Setting up a kitchen

As I've mentioned in a few posts over the past couple of months, the apartment I got was with an empty kitchen (as is the norm around here). Well... I guess I should not say empty: there was a tall cupboard, a sink, and a few dirty shelves above the sink - but apart from that it was empty. With a little planning ahead we made sure to buy a fridge that was ready to be installed and turned on from day 1.

Then the planning started. I've never before had the option of designing my kitchen, so I tried to think about what I would have like to change about the past kitchens I've had (if anything). Apart from such issues, the planning was strongly influenced by the shape of the room: A longish, rather narrow room. Putting both an ordinary dining table (even a small one) AND a stove and a table for working would transform the room into some sort of weird obstacle course. Instead, we decided to put in a bar along one of the long walls: this would go well with a couple of stools (which can handily stand under the bar when not in use) and leave room for manoeuvring while working at the sink, the stove, and the counter top.

This meant putting the fridge near the entrance to the kitchen, but that works quite well - the kitchen is not that long after all - and even seem logical right across from the tall cupboard where we store the rest of our stuff.

The rest was details: we put up a small shelve for spices above the stove and a magnet for knives next to it.

Stirfried Duck

OK, I don't actually have a wok here, but I have a large non-stick pan which is sort of wok-shaped and I figured this would be a nice way to make duck and cabbage, so I thought I try to use it for this kind of a meal. The use of cow's milk is perhaps not super authentic to the Asian kitchen, but hey..

Ingredients:
- duck fillet (ca. 300 g, 2/3 lb)
- 1 medium large red onion
- 2 cloves garlic
- 1 mild, large green pepper
- 1 scotch bonnet [1]
- 1/2 head savoy cabbage (ca. 250 g, 1/2 lb)
- olive oil
- salt
- milk

The fillet of duck was cut in thin slices and fried in the wok/pan in oil, with salt, mashed garlic, and finely cut chilli. When the meat was fully cooked the onion (in boats) and the large pepper (coarsely diced) were added and stir-fried. After a few minutes long strips of cabbage and some milk was added before covering and turning down the heat. When the cabbage was steamed to a nice texture, the whole thing was served with brown rice.

[1] These are sold as piment cloche here and as far as I can figure out they are what is also known as scotch bonnet i.e. a variety of the habanero chilli. They are quite potent and as far as my taste goes 1 of them is quite sufficient for 1 meal, which makes it all the more interesting that the store sells them in packs of 25 or so.

Frikadeller (Danish Meatballs 2)

Unlike horse, the availability of mixed minced meat (pork and beef) is something I was used to growing up - and it's exactly what my old recipe for frikadeller calls for. I went ahead and made a small mountain of meatballs (as one of the pictures show), but normally I would make a smaller batch.

Ingredients:
- 1 kg (2 lb) minced beef/pork
- salt
- pepper
- ca. 4 dL (1.5 cups) flour
- 3 eggs
- 2 medium brown onions (finely diced)
- ca. 4 dL (1.5 cups) milk
- a little margarine/shortening/butter for frying

The minced meat was put in a large bowl together with flour, salt, pepper, eggs, and onion. While stirring with a ladle the milk was added in portions until the texture was right .. yes, that's of course a little hard to quantify, but the resulting mixture should be slightly more runny than most of my other meatball recipes.

The meat balls were placed one by one on a heated pan with a little margarine as they were shaped - the shaping process is attempted illustrated in the pictures: A portion of meat mixture was taken with a spoon and shaped into a ball by turning in between the hand and the spoon repeatedly until one is happy with the result. Don't overdo it - due to the texture, the balls will deform somewhat on the pan anyway. This is one of the instances when a non-stick pan and a wooden spatula are less useful than other tools.

Served with boiled potatoes and boiled cauliflower this became a meal very much in the Danish tradition. Leftover meatballs are good both on wholegrain dark rye bread and in pita sandwiches together with lettuce, cucumber, tomato..

NB: For an updated recipe, see here.

