Daylight Carbs

Trends are there to be obeyed and so we finally cut back on carbs after dark... but there are the occasional daylight meals.

So later today we are invited to a birthday tea. Since we have never been to such an event we have no clue what is being served, we thought stocking up on carbs for lunch might not be the worst of ideas...

Penne with broccoli topped with cherry tomatoes slow fried in sage and butter from milk of Piedmontese cattle.

Cucumber Salad

It is close to bed time and this is usually the time I am brushing my teeth, floss and so on... and the time I am reflecting on the day that just passed. Well, looking back on today I have to admit that I have not achieved much for my caring employer. Never mind. Though the thing I can truly be proud of is that cucumber salad I came up with as side for the slice of tuna Toño made for dinner.


I was torn between crème fraîche and yoghurt as base for the dressing and luckily sided for the latter. It was refreshing and went perfectly well with the tuna as well.

I mixed a plain yoghurt with some apple vinegar and seasoned with sea salt and black and red pepper. Before adding the dressing to the pitted, quartered and finely sliced cucumber, I sprinkled them with chopped dill.

Dinner was served with a Schloss Gobelsburg Grüner Veltliner Tradition 2010.

Sonntag

Marting does it all the time, so for once I may do so as well... this was this Sunday's lunch:



Later, when the champagne has worn off, one might find us at the lido Mythenquai, before we'll had to see Race Horse Company's Petit Mal at the Theater Spektakel:

Dealing with Cutlery or the Lack Thereof

I am not talking about the basic differences of dealing with cutlery by Americans and Europeans. Others wrote about that conclusively (read about). I am talking about my intercultural competence being constantly challenged by the lack of basic cutlery here in México. At home in cosily boring Switzerland my cutlery concerns are being restricted to occasionally having to eat with a knife, of which the handle is not hollow (and thus not well balanced). Here in México I'm hardly given the opportunity of a knife at all. If so, I'm not even expecting a sharpened one anymore. What one can expect is a spoon or a fork at best. If you address this subject with Mexicans they point out that the tortilla acts as spoon in their culture. Fair enough, but I still find it rather challenging to eat bone-rich meat with just a fragile plastic spoon and a floppy tortilla.

Location:Morelos Sur,La Huacana,Mexico

The In-N-Out Experience

Our last meal in California was at In-N-Out Burger at LAX Airport. In-N-Out has been recommended to me only minutes after we passed immigration and it has been many times again during out stay. Have you eaten already at In-N-Out? was a common phrase. Such highly praised things should not be missed and so we squeezed in this visit. I don't know if it was because of us or or the burgers... we were a group of 11 who showed up together.



The menu is pretty simple: burgers, fries and beverages. the burgers come in three different basic types (hamburger, cheeseburger, double cheeseburger) with a few options. That's it and it tastes delicious - not only for a fast food place. The fries are made fresh by hand at the shop and for the patties, the family owned company has got their own butchery. No microwave, no heat lamp, and no freezer compromise the taste. I loved it.

There Is a Butcher Deep Down Inside Me

Since the best part of making hamburgers is operating the mincer.

Cutlery

I will not go as far as to say that the way people handle their cutlery reveals their character. Although, the way people handle their cutlery tells a lot. Like you can easily spot the American in a restaurant (swap alert!). Nevertheless, I was quite flabbergasted when I was given my cutlery like this earlier this week:



¡Qué cabrón!

Weekend in Bed

We have been rather lazy this weekend, actually we spent a lot of it horizontal. On Sunday evening we could not even be arsed to cook and ordered* some pizza. We'd never ordered food in before. Unlike Toño, I at least used cutlery to eat mine.



* via the internet, since we had to get up to get a phone.

Olives

I have a difficult relationship with olives, although our relationship started rather innocently. I heard the first time of olives in Sunday school, when our teacher told us the story of Noah and showed us an olive twig, so that we knew what this thing was that the dove returned.*

Olives were not a very common thing where I grew up. The next encounter I actually remember was about 10 years later during my apprenticeship, where I had to install a pump for a tank for blue lobsters, which was located next to five huge barrels of olives. The combination is haunting me ever since. In other words the odour of olives in oil I find rather revolting.

Nevertheless, I like dishes that are cooked with black olives. Although, I don't eat the olives.



