy abundance at the grocery store, I immediately set about shelling piles of pistachios, boiling down gorgeously colored juice, and teasing apart layers of paper-thin phyllo dough. Along the way, I learned a great method for de-skinning shelled pistachios.

The crisp-chewy pastry, spicy cinnamon and cardamom, crunchy nuts, and sweet-tart syrup (not to mention the whole cup of melted butter painted between the layers) all play off each other wonderfully and would be a perfect end to a Mediterranean-inspired meal. Or a really, really good book.

Blood-Orange Cardamom Baklava
Adapted (barely) from Bon Appetit Magazine, January 2010

1 3/4 cups plus 8 tablespoons sugar, divided
1 1/4 cups fresh blood-orange juice
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
2 cups shelled pistachios, toasted
1 cup whole almonds, toasted
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted
30 14x9-inch sheets fresh phyllo pastry or frozen, thawed (from one 16-ounce package)

Simmer 1 3/4 cups sugar and juice in saucepan over medium heat, stirring to dissolve sugar. Boil over medium heat until reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 8 minutes (be careful not to let it boil over). Stir in cardamom. Cool syrup.
Place nuts and 2 tablespoons sugar in processor. Using on/off turns, process until most of nuts are finely ground (the largest pieces should be the size of small peas). Mix nuts, 6 tablespoons sugar, and cinnamon in medium bowl.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush 13x9x2-inch glass baking dish with some of melted butter. Place 1 phyllo sheet on bottom of dish. Brush lightly with melted butter. Repeat 9 more times with phyllo and melted butter. Sprinkle half of pistachio mixture (about 1 1/2 cups) evenly over phyllo. Place 1 phyllo sheet over nuts; brush lightly with butter. Repeat 9 more times with phyllo sheets and melted butter. Sprinkle remaining pistachio mixture evenly over. Place 1 phyllo sheet atop nuts; brush with butter. Repeat 9 more times with phyllo sheets and melted butter.

Using sharp knife, cut diagonally through top phyllo layer from top left corner to bottom right corner. Cut top layer of phyllo into 1-inch-wide rows parallel to both sides of first cut. Turn pan and cut rows about 2 1/4 inches wide, forming diamond pattern.

Bake baklava until golden brown and crisp, 50 to 55 minutes. Drizzle syrup evenly over hot baklava. Cool in pan on rack. Recut baklava along lines all the way through layers. Do ahead: Baklava can be made 2 days ahead. Store airtight at room temperature.

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 3: Chiang Mai Thai and Sala Thai

2010-03-11T19:51:00.011+01:00

The next two stores on my list (see Part 1 and Part 2) are still fairly close to the train station, and focus more on Thai cuisine and ingredients.

Chiang Mai Thai
Josefstrasse 13
8001 Zurich
044 271 82 52
Mo 10:30-18:30 | Tu-Fr 10:30-19 | Sa 9:30-16

It doesn't look like much from the outside, but this would be my first stop for ingredients to make Thai Tapioca Pearl Dumplings from Andrea's book. Only a few minutes' walk from the train station, this store isn't much bigger than the HB Asia Store, but it's nicely laid out and also has a food counter serving hot lunch every day. You can either do take-away or enjoy your food at one of the wooden block tables scattered around (bottom right).

In addition to two aisles of dry goods, there is also a well-labeled produce refrigerator, and a couple small freezers. Besides groceries and hot food, they also sell various souvenirs and decorative items from Thailand. The staff are very friendly and happy to help, and if you can't find what you're looking for, they also take special requests and orders.

If you're at Chiang Mai and have a few extra minutes, stop in at the store on the opposite corner full of beautiful dishes, glassware, furniture, and other knick knacks. I bought a gorgeous pedestal glass cake plate there, an item you don't see often in Switzerland. The owner seems a little eccentric, though - when I asked her if I could take a few pictures, she declined. Then I asked for a card with the store's information. She gave me one, but quickly pointed out that the address, name, and phone number on the card were all incorrect and still from her previous flower store down the road - and she hasn't gotten around to making updated ones yet. Furthermore, she is still trying to decide on a name for this shop (though it didn't seem so new), and has no website. Even mentioning the internet made her scrunch up her nose in distaste. I've never met a shop owner so averse to publicity and seemingly ignorant of advertising. Nonetheless, she has great taste in pretty things, and it's worth popping your head in for a browse after picking up your galangal and banana leaves across the road.

Also worth mentioning: a few steps up the road are some other ethnic stores that may be of interest: El Maiz (Josefstrasse 23) carries Mexican imports including fresh homemade tortillas, and EGE Imports (Josefstrasse 53) is a sizeable, predominantly Turkish grocery store with many aisles of dry goods (you can find pomegranate molasses here), and deli counters selling halal meat, fresh cheeses, and homemade baklava.

Sala Thai
Zwinglistrasse 32
8004 Zurich
044 291 60 08

It's a good ten minute walk from the nearest tram stop (Sihlpost) to get to this tiny, cramped store in a nondescript neighborhood southwest of the main station. I got a very "What are you doing here, blond girl?" look from the man behind the cash register when I walked in. With only two short aisles and two refrigerators against the walls, browsing through their selection only took a few minutes. Many of their ingredients and even fresh items are very similar to what can be found at Chiang Mai Thai, with a couple exceptions. The row of 15 different fresh homemade curry pastes lined up in their plastic pots impressed me, as did a choice of fresh snacks and little dessert bites (which I got the impression are not always there). They also carry imported Thai magazines, music, and beauty products. The store was so small that I wasn't really able to get a representative and well-lit picture inside.

The same people who own the store run a restaurant of the same name a few blocks down. There's also another restaurant in Männedorf, and two more grocery stores in Winterthur and Frauenfeld (see website for more details).

Go to Part 4: Aggarwal Indian Food and New Asia Market

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 2: HB Asia Store and Yumi Hana

2010-03-05T12:04:00.014+01:00

For lack of a better way to group the stores in this series (see Part 1), I'm going to do it by location. Counting the Hauptbahnhof as the center of Zurich, I'll start there and work my way outwards. I'll also include a map at the beginning of each post so you can see which stores are closest to where you live. After all, not everyone is as ~~OCD~~ thorough as me and wants to spend half their Saturday on trams because they just have to check out one last store in Kreis 67. Right?

Asia Store Hauptbahnhof
Main station underpass, halfway down track 18 (not connected to ShopVille)
M-F 10-19:30 | Sa 10-18 | Sun and holidays 11-17

Located right in the main station, this relatively small store is your best bet if you're looking for common Asian ingredients and don't have time to go out of your way to find them. The selection seems fairly pan-Asian; I was able to find palm sugar, tamarind paste, chinkiang vinegar, self-rising flour, skippy creamy peanut butter (!?), udon noodles, and various lentils in their two short aisles of dry goods. There's also a limited choice of dishes and chopsticks. Two smallish freezers at the back contain a selection of frozen seafood and packaged dumplings, and two refrigerators have exotic fresh fruits, vegetables (delivered every Tuesday and Friday), herbs, and a handful of homemade curry pastes. I would go here if I just needed to grab a couple fresh ingredients for a recipe, but not necessarily to do a big stock-up. There's also another branch of this store at the Oerlikon train station.

Yumi Hana
Schützengasse 7
8001 Zurich
044 211 57 57

Yumi Hana is a Korean/Japanese place in a prime location two steps from the train station, just off of Bahnhofstrasse (opposite Café Balthazar). The front of the store, as you can see from the window above, is dedicated to a very informal Korean restaurant with 15 bar-style seats where you can eat a quick lunch. I've had the bibimbap (CHF 20) there a few times - flavor and freshness are fine but the whole dish is somewhat lacking since it's not served in a dolsot (hot stone bowl) with a layer of sizzling sesame oil that creates the nice chewy rice crust on the bottom. Nonetheless, it's healthy and filling and if you haven't had quite enough the friendly cooks are happy to serve you a bit more rice and veggies at no extra charge.

At the back of the restaurant is a small grocery area. The selection is limited to Japanese and Korean items, and there's no fresh produce (what you see above is two-thirds of the store). However, the staff are very helpful - one gentleman (the owner, I think) asked to see my list, then bustled around gathering all my items and even labeling them in English with a sharpie so I could distinguish between similar packaging.

Prices here are not cheap; you will probably pay 2-3 times what the same thing costs at another asian store in the city, simply for the convenience of the location. One baking item I found here that I haven't seen anywhere else in Switzerland at all is light corn syrup, imported from Korea. It's among the yellow bottles on the bottom shelf the in above picture (look for a clear bottle with a big yellow and green ear of corn). As with the first store, I would stop by here if I was in a hurry to get one or two items and didn't mind paying the extra money for convenience (and a tasty lunch).

Go to Part 3: Chiang Mai Thai and Sala Thai

Daring Bakers in February: Tiramisu

2010-02-27T00:01:00.010+01:00

Middle names weren't big in Switzerland when I was born back in the eighties, or before that either. My dad doesn't have one. Neither does my sister, and neither do I. The official record hasn't prevented me from being assigned ones, though. One day in college, I opened an envelope from the registrar to find that a mysterious "S." had appeared in the middle initial field of my records. That S. continued to plague various official documents throughout the rest of my college career. It was as if a records gnome deep in the registrar's office couldn't stand that un-American blankness in between my names and kept tossing in a letter to fill it up.

What do middle names have to do with Tiramisu, you ask? Well, I do have an unofficial middle name that begins with S, and it comes from this dessert. As my mom tells it, "My sister was visiting from New Zealand when you were very little, and it was time for tea (dinner). I asked, 'Would you like some tea, Romy?' and Michelle finished it off by exclaiming, 'Su! Tea-Romy-Su!'" The name stuck, and ever since then my mom's nickname for me has been Romy-Sue, not only because of my aunt's little pun, but also because tiramisu was an oft-served dessert in our home and one of my mom's specialities. In the intervening years it's become for me one of those foods inextricably tied up with family and memories and even my own name.

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home, and Baking Obsession.

I must admit that my first reaction was, "pshaw!" Tiramisu is undeniably delicious, but also one of my go-to "quick" desserts to be thrown together when I don't have time to properly bake. "Layering some ladyfingers and cream is not a challenge!" I scoffed. Then I skimmed the recipe and saw make your own mascarpone. And make your own ladyfingers. And make zabaglione. And pastry cream. And sweetened whipped cream. And harvest your own coffee beans.
OK, just kidding on the last one, but yikes. My smirk was long gone. The sheer amount of preparation and planning it took to make all those separate components and then combine them before one got stale or went rancid was a challenge all in itself.

I managed it, though! Top left is my lovely creamy mascarpone, made by gently cooking cream with a little lemon juice until it thickens, then allow to drain and set in a cheesecloth-lined sieve. I was happy to find that our local dairy sells fabulously fresh-tasting lightly-pasteurized cream, perfect for this project. Below it is the pastry cream, scented with lemon zest. Top right is the coffee/cognac mixture, and below it is the zabaglione, made with leftover Marsala wine from the cannoli in November.

Making the ladyfinger cookies, also known as savoiardi biscuits, was probably the most technically challenging part of this recipe. The batter had to be folded very carefully to maintain the fluffy texture, and then piped precisely onto baking trays for a coating of powdered sugar and a trip through the oven. The recipe also called for cake flour, which if you read my writeup a few months ago about flours in Zurich, you would know isn't available here. I ended up (finally) making a batch of Kate Flour and using it for these cookies, and they turned out crispy, light, and eggy - just as they should be. I'll be testing out some further recipes soon using the leftover treated flour, and will report on the results!

Once all the components were made, the final assembly didn't take long at all. The recipe warned against dipping the cookies in the coffee for more than one second, but I wish I had left them in a little longer - they were rather dry in the finished product and the coffee taste could have been more pronounced. The cream, however, was heavenly - a mélange of the whipped cream, pastry cream, zabaglione, and mascarpone, it combined hints of lemon and marsala in the richest, creamiest possible texture you can imagine. I challenge you to come up with another dessert that makes you write "cream" that many times in one sentence.

Would I make it again? Tiramisu, definitely. Multi-creamy-component Tiramisu with homemade mascarpone and ladyfingers? Probably not. It was really good, but not so much better than my normal recipe (with store-bought cookies and cheese) that it's worth the tons of extra time and effort - even for a dessert that gave me my middle name.

You can download a printable version of the Daring Bakers recipe here.

Asian Grocery Stores in Zurich, Part 1: Introduction

2010-02-25T12:32:00.017+01:00

Not long after I posted about Chinese dumplings last year, I came across Andrea Nguyen's newly published book entirely devoted to making Asian Dumplings. Naturally I added it to my shopping cart straight away, and placed my order of books a few months later. (There's no Super Saver shipping to Europe so I wait a while until I have enough books to warrant paying the postal cost!)

What a fabulous and comprehensive book! Covering pretty much every type of Asian dumpling you can think of, from gyoza to samosas to steamed bao to sweet gulab jamun, there is something for absolutely everyone. The book is divided by type of wrapper, with instructions on how to make from scratch, stuff them, and fold them into beautiful shapes. As a valuable resource in addition to the book, Nguyen's Asian Dumpling Tips webpage has all kinds of demonstration videos and further ingredient information to turn to in case you're stumped (or just plain intimidated).

To make Asian Dumplings, I was going to need some Asian ingredients - what Nguyen calls "a basic dumpling pantry." These include various flours and starches (rice flour, tapioca flour, wheat starch) for the wrappers as well as seasonings (Chinkiang vinegar, Shaoxing rice wine, oyster sauce) and ingredients (pandan leaf, chinese chives, bamboo shoots) that are mostly only available here if you search. And search I did.

