The Benefit of Your Bargain

I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday. After two weekends out of town, I didn’t want to get on the subway this weekend (ok, I never want to get on the subway). I just wanted to walk in the park and buy beets and apples.

The beets came with tops on. The woman next to me was eyeing them and asking the guy working whether you could eat them. “I hear they’re good in salads,” she said. “Have you ever cooked them?” The guy shook his head. “I bet you can’t cook,” she said. He shrugged. I told her I’d heard that you cook them like collards, but that I’d never done it myself. She said she was going to buy the loose beets, topless.

Jason gets really angry that I bring home huge bundles of leafy green vegetables that displace his food from the crisper drawer. In this case, my kale and beets weren’t both going to fit. I had to choose. I lopped off the beet greens and stuck the roots on a shelf. Then I made pasta with the beet greens.

Okay, sorry for the lame contracts reference in the title, but really this pasta is awesome, and beautiful, and it stretched $3 worth of beets into probably five meals, so I take it back, I’m not sorry after all.

Except that right after I ate, I read this, and now I’m worried that my leafy green habit dooms me to death by pulmonary embolism at 23 (if I make it through the next two weeks, that is).

Beet Green Pasta (adapted from Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables)

1. Pour boiling water over 1/2 c. raisins [she calls for currants, which are for the wealthy, duh]. Let them sit and plump while you

2. wash and chiffonade the greens from 1 bunch of beets (I had four beets), stems included. Wash and chiffonade a handful of parsley [she calls for mint, which I didn't have].

3. Start your pasta water boiling.

4. Heat some olive oil in a skillet, then add a tablespoon of minced garlic and a bay leaf and sauté until fragrant, about a minute. Dump in the beet greens. Toss so that they are all coated with oil. Sauté for five minutes.

5. Cook your pasta (I used half a pound of linguine).

6. Drain your raisins/currants. Add to the greens. Add the parsley. Stir. Keep over low heat while the pasta cooks. Salt and pepper to taste.

7. Drain your pasta. Add it to the beet green mixture in the skillet and toss thoroughly, until your pasta is a pretty pink color. In the immortal words of my brother, “Put it on a plate and eat it.” Add cheese, though.

Sliced Dread

Pardon the long absence. This is something like New York: Day 32.

People keep asking me if I am glad to be back in NYC and I keep shrugging. I was reading the New Yorker (okay, I did miss that) a few weeks ago and when I came upon this book review I felt a weird kinship with the man quoted at the beginning who kept saying: “I’m in New York, but New York ain’t in me!” Exactly, I thought.

Law school is time consuming (three years, folks). Homework is hard. It doesn’t help that I have no bookshelf and haven’t unpacked. Here is what my room looks like:

law and order: special victims unit

I’ve been living here for more than 2 weeks. Oma, if you’re reading this, don’t worry–I promise I will clean up before you come over on Saturday. Maybe.

Tonight I was at home. A big storm (including a tornado! My childhood fear of severe weather returns) knocked down a bunch of trees, killed someone in Queens, and prevented our trip to the dollar store to get a broom and mop. After the storm subsided, Jason and I went to the supermarket to get some stuff so that I could make rice* pudding. Here is what we saw:

Dread in Aisle 11

New project: The Emotional Supermarket. In Aisle 3, we have Ecstasy, Rapture, and Joy. Cheap Thrills are at the front by the cashiers. Self-Doubt is in the dairy section. Insecurity is everywhere.

*Rice: Jason bought 25 lbs of rice for only $10! 25 lbs of rice is 500 servings. I used half a cup. That’s about two servings. I will post the recipe on our haus blog as soon as we get the internet to work for more than two people at a time.

NYC: Day 4

I live in America again. They have things here that they don’t in Germany. Things like corn syrup, malt balls, and deserts. Credit checks. Credit cards. Hummers. I went away and when I came back the subways were terrible (sad) and all of a sudden there were bike lanes everywhere (glad). Even in New York, people have been nice, friendly, and helpful. But all the food is expensive (even at the grocery store) and there are no giant tubs of Omür Turkish yogurt to be found. I live in my sister’s bedroom (IT’S TEMPORARY, OKAY?) and have yet to unpack anything but my new (old) silk bathrobe, my Hugh Hefner outfit. I just ordered $650 worth of textbooks online. I can’t find my social security card. Of course the Vows column made me cry. At least there’s one constant in my life.

Okay here, this will make me feel better. The Zuni apricot tart on my lap in Hannah’s car!

tarts on laps

This is the recipe. Everything about the crust is perfect, so don’t mess with it. You can’t really screw up the filling no matter how hard you try. We put some peaches and nectarines in there, too. I’m not sure I actually ate any of it but I think I can say with confidence that it was good. That’s something, right?