But there is an exception to my avoidance of olives: Tapenade, the Provençal dish consisting of puréed or finely chopped olives, capers, anchovies and olive oil. It's just the perfect hors d’œuvre.



*In Sunday school we also had this collection box with a small black boy on the top, who bowed gratefully when you entered a coin. I don't think that is in use any more.

Mukhwas

This mission in India is over. I think I've accomplished for what I've been here *pats on the back*.

Here in India, after a meal one takes some Mukshwas as digestive aid and also to freshen the breath.



I reckon I'll need some (symbolic) Mukshwas too. I' can ponder what that might be until my flight will take off. There is sufficient time. I'm supposed to embark at 3:30am *yawn*.

Apple Waie

In a comment to an apple post by MartininBroda, naturgesetz wrote:

there's no better way to use apples than in a good old fashioned simple apple pie — just apples and sugar and pie crust, maybe the lightest touch possible of cinnamon and/or a drop or two of lemon juice, if you must. But it should taste of apples, not a lot of other stuff, and it doesn't need other ingredients to make it "interesting."

We have such a dish that might please naturgesetz' palate. It is called Wähe or Waie, which is Alemannic German. But there are various names for it. I personally call it Dünnle. I only know four other people who called by that name.

Whatever, a Waie is basically a short pastry shell with shallow sides, no top crust, and any of various fillings, such as fruits, cheese or onions.

This is how I make an Apple Waie:

I like baking but I loath making short pastry dough, thus I usually buy it ready made. I like the taste of whole grain flour for this dish, but my supermarket of choice has recently replaced that with an organic white flour version. Meh.

Put the flattened pastry on a buttered baking tray, pull up the edges a little and pierce the dough repeatedly with a fork. Sprinkle a thin layer of ground hazelnuts onto the dough.



Peel the apples, remove the core and cut to thin slices. It is not essential to use a gold-plated peeler, but it feels so much better. For the apples I recommend the Boskoop variety, or any type that is rather tart and keeps its shape when cooked. Arrange the apple slices like a shutter is constructed (or how would you describe this?)



For the filling I use 2 dl of cream, 1 egg, some vanilla sugar and some ground cinnamon. Beat it briefly but firmly before pouring it over the Waie.



Bake it for 25 to 30 minutes at 250°C/480°F.



My mother used to serve tea to Apple Waie (this was the only time we drunk tea at home besides of when being sick), however, it also goes perfectly well with some champagne.

Simple Pleasures - Oatmeal Soup

It is only 7 weeks until my Swiss compatriots will decide whether I will loose my job, be cast out and shoved into the lumpenproletariat*. Thus it seems appropriate to see if there is a life beyond hedonistic indulgence. Like today, when I decided not to go for the traditional Sunday roast and made some oatmeal soup instead.

Ingredients for 4 plates:

• 1 tbsp of oil
• 3 tbsp of oatmeal
• 0.8 litre of stock
• 1 small leek
• some bangers (which might only be permitted temporarily- to smooth the transition)

Heat the oil in a pan. Add the oatmeal and fry it for a bit, before you add the chopped leek. Reduce the heat and keep stirring until the leek has softened.



Add the stock. Season and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat, add the chopped bangers and let it simmer for 30 minutes.



Serve the soup with some bread. You should buy the bread a day in advance since people eat less bread, when it is a bit stale.

* The initiative for an export ban on Swiss arms is on the ballot of the November 29 polling. The other initiative, the Swiss will have to decide on that date is the prohibition of minarets in Switzerland. Both are amendments to the constitution. We Swiss have the tendency to put the weirdest things into the constitution. Like we constitutionally prohibited both Absinthe and the Society of Jesus, nevertheless, both have been legalized some years ago, since we Swiss apparently have gained in strength to withstands such threads to society. However, some seem to think that the Swiss are not quite ready for harmful effects of minarets, and that world peace might suffer due to my ingenious mind.

Sweet & Salty

When I visit my clan I usually bring something to eat. Mostly something I bake, since that's so much easier to carry on train & bus.

This weekend I tried 2 new cake recipes (yes, I use my family as guinea pigs) - a sweet and a salty variant.

The sweet is a blueberry pie. It is basically many blueberry muffins in a brick form.