First I looked online, of course. Maki over at Just Hungry posted a quick overview three years ago when she lived here, but it doen't cover some of the biggest stores. There's also a rather outdated discussion thread on the English Forum, but it takes forever to scroll through all the posts and many of them are along the lines of, "There used to be a little shop near so-and-so but I can't remember what it's called or how to get there." Lacking a coherent and updated list, I gathered as many addresses as I could and spent the next month or so perusing what felt like every ethnic grocery store in Zurich to see who had what.

What I found was pretty great. There are a LOT of resources for my dumpling ingredients, and even better, many of these stores stock other kitchen staples much cheaper than Coop or Migros (eg. rice, all sorts of beans and lentils, spices). While I am by no means an expert on Asian cooking or Asian ingredients, the lack of descriptive information online inspired me to do a series of posts on the stores I found in the hopes of helping other intrepid cooks save some time and trouble. I'll be writing them up two at a time in the coming weeks, likely with some dumpling pics thrown in, so dust off your woks and bamboo steamers and keep your eyes peeled!

Go to Part 2: HB Asia Store and Yumi Hana

Giveaway Winner

2010-02-16T09:32:00.000+01:00

Hi Emily!

You've won!

See?

Shoot me an email to halfthesugarbowl {at} gmail.com with your address and I'll pop your lovely Somea things in the mail this week! Congrats!

Somea and a Valentine's Giveaway

2010-02-13T17:01:00.011+01:00

I'm misleading you by starting with this picture of cookie cutters. This post actually isn't going to be about food at all. It just made me happy to get out my three sizes of heart cutters for Valentine's Day!

On the topic of Valentine's Day, let me tell you about one of my favorite local places full of pretty, flowery, nice-smelling things that would be heavenly presents for any lady you love. Somea is a little store in the Niederdorf section of Zurich that specializes in organic soaps, bath items, candles, and other beautiful household furniture and accessories. In other words, Matt won't set foot in the place and ogles the windows of the games-store down the road while I happily smell every item on display. Even though I know it's just "stuff," I find that there is something so soothing about being in a place filled with beautiful and carefully-made things, and I like to take my time choosing a special gift for the person I have in mind.

Today, that special person is... you! In honor of Valentine's Day, I'm giving away a little gift package from Somea: An organza bag filled with delicate "soap needles" that are one of the store's best-sellers, and a rose-scented heart-shaped bath melt made with cocoa butter and essential oils. The soap needles dissolve very quickly and are great for a foot soak or a fragrant bath.

To enter, leave a comment (one per person, please!) by midnight Swiss time on Monday, February 15th and I'll choose one at random to be the lucky winner, announced on Tuesday. I'll ship anywhere in the world so even if you're nowhere near Zurich to check out the store, don't let geography stop you from giving yourself a little Valentine's Day treat!

Somea
Oberdorfstrasse 28
8001 Zürich

Pancakezeit!

2010-02-07T15:05:00.004+01:00

"Pancakezeit!" I rolled over in bed and tried to shut out the call by covering my head with a pillow. "Pancakezeit!" This time it was closer, nearly at the door. "Pan-cake-zeiiiiiit!!" Matt sang as he waltzed cheerfully into our bedroom, throwing open the curtains to the morning light, and ignoring my feeble protests of "Saturday morning" and "more sleep."

Most weekend mornings in our house start like that. Matt is a consummate morning person, getting up only a few minutes later than he would during the week, humming happy songs and starting optimistic conversations as soon as I stumble blearily into the living room. You've probably already figured out that I'm the exact opposite. If I had my way, nobody except the cat would talk to me for at least an hour after I wake up.

He has a good reason for getting me out of bed, though. Pancaketime! I've flipped my way through quite a few recipes in the last two years, some of them good, some of them not so good. I still get teased about the cornmeal version I tried one Saturday ("pancakes should not be crunchy!") and a recipe with cinnamon and nutmeg that I thought was delicious met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm from the opposite side of the table.

But these - we agree on these. It's a Dorie Greenspan recipe, so you're on the right track from the start, and it only gets better from there. With only a handful of ingredients, they're super quick to toss together. The whole cup of buttermilk in the batter makes them incredibly fluffy and tender, and the amount is just right for two people (3 for him, 2 for me). Since buttermilk comes in half-liter cartons here and goes bad pretty quickly once opened, I usually freeze it in an ice cube tray, store the cubes in a ziploc baggie, and then just take out just as many as I need to melt to make a cup. It might look a little curdled after a trip though the microwave, but once mixed into the batter it's fine.

More than fine, in fact. Drizzled with some real maple syrup (my sister-in-law from Vermont keeps us well-stocked), these are a slice of weekend heaven that you shouldn't pass up. Even if it does mean getting out of bed a little earlier than you planned.

Basic Buttermilk Pancakes
from Pancakes: From Morning to Midnight by Dorie Greenspan

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
3 tablespoons (42 grams) unsalted butter, melted

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, and melted butter to blend thoroughly. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix with the whisk, stopping when everything is just combined. (Don't worry if the batter is a bit lumpy.) The batter will bubble and become spongy almost immediately.

If necessary, lightly butter, oil, or spray your griddle or skillet. Preheat over medium heat. If you want to hold the pancakes until serving time, preheat your oven to 200*F.

Spoon 1/4 cup of batter (I usually use a little more) onto the griddle for each pancake, allowing space for spreading. When the undersides of the pancakes are golden and the tops are lightly speckled with bubbles that pop and stay open, flip the pancakes over with a wide spatula and cook until the other sides are light brown. Serve immediately, or keep the finished pancakes in the preheated oven while you make the rest of the batch.

The New Bakery on the Block

2010-02-04T23:02:00.010+01:00

I flipped through the stack of mail that accumulated while we were on holiday: bill, bill, ad, bill, Christmas card, bill... pastries?? There, on a postcard-sized flyer in front of me, appeared a vision of a juicy raspberry sitting atop a square of ganache-covered chocolate mousse. I turned over the card, expecting perhaps an ad for a catering company, but no: a new bakery less than a 5-minute walk from my house, the latest tenants in a row of stores that has seen quite a lot of turnover in the last few years. And not just a new bakery - a new Japanese bakery! I tried hard to think of any particularly Japanese treats I knew of other than mochi. Unable to come up with much, I hot-tailed it over there to have a look (and a taste!).

Hiro Takahashi was the longtime chef de pâtisserie at the posh Savoy Hotel in Zurich and has now fulfilled his dream of opening his own shop, just 100 meters from the Sood-Oberleimbach train station. It's klein aber fein, as you would say in German - small but good, with the gleam of brand-new equipment everywhere and the colors of the beautiful confections in the glass display case serving as the centerpiece of the store.

No mochi here. Mr. Takahashi has created a fusion bakery where his classic European pastry training is clearly evident - on the sweet side, you'll find french apple tarts, jelly rolls, and chocolate cake next to Asian-inspired squares of vanilla sponge topped with green tea mousse and red bean paste (below). All the pastries are crafted with elegant care, adorned with gleaming fruit, and prettily packaged. In addition to the selection in the store, he is happy to create birthday cakes and other items to order.

On the savory side, besides traditional fresh Swiss breads and baguettes, there are also filled buns (okazu pan) which my Japanese friends were particularly excited about: red bean, curry, corn, black sesame, and sweet potato. I have fond memories these flavors in moon cakes from when I lived in China, so I happily added a few to my order to try later at home (curry and corn, below). Though the plastic wrapping initially gives different impression, everything is made fresh on the premises by Mr. Takahashi. The buns have a tasty layer of filling and a soft texture that contrasts with the crispy panko breadcrumbs sprinkled on top.

Rounding out the savory assortment are sushi and fresh sandwiches that you can enjoy at one of the bakery's five cafe tables for lunch. Chances are, Mr. Takahashi will appear from the kitchen to chat with you in person and answer your questions about his creations. It's refreshing to see a bakery that has a more unusual selection than just the ubiquitous croissants and hazelnut-filled items that you find on any corner. Everything in the store is of very high quality, and I would happily return here to buy a special cake if I didn't have time to make one myself. Despite the out-of-the-way location, I sincerely hope that the patronage from the Japanese community in Zurich and the locals in Adliswil will be enough to keep this little place afloat.

Confiserie Bäckerei Hiro Takahashi
Im Sihlhof 10
8134 Adliswil
044 709 2244

www.hirotakahashi.com
Tues-Fri 8-18 | Sa 8-16 | Sun and Mon Closed

Holiday Highlights, Part 3: Buffalo, New Year's, and a Big Surprise!

2010-02-01T20:42:00.003+01:00

Seeing as today is already February first and we are well into the New Year, it's definitely time to wrap up my, well, holiday wrap up!

I left off Part 2 just after Tori and Pierre's wedding in New Hampshire. The last part of our holiday was all about family, family, family. After a brief overnight with my brother- and sister-in-law Michael and Katie, we arrived at Matt's parents' house in Buffalo to find.... my mom! Who lives in New Zealand! At Dave and Kathy's house in upstate NY! Needless to say it was quite the collision of worlds and I was completely shocked and flabbergasted. Apparently it was all Dave's idea and they had been plotting this together for months - do I have wonderful parents-in-law or what? Matt and I originally planned to go to New Zealand for Christmas 2009, but then both weddings came up so we changed our plans. So, since we didn't go and see her... she came to us! How funny it was to watch her and Kathy chatting together in the kitchen, and how lovely it was to celebrate a late Christmas together.

She stayed for the whole time we were there, and we had a great time cooking together, shopping together, getting in lots of mother-daughter hugs, and generally enjoying the precious six days! New Year's Eve at a local banquet hall was especially fun, with great food, lots of dancing, and numerous cans of silly string...

On our last evening, my mom whipped up her famous fruit-topped pavlova, which I haven't had in years. A pavlova is a traditional dessert from Australia/New Zealand and consists of a meringue baked into a cake-like shape, with a crispy outside and soft inside. It's feather light and oh-so-delicious. I had at least three pieces and it took me back to the days when my mom used to make a pav as my birthday cake. What kid (or grown-up) doesn't love digging into a huge sugary meringue?

It was a great way to end our wonderful holiday, and a special treat for Dave and Kathy, who had never tried a pav before. And I'm looking forward to one again soon - when we visit New Zealand in December. This year, I promise, Mom!

Diana's Pavlova

4 egg whites at room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 tsp vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tbsp cornstarch
Sliced fruit and whipped cream for decoration

Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Beat the sugar and egg white hard for 10 minutes, until they form a solid shiny lump. Just turn the timer on, walk away and come back after 10 minutes.Mix the rest of the ingredients in a small cup and add to egg whites. Beat for another 4 minutes. Turn out onto baking tray lined with parchment and shape carefully into round, cake-like shape with a spatula. As you put the pavlova in the oven, turn it down to 100 degrees. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until outside is firmly set but not browning (there may be small cracks in the meringue shell, that's fine).

Cover the outside of the pav with whipped cream, smoothing it, and decorate with fruit slices. Serve immediately (if you wait, the meringue will go soggy from the cream).

Daring Bakers in January: Passionfruit Nanaimo Bars

2010-01-27T08:10:00.012+01:00

The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and http://www.nanaimo.ca/.

This month's challenge was two-fold: make graham crackers, and in honor of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, turn them into that all-Canadian and all-sweet treat, Nanaimo Bars. Though part of the original challenge was to make them gluten-free, a half hour of calls to every Indian and organic food store in Zurich yielded no sorghum flour to use as one of the gluten-free flours in the graham cracker recipe. Since the few gluten-free friends I have all live far away, I saved myself any further time and hassle (and long, quizzical pauses from stumped shop assistants) by just using whole wheat flour instead.

Despite my neat edge-trimming and decorative fork-prick patterns that made the raw crackers look pretty on the baking sheet, they turned into homogeneous, crisp, vaguely-rectangular blobs by the time they came out. Good thing I had to crumble them up to make the bars anyway! Their unattractive shape belies their flavor - the biscuits have a deep, dark brown-sugar taste, far better than store-bought, and I'm looking forward to using the crumbs for a cheesecake crust tomorrow night.

Nanaimo bars are decadently, tooth-achingly sweet, very very addictive. A chewy brownie-like base, stuffed with coconut, chopped almonds, graham cracker crumbs, cocoa, and oodles of butter is slathered with a generous layer of buttercream icing (yep, more butter) and then topped with dark chocolate (mixed with melted butter). These are basically a heart attack cut into very small squares.

In order to provide a little more interest than just butter, I added some passionfruit pulp (leftover from the recent tart) to the buttercream icing, which resulted in a tangier flavor and a good combination with the chocolate and coconut. I would definitely recommend being inventive with the flavoring in that layer - I'm sure almost any tropical fruit would work well, or else you could go in a completely different direction and try espresso or mocha or mint. OR, you could take every imaginable direction, utterly reinvent the compass, and come up with pomegranate, cherry, rose, poppy seed, roasted pine nuts, cumin, fennel, chives and parsley Nanaimo Bars like Audax Artifex, the incredibly creative and undisputed King of the Daring Bakers! Check his other amazing flavor combinations out too, they are truly mind boggling!

Passionfruit Cream Tart with Poached Oranges

2010-01-19T21:28:00.003+01:00

I have a case of the Januaries. We've been back for two weeks now, and memories of the beach and the sun are fading into the darkness that is omnipresent when we wake up in the morning and when we come home from work. Though we've already decided to go to Istanbul for Spring Break in April, it's too far away to get excited about yet.