Oh, and the cookbook! It’s done!

Berlin: Day -3

It’s Friday, six days before liftoff. I’m walking through the Turkish market on Maybachufer and I buy a spinach gözleme, hot off the griddle, so hot it burns my hand and I drop my wallet and all the tiny euro pennies and Bosnian konvertible marks* I’ve saved for my baby brother’s coin collection fall onto the ground. So now I’m holding a gözleme in one hand, it’s steaming the paper wrapper, making it wilt and rip, and with the other hand I am trying to scratch up the pennies from the ground. After I’ve salvaged most of the change I decide that I cannot eat and walk (at least not today) so I pick a spot under some scaffolding to eat my blistering gözleme.

My gözleme eating spot is right across from a man selling Italian plums for €1/kilo. €1! It is so fortunate that I have scrabbled so much change from the ground. After I eat the gözleme I make a beeline for the plums, which are oblong and always look dusty (they have a white bloom on them–I don’t know why).

I go home. I make this cake. We eat two thirds of it. I make it again the next day. The recipe is from my grandmother, who would never make it twice in two days (but Oma–I know you’re reading–I gave it away to friends on the second day!). There are still six plums sitting in the refrigerator, destined to get used for something… else, something different. But that doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a baller cake.

Pflaumkuchen

Pflaumkuchen

1 stick butter, softened
1/2 c. sugar
1 c. AP flour
juice of 1 lemon, seeds and pulp removed
1 egg

Combine ingredients for dough and chill at least 3 hours. Note: I am an impatient person and bad planner. I never refrigerate this for as long as I should. The dough slumps down on itself and does not retain much of a tart-like shape. It isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it’s not the way it’s “supposed” to be. Anyway, you do have to chill it until the dough is firm and cold.

Filling:
12 Italian plums, quartered lengthwise.

Preheat your oven to 350 F. Press your cold dough into the bottom and up the sides of a greased 9 inch springform pan. You don’t have to roll it out, just sort of daub the dough into the pan until it’s evenly distributed. Line the bottom with the plums, arranging them in concentric circles. Sprinkle with around 1 tbsp sugar. Bake for 45 minutes or so, until the dough is firm and the plums are dark purple and juicy. The plums may have exuded lots of juice. Don’t worry, when it cools, the juice will sort of reabsorb into the cake and the fruit… it’s a good thing. Cool. Unspring. Devour.

*Convertible my ass. When I brought my one remaining 20 km bill to the woman at the exchange counter in Frankfurt, she wrinkled her nose at me and said, “No. No. We don’t do that. What is that?” “Um, Bosnian marks?” “No.”

Berlin: Day -7

Even writing that title makes me feel like I’m going to throw up. I’m going to pretend it’s not there and instead tell you about the Balkans.

buredžici

First stop: Dubrovnik. Dubrovnik is pretty… pretty dear! I ate a lot of cheap creamy yogurt that comes in a carton that you can drink from. And I spilled a bag of müsli on the floor. The best thing I ate in Dubrovnik was probably a plum, one of those little Italian ones. Yeah.

Mostar, though. Mostar was full of good food. The photo above is from the little hole-in-the-wall burek place I stopped in on my first day. A huge plate of buredžici, tiny meat bureks in a tangy garlic-yogurt sauce, with a spinach burek on the side for good measure, ran me less than 2 euros. The next day I had a whole grilled trout on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking the Neretva river. It came with an entire loaf of bread, greens, and salad. 5 euros. And then there was the meat burek from the wood-fired oven that I ordered for delivery and ate for two consecutive meals. 1 euro. Thank you, Mostar.

I didn’t take any food pictures in Sarajevo, but I did eat cevapi 3 days running, and went to the fancy patisserie in the Hotel Europe. The cevapi was invariably served by very grumpy blonde women. I also started waking up in a panic at 7:14 a.m. every day. I didn’t realize until later that this was probably because of the massive amount of espresso I was consuming. (Hey, when you can get a shot of espresso for 50 cents, it’s hard to say no. But Just Say No anyway.)

Sadly, Bosnia is one of the few European countries without Google Maps, so I cannot show you where these lovely cevapi places, staffed by ogres, are located. It is also one of the few without McDonalds (maybe the only one, actually). But they do have signs like this one:

no guns, no ice cream, and nothing in between.

I don’t know why that’s blurry (thanks a lot web resolution), but you get the drift. Stay tuned for reviews of our last suppers (gulp) in Berlin.