Horse Steak

I was always aware that horse was edible, but in Denmark where I grew up it was somehow considered inferior meat that most people did not want. It did not figure prominently in the meat section of the supermarkets I frequented in California either. But now that I live close to France it is quite easy to come by. Several options exist in the supermarket, and I have on several occasions seen local restaurants advertise horse steak as special of the day.

Of course I had to try it. As you can see in the picture (click to enlarge) it is easy to recognise it at the store - even if one happens not to be familiar with the French, German, or Italian words for horse. Actually, the taste is strikingly similar to beef - I guess this is mainly surprising to me based on people's reluctance to eat it where I come from.

Ingredients:
- horse steaks
- salt & pepper
- oil from sun dried tomatoes
- 1 medium red onion
- 200 g (7 oz) mushrooms
- 2 tsp capers
- 3 tbsp sour cream
quinoa:
- 2.5 dL (1 cup) quinoa
- 5 dL (2 cups) water
- salt
- fresh mint and basil

Quinoa (which I've mentioned briefly before here) was prepared simply by bringing water to a boil, then adding half the volume quinoa and salt, turning the heat down and letting stand till the water was absorbed (about 15-20 minutes), then freshly chopped mint and basil was stirred in.

In a large pan I heated up oil (leftover from a glass of sun dried tomatoes) and when warm I put in the steaks seasoned only with salt and pepper. The horse steaks I bought were rather thinly sliced and required only a few minutes of cooking, after which I removed them from the pan and added onion rings. After a few minutes this was followed by sliced mushrooms and a few minutes still later capers and sour cream - was covered and let stand for a few minutes.

Served with a quick salad (lettuce & cucumber) and dressing like the one I mentioned here.

Hubertus

The name Hubertus invariably brings to my mind images of riders in red jackets - the traditional Hubertus Hunts from The Deer Garden north of Copenhagen being my point of reference.

As it happens, the hunts are named for Saint Hubertus and he is also alluded to on the label of the beer with the head of the stag with the antlers (much like on the Jägermeister bottle - just without the glowing cross).

This was another beer I tried in Basel and I was quite impressed with it. I was previously unaware of the brewery, Eichhof. They are located in Luzern (Switzerland) and I read that they are quite important on the Swiss beer market - I'll have to look out for them now. I'm curious about trying out other beers from their range of products (link to German homepage).

Flour Tortillas

Although I'm all for trying out new food in the new region I'm living in, I'm not ready for a complete withdrawal from the Mexican cuisine I've come to love over the past 6 years of my life while living in California. Although tortillas can be bought in the store here, the selection is rather slim and the prices are somewhat steep - so I decided to try my own hand at making them. If it wasn't for this kind of attitude, would I blog about food in the first place?!

Ingredients:
- 225 g (1/2 lb) flour
- 65 g (2 oz) margarine
- pinch of salt
- 1 dL (1/2 cup) water

The margarine was cut into small cubes and then worked into the flour by hand. The water was warmed and the salt dissolved in it - the resulting salty water was added in small portions (in order not to use too much), working it into the flour by hand. Once a cohesive mass (not very sticky) is obtained the dough was kneaded by hand for 2-4 minutes before forming little balls (in this case 7) which were put back in the bowl, covered and left for about an hour.

A pan was heated on medium high setting (2.5 out of 3 on my electric cooker) - it's advisable to turn it on well in advance so the pan is hot by the time the tortillas are ready to be cooked. No grease needed.


Each ball was flattened first by hand, then rolled into tortillas on a floured surface (as I don't have an ordinary rolling pin in this kitchen yet using instead a 0.5 L beer can - full works best.. I'll get back to that beer in a future post). The tortillas were cooked one by one, roughly some 15 seconds on each side when the pan is properly hot - the latter part of the process and the result looks quite similar to making these pancakes.

I was quite happy with these tortillas - I'll be doing this again.

Fish Dinner

In no particular style (so far as I can tell) I made this dinner because it was Saturday night, and I felt like it - everything turned out quite nicely, I do think.