One of the consolations I can come up with for this time of year is making luscious, sunshine-colored, tropical-flavored desserts - like this Passionfruit Cream Tart. I've been loving Julia at Melanger's tropical fruit month (especially the papaya sorbet) and the idea for this tart came to me as I was contemplating a huge display of blood oranges at my local grocery store.

A basic vanilla pastry cream recipe blended with the pulp of five passionfruit took care of the filling. The fruit did nothing to color the cream - my beautiful golden eggs yolks took care of that all by themselves! Since I made the tart early in the day and didn't want the crust to get soggy, I covered the inside with a thin layer of dark chocolate to insulate it from the moisture in the cream.

Initially I had planned to arrange segments of blood oranges decoratively on top, but the poaching went a little awry when all my slices fell apart in the grand marnier-spiked liquid. Oops. I salvaged a few relatively intact ones for the top and hid the rest of them under the cream. Same flavors... prettier presentation.

If you close your eyes when you take a bite, you can almost believe that April's right around the corner!

Passionfruit Cream Tart with Poached Oranges

1 fully-baked tart crust (I used Dorie's Sweet Tart Crust with Almonds), cooled
1 recipe basic pastry cream (again, I used Dorie's recipe from the back of Baking)
Pulp of 5 passionfruit, strained
150 grams dark chocolate, melted in a double boiler with 2 tbsp butter
3 blood oranges, sectioned
150 grams sugar, made into a simple syrup with 1/2 cup water and 1/4 cup grand marnier liquor

Make the pastry cream. Just after the last step, blend in passionfruit pulp, and set cream aside to cool. Melt chocolate and spread evenly into cooled tart crust, making sure it goes up the sides. Set aside to cool and harden. Poach orange segments, reserving a few for decoration. When orange slices begin to fall apart, remove from poaching liquid with a slotted spoon, drain, and cool. Spread into bottom of tart crust, then fill with pastry cream. Top with reserved orange segments, and chill until ready to serve. Drink grand marnier-orange poaching liquid if you are so inclined.

Holiday Highlights, Part 2: NYC, Massachusetts, and Wedding #2

2010-01-16T13:31:00.009+01:00

If the first part of our holidays was mostly about ~~rum~~ sun, beach, and Mark & Rebekah's wedding, the second part of our holidays was about staying warm, visiting with friends, and Tori & Pierre's wedding. Christmas morning found us at the Fairfield Inn just outside of JFK, where we had crashed after flying in late from Barbados the night before. Lest you think that waking up in a stale and anonymous hotel room did not bode well for our Christmas day, I can assure you it got a lot better from there.

After a slight hiccup with the rental car, we headed into Manhattan to meet Matt's old college friend Taufan who had invited us to a wonderful and fancy Christmas brunch at the David Burke Townhouse. The main courses were delicious, but the real highlight of the meal was the restaurant's specialty: a cheesecake lollipop tree! It was the most fanciful dessert I've ever had, and so fun to eat! Behind it you can see Matt's malted caramel chocolate cake with Guinness ice cream, and also Taufan's caramel apple tart.

Full of amazing food, we left NYC and drove up to visit some of my favorite people, Mel and Robert, in western Massachusetts. You might remember Robert from this post - he officiated at our wedding ceremony. Robert was the pastor of my church in college, but he and Mel were so much more than that too - they fed, counseled, prayed for, comforted, and served as an example for me through my four years in college and since then, too. It's always a joy to see them and to relive many happy memories of bible studies, dinners, and chats in their warm and cozy house.

As if staying with them and invading their house on Christmas Day wasn't enough, Melanie (the hostess with the mostess!) put together a thoughtful basket full of baking ingredients, snacks, magazines, and her special cranberry-almond granola for me!

Boxing Day was filled with more visits with old friends from my college days: breakfast with Elaine, visit to the Cartel family, lunch with Campbell family, a drive to New Hampshire, and dinner with Tori and Pierre, the bride and groom of wedding number two!

Tori and I went to Mount Holyoke together, and she met Pierre (who is French-Cambodian) during her semester studying abroad in France. After many years and many miles apart, they became husband and wife in a lovely winter wonderland wedding with Robert officiating. Tori is a very tiny and graceful ballet dancer - she looked absolutely gorgeous in her mermaid dress with a long veil.

The reception was held in the main hall at Zorvino Vineyards in southern New Hampshire, still cozily decorated for the holidays. Lots of our other friends from college attended too, including my best friend Julia who is getting married in September, and after the reception we had a blast catching up and eating chocolate cake in the hotel room until the wee hours of the morning!

Still to come: Holiday Highlights, Part 3, in which I get a HUGE surprise...

English Muffins

2010-01-10T22:23:00.010+01:00

English muffins fall into the same category as bagels - if they were available at the store I'd never bother making them, but since they're not... I got english muffin rings for Christmas and I'm not afraid to use them! I once wrote that I could eat a bagel every morning for breakfast, but I'd like to amend that statement to 'every other morning.' On the off days I'd eat these: lightly toasted, salted-butter-and-strawberry-jam-covered english muffins. I love their slightly tangy taste from the milk powder in the dough, the little crunch from the cornmeal on the baking trays, and the crispy brown areas on the crust that resist your teeth.

I actually tried making these a few months ago, but without the rings to help the dough rise in a neat high circle, the dense, misshapen results were definitely not worth posting about. These were much better! The only possible improvement is the size of the air pockets in the center. The texture was a little too bread-y; perhaps I need to let the dough rise even longer before frying in order to create the big butter-catching holes I like (Leela over at She Simmers knows exactly what I mean). With the icy weather we've been having and the first day of the new semester starting dark and early tomorrow, who doesn't need a butter puddle and a few yellow tulips to cheer up the mornings?

English Muffins (mine are sprinkled with poppy seeds and sea salt)
From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

11 ounces (about 2 1/4 cups) all purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 cup warm water (about 110*F)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for skillet
1 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt, plus more for sprinkling (optional)
Vegetable oil, for bowl, plastic wrap, parchment, and rings
Semolina flour or fine cornmeal, for pan

In medium bowl, combine 1 cup (5 ounces) all-purpose flour, 1/2 tsp yeast, the warm water, and the honey; whisk vigorously until mixture is thick and slightly foamy, about 1 minute.

In another bowl, whisk together the remaining 1 1/4 cups (6 ounces) all-purpose flour, the remaining 1/2 tsp yeast, and the dry milk. Sprinkle over the wet flour mixture, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours. Refrigerate until chilled, about 1 hour.

Transfer to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the dough hook. Mix on medium-low speed until all dry ingredients have been incorporated into the dough, about 2 minutes. Add the butter and salt, and continue to mix on medium speed until combined (the dough should be smooth but slightly tacky), about 5 minutes. If the dough is too dry, add a little room-temperature water, 1 tsp at a time; if the dough is too wet, add more flour, 1 tsp at a time.

Transfer dough to a lightly oiled bowl. Cover bowl with oiled plastic wrap, and let rise in a warm place until the dough has doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours.

With lightly oiled hands, gently knead dough in the bowl, covering all sides with oil. Turn out dough onto a piece of plastic wrap. Form dough into a flattened rectangle; wrap in plastic, and refrigerate until well chilled, at least 1 hour or overnight.

Line a baking sheet with parchment, brush with oil, and lightly dust with semolina flour. Lightly oil eight English muffin rings, and place on prepared sheet. Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface, and roll out to 3/4 inch (2 cm) thick. Using a floured 3-inch (7.5 cm) biscuit cutter, cut out eight rounds; place each round in one of the oiled rings. (Dough can be rerolled in order to cut all eight muffins.) Set aside in a warm place until rounds have risen slightly, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350 F (180 C).

Sprinkle rounds with seeds or salt, as desired (about 1 tsp) per muffin. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt enough additional butter to coat the bottom of the pan. When the butter is bubbling, carefully transfer rounds to the skillet with a wide spatula, leaving muffin rings in place. Do not crowd the pan; rounds should fit comfortably without touching. Cook muffins until golden brown, about 4 minutes. Flip them over, and cook until golden, about 4 minutes more. Return muffins to the baking sheet, and remove muffin rings. Bake until muffins are cooked through, 7 to 10 minutes. (They should reach an internal temperature of 190 F (87 C). Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Muffins can be eaten warm or allowed to cool and then split with a fork and toasted. They can be wrapped in plastic and kept at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Whole-wheat English muffins variation: After combining the first yeast mixture, substitute 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp whole-wheat flour for 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp of all-purpose flour. Mix with yeast and dry milk. Proceed with English muffin recipe.

Holiday Highlights, Part 1: Barbados and Wedding #1

2010-01-04T04:15:00.008+01:00

Happy New Year! I'm not quite back from my holidays yet but I couldn't wait to get back before sharing it with you. It's a daunting task to sum up our eight fantastic days in Barbados into just a few words and pictures, but it's a new year and I'm going to try!

Before getting to the good stuff, apologies to anyone who stopped in looking for my December Daring Bakers Challenge, which was to create and decorate a gingerbread house. What with the end of the semester at work and traveling for most of the month, I simply didn't have time to complete the challenge. Stay tuned for your regular dose of DB sugar at the end of this month, though!

It was a little strange to land in a country full of sunshine and palm trees just after the third Sunday of Advent, but we quickly adjusted to the holiday season island style: calypso carols blasting, staff at our great family-run hotel wearing Santa hats, and real pine Christmas trees everywhere...with a beach view.

Christmas spirit and sunshine weren't the only things in plentiful supply. Rum punch in Barbados is like coffee elsewhere - available everywhere, nearly as cheap as water, and consumed in great quantities by locals and visitors alike. So, when in Rome...

....drink plenty of punch during happy hour(s)!

Of course, we did a bit more than bathe in punch and roast on the beach! Most notably, we attended the wedding of our dear friends Mark and Rebekah, who both teach at the international school in Trinidad. They had just gotten engaged when we visited them a year ago, forcing us to come back to the Caribbean again for their gorgeous wedding. So terrible, I know!

Rebekah's parents are native Bajans, so after the ceremony in the city of Bridgetown, the reception was held at their plantation house with a stunning view of the interior countryside of the island.

The celebrating started almost immediately and lasted into the wee hours of the morning - if anyone knows how to party, island people do!

After recovering from the festivities, there was plenty more to do! Barbados is wonderfully set up for visitors, clean and safe, with good and cheap public transportation and extremely friendly citizens (English is the official language and the country has a literacy rate of 100%).

One day, we took a tour to the rugged Atlantic (eastern) coast and enjoyed a fabulous typical Bajan buffet lunch with fried flying fish, yams, rice and beans, pumpkin dumplings, macaroni pie, and icy fruit punch.

Our drive across the island took us past many a local "rum shop" where Bajans stop in to cool off with a rum punch and socialize - the joke is that there are as many rum shops as churches on the island (365!).

Most of the rum shops serve and proudly display the island's home-grown brand of rum, Mount Gay. The factory is a fun place to visit, where you can learn about and sample the five different varieties, as well as buy a bottle or two to bring home so that the sweet taste of rum punch can stay with you long after you've returned to chillier climates.

Mark and Rebekah organized some great activities for all their guests, including chartering a catamaran one afternoon so our group could swim with sea turtles and visit a shipwreck. The turtles were huge - some as big as me! - and remarkably accustomed to groups of intrepid snorkelers pointing and diving down to pet their shells.

One of our last visits was to Earthworks Pottery, where local clay is used to make every kind of beautiful and brightly-colored dish and pot you could imagine!

Of course, after all these fabulous activities, there was still nothing like going back to the beach and watching the fiery ball of the sun sink slowly into the sea. You can see more pictures of our time in Barbados at my public Facebook album here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll help the snow here in Buffalo, NY magically disappear by mixing up a rum punch according to the Bajan rhyming recipe...

One of sour,

Two of sweet,

Three of strong,

And four of weak.

Rum Punch

1 cup freshly squeezed lime juice
2 cups simple syrup
3 cups Bajan rum
4 cups water
A few dashes Angostura Bitters
Grated nutmeg

In a pitcher, combine the lime juice, syrup, rum, water, and bitters and stir well. Pour into glasses filled with ice, and sprinkle the nutmeg over the top.

Yield: 2 1/2 quarts

I am here.

2009-12-18T15:38:00.003+01:00

Barbados is fantastic so far. Yesterday we took a catamaran cruise and swam with giant sea turtles, tonight we're going to the Oistins fish fry, and tomorrow is Mark and Rebekah's wedding! In between, I'm slathering on sunscreen, zipping through novels, and trying to moderate my rum intake - difficult when happy hour is three times a day (really!).

Don't have a lot of time or inclination here to do a proper write-up, but I promise it'll be forthcoming once I'm back in a place where the weather isn't quite so inviting...

Adliswil Christmas Market

2009-12-07T16:20:00.004+01:00

Every year our town hosts a lovely little Christmas market on the main square. After we had gotten the house back in order on Sunday following our Thanksgiving feast, Matt and I headed into town to check it out. I meant to post these last week, but as usual, life just got in the way!

Natural wood decorations are very popular here. I particularly like the cozy gift box in the lower left corner - some tinder and kindling to start a fire to warm your hands, and a bottle of wine to warm your insides while you enjoy the crackling flames. Perfect for a winter's night; now if I only had a fireplace...

After all that cleaning, we were ravenously hungry, so nearly our first stop at market was to get a belly-warming Käseschnitte Spezial - a slice of bread topped ham and pineapple, covered in melted fondue cheese and sprinkled with paprika.

With full bellies, we continued our shopping and browsing...

...and climbed to the top floor of a public building to get a good view of the town and main bridge crossing the Sihl river. It looks rather grey in this pictures, but so beautiful at night with all the trees and houses lit up in the traditional white lights!