The salty variant is a ham wrap cake.



Besides of ham it contains onions, tomatoes, gherkins, curd cheese, eggs, cheese, parsley and mustard.

In other family related news, a provisional date for my brother's wedding is set for September 18. The residence permit for his fiancée is still pending. However, our trip to Paris is cancelled. We will celebrate Toño's birthday in Switzerland, since Toño has been chosen by the love birds to be witness to the marriage.

And my sister passed the written test for her shunting locomotive driver license with 99% correct answers. The failed were related to electric locomotives. She plans to pilot only diesel ones and did not learn for those. Now she has to practice for the driving test. Stay clear of rails!

tomARTen

Yesterday, we went to a little bit different kind of art exhibition. Adoptive parents were growing 540 different varieties of tomatoes. The idea behind it was to give evolution a face.

Coincidentally the local natural history museum was founded 150 years ago, exactly when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The art project celebrating this is called tomARTen - an acronym of the two German words for tomatoes and species.

Our friends Anigna and Topo were among the adoptive parents and brought their three children for everybody to taste.



The three varieties were:

• Astrachanskije
• Aunt Gerti's Gold
• Dvorzovij (from the palace)

Out of the Astrachanskije Toño & I made some ceviche.



The ceviche was so well received, Toño even had to give an interview.



The day ended at Anigna's and Topo's garden, were we had some more tomatoes (we just can't get enough)...



... and just enjoyed a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Did Cooking Made Us Human?

This metamorphose amazes me time and time again. You take soemthing mother nature gave you...



...and simply by cooking, it turns into something with a different flavour, taste and texture.



But when did mankind came up with the idea of cooking? I searched the lovely net for an answer and couldn't find any useful. Researchers' opinions range from 2.3 million to 10'000 years ago. Wtf.

However while searching, I came across Richard Wrangham, who wrote a book called How Cooking Made Us Human, in which he claims that cooking of food made digestion easier allowing the early cooks to evolve smaller guts and larger brains. Or in other words, modern humans are highly evolved for eating cooked food and cannot live healthily for long on a strict raw food diet (read more about).

Feeding Our Inner Moloch*

Sometimes I really understand that Lunario is contemplating going vegetarian.



* Ancient Middle Eastern deity to whom children were sacrificed.

Stoned Cherries

1. We haven't got a cherry tree*; and
   
2. the cherry season is rather short; and
3. our kitchen is far too small,
   

thus it does not make any sense to get a fancy deluxe cherry stoner. But luckily, there is an alternative, which can be nicked at work: paper clips.



Fix the cherry with one hand and take the paper clip into the other. Stick the paper clip through the spot were the stem was attached, grab the stone with the tab on the front and lever the stone out of the fruit. Done.



I don't recommend to wear your best shirt. It can be really messy. I kind of recommend a Dexter approach to the stoning: wear gloves & uses easily cleanable surfaces.



* When I was a boy my clan used to have some cherry trees. That is where I learned how to fire a rifle, since it was my task to kill the cherry eating birds. Though I got into serious trouble when I killed a songbird. Hard to sort the wheat from the chaff on a tree when you're short sighted.

Well-Hung Cheese Cake

Toño likes cheese cake. Most probably because he is under the impression that cheese cake does not influence the waistline. Denial can be such a comfort.

However no matter how hard I tried, I was not able to please him. I tried numerous recipes, but none could appeal to Toño. Until this weekend when I found out that it has nothing to do with the recipes...



Last Thursday, my swim buddy, trained chef & fellow pooftah Beat gave me the decisive tip: let it rest in the cold. A cheesecake has to be treated like a steak. It should only be served well-hung.

This actually worked. A cheese cake must not be freshly made. Why didn't anybody tell me this earlier? It would have made my life so much easier.

Taboulé

Sorry, again a food post. But, inspired by a comment by Pilgrim and a tweet by Ms Mac we made Taboulé with some tuna steaks on the side.



Unfortunately we were out of Couscous (how did that happen?), but we still had some Bulgur, which I think is anyway the original way of making this dish.

Dinner @ Sternen Grill

You cannot always eat healthy, can you?



So tonight it was St. Galler Bratwurst and Servelat at the Sternen Grill.