Ingredients:
creamy potatoes:
- 4 large potatoes
- 1 medium onion
- 1 dL (1/2 cup) heavy cream
- 2 dL (1 cup) water
- salt, pepper
salad:
- 1/2 head fine frisée lettuce
- 75 g (3 oz) feta cheese
- 4 sun dried tomatoes
- 1 handful pistachio nuts
dressing:
- juice of 1/2 lime
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp mustard
- 1 tsp honey
fish:
- olive oil
- salt, pepper, paprika
- Dorado fillets
- 1 leek
- 1 green chilli [1]
- 20 fresh leaves oregano
- juice of 1/2 lime
- 1 tsp honey

The potatoes were sliced, and put in an oven-proof tray together with a sliced onion, salt, and pepper. The cream and the water was poured over and the tray was put in the oven at 200 C (400 F) for at least an hour.

I found fine frisée salad at the store, but less fine frisée (i.e. ordinary) would probably work well too) - it was rinsed, cut roughly, and mixed with crumbled feta cheese, strips of sun dried tomatoes, and a handful of pistachio nuts.

The salad dressing was made simply by stirring all the ingredients together (needs some stirring as not everything mixes naturally).

In large pan a little olive oil was heated, then salt, pepper, and paprika was stirred into it before adding the fillets of dorado (aka mahi-mahi), which were fried for a few minutes on both sides. Pushing the fish towards the side of the pan, the leek and the chilli both cut in long strips was added, then poured over with a mix of honey and lime juice, and finally added coarsely chopped fresh oregano.

[1] The green chillies I buy here are called "Piments Verts" in the store, which tells me no more than what I can see by looking at them: They are green chillies. Trying to correlate them with the chilli types I know, I'd say they are about as thick as jalapeño peppers, about as long as Anaheim peppers - the overall looks of them are most like Anaheim peppers, but in hotness they are much closer to the jalapeño.

Real Swiss Beer

On a trip to Basel in the German speaking part of Switzerland I had the opportunity to visit Restaurant Lällekönig and taste a number of local beers. Overall those from Unser Bier (that's "our beer" in German) were the most interesting to me. Their amber beer was initially surprising to me - surprisingly un-bitter to be more specific, but I realized this was mainly because I'm so used to California style pale ales. At any rate it is quite good - as is their Schwarz ("black") which I had a large mug of afterwards (not pictured).

Chorizo Omelette

After 5 weeks of not being able to cook Sunday morning eggs, it was truly wonderful to have the option again. Loosely inspired by reading from the period in question I wanted to this type of omelette. It turned out to be quite the hearty breakfast.

Ingredients:
- 3 eggs
- milk
- 1 mild chorizo
- 2 raw pepperoncini ("poivrons cecei")*

served with home fries:
- 5 potatoes
- 1 onion

The potatoes were cut in small dices (say 6 mm (1/4 inch) to the side) and fried in a large pan with a coarsely chopped onion.

The chorizo was peeled, and halved along the axis and sliced - then fried in a second pan together with the coarsely chopped peppers. After a few minutes a mixture of eggs and milk (beaten together with a fork) was poured over the chorizo and peppers, the heat was reduced and the while thing left till the eggs had solidified.

* I think these are unpickled pepperoncinis - the colour and shape certainly looks right. The French name is what they're called in the store I where I buy them.

Conger

To be honest, I didn't know what conger was when I bought it. Yes, I figured it was a large fish or something along those lines, but it was just 4 slices in the pack and therefore hard to judge. When I came home I could consult my dictionary and learn that conger is salt water eel. This would be a first for me: cooking eel.

Ingredients:
- 4 slices conger
- about 1 cup white wine
- potatoes (for 2)
- 1 onion
- 3 tsp capers
- 250 g (1/2 lb) green beans
- fresh flat-leaf parsley

The conger came in slices about 2 cm (3/4") thick, gutted and cleaned, but with bones and skin. The fillets were seasoned with salt and pepper and seared in a large pan on both sides for a few minutes. Then added a little less than half of the wine, covered and left on medium high heat until the wine was reduced, then added an equally big portion of wine and repeated. The whole process took some 30-40 minutes and the conger fillets were turned from side to side occasionally.