Back home, we lit the candle on our Christmas wreath and took a long and well-deserved nap!

Thanksgiving Table Roundup

2009-12-01T22:05:00.004+01:00

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

2009-11-29T22:32:00.012+01:00

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%.

Standing up, the water only comes to your knees, but once you lay back, the salt makes you so buoyant that it feels like you're floating on a cloud. The water reflects prettily off the ceiling and once your ears dip underwater there's another surprise - peaceful, relaxing music! Spending time here was worth the price of admission alone.

The trick to visiting thermal baths is to go on a weekday. I can't stress this enough - on weekends, and especially on rainy days and in winter, they are incredibly crowded and it's nearly impossible to get a locker, a hairdryer, a shower, or any peace and quiet in the water for that matter. Also, buy the 3- or 4-hour entrance ticket; the 2-hour is simply not enough time to see and do everything and be out by the time it expires.

Sufficiently relaxed, we wandered over to the old town and passed through the thick walls which enclose the city on three sides (the fourth side is the Rhine river) by way of the Oberturm.

Once inside, we admired the lovely old houses, each with their name painted above the lintel, and happened upon the home of Feldschlösschen beer, which originates in Rheinfelden.

An old cobblestoned bridge across the Rhein connects the town (and Switzerland) to Germany. Each side of the bridge flies the flags of the different provinces or cantons in the two countries.

There wasn't much to see over there, so we only stayed a few minutes. Upon arriving back in Switzerland we had to laugh at this ghetto little customs box, propped up on wooden planks against a house. It was the only sign on the Swiss side that there might be a border anywhere nearby.

We capped our visit with a stroll down the main street and a peek into Pane Amore e Fantasia, a cafe and restaurant named after a well-known Italian movie from the 1950's.

As the slightly hyperbolic banner advertises, the specialty of the house, about 20 different kinds of panettone, were out on display ready for the holiday season.

I'm sure now that advent has started and the decorations and lights are up, Rheinfelden would be even more charming to visit. And speaking of the holiday season - after hosting our annual Thanksgiving bash yesterday and a visit to our local Christmas market today, you can expect things around here to get very festive, very soon!

Daring Bakers in November: Vanilla and Chocolate Cannoli

2009-11-27T00:10:00.008+01:00

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.

I like cannoli, but the whole deep frying thing puts me off of making them regularly. The dough, made with marsala wine and cinnamon, was hard to work with and I kept having to re-roll the circles to coax them thin enough to wrap around my homemade molds. I also couldn't get the shells to blister and bubble the way that they are supposed to - see a good example here.

I filled my shells with the traditional sweetened ricotta mixture, adding the seeds of a scraped vanilla bean to one half and some melted dark couverture chocolate to the other. The chocolate was divine - slightly tangy from the ricotta and richly chocolate-y, good enough to serve on its own as a mousse, and even better in the crunchy shell.

True to his taste, Matt murmured appreciatively about the chocolate or vanilla with each bite in the hopes that I'd get the hint and promise to make everything only chocolate or vanilla the future. No such luck! Next month: back to my regularly scheduled ~~weird~~ adventurous flavors!

American Baking in Zurich, Part 3: Everything Else

2009-11-21T20:02:00.008+01:00

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!

Agave nectar - Müller Reformhaus
Allspice, whole and ground – Order from www.gewuerzprofi.ch, look for “Piment” or “Nelkenpfeffer”
Almond paste (not marzipan, which is much sweeter) – Coop, Globus
Buttermilk – Coop or Migros
Candied Violets – Schwarzenbach
Candied fruit slices like pineapple and orange - Schwarzenbach
Chestnut flour – Globus
Chestnuts, cooked - Globus
Chestnut puree - Globus
Corn Syrup – Substitute Melasse, found in a jar at Coop in the jam/honey section. It has a bit more caramel flavor and color than a normal light corn syrup but is mostly glucose so works as a good stand-in. Otherwise, order from one of the websites below.
[update Jan 26, 2010: I found light corn syrup at Yumi Hana Asian grocery store just off Bahnhofstrasse (Schützengasse 7). It's in a clear bottle with Korean script on a green label for CHF 4.50.]
Cranberries, fresh – Coop in October, very rare. If you see them, snatch them up.
Cranberries, dried – Coop, all year round
Demerara Sugar – Globus, Jelmoli, Schwarzenbach
Dried Fruits – Grocery stores, Schwarzenbach for specialty ones
Food coloring, powdered - Sibler
Food coloring, liquid – Sibler
Flour, self-raising – Asia Store
Gold and silver leaf, edible - Globus
Golden Syrup – Globus, Orell Füssli The Bookshop
Halva – Globus
Malt extract (powder) - Müller Reformhaus
Maple syrup – small at coop, 1 liter jug at Müller Reformhaus
Molasses, unsulfured – only found this online, here or here
Nut butters, natural (hazelnut, almond, peanut) - Müller Reformhaus
Orange blossom water – Coop baking aisle, Globus
Peanut Butter – Coop (USA brand), or if you have a hankering for creamy Skippy, Asia Store or Cindy’s Diner.
Potato starch – Globus
Pumpkin Puree, canned – Globus from November 15 – mid December (Libby’s brand)
Rose water – Globus (expensive), Asian grocery stores (much cheaper)
Sanding Sugar (large crystals), colored – Sibler, Jelmoli
Sanding Sugar (large crystals), plain – Jelmoli, in tiny packets inside a larger packet.
Sugar Flowers for Decoration – Schwarzenbach
Tapioca pearls – Globus, Asian grocery stores
Treacle - Globus, Orell Füssli Bookstore downstairs
Valrhona Chocolate – Schwarzenbach
Vanilla Beans – Coop has two kinds, Globus has the best selection of different origins if you’re particular.
Vanilla Paste (Nomu brand) – Globus

Equipment: Manor and Globus both have good kitchenware departments where you can find a lot of general baking equipment, especially around Christmas time. For specialty items, your best bet is to visit Sibler. They carry a number of professional pastry molds, imported Wilton cake decorating products, decorative candles, decorative cupcake papers, etc. They also are the Swiss representatives for Städter, a German baking equipment company producing professional piping tip sets, cake molds, and much much more. Ask for some of the Städter catalogues at the shop.

I must admit that despite the above, a lot of my baking equipment has come from the States, simply because it's much cheaper.

Other American food: Above - Cindy’s Diner also carries some American candy (Reese’s peanut butter cups, skittles, nerds), Pop tarts, boxed macaroni and cheese, Betty Crocker cake mixes and frosting, bisquick, and other foods.

Addresses

Globus Delikatessa (downstairs)
Schweizergasse 11
8001 Zurich

Jelmoli Gourmet Factory (downstairs)
Seidengasse 1 (just off Bahnhofstrasse)
8001 Zurich

Manor
Bahnhofstrasse 75
8001 Zurich

Asia Store (no website)
Zurich HB underpass, halfway down track 18
(not connected to Shopville)

Orell Füssli The Bookshop, downstairs
Bahnhofstrasse 70
8001 Zurich

Cindy’s Diner - Herrlisberg Reststop on A3 highway (both directions)

Schwarzenbach
Münstergasse 19
8001 Zurich

Müller Reformhaus (many other locations as well)
Rennweg 15
8001 Zurich

Sibler
Münsterhof 16
8001 Zurich

www.afoodave.ch/
www.americanmarket.ch/
www.tasteofamerica.ch/
www.britshop.ch/
www.aussieshop.ch/
www.londonstore.ch/
www.peace-foods.ch/

Cleaning Up From Lunch...

2009-11-19T12:46:00.003+01:00

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

2009-11-09T21:06:00.017+01:00

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!

Brown Sugar
If you tell a Swiss person you bring brown sugar from the United States, they’re likely to scoff, “but we have brown sugar at every Coop and Migros!” It’s true and not true. What you’ll find at your local grocery store is Rohzucker – brown, yes, but coarse-grained, free-flowing, dry sugar.   The moist, soft, melty kind that gives a chocolate chip cookie its chew is just not available at grocery stores in the Swiss-German part.

Now, all is not lost!   Note I said, “Swiss-German part.” I have heard that at Manor grocery stores in the Romandie, moist brown sugar of the brand La Perruche can be purchased. It’s called “cassonade fort en gout.” Taking a look at their website, the picture for this product also looks quite dry, but the woman telling me this is an experienced baker of American goodies, so I am taking her word for it. She also mentioned that she has found both light and dark American-style brown sugars at Landi in the Romandie, Candico brand, named “kandij cassonade blond/brune.”   Despite dragging Matt to both the Manor grocery store in Rapperswil and the biggest Landi we could find, there was no sign of either of these products.   Next time I am in the Romandie, though, you can be sure I will be on a sugar-hunt and update this post accordingly!

[Update 19.11.09: I found the La Perruche “cassonade fort en gout” at Globus today. It's perhaps a little moister than your average Rohzucker but not at all like American brown sugar. I would stick with the muscovado mentioned below as a decent substitute.

Update 3.3.10: I finally had a chance to get to a Landi in the Romandie, and my friend was right. They carry a product that is very, very similar to US brown sugar.

Below is a comparison of textures. American Domino brand on the left, Candico from the above packages on the right. Though Domino is still a tiny bit moister than its Swiss counterpart, these sugars from Candico are a perfectly acceptable stand-in and "pack down" in a measuring cup the way that Domino does.

]

So, after all that, where CAN you get your hands on some good moist brown sugar in Zurich? The first answer is Jelmoli, downstairs at the Gourmet Factory. They carry both dark and light muscovado sugar, which is a moist cane sugar with fine crystals. It’s not quite as delicate as your imported Domino, but it can be substituted for dark or light brown sugar in recipes with no problem. [Update: Schwarzenbach in the Niederdorf also carries the same brand of muscovado as Jelmoli, both light and dark.]

The other answer is the internet. There are a few different Swiss sites selling American foods, but the cheapest one I have found is http://www.afoodave.ch/ They sell both dark and light Domino brown sugar at CHF 2.95 per pound. Other web sources are http://www.tasteofamerica.ch/ (both kinds), http://www.americanmarket.ch/ (both kinds), and http://www.aussieshop.ch/ (CSR brand, light only).

Shortening
Available at Coop, called pflanzenfett (Becel brand) or speisefett (Sais brand, which is 10% butter), and comes in round plastic tubs in the oil section. I haven't tried it myself, but I heard from Amanda that it worked just fine in her apple pie crust.

If you must have your Crisco, then the above links to Afoodave and Taste of America are your friends. Just be sure to keep it in the freezer so it doesn’t go rancid!

Cream of Tartar
Your local apotheke should carry it - ask for weinsteinpulver.

Baking Soda
This is called natron in german and can be found in little green packets in the baking aisle of Coop (and probably Migros – I don’t shop there so I’m not sure). You can also buy it in larger quantities at any apotheke.

Baking Powder
Called backpulver in German, it's also found in the baking aisle of any grocery store in little packets. I love my Calumet tin because of the handy spoon-leveler, so I just empty all the little sachets into the tin. Since baking powder can lose its efficacy relatively quickly, it’s best to just buy smaller amounts and use it up before buying more.

Chocolate Chips
Again, some well-meaning Swiss person might try and tell you that you can buy chocolate chips here. Again, sort of. In the baking aisle, you can find a tiny baggie of tiny squares of gray-looking chocolate, which just doesn’t cut it in my opinion.   I’ve been laughed at a few times for using imported American Toll House chips in my chocolate chip cookies despite living in one of the most chocolate-y countries in the world, where chocolate pretty much has its own aisle at the grocery store. True, it’s no problem to chop up a nice semi-sweet chocolate bar and use that as my chips, and agreed, the quality of the chocolate would be better.   I use Swiss chocolate in all other recipes, and naturally it’s fantastic. But when it comes to the chocolate chip cookies, my opinion is still that using Toll house chips makes them taste best, and I’m sticking with it!

So, where to get them? Until now I’ve only found them online at Afoodave and Taste of America (toa has butterscotch chips too!), but I suspect they may be available at the Premiere Videothek in Zurich as well, which supposedly carries some British and American goods. I plan to check this out in the next couple weeks and will update accordingly.

[Update 19.11.09: A visit to the Premiere Videothek today was disappointing - they are now exclusively a movie rental shop and no longer carry any food items. The guy told me that I should visit the London Store in Zug instead.]

Vanilla Extract
You will find some tiny vials labeled vanilla in the baking aisle at the grocery store, next to the almond and the lemon and the rum. This is a flavoring, not an extract, and is not what should go into your nice American brownies and cookies and cakes.

Apart from the above websites, which both carry McCormick’s Pure Vanilla Extract, you can buy one (and only one) top-quality vanilla extract at Jelmoli Gourmet Factory. The brand is Nielsen-Massey, which is one of the best and most expensive producers, but in my opinion the flavor makes a big difference to baked goods. A teeny 60 ml bottle of exceptional Madagascar vanilla extract will run you CHF 20.80, but if you’re desperate or you really love your vanilla, that’s the place.

What’s that you say? There’s no way you could ever spend CHF 20 on a bottle the size of a postage stamp? Well, if you can wait a few months, why not spend the 20 francs on some booze and a bunch of vanilla beans and make your own?

Head over to Part 3: where to look for items that are a little more esoteric but that the serious baker might need to find.

Happy 80th, Grosmueti!

2009-11-05T13:53:00.011+01:00

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!