Berlin: Day -14

I’m not going to complain about this week’s heat wave; the temperature that, as Lucy put it, cannot be described without using bad words or the word “balls;” the lack of air conditioning in all but the most insipid chain stores (H&M, I’m looking at you); the German conviction that air, if blown directly on you, causes colds; the resulting lack of fans in the office, coffee shops, and my apartment; the mini-ness of the fridge and my ensuing inability to make more than 16 ice cubes at a time, although I desire to consume at least eight ice cubes in any given glass of water; the complete absence of iced coffee and tea from menus around Berlin, and the seeming contentment of this fair city’s residents to continue drinking hot Milchkaffees and grüner Tees despite the body-temperature heat surrounding them, whether they’re inside or out.

Instead, I will share a photo.

Lakritz

When was the last time you saw a licorice store?

Kadó, Graefestraße 20.

Berlin: Day -21

Since I can’t count, and since I’m much closer now to the end of this sojourn than to the beginning, I thought it would be appropriate to recognize that, while I am hovering around the Day 114 mark, I only have a few weeks in Berlin to go. Three, to be precise, since I will be spending 9 days in Croatia and Bosnia. Alone. When was the last time I was alone for 9 days? I refer you back to the beginnings of this blog, dear reader. India 2008. It’s been a while.

That was a hot summer.

If you’re here for my food adventures, I might have to refer you to Lucy, who posted this masterfully edited video of me reading aloud from my journal. It might seem that the one thing that gives meaning to my life now is amusing my baby sister. But I was doing it for her own good–she neglects to note that she requested some food recommendations for Budapest, and I was merely responding.

I did cook recently. This is what I made:

Red Lentil Soup

1 large onion, finely chopped
100 g red lentils
50 g rice
1 liter water
1/2 T cumin
1/2 T coriander
Salt and pepper
lemon wedges

Slice the onion, cook over medium heat in a heavy pot in olive oil until dark brown and fragrant. Remove and set aside the onion, but do not wash the pot. Dump in the lentils, rice, water, and spices. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer, stirring occasionally to keep from sticking to the bottom, for 30-45 minutes, until thick and creamy. Add water if necessary to thin the soup. Serve with the onion on top and with lemon wedges.

-from a German version of Claudia Roden’s book Arabesque, which I found at the Neukölln library, where I write this now.

I’m also still working on the cookbook. Keep an eye out for new developments. It will come out soon.

Berlin: Day 86

What I do when I’m learning about the current (read: latest) German political crisis, driven outside by a lack of internet and beautiful weather:

That’s Weinschorle, folks. White wine and SELTZER. A lightweight’s drink, for sure–and a refreshing one, at that.

Berlin: Day 84-ish

Sorry about that. I don’t have the internet in my apartment anymore! Right now I am sitting at a picnic table facing the Marheineke Markthalle, drinking beer mixed with sprite and getting my internet fix (does anyone agree with me that Google offline features leave a lot to be desired?).

Here are some pictures from Istanbul (May 16-23). My food diary is at home but I can try to recreate it for you.

A candy store display in Eminönü

Christopher eating Turkish Delight by the Hagia Sofia

Ataturk

From left: bread, sweet mint syrup, garlic sausage (sucuk)

Kafka's Waffle World

This last reminds me all too vividly that it was a year ago today that our U-Haul road trip through the American South (“and Midwest,” Lucy adds) concluded, with its many wondrous sightings of a different kind of Kafkaesque waffle chain. “Is today an important day?” she asks. “I think it’s D-Day,” I say. We nod pensively.

Happy D-Day, everybody!

Berlin: Day 64

Today’s word is “cockaigne,” meaning an imaginary land of luxury. I immediately thought of the Joy of Cooking–I’ve always wondered why their excellent brownie recipe was tagged “cockaigne,” along with myriad cheesecakes, lemon bars, and possibly even chicken. I can’t remember–I’ve been deprived of my cookbooks now for a good seven months. Anyway, Wikipedia has it that Marion Becker’s country home in Ohio was named “Cockaigne.” I had never imagined Ohio as utopia, but I guess I’m closed-minded.

I made these utopian biscotti, dreamy tabbouleh, heavenly baklasagne, and excellent home fries.

Shangri-La Home Fries

• 2-3 small potatoes
• 1 bell pepper
• 1 onion or 3 scallions
• dried thyme
• salt and pepper

Quarter your potatoes lengthwise, then slice 1/4 inch thick. Cover with boiling salted water and cook over high heat. Dice your pepper and onion (or slice your scallions) and sauté in olive oil over medium high heat. Add a pinch of dried thyme and some pepper flakes (optional). When the potatoes are done, drain them well and then add to the pan, stirring occasionally so that they brown on all sides. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve with fried eggs, toast, coffee and orange juice, a la diner.