While the conger was cooking, small potatoes were rinsed and boiled in lightly salted water. In a separate pot, fresh green beans likewise.

At the end of the second wine reduction the conger was moved to the side of the pan, the whole in the middle filled up with onion rings, capers, and a final bit of white wine.

Served with freshly cut flat leaf parsley.

Couscous Salad

OK, so this isn't a very unique recipe - it's quite similar to other couscous salads I've made in the past. The point is more to illustrate that this is possible without a stove, if you have an electric kettle.

Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup couscous
- 1 cup boiling water
- salt, pepper
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 handful cherry tomatoes
- 1 red bell pepper
- fresh basil
- fresh flat leave parsley

- to serve also: arugula, flat breads, and sour cream.

The couscous was placed in a bowl with salt and pepper, the boiling water was added and the bowl was covered. After 5 minutes or so the water was absorbed and the chopped reds and greens were added. Served on flat breads, with arugula and a little sour cream on top.

Kippers

No, I didn't actually split, gut, salt and smoke these herrings myself. I just bought a can of it, served is on whole grain rye bread and garnished it with chives from the newly installed balcony herb garden.


This is being one of the kinds of foods possible in my currently unfinished kitchen...

Herbs

With the small balcony of the new dwelling facing south it was decided to try to profit a bit over the summer by growing some herbs in wall-mounted box. So far they're doing quite well - the second picture was taken a couple of weeks after planting them. From left to right it is: basil, cilantro (coriander), mint, oregano, flat leaf parsley, and chives.

Bavarian Beer

Returning for more (relatively) local beer options I found these three, all hailing from Bavaria, Germany. I have been a fan of Paulaner Weissbier for quite some time, but their lager isn't bad either and on sale at 0.85 CHF per 0.5 L can it presents me an offer I can't refuse.

Löwenbräu is another beer from Munich, quite good too, but I haven't seen it as cheap yet. Interestingly, their Weissbier is also available in 0.5 L cans, but it seems to me the can prevents you from pouring the beer in the proper way, so I refrain from buying those.

Gralsburg is easily the cheapest of the pack, but also easily the least interesting of them. Given the wide array of other options I think I'll be spending my hard-earned CHFs otherwise..

Atomic Ginger

You may be familiar with the curiously strong ginger ales that result when the producers insist on cramming the equivalent of 25 grams (close to 1 oz) of fresh ginger into a standard bottle of the stuff. Imagine then concentrating a similar amount of ginger into a mere ball of ice cream sorbet .. the result brings colour to your face and sweat to your brow:


This concocted was served me as dessert at the Restaurant la Croix-Fédérale in Hermance, Switzerland along the southern shore of Lac Léman close to the border to France.

Yes, I know this is yet another post of me not cooking, but I don't have functioning kitchen in my new apartment yet - a subject I'll probably return in later posts.

Cheap Swiss Beer - Chapter 1

One of the interesting differences between Europe and America is that while buying cheap beer in America is a surefire way to get some spineless I-can't-believe-how-close-to-water-this-is soapy beer devoid of character, this isn't necessarily so in Europe. Don't get me wrong, sometimes it is indeed so, but other times you'll get cheap beer that has plenty of character. The issue of course is that all these beers have interesting traits, not all of which everyone will like, but there's plenty of different brands to choose from, so if you keep looking you're likely to find some you'll like. Being new to this region there's a lot of beer for me to try, so when I located a good store, I got my first 4 - all at about 1 CHF pr. 0.5 L can. Actually, as it so happens none of these beers are actually made in Switzerland: One was brewed in France, two in Germany and one in Austria.


I have to say the Denner Export (brewed in Germany) was the most disappointing of the bunch, while the strong beer (8.8%; brewed in France) was surprisingly good - certainly one I expect myself to buy more of.

Bacon Musubi

After graduating I wanted to do something special, so I set forth to finally execute an idea I'd had for quite some time. This also ended up being the last real meal I cooked in California before moving to Switzerland (more about this in later posts).