Daring Bakers in October: Macaron Month

2009-10-27T00:05:00.008+01:00

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I let out a little gasp when I saw that macarons were this month's challenge - so appropriate! On October 14th Ladurée, one of the most famous Parisian pâtissiers and purveyor of macarons, opened a branch here in Zurich. So, before I chronicle my adventures replicating this tasty confection in my own kitchen, I'll give you a quick rundown of ~~what they're supposed to look like~~ the macaron's presence in this fair city.

Ignore the new kid on the block for a minute. If you come to Zurich, you've got to start at Sprüngli. This tradition- and calorie-rich city institution offers Luxembürgerli, the macaron's little sister - feather light and crispy shells filled with an equally ethereal buttercream. It's easy to sit at Bürkliplatz, admire the lake view, and pop three... or four.. or the whole box into your mouth with nary a twinge of conscience. Next, you should head up to Cafe Schober in the Niederdorf, now also known as Péclard, to pick up a box of their brightly colored treats. These macarons are larger and cakier than their Sprüngli counterparts, and I actually found them rather dry.

Rose, Passionfruit-Chocolate, Caramel, Peppermint, Vanilla, Cassis

Continuing on, stroll down the Niederdorf to Vollenweider near the opera house, where you should keep an eye out for their blueberry-vanilla "Zurich" macaron - it's half blue and half white, just like the city's flag. From here you can catch Tram 11 up the hill to Confiserie Baumann, the most obscure macaron-maker in Zurich - they didn't even make it into the NZZ newspaper's article comparing all the different brands.

Finally, with all the local macaron flavors and textures under your belt, you're well prepared to head over to Kuttelgasse and visit the Frenchie in town. You can see lots more pictures of the facade and decor of the shop over at Kerrin's post, but in the end you're more than likely to leave with a much lighter wallet and a box looking something like this...

Red berry, Salted Caramel, Rose (2x), Dark Chocolate (2x), Fig & Date, Cassis & Violet

Ladurée's macarons are thin, sweet, and very chewy with a dense texture. Unlike Luxembürgerlis, one or two is plenty - it would be a challenge to eat the whole box. With all these wonderful macarons just a few minutes away, you can imagine that I was both rather intimidated and rather excited to try making my own!

Batch One

These were plain shells filled with salted caramel that I splurged on at the Laduree store on opening day. They turned out rather bumpy and uneven, but still with the nice "feet" (crunchy part at the bottom) that a quality macaron is meant to have.

Batch Two

Ummm...

...disaster. The above is before baking. They didn't even make it into the oven, they were so bad.

Batch Three

I switched recipes since the original one didn't seem to be working too well, and tried hard not to overbeat the meringue. Lo and behold, the results were much, much, MUCH better. The batter settled nicely into even pools before baking, and when I took them out...
...voilà! Proper, elegant, smooth shells! At this point I did a little dance around the kitchen and let out a shriek of glee. No, Matt was not home - only the cat was present to roll his eyes at me.

The next day I whipped up a violet buttercream to go along with the crushed candied violets on the shells and gave my cookies a little photo shoot (have I mentioned I love my new camera?). Thanks to Helen of Tartelette for the recipe and flavoring idea!

These were definitely a challenge for me, but one I thoroughly enjoyed. I found that they're quite addictive to make - with only four ingredients in the shells, it's not so hard to whip up a batch in the evening after work. Next flavor up: chocolate for Matt. You haven't seen the end of macarons around here!

Photo Fun, aka More Geeky Pictures of My Cat

2009-10-20T22:04:00.009+02:00

I've been taking a beginner's photography class recently, offered as part of the adult education program at work, and am having so much fun getting to know my new Canon Rebel XS (1000D in Europe) camera and marveling at the amazing quality of pictures it takes practically all by itself.

Between working on my Daring Bakers challenge and a busy week and weekend, I won't have too much time to write up lengthy posts. So, I thought I'd just share with you my latest "assignment" from photography class: pictures of something from above, eye level, and below to demonstrate the effect that perspective can have on a picture.

Above - It's hard to tell from this picture but the amount of crisp detail my camera captured when I was able to see the picture at its full size just stunned me. I'm in love!

Eye Level

Below - I love how the fur of his chinny chin chin matches the wall behind him!

Consider my unorthodox mid-week cat blogging done. Have a good one!

American Baking in Zurich, Part 1: Flour

2009-10-18T22:40:00.006+02:00

It's a strange game to bake and cook out of American books and magazines here, though I stick with them because the recipes and flavors are much more to our taste than most Swiss baking books. Some essential ingredients, like vanilla extract or light brown sugar, ubiquitous in any baking aisle in the United States, are next to impossible to find here and I ration my imported stash carefully so as not to run out before someone can bring me more. Other items, considered gourmet and carefully described in the recipe's header notes with source websites, need no such explanation to any European: I buy creme fraiche and all kinds of "specialty" cheeses at my local store as a matter of course.   I'll often run across recipes where the specialty ingredients are no problem, but I'm foiled by a very plain American ingredient that difficult or impossible to find here - something like corn syrup, or cream of tartar, or cranberries, or cake flour.

Yes, cake flour. There's no such thing here. No bleached flour, either. In fact, you won't find bleached flour anywhere in Europe - health regulations here deem the chemicals used in the process to be potential carcinogens. This can be quite frustrating for anyone who is trying to bake something from an American book - say, the Pie and Pastry Bible I just bought for my birthday.   Beranbaum's exceptional treatise on the relative merits of cake, pastry, all-purpose, and bread flour is useless to me, as are 70% of her recipes which require some combination of the above to achieve perfection.   My next thought was "who can I get to ship or bring me some cake flour?" but after a day or two of reflection, I realized how ridiculous it was to carry or ship kilos of flour halfway around the world, only to have enough for one or two cakes and then be out again.   Maybe I just hadn't done enough research - surely I could find something in Zurich?

The difference between the kinds of flours lies in the protein, or gluten, content. The higher the percentage, the better the flour binds everything together - desirable for a chewy dense bread, not so much for a light, airy cake. Cake flour has a protein content of between 6-8%, pastry flour around 9%, all-purpose around 11%, and bread flour 13-14%.   Cake and pastry flours are usually bleached as well, which further serves to weaken the gluten and make the baked goods tender (although well-known American flour brand King Arthur has very recently come out with an unbleached cake flour sans chemicals). Despite the unease of using a product banned here for health reasons, if you use regular European all-purpose unbleached flour in a recipe intended for delicate cake flour, you're likely to end up with a sodden, dense, clumpy cake. What to do?

Initially I was only searching for bread flour to make bagels. A careful perusal of the baking aisle at my Coop yielded only one kind of white flour: all-purpose (11%). No luck. So I went to the city, and here is what I found after pawing through the baking sections of a few different stores.

Jelmoli - Belfor brand (2.20/kg) at 13.2% protein is the highest I found anywhere. They also carry an organic flour, Biofarm brand (6.50/kg ouch!) at 10.2% protein.

Müller Reformhaus - They carry another type of Biofarm brand called Haushaltmehl at 12%, and also Demeter Type 550 flour at 9.8%, the lowest I found.

Globus - No flours beyond what's commonly available at Migros or Coop.

Schwarzenbach - Their flours aren't out on display or packaged so no chance to look at a label. When I ventured to ask the woman if she knew the protein percentage, she looked at me like I had two heads. Even after an explanation of what I was looking for, she didn't have much to say and just wanted to know what she should ring up. So, not much help.

Conclusion: The range of available flour spans from 9.8 % - 13.2%. The latter is fine to use as bread flour, but 9.8% is still too high to be considered anything like cake flour. What next?

One of the blogs I read, Joy the Baker, posted a piece last month about turning all-purpose into cake flour by replacing a portion of it with cornstarch. Good in a pinch, but she doesn't say anything about starting with bleached or unbleached, or the approximate protein content of the finished product. I needed something more specific, so I turned to the Almighty Google.

Lo and behold, I am not the first person who has been frustrated by this problem! Kate, a food blogger living in the UK, spent more than year developing a workable alternative to American bleached cake flour by heat-treating normal all-purpose flour.   Many, many cakes later, she perfected the process and very kindly has made the instructions for Kate Flour (as well as the whole saga of discovery) available to all and sundry on her blog, A Merrier World.

So, Kate Flour it's going to be. I've already pestered my father to get me some xanthan gum from one of his ice-cream-factory colleagues (xanthan gum is commercially used as an ice cream stabilizer but is not available in small quantities to your average consumer here) and I ordered an inexpensive instant-read cooking thermometer from Amazon (which I've been meaning to buy anyway). It's still quite a bit of trouble but there seem to be no other workable alternatives here. If any of you have further ideas or resources, do tell!

Coming up in Part 2: where to find essential American baking supplies in Zurich and Part 3: where to find baking ingredients that are a little less common.

Would you loan her $25?

2009-10-14T12:49:00.003+02:00

Imagine you live in Ghana. You are the mother of three children, and your husband is a day-laborer who can only occasionally find work. Your family lives on less than $5 a day. Food has been in short supply lately, but you know some farmers in your village who help you get by. One day, you have an idea - if you could start a small shop and sell the produce from the farms at a small markup, perhaps the income would help you to put one of your kids in school, which you can't afford to do right now.   In order to rent shop space and buy stock, though, you need capital that you don't have. Given your husband's spotty employment, a bank will not lend you the $100 you need to get started since the risk is too high that you will not be able to repay it, and you have no assets with which to guarantee the loan. Even if you could get the bank to agree, interest rates are so high that all the profit from your store would be swallowed up just paying the interest.   Your dream of a little vegetable shop seems like an impossibility.

Or is it?

When someone says "loan" in the Western world, it's usually a substantial sum. We take out loans for cars, for houses, for weddings, to start a business, and we take for granted that a bank would be happy to lend us the amount in exchange for interest. In developing nations, the poor are often denied loans for even what we would consider relatively small sums - $25, $50, or $100. They may seem insignificant to us, but in those countries, that money stretches far enough to help open a business or put a child through school, and give someone the help they need to lift themselves out of poverty.

The concept is called microfinance - "...the supply of loans, savings, and other basic financial services to the poor" (more detailed definition here) and it's one of the most effective ways of fighting poverty and empowering the poor.  My Anthropology of Development class in college only touched briefly on the topic, but after Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 and thrust onto the world stage, I've regularly run across articles and interviews on the topic in mainstream media. Most recently, Yunus was featured in Time Magazine's 10 Questions section.

A must-read article in the New York Times on the relationship of women to poverty starts out with the story of a Pakistani woman who substantially improved her standard of living and family relationships through taking out a small loan to start an embroidery business. I had always thought that microlending was only possible through institutions, but links from this article took me to kiva.org, the "world's first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs around the globe."  Lenders set up a profile and then choose the person or group of people they wish to lend to, as little as $25. Organizations in the local community disburse the loan and keep tabs on whether the money is being used for the purposes stated, and lenders receive regular email upates about the progress of the project and the status of the repayment (carried out within a specific time frame, often 6 months). Because it is a loan and not a giveaway, the recipients are motivated to make their projects succeed and repay the money, and often a group of people will take out a loan together and guarantee one another's shares. And then, when your loan is paid back... you loan it again. The same little chunk of money can do 5, 10, or 100 times its value in good.

So. Would you loan $25? Or $50? Or $100?

A Stone Commemorating Soup, and Peace

2009-10-11T21:48:00.013+02:00

The idea of Zurich fighting our neighbors Schwyz or Zug is ridiculous... now. But in the 16th century, at the height of the Protestant Reformation, tensions between the Catholic cantons and Protestant Zurich ran very high. After numerous provocations from each side, Zurich officially declared war in 1529.

This afternoon Matt and I decided to do a historical hike in the hills around Kappel am Albis, the tiny town where much of the conflict was played out. My wonderful local hiking guide traced out a 3 hour hike, starting at the beautiful Cistercian monastery (kappel means chapel) dominating the skyline.

You wouldn't know that you're only a 20 minute drive from Zurich - this area is truly rural, with lots of little farms, rolling hills, quiet trails through forests and fields....

...and friendly barn cats.

On the grounds of an old farm, a tiny chapel was built at the turn of the century to memorialize the history of the area. Only 20 people can sit inside!

About two hours into the hike, we reached the Milchsuppenstein - the "milk soup stone." After Zurich declared war, the two armies met on the border of Zug and Zurich to battle. However, the federal council intervened to broker a peace just in time, and the First War of Kappel finished without a drop of blood being shed. Legend has it the two armies shared a local dish, milk soup, while the terms of the treaty were being negotiatied. Zurich brought the bread, and Zug contributed the milk. A commemorative stone overlooking the lake of Zug still marks the spot.

Unfortunately the soup's effects didn't last long - two years later tensions flared again. The Second War of Kappel was considerably bloodier. Zurich's most prominent reformer and pastor, Huldrych Zwingli of Grossmünster fame, was killed in battle and the Zurich's forces were decisively defeated. Nevertheless, the milk soup became a tradition that lives on in the present day. Whenever a dispute among cantons has been successfully mediated, a milk soup is served to all parties at a common table to symbolize that the argument has been laid to rest.

You can find a simple recipe and photo of the Kappeler Milchsuppe here (in German).

Aristocat Refyooses to Slurp

2009-10-08T21:45:00.005+02:00

I finally got a video of Schoggi drinking! What cracks me up the most is when he dips his paw so carefully that it doesn't actually touch the water (pay attention at 0:14) and nevertheless licks it again with gusto!

One-Bowl Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes

2009-10-05T19:18:00.026+02:00

I made these chocolate cupcakes for a baby shower on Sunday and was really pleased with how they turned out. And so easy! I didn't even need to dirty up my kitchenaid mixer to get these in the oven since they came together with just a few turns of a whisk (unlike their lemon neighbors). The oil and buttermilk give them a unique flavor and moist texture, and the bittersweet glaze was the perfect topping. Not long after I put them out, lots of kids were running around with nothing left but chocolate smears on their faces - the highest compliment!

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
From Martha Stewart Living, February 2009

3/4 unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup warm water
3/4 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons safflower (or other flavorless vegetable) oil
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners. Sift cocoa powder, flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a large bowl (preferably with a pouring spout). Add eggs, warm water, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla, and whisk briefly until smooth.

Divide batter among muffin cups, pouring each 2/3 full (not more or they will bulge up and be very hard to glaze). Bake until tops spring back when touches, about 20 minutes. Transfer cupcakes to wire racks, and let cool. Cupcakes will keep, covered, for up to 3 days.

Chocolate Glaze

2/3 cup heavy cream
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (use good chocolate, you will really taste it)
1 tablespoon corn syrup

Heat cream in a small saucepan over medium heat. Add chocolate and corn syrup and stir constantly until melted and smooth. Dip tops of each cupcake in the glaze, letting excess drip off. Let stand until set, about 30 minutes.

A New Look!

2009-10-04T10:13:00.014+02:00

As you can see, my blog has some new clothes and a new name as of this morning, thanks to Hannah of Sherbet Blossom Designs. I still have a few little tweaks left to make, but I love the new design and hope you do too!

If you link to me somewhere, please update it to my new URL: http://www.halfthesugarbowl.com/

Daring Bakers in September: Vols-au-Vent

2009-09-27T10:36:00.026+02:00

My general philosophy of baking is that if I can buy it elsewhere for better and cheaper, then I don't make it myself. For example, bread. Switzerland is bread heaven. Even little gas station convenience stores have their own ovens where they bake fresh, crusty, fragrant bread all day long, to say nothing of the two or three bakeries that you can find in every village and town. I understand it's all about the challenge to some people, but I would much rather run out and buy a warm, expertly-made, perfectly-risen loaf for CHF 2.50 than spend ten times that in time and effort just to say, "I made it myself."

Conversely, if something is unavailable or of poor quality elsewhere, I take great delight in making it from scratch. Case in point: bagels. You just cannot get good bagels here. Really. Anywhere! I don't understand why, but it's true. So, I make my own. If we ever move to the States, though, I will be happy to just pop out to Bruegger's and get a much better bagel than anything I make myself. However, I will be motivated to make bread, since a good Züpfe simply cannot be found in the States. It's all about location!

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

This month's challenge falls strictly into the first category for me. I can buy much, much better all-butter puff pastry than I can make myself, and not only puff pastry, but vols-au-vent casings too. In Swiss-German, these puff pastry circles are known as pastetli and filled with meat (usually veal) in a savory sauce. They were a common meal in my family.

Here you can see one of the six "turns" that gives the pastry its many thin layers of butter, crucial to obtaining a good rise in the oven.

I was quite pleased to see all these beautiful layers when I divided up the finished dough and prepared to roll it out.

Laying out the circles for further refrigeration before constructing the cases by gluing the rings onto the bases with egg wash. Keeping everything very cold is the key to successful puff pastry. As you can see, I made two sizes. The larger ones I filled with the traditional meat sauce for dinner last night...

...and the smaller ones I ringed in poppy seeds. My idea was to fill them with lemon mousse for a different take on a lemon-poppy seed muffin, but as you can see from my empty cases below I ran out of time and inclination to make the mousse just for the two of us.

Final verdict: The pastry tasted very good thanks to all that butter, and also puffed up quite nicely in the oven, so I was reasonably pleased with the result. The experience was a good one, but I don't think I will make puff pastry from scratch again - unless, of course, someday we move to a country where it's unavailable. You never know!

Birthday Books

2009-09-26T11:06:00.012+02:00

When I turned 25 last week, my lovely mom sent me a present sure to satisfy my bookwormy little heart - an Amazon.com gift certificate! My happily anticipated order arrived Tuesday after only four business days. Yes, I splurged and treated myself to expedited international shipping - if your birthday isn't a good reason, what is?

Naturally, we'll begin with dessert....

Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share
By Martha Stewart Living Magazine

Ooh cookies. I love cookies, and Martha Stewart's recipes. I also love how this book is organized by texture instead of flavor (soft and chewy, crumbly and sandy, rich and dense, etc.) The tables of contents are just a small picture of each cookie, which is a really wonderful way to quickly find what you're looking for... and make you want to bake everything. Recipes I want to try right now: pistachio lemon drops, chewy chocolate gingerbread cookies, turtle brownies, ginger cheesecake bars, and orange-cardamom madeleines.

The Pie and Pastry Bible
By Rose Levy Beranbaum

At more than 650 pages, this is truly a bible. I like tarts and pies a lot more than cake, so I'm hoping to expand my repertoire! Haven't had a chance to give this one a good look yet but I'm pretty sure it will be fabulous.

Salty Sweets: Delectable Desserts and Tempting Treats with a Sublime Kiss of Salt
By Christie Matheson

My sweet-and-salt-loving friend Kerrin nearly jumped out of her skin with excitement when I told her about this book, which has just very recently been published. It has clean, beautiful photographs (don't those cover cupcakes look SO good, even in tiny thumbnail format?), colorful pages, and fairly straightforward recipes with some interesting combinations. Recipes I want to try right now: sweet cornbread with honey-salt butter, lavender fleur de sel shortbread, dark chocolate cupcakes with snappy butterscotch icing, honey-tangerine caramel truffle tartlets, watermelon sorbet.

Dessert Bible
Published by Penguin Books

I didn't order this one off Amazon - my sister Melanie sent me this little book all the way from New Zealand, and since it's a birthday book it deserves inclusion on this list too! This little volume covers a broad range of desserts and is perfect for when you need inspiration for something simple and sweet without poring over 600-page pie bibles! Things I want to make right now: baklava, chai spiced rice pudding, lemon-ginger cheesecake, pan-fried bananas with butterscotch sauce.

Moving on to dinner...

Asian Dumplings: Mastering Gyoza, Spring Rolls, Samosas, and More
By Andrea Nguyen

Mmmm, dumplings. I was pretty pleased with my jiao tze a couple months ago and would love to build upon them with new shapes, fillings, and methods. This book is a comprehensive look at pan-asian dumplings, with how-to line drawings, thorough descriptions, and relatively easy-to-find ingredients. Recipes I want to try right now: spiced potato dumplings, fried sticky rice dumplings, sweet rice dumplings with palm sugar and coconut.

...and to go along with it, some good reads. As a child my dad was always telling me when we sat down to eat, "Put your book away, it's not polite to read at the dinner table!" One of the best parts of being a grownup is that when Matt's away and it's just me and myself at a meal, I can have a fork in one hand and a book in the other and nobody to boss me otherwise!

Spiced: A Pastry Chef's True Stories of Trials by Fire, After-Hours Exploits, and What Really Goes on in the Kitchen
By Dalia Jurgensen

As you might gather from the subtitle, this is an anecdotal, entertaining, easy read in the style of Anthony Bourdain - perfect for unwinding from a busy day at work and stoking the fires of my energy to get into the kitchen and cook. Speaking of fire, so far the author has burned a hole in a pot, burned genoise, and third-degree burned her hand. Hopefully it improves from here!
On days where I need something a little meatier, I've got these two. I like Chesterton nearly as much as I like C.S. Lewis - they have similar witty, lucid, good-humored styles and great deftness at expressing complex arguments in simple ways.

The Everlasting Man
By G. K. Chesterton

This book is an answer to the social Darwinism of Chesterton's time and deals with the question, "What, if anything, makes the human uniquely human?" Sounded interesting so I tossed it into the cart along with his book I originally intended to purchase:

Orthodoxy: The Romance of Faith
By G.K. Chesterton

I read this one a long time ago and have found myself thinking of it a lot lately and wanting to re-read it. As one reviewer describes on Amazon, "This book is Chesterton's defence of orthodox Christianity. It is partly autobiographical, in the sense that Chesterton describes various insights into the nature of reality, and various puzzles about reality, and then shows how (to his astonishment) the Christian faith accounts for the insights and answers the puzzles." I've long been interested in apologetics and this is a good to have on the shelf.

By the time I've cooked and read my way through all the above, it'll be nearly the holidays and time to start perusing the last book in my order before we leave for Mark's wedding in the Caribbean on December 15th! Can't wait!

Barbados Travel Pack (Globetrotter Travel Packs)
By Melissa Shales

Holunderkonfi, My Favorite!

2009-09-21T19:15:00.011+02:00

When grandchildren go to visit their grandparents, they usually look forward to being spoiled with sweets, extra dessert, and pretty much anything else their little hearts desire. Now, my grandparents did their fair share of spoiling me and my sister with candy, but what I really got excited about when we visited was a different kind of sweet - elderberry jelly!

As far back as I can remember my grandparents have made their own jams and jellies each summer, and this is my favorite of all of them. Thick and smooth with a deep purplish-red color, the flavor is deep and mellow, almost like good wine. Spread on a fresh Züpfe (braided sunday bread) with butter, I can't think of many better ways to start the day. Until now I have relied upon Grosmueti's basement stash to keep me stocked up, but as she is about to turn 80 and it's more and more difficult for her to go out collecting wild fruit, I started thinking that it might be time to start being self-sufficient instead of just always filching jars from her. ;)

I was helped along by my sudden realization this summer that a number of the bushes on my walk to work are, in fact, elderberry bushes. (They aren't the only berries I see, either!) Apparently they love to grow near rivers, lucky for me! As soon as I saw one, I saw them everywhere, laden with clumps of little green berries waiting for September to turn purple and juicy.

So, without further ado I emailed my grandparents for their jelly recipe and watched one particular bush with an eagle eye for the right day to pick. The first thing to make sure of, is that the berries you have your eye on are actually elderberries. There's one other plant in this area (don't ask me what it is, I'm no botanist) that can look quite similar, so be careful. These are NOT elderberries:

Notice how the leaves are a bright green and rounded, with smooth edges, and the berries grow in very small clusters? Those are two telltale signs that you're not looking at the right plant.

This is what you're looking for. Dense, flat clusters hanging down, and slightly elongated, serrated leaves, and the stems leading to the berries are a rhubarb color. Your plant(s) of choice should also not be too close to a road since plants tend to absorb car pollution and you wouldn't want any of that in your jelly.

On a day last week when it looked as though most of the berries in the clusters had turned a deep dark purple, I recruited my dear husband to carry a ladder and help me in the collection. We got quite a few stares and a couple questions from passerby, especially from one of our work colleagues, who spotted us stashing berries into a plastic bag and demanded jokingly, "Is that legal?!"

The first thing to do when you get your berries home is to give them a good wash to chase out the earwigs, snails, and families of little brown forest cockroaches that like to live in elderberry bushes. A good way to do this is to submerge the whole clippings in a big bowl of water so the bugs will come to the top, to be washed away or smushed with some paper towels.

Then, put on a good movie, set yourself up at the coffee table with a big bowl, and pick all the ripe berries off the stems. This is the most time consuming part but if they're properly ripe they should come off quite easily. Discard any green or light purple berries and bits of stem. You should be left with a beautiful bowl of shiny dark pearls.

Weigh a saucepan on a kitchen scale and note the empty weight. Give the berries a quick rinse in cold water, then pour into the saucepan. Mash with a potato masher until the berries are crushed, and then heat until boiling and very juicy. Place a sieve over the same saucepan, line the sieve with a clean, fine-weave, old cloth (linen or cotton - it will get stained), and pour in the berry mush. Let it drain and cool until you can handle it, then use the cloth to squeeze until as much liquid as you can is in the saucepan and all you're left with is seeds and skins. Your hands will also get stained in this process - purple everywhere!

Remove sieve and discard seeds and skins. Weigh the saucepan again and note how much the liquid weighs (i.e. subtract saucepan weight from total weight), then add the same weight as the liquid of gelierzucker (literally, jellying sugar) to the pan. So, if you have 300 grams of liquid in the pan, add 300 grams of sugar.

Cook up the mixture until the sugar is melted, stirring constantly. Once in a while, spoon out a little bit of the syrup onto a saucer and pop it in the freezer for a few minutes to test the consistency. Once you're licking a smooth jelly off the saucer, remove from heat and pour into prepared jars (see Dorie Greenspan's recent and very informative post about canning for instructions and reassurance).

And voila! My first three jars of granddaughter-made elderberry (holunder in German) jelly! I haven't actually tried any yet since I still have an open jar from Grosmueti in the fridge, but I'm just happy to know that there will be more when this jar is finished, and long after that too. Maybe I'll even be brave enough to bring my grandmother a jar for her birthday!

Falling into Applesauce Spice Bars

2009-09-15T19:20:00.009+02:00

The end of a school year is like a flea market. The principal makes announcements, hopeful items are prominantly displayed on tables by the entrance, but inevitably the halls fall quiet with the sound of summer and lots of great stuff is left behind. At the high school in particular, where the students are usually around the same size as adults, this is when the staff come out to rummage before it's all donated to charity. Two years ago I snagged a great lined zip-up fleece from a name-brand outdoors store, last year a couple t-shirts that were as good as new after a trip through the washing machine. If you're willing to dig through the rank teenage gym bags (read: hold your nose with one hand, search with the other), you might even find yourself a new pair of cleats or tennis shoes.

After the teachers have all left, next stop is the staff kitchen. Leaving teachers often drop off left-overs from their pantries, and everything has to be cleared out for the summer cleaning anyway, so it's all up for grabs. Among other things Matt brought home in June were two huge unopened jars of apple sauce and a nearly-full jug of maple syrup (a real find in the land of very verrrrry expensive pancake sauce).