Last year I went on a vacation to the island of Hawai'i (see here). While there, I noticed of course the famous Spam Musubi phenomenon, along with a range of other less famous musubi varieties (chicken, egg, and hot dog comes to mind). For the uninitiated, musubi is a lot like sushi, only without the fish - and the individual packs are usually larger than your ordinary nigiri.

Soon after returning from the vacation, it occurred to me what the logical next step would be, and I present to you:

Bacon Musubi - what spam musubi was always (?) meant to be!

Now, I believe this is an invention of my own, for one thing, the book mentioned here does not contain such a dish.

One of the reasons I hesitated before trying this out was that I didn't have experience making sushi either, so I wanted to wait till I had a good chunk of time to experiment.

Ingredients:
- nori
- apple smoked bacon
- sesame seeds
(rice)
- 1 cup black sticky rice
- 1 cup white sticky rice
- 4 cups water
- salt
(teriyaki)
- fresh ginger
- ¹/₂ cup soy sauce
- ¹/₄ cup vinegar
- ¹/₄ cup sugar

First the rice were boiled separately - this is important for the visual outcome, as black sticky rice contain plenty of color to also color the white rice if boiled together - each in 2 cups of salted water, for as long as needed (my black rice needed longer time than my white rice). When done, they were left uncovered to cool sufficiently to be workable with bare hands.

In a pan sesame seeds were toasted golden, and transferred to a bowl. Then the bacon was fried to a desired crispness and transferred to a plate. In the same pan, finely diced ginger, sugar, soy sauce, and vinegar was heated with constant stirring till the sugar was dissolved. Heating and stirring was continued for some minutes till the mixture thickened a little and then transferred to a bowl.Nori was cut into strips approximately 10 x 20 cm (4 x 8 inches), and on each was placed a ball of rice (formed by hand by mixing the boiled and semi-cooled black and white sticky rice), then a piece of bacon, teriyaki sauce (as made above). Finally toasted sesame seeds were sprinkled on top, and the nori was rolled to a closed band (wetting one end of the nori and then joining the 2 ends is usually sufficient to glue them together).
I was quite happy with the final result - but a dinner of only bacon musubi might be a little over the top, so I also made a few chicken musubi (otherwise same procedure).

Meringue

I never really thought about making my own meringue - I just settled for the stuff you can buy in stores (well, it's not something I've been eating a lot either). But when my muse mentioned this would be an obvious way to use the three left over egg whites we had I learned that the result was quite interesting.

Ingredients:
- 3 egg whites
- 150 g (1/3 lb) sugar

The egg whites were whipped stiff (i.e. not going anywhere when turning the bowl upside down), then the sugar was added and the mixture was whipped for an additional 3 minutes. The mixture was placed as small circles on a baking sheet and put in the oven at 150 C (300 F). The recipe we read recommended baking them till dry and golden, approximately 20 minutes, but we thought they started looking golden somewhat faster (maybe just 10-12 minutes) and pulled them from the oven for fear of burning them. The result was very interesting - they were probably not baked as thoroughly as is normally intended, but I actually liked them better this way: crisp on the edge, but somewhat gooey-soft too.

Talisker

Well, finishing also meant moving - and since we had quite enough stuff to move, this was a welcome chance to finish my last bottle of whiskey.

Talisker is unique for being the only whiskey from the isle of Skye, but it's actually far more important to me that it was the one I had a glass of on one of the very first nights out with Mrs. Throat-Erator. It's not nearly as extreme as Laphroaig or Caol Ila, but it's quite complex nonetheless. This bottle was a gift from a good friend, so I thought of him too as I emptied it.

Bloglagged 2

Wow - long time, no blogging. The end was quite busy - especially the last 4-5 weeks when I was writing more or less nonstop.

But then the end DID come. So I guess it's Dr. Throat-Erator to you guys from now on.

A friend of mine gave me this nice graduation/going-away gift:



I have a suspicion that as I get back to posting here, I'll be referring to this Bacon Bible from time to time.