School has been underway for more than a month now and those jars of applesauce were still languishing at the back of my cupboard. The mornings have just started to get that particular snappy chill that says "summer is over," the grass outside my house is just barely speckled with the first leaves to give up their geist, and a different variety of crisp and ripe apple is taking over the produce section every time we go shopping.

These spice bars by Dorie were a great way to use up some of that applesauce. They're full of lots of autumn-y flavors like brown sugar, cinnamon, raisins and even a little splash of rum to pull it all together. I ate one as a late night snack, one for breakfast, one with lunch, and one before dinner...just to make sure fall was kicked off well and good, you understand. :)

These actually turned out a tad softer than I would have liked and were very difficult to cut neatly. If I make them again I will add another 1/4 cup of flour and increase the baking time to half an hour to try and firm them up a bit, but that's up to you - the recipe below is as Dorie writes it. I would also recommend refrigerating the glaze before spreading it on the completely cooled bars so that it doesn't soak into them (or omitting the glaze altogether if you want to cut down on the sweet). And don't forget to wash them down with a big glass of cold milk!

Applesauce Spice Bars from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan

For the Bars:
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick (8 tbsp) unsalted butter
1 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1 tbsp applejack, brandy, or dark rum (optional)
1 baking apple, such as Rome or Cortland, peeled, cored and finely diced or chopped
1/2 cup plump, moist raisins (dark or golden)
1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)

For the Glaze:
2-1/2 tbsp heavy cream
1/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
2-1/2 tbsp unsalted butter
1 tsp light corn syrup
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Getting Ready:
Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350F. Butter a 9x13-inch baking pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, butter the paper and dust the inside of the pan with flour. Tap out the excess flour and put the pan on a baking sheet.

To Make the Bars:
Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, spices and salt.

In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the brown sugar and stir with a whisk until it is melted and the mixture is smooth, about 1 minute. Remove the pan from the heat.

Still working in the saucepan, whisk in the eggs one at a time, mixing until they are well blended. Add the applesauce, vanilla and applejack, if you're using it, and whisk until the ingredients are incorporated and the mixture is once again smooth. Switch to a rubber spatula and gently stir in the dry ingredients, mixing only until they disappear, then mix in the apple, raisins and nuts. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

Bake for 23 to 25 minutes, or until the bars just start to pull away from the sides of the pan and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Transfer the baking pan to a rack and let the cake cool while you make the glaze.

To Make the Glaze:
In a small saucepan, whisk together the cream, sugar, butter and corn syrup. Put the man over medium heat and bring the mixture to a boil, whisking frequently. Adjust the heat so that the glaze simmers, and cook, whisking frequently, for 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

Turn the bars out onto a rack, remove the paper and invert the bars onto another rack, so they are right side up. Slide the parchment paper under the rack to serve as a drip catcher, grab a long metal icing spatula and pour the hot glaze over the bars, using the spatula to spread it evenly over the cake. Let them cool to room temperature before you cut them.

Cut into 32 rectangles, each about 2-1/4 x 1-1/2 inches.

Yield: 32 Bars

Storing: These will keep for about 3 days at room temperature. Because of the glaze, they cannot be frozen.

Mumbled

2009-09-13T22:24:00.007+02:00

...by Matt, after getting up for the hundredth time to let Schoggi either out on the balcony or back into the house: "Make up your mind, dumb cat, I can't believe you are actually male."

Couchsurfers: Meet Candy and Tim

2009-09-12T12:52:00.006+02:00

Candy and Tim were so excited about their first-ever trip to Europe that they sent us a message way back in March for this weekend, the most advance-planning couch request we've ever had! This cool and friendly couple from just outside of Chicago came to Switzerland for a very special reason - to get married!

Candy, a graphic designer, and Tim, a landscape architect, "eloped" to Europe with their family's blessing to have a small ceremony for just the two of them in Interlaken tomorrow. When they return to Chicago they'll be hosting a big barbecue reception for over 200 of their family and friends, though - so they didn't escape the planning madness entirely!

They only stayed with us one night but we had a great time talking till late at night about German and Swiss-German, life in Switzerland compared to the USA, and their own couchsurfing experiences back home. We were especially impressed that Candy had taken the time to learn some basic German phrases before coming here! After their wedding tomorrow they'll be continuing on to see Germany and Belgium-Netherlands-Luxembourg (BeNeLux) before heading back to to the States. We wish them all the best for the rest of their travels and for their newly married life!

Busy Busy!

2009-09-10T20:09:00.008+02:00

It's been one of those weeks where I feel like I am barely keeping up with what needs to be done each day, much less having time to cross things off my general to-do list. We're having guests for dinner on three separate evenings this week. I three-quarters like it, because it's great to meet and spend time with people, and I have a lot of fun coming up with better-than-usual menus and cooking them. It's a pleasure to put good food on the table and have everyone enjoy it, especially traditional Swiss food for couchsurfers who are eager to try some local flavors. But I one-quarter dislike it, because it eats up evening time like nothing else - researching/planning the meals, shopping for them, cooking and entertaining... phew! Tuesday evening couchsurfers Jeff and Mel from Quebec stayed with us on their drive though Switzerland, tomorrow night another couple named Candy and Tim will be here, and Saturday evening we are having some friends from church over for an Indonesian meal (read: oodles of peanut sauce!). Thankfully we're not doing much else this weekend so at least I'll get some time at home to take care of my exciting to-do list of ironing, dusting, voting... and planning all the things I'm going to bake for my 25th birthday coming up next week. So far the only certain on the baking list is Carrot Cupcakes with Maple-Cream Cheese Frosting, so if anyone needs an excuse to spend hours browsing through the recipe archives at Smitten Kitchen or Joy the Baker or Cannelle et Vanille or [insert favorite baking blog here].... I'm open to suggestions!

Speaking of my birthday, one of my presents from Matt means you'll be seeing some changes around here soon... I'm very excited. :)

A Record-Breaking Brunch

2009-09-06T21:30:00.013+02:00

An attempt to set a Guinness world record is usually well-publicized, except if it's in Richterswil, a small town along the lake with not much to put it on the map. There was almost no advance publicity in the area about this event, except for this one small article in the Tages Anzeiger. Happily, we found out about the Longest Brunch Table in the World from our friends who live nearby and were able to purchase the "ticket" - a set of special cutlery and dishes - in advance.

The organizers were lucky that the weather decided to cooperate with a stunning late-summer day and all 1000 dish sets (the record-setting goal) were sold out!

In true Swiss fashion everything was impeccably organized, with about 20 identical stands set up all along the 400 meter brunch table snaking through the main street of Richterswil, so you didn't have to walk too far to get your breakfast. The food was simple but good: fresh bread, cheese, jam, cold cuts, yogurt, coffee/tea, and applejuice. Most of it was donated to the cause by local suppliers.

Each stand was replenished with fresh bread by this guy riding up and down the street on his bike. It was clear he was enjoying himself and was delivering his bread with great energy and gusto!

Soft drinks, water, and prosecco were not included in the Fr. 15.- ticket price and had to be purchased from the carts below, which were actually repurposed luggage trailers borrowed from the nearby train station. They looked fantastic all decorated with sunflowers and a bright umbrella!

Of course, the 400 meter long table was not one table, it was many pushed together - and it did have gaps so that people could still get to the other side. I guess Guinness makes some allowances...

No good Swiss party is complete without the police, who were wandering around with cameras since their job that morning was to officially document all the fun! There were plenty of them just having breakfast too - not a bad way to spend a morning at work!

And finally, a few happy pictures of Matt and young Kieran (son of our friends Tracy and Rami) being silly in the sunshine.

Hope you all had a wonderful Sunday!

Five Hours, Five Lakes, and Many, Many Aches

2009-08-30T20:43:00.029+02:00

I had an entirely different topic in mind for today's post - namely, more summer markets. Our second trip to Vevey from last weekend (this time including wine!) and Saturday's leisurely stroll around the organic lakefront market in Zug, in particular. But the piles of fruit and vegetables I was going to show you pale in comparison to the splendor before my eyes all day yesterday.

Along with some friends and colleagues from work, we undertook the Fünfseeenwanderung (Five-Lakes Hike) in the mountains of eastern Switzerland. I'm going to give you far too many pictures which will make this post ridiculously long but... I don't care. It was just too gorgeous NOT to show you!

Lake 1, the Wangersee, from the cable car station at the very beginning of the hike at 2200 meters. We walked to the buildings, down behind them, and then around and up to the pass on the far left of the photo.

This was the first and toughest climb, ascending to 2600 meters on a very steep and zig-zag trail. After about an hour and a half and a lot of huffing and puffing, we reached the top and could just see the buildings from the first photo on the ridge at left.

Crossing the pass, the other side revealed a sight for oxygen-deprived lungs... the absolutely stunning Wildsee, Pizol glacier, and Graue Hörner peaks. Yes, the lake really was that color, like a puddle of turquoise paint that someone had just tipped out in the middle of the mountains.

Matt catching his breath and enjoying the view...

Forty-five minutes around and down the next hill brought us to the Schottensee, my personal favorite of all the lakes. From high above the lake you could see the sunlight streaming down into the clear depths, and the color! I just couldn't get over it. You need absolutely no photographic skill to take photos like these because everywhere you turn is a fantastic picture.

Another climb around this hill past patches of wild alpine flowers brought us to Schwarzplangg, a slate plateau at 2505 meters where most hikers (us included) stop to have lunch and enjoy the views.

Schwarzplangg overlooked lake #4, the Schwarzsee, which we passed by on the way to the third and final climb up the hill on the left. You can see how just a few hundred meters descent in altitude has already changed the color of the water - the Schwarzee was a lot greener than the previous two.

Once up the next hill we reached the Steinmannlis, a whole field of stone towers that have been there for more than 100 years. From far away it looks like a graveyard. Nobody knows who built them all, though their shapes and numbers have changed in the last decades as hikers add and move around the stones at will.

When I saw them I thought of the pile of stone that Jacob and Laban built as a covenant between them in Genesis, and the tower of 12 stones that Joshua built when Israel crossed the Jordan. These were not the only reminder of God... next to the red and white slashes marking the trail, I enjoyed reading plaques with Scripture verses and poems praising the Creator and his stunning work surrounding us. The one below reads, "God's will is charity, his heart only love, and all the paths he makes are good."

The path down from the Steinmannli toward the Baschalvasee led us past some spectacular cliffs and a bird's eye view of the Rhine valley into Liechtenstein and across the Austrian Alps. Liechtenstein begins where the river makes its first bend, and the capital city of Vaduz is nestled against the second bend. And see that little brown and white speck standing on the cliff? That's me. :)

Finally, finally, after 11 kilometers, 5 hours and a knee-crunching descent to 1850 meters, we reached the restaurant and chair lift at Gaffia where we were greeted with the possibility of six different kinds of boozed-up hot drinks. Tempting, but we opted for the blessedly cold beers and soft drinks instead.

I had a good laugh at this plaque hanging at the restaurant, which plays off a popular hymn and roughly translated reads,

Praise God in the heights.
He made the mountains so high
and manifested Himself
so that not every Lumpenhund (literally, rag-hound: scoundrel or cad)
that the valleys are blessed with
runs into happy hikers up here.
Praise God in the heights.

It must be said - this hike kicked our butts. It was a lot more challenging than anything in my usual Sunday hike guide, but oh, it was worth it. I have silly-shaped sunburns all over my body (see below for what will eventually fade to a sexy sock-tan), my muscles yell at me every time I get up from a chair, and one strange little spot on the sole of my right foot is a lot more painful than it should be.

All this to mean: if you at all enjoy hiking, you should do this hike. The hours of being surrounded by nothing but mountains and lakes and clear crisp air are worth every ache and aloe vera application.

Getting There and Tips: If you're going by public, there is a RailAway special (another more detailed info sheet here and the official Pizol site here). By car, drive to Bad Ragaz and take the cable car up to Pardiel, then chair lift to Laufböden, then 20 minute walk over to Pizolhütte where the hike actually begins. Cost: CHF 36 round-trip without halbtax, CHF 18 with. Take plenty of water - at least 1.5 liters per person - and food as there are no fountains or signs of civilization anywhere along the hike. You also need good solid hiking boots, hiking poles if you have them, a sweater in case of chillier weather and for when you stop walking, and plenty of sunscreen. The last chair lift trip from Gaffia back to the Pizolhütte is at 16:00 so you should get to the base station in Bad Ragaz by 9:30 am at the latest.

Daring Bakers in August: Dobos Torte

2009-08-27T08:24:00.003+02:00

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

The Dobos Torte is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.

I already had a cake for Matt's birthday on the baking schedule when this month's challenge came out, and I'm not much of a cake baker anyway. Out of all baked goods I like cake the least - give me a pie or cookies or brownies over cake anyday. So two cakes in one month definitely was a challenge!

The sponge cake layers are meant to be as thin as possible, and the first few were definitely an exercise in trial and error. After two or three I started to get the hang of quickly and carefully peeling the baking paper off, then using my silpat to flip the still-hot layer back onto the clean side of the paper to cool. The surfaces of the layers were incredibly sticky, though, and left little patches of crumbs on everything they touched, so I couldn't stack them. My kitchen was quickly covered in cooling cake layers - in the dish rack, on top of my cookbooks, perched on the microwave...

Given the heat wave of the last few weeks and a just-completed triple chocolate birthday cake, I wanted to change up the traditional flavor of this torte a bit and give it more of a summery feeling. I decided to go for an orange theme by grating some orange zest into the sponge cake batter, brushing the layers with a grand marnier (orange liqueur) syrup, and changing the flavor of the buttercream to vanilla-fleur d'oranger. I already had some orange flower water languishing in my baking drawer and was thrilled to find a use for it!

The final step to assembling the torte is to use a reserved cake layer to make caramel-glazed triangles for the top. My triangles turned out a bit patchy, I'm not really sure why. They were also sticky and chewy and not so pleasant to eat; I think the humidity and sweltering temperatures prevented them from becoming nice and crackly like they should be.

A classic Dobos Torte's triangles are propped up into a propeller design with a single hazelnut under each one. Hazelnuts didn't fit my theme very well, though, so I filleted an orange and used the slices to arrange each section instead.

The cake had to spend a couple hours in the fridge to firm up the buttercream and my first bite reminded me that I really do not like the texture of refrigerated buttercream. Actually, I don't like buttercream all that much in general - give me a tangy cream cheese frosting anyday! The orange flavor worked okay, could have used more of the grand marnier syrup, and overall I was glad I tried out something other than chocolate. You can see the layers below when it was served at a friend's afternoon barbecue. I probably wouldn't make it again, given how I generally feel about cakes, but it was a useful exercise making all those thin sponge cake layers and I definitely learned a new technique!

Iced Chai Latte

2009-08-25T17:39:00.014+02:00

I'm not a coffee drinker (although there have been exceptions lately) and so any summer visit to Starbucks inevitably has me debating between one of their blended fruity frappucinos, or an iced chai. Most of the time, the iced chai wins. What doesn't win is my wallet - CHF 6.80 for some cold tea and a splash of milk? Ouch. Since the closest Starbucks is all the way in the city, I had added incentive to try and re-create this favorite at home.

The easiest way, of course, would be to buy some chai teabags and use those with milk and ice, but I often find the flavor of store-bought chai tastes more like a plain cinnamon tea than a complex mix of different spices. Using whole and fresh spices really made a big difference to the final flavor, and of course you can customize it according to your tastes.

The final product turned out sweetly spicy, wonderfully refreshing, and much cheaper than a visit to The Cash-Munching Coffee Temple. I especially liked pouring the milk into the chai and watching the two cloud together in pretty swirls before stirring.

Iced Chai Latte

6 cups water

2 cinnamon sticks
1 thumb-length chunk of ginger root, minced
12 whole cloves

1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

10 cardamom pods, crushed so seeds spill out
2 bay leaves
2/3 cup white sugar

2 tbsp loose black tea leaves (I used Darjeeling)
ice and cold whole milk for serving

Heat the water, spices, and sugar in a saucepan until boiling, then turn down heat, add tea leaves, and let simmer for 10 minutes (this makes your kitchen smell fantastic). Remove from heat and let stand until room temperature, or overnight for an even stronger flavor. Strain liquid into a pitcher, refrigerate until chilled. Fill tall glasses with ice and mix 3 parts tea to 1 part milk (adjust according to taste).

Variations: You could add half a split vanilla pod to the simmering liquid to make vanilla chai, or sweeten with honey instead of sugar. You can also forego the chilling and just make the drink in a mug for a hot chai latte. And if you're really feeling on a spice kick you might even want to make some of Anita's beautiful chocolate chai cupcakes to go along with it...

No Dinners Tonite

2009-08-22T22:48:00.003+02:00

Back to School, But It's Still Summer!

2009-08-17T21:25:00.001+02:00

Today might have been the first day of school, but neither the sweltering weather nor my kitchen is quite ready to accept the fact that summer holidays are over. No sooner had I lamented my inability to find the perfect crisp topping than recipes started leaking from the internet's seams. First I came across Martha's parade of fruity goodness, and then a browse through Gourmet's homepage yielded their own guide to the traditional toppings. With juicy damson plums in my fridge and all these recipes to read through...I might just end up finding that elusive perfect topping after all!

Hiking Project

2009-08-12T18:40:00.018+02:00

We live in a beautiful valley, just below the Albis hill range, full of forests and trails. A year ago when we moved to this apartment we resolved that hiking was going to be a greater part of our free time activities, and I must confess we haven't been too great at upholding that and getting our butts out and about on weekends. It's just too nice to sleep in, make pancakes, and hit noon without the notion of getting dressed even appearing on the horizon. Oh, there has been the occasional outing, but not with any regularity, and the one trail near our house we've walked a number of times is getting a bit monotonous.

So! I did what I always do when I take on a new project - I bought a book. I was pretty sure Amazon.com was not going to have much material about hiking in my little valley, nor would the English bookstore, so I took the Deutsch route and found this little gem at Barth Bücher on Bahnhofstrasse.

Perfect! The area map on the back has our town smack in the middle, and a glimpse at the table of contents showed a majority of the 50 recommended hikes to be 1-3 hours long - right in our range. Each hike has elevation listings, so you can get some idea of the difficulty, and the descriptions are anything but dry - the author writes two or three pages about each hike as though you are walking along with him, pointing out things of interest and giving little blurbs on local history in a friendly and warm tone. His charming pencil drawings of various scenes and plants are scattered throughout the book, as are quotes about hiking and nature. And for those of you who live in other areas around Zurich, there are further books in the series covering all different regions.

We did our first hike from the book on Sunday afternoon: through fields along the peaceful riverbank, across a busy intersection, and then a tough 40 minutes uphill to the Schweikhof Restaurant where we gratefully downed cold drinks, gobbled up a platter of meat and cheese (but NOT the pickles - blech), and enjoyed the view and nice weather.

My idea is to complete a good chunk of the hikes by the time we move away from Adliswil, whenever that will be, and date them as we do them. I'll keep you posted!

Gluten-Free Apple-Blackberry Crisp

2009-08-08T14:47:00.019+02:00

Whoever invented fruit crisps deserves a medal, there's no doubt about that. You left those apples/peaches/berries on your counter a few days too long and the fruit flies are having a field day with the mushy patches? Never mind! Chop 'em up, squish together a one-bowl topping, lick your fingers, and you have a quick and delicious summer dessert... and snack... and breakfast. Nobody will ever know (about the fruit OR your fingers).

Peach-blueberry? Raspberry-pear? Plum-berry? Berry with berries? Count me in. The part where I get picky is the topping. It's gotta live up to the name crisp and be nearly as crunchy as granola, and that without nuts. I've tried a lot of different recipes and most have fallen short - too mushy, too cakey, too crumbly. And unless it has oats, it's out of the running. I've never had a topping that could hold its own without that hearty ingredient, preferably combined with plenty of brown sugar.

As you might imagine, that eliminates a lot of recipes I come across. You're probably thinking that at this point I'm going to shout "eureka!" and rhapsodize about the ultimate crisp topping recipe that has fallen into my lap, but alas, no. I'm hoping you'll help me with that, fellow bloggers and readers, and point me in the right direction. Links? Torn out magazine pages? An old typewritten recipe? Do tell!

Until then I'll leave you with a runner-up from Friday night's apple-blackberry crisp. I subsituted gluten-free flour for our celiac dinner guest, which made it more crumbly than it would be with normal flour, but still not bad. I also added some macadamias since I love them, and they're the only nuts that are somewhat acceptable to the nut-hater I live with. The best part was that the blackberries softened up and turned all the apples underneath them a beautiful blushing pink (this is why they should be on top, so the juices can run down through the layers of apples).

Gluten-Free Apple-Blackberry Crisp with Macadamia Nut Topping

Filling

4 large gala apples, peeled, cored, and thinly sliced

150 grams (two handfuls) fresh blackberries, washed and drained

Topping
Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, June 2009

3/4 cup gluten-free flour (you can also use all-purpose if you're not g-f)
1/2 cup instant oats (not rolled)

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp coarse salt

3 ounces (85 grams) unsalted butter

1/3 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup toasted macadamia nuts, chopped coarsely

Arrange apples in an even layer in an appropriately-sized baking dish and top with blackberries.

Stir together flour, oats, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt. Cream butter and sugar in a mixer until pale and fluffly. Stir dry ingredients and nuts into butter. Using your hands, squeeze topping pieces together into clumps. Sprinkle topping evenly over filling. Bake until topping is browned and apples beneath are pink and soft, about 1 hour. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool 15 minutes before serving (with ice cream, crème fraîche, whipped cream...need I go on?).

ZüriTipp: Rimini Bar

2009-08-08T14:10:00.006+02:00

This rainy and gray day is perhaps not the most appropriate day to tell you about this discovery, but I'm posting it anyway in the hopes that the sun decides to come back soon!

Anyone who has spent a muggy summer night in Zürich knows - the best place to be is near the river (or on it, like the canoe-polo players above), where a chance to dip your toes or at least feel a slight breeze coming off the cool water helps to mitigate the heat. Most people head for the Oberer Letten area of the river, which is just a short walk (or float!) from the main station and lined with snack bars and swimming platforms.

Another option closer to the lakefront is the Barfussbar, located in the city's Frauenbadi (a river-swimming facility open only to women during the day). However, the Barfussbar's opening days are rather erratic and since it's often rented for private parties, there's a good chance an unplanned visit will result in disappointment.

Last week we met up with some members of the local couchsurfing community for a drink at the Rimini Bar, just two steps from Selnau train station, down a poorly-lit and unpromising path behind the stock exchange. At first I wondered where the heck we were going, but as we stepped through a small wooden door and onto these platforms, I was amazed to find this cool place suspended above the Schanzengraben section of the river. Open every summer evening except if it's raining, this is a great place to beat the heat and dip your feet while sipping one of their creative house drinks and lounging on comfy cushions. My bicicletta (2 dl of white wine with a splash of campari) was a very reasonably-priced CHF 11, and a generous 3 dl gschprützte wysse is only CHF 8.
The Rimini Bar also hosts other events such as a Monday Clothes Market, offering everything from secondhand to designer labels, and occasionally concerts and parties as well.

Cheers!

A Perfect Swiss Day, Part 2: Forest and Fireworks

2009-08-03T14:59:00.013+02:00

For the second half of our National Day, we continued our theme of traditional activities and joined some friends in a wooded area of the Hönggerberg above Zürich. Hanging out in the forest with a picnic and a pile of sausages is called go bräätle (going grilling) in Swiss-German, and is most definitely a national pasttime! Arline and Michel went up early to lay claim to a fire pit and grassy area, with Michel on the lookout for potential usurpers of our prime spot...

...just kidding. :)

Our resident carnivore was naturally in charge of the meat and picked up a few of these excellent sausages from Gnusspur: Toscana (sundried tomatoes, ham, and basil), Pizza (cheese, ham, mushroom, oregano), and Knobli (garlic, lots of garlic!).

Arline the teacher had even put together a little Swiss Quiz on post-it notes (see how fiercely she's guarding the answers against her chest?). We split up into teams by couple and answered questions about economy, geography, food...

Andy and Laura were allowed to use the guidebook since they had the marked disadvantage of being tourists... and they ended up taking second place, winning a block of Gruyère cheese to use in their sandwiches the next day!

As the sun set and the fire burned down, we walked around to the other side of the hill overlooking the city and joined a crowd of others with the same idea. All the fireworks across the city and down the lake were perfectly visible against the clear sky, capping off a wonderful first of August.

A Perfect Swiss Day, Part 1: Brunch

2009-08-03T09:14:00.020+02:00

Last week I gave you a heads up about the farm brunches that happened all over Switzerland on Saturday, and now you can see exactly what I was talking about! We had quite a few choices but I decided on Lützelhof, a family-owned farm in the town of Pfäffikon that offers a lot more than just brunch - more about that later!

Saturday dawned gorgeous and sunny, so along with our visitors Andy and Laura we got up relatively early and made our way down the lake. Upon arrival we paid CHF 30 each, found our seats inside the beautifully decorated barn, and took our plates and appetites over to the generous buffet tables.

As Backie said to our guests, "It's a marathon, not a sprint." Cheese and meat platters, jams, juices, yogurts, cereals, muesli, breads, eggs, rösti, as well as a wonderful dessert table had us going back for seconds, thirds, fourths... I especially liked the creative Swiss cross bread on the bottom right, and just look at that enormous bowl of blueberries!

The same organization that coordinates all the farms also runs ad campaigns, one of which you can see in the top left corner of this picture. The campaign features Swiss celebrities wearing the traditional blue farmer shirt and a catch-phrase relating to both their profession and farms. For example, this gentleman is the extremely popular former coach of the national football (soccer) team saying, "Our farmers have natural talent." Another poster has two famous Swiss models in the blue shirts saying, "Farm-fresh food never goes out of style."

In between heaping plates of food we strolled around the rest of the farm, which offers a whole range of other activites. You can rent all different parts of the farm for parties and events, and a couple times a year they put on traditional music concerts. The Dillier family also host many hikers, visitors, and pilgrims throughout the year and have a public recreation room where you can enjoy a farm breakfast after spending the night sleeping on sweet-smelling hay or just find a comfortable place to eat your picnic lunch.

The farm store sells all kinds of their products - fruit, vegetables, flowers, meat, eggs, cheese, jams, juice, apple wine, and crafts. Payment is on the honor system, so you just take what you like and put the money in their small cashbox before you go.

Andy and Laura live in Florida and are on a two-week trip through Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. Our mutual friend Melanie put us in touch when she found out about their trip, and it was our pleasure to host them this past weekend and show them around a bit! Andy's hobby and passion is beer-making and drinking, so on the way back home we stopped at the Wädi-Brau-Huus (a popular local brewery) so he could try their sampler plate. He was quite protective of his glasses and carefully savored each one!

After all that food and beer it was definitely time for a nap, so we headed home for a few hours before our evening plans - coming up in part 2!