Red Pears For Dessert

Some days ago, we cooked some pears in red wine, in some Rioja, just to be overly precise, but it doesn’t really matter, I think, the minute you put in the cinnamon stick and the cloves, it would be a little casting-pearls-before-swine-ish if you had opened a bottle of Château Pétrus especially. Not having one of these fancy bottles in the cellar anyway, I was quite secure not to spoil the swines I don’t own either. Anyway, whichever red wine you use, let the pears simmer at an almost boil for quite some time, just to make sure not only the aromas are allowed enough time to infuse properly but also the red wine’s red colour. I’m sure, these red parts are especially high in flavonoids and antioxidants so you can tell yourself poires au vin rouge is a very healthy dessert. Works with me. Maybe too well. Health and dessert appears so very contradictory a combination… Maybe that’s why I completely forgot about the pears twice: first on the oven, I only thought of them when it was way too late for dessert and by then most of the red wine had diffused into thin air (or rather rich air, the whole kitchen smelled of wine and spices), I had to add some fresh Rioja, and then a second time in the fridge, where subsequently the wine was allowed three whole days to infuse ever so completely. They tasted divinely! And as far as I’m concerned, it’s one more recipe to make it to 100. By the way, you don’t need a steak knife to cut them like in the photo, they’re ever so mellow and soft. It was just the only knife of our household not yet in the dishwasher… Anyway, Bon appétit, or rather Santé!

Advertisement

Christmas Gardening

Starting December 1st, at the very latest, everywhere you go everything is red and green. Or green and red. It’s not very original, but when it comes to traditions, I say to hell with originality! And so our front door gets decorated one more time in red and green despite being blue. Our garden shares this point of view, I think. There is no other explanation why all of a sudden everywhere in our garden everything is red and green. Or green and red. Isn’t it lovely?

The Boy Who Cried Pasta

There’s pasta and there’s… nothing! If it comes to pasta, I lose all objectivity, I forget all about any other meal, I always declare I will never ever eat anything else again. Like the boy who cried wolf, nobody believes me, but it’s true, nothing beats pasta, nothing is better, believe you me! As a proof, I stop writing right here and now, there’s nothing left to be said.

World Fruit Salad Day

When you’re on Instagram, you learn that every day is a very special day, there’s a day to remember everything and anything, the earth, cats, mothers, turtles, France, tattoos, allergies, beer, butterflies, and bamboo. Today, however, should be World Fruit Salad Day as I made one of my chaotic fruit mixes, consisting mostly of a giant ananas, two pears, a banana, an orange, rum raisins, walnuts, and some defrosted blueberries from the freezer that turned everything not-blue blue. For dressing, I consequently chose a blue one: a blend of Cointreau and crème de cassis, which turned out a strange chemical experiment. The blue blackcurrant liqueur just wouldn’t mix with the orange liqueur, just like oil and vinegar they stayed apart, and when I tried this bi-phase-mélange, it didn’t taste like neither of the liqueurs but like some old school cough sirup from some very secluded pharmacy somewhere high in the mountains, run by some old bearded fellow with a bow tie, like Breinmeier’s Est. 1543, do you know what I mean? Anyway, maybe today isn’t World Fruit Salad Day but World Bi-Phase Day…

Swedish Superfood

The Swedes are very happy people. They have Abba and Anders Celsius, great people as Donald Trump would call them, without them we would know nothing about Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and if we should put on a pullover when leaving the house or not, then there’s Queen Silvia, a very politically interested queen, she does a lot of charity work for underprivileged children, for the elderly and people suffering from dementia, there’s IKEA, too, I could not live without my BILLY book shelves, there’s Ingrid Bergman and Ingmar Bergman, Greta Garbo and Sofia Helin, one doesn’t need much more on one’s screen, there’s Stockholm and all these beautiful lakes to swim in naked, there’s Stieg Larsson and Arne Dahl to prevent one from sleep, then they know all about goals in life, as there are Pippi Långstrump aka Pippi Longstocking and the Nobel Prize, the most prestigious prize ever, if I ever got one, I would no longer talk to you just out of sheer arrogance (I’m kidding, of course I would still talk to you, I’d tell you all about my Nobel Prize, the night I got it, why I got it, how much I deserved it, and where I keep it, maybe on the mantelpiece), and last but not least (at all!), there’s gravad lax! If I were a salmon, I’d be deeply honoured to end up with sweet mustard and dill sauce on my toast, believe you me. Nothing is yummier!

The Soup That Left No Leftovers

One is supposed to eat all kind of colours on a daily basis to remain fit and healthy and quite good looking, green, red, orange, yellow, and whatever colours there are in vegetables and fruit. With red, I don’t have the slightest problem (see previous post), but sometimes I wonder whether my supply of anything green might in any way be questionable. For instance, I hate Granny Smith apples. Horrid specimen of green little helpers! They look like they came right out of a chemical lab from outer space, just the kind of apple Mr. Spock would love to have for a snack. But I keep digressing, anyway, just to kill two birds with one stone, I put all my eggs in one basket, meaning I made a stew out of some fine ever so organic beef bouillon, green peas, even greener beans, red peppers, orange carrots, and as I didn’t have anything yellow to add, I had to substitute some colourless cabbage for the health benefits any kind of yellow stuff would have let one profit from. Poor me. However, it tasted so fine that I ate it all up and should survive to a hundred and five.

Raspberries Revisited

Yesterday, quite out of the blue, I was confronted on Instagram with a photo I had posted years ago. Years! A fantastic little object of fine Swiss patisserie on one of my Royal Copenhagen plates. Obviously, I was still living in Zurich at that time, a time I was deeply and ever so hopelessly in love with everything the Swiss do to raspberries. At Vollenweider’s, for example, they sprinkle them with tiny pistaccio crumbs, des pistaches hachées ever so menues, just to enhance their aroma, just like what a glass of cool Sauternes does to strawberries, at least if we trust Sebastian Flyte, which I do, but I digress and on top, I’m quoting from Brideshead Revisited again, but any of Evelyn Waugh’s novels are forever stuck in my mind, so I have to ask for your forgiveness and to reread them all. Anyway, this delicious post had just gotten a new like after all these years, and by whom? By none other than the Vollenweider people themselves! I was most honoured to be reminded of what I’ve been missing in my life ever since I left Zurich… Damn!

A Nice Salad From Nice

Pardon my stupid unoriginal pun, I just couldn’t resist. Fact is, however, this salad’s recipe is originally from Nice, France, and secondly, it’s very nice a recipe, especially when served in summer on a hot day and spaghetti bolognese are just to heavy a meal to even think of. You might say now, that in November, temperatures are ever so moderate, and ask what kind of point I was trying to make, and in fact, you’re right, if served outside now, you might want to exchange your glass of red wine that goes ever so fine with for some mulled wine or punch in order to stay alive and/or unfrozen, but I still would have to remind you of the people from Down Under who are suffering from some rigid heat wave right now, so hot, they might actually wanna have their red wine served on the rocks. I have never quite understood why that actually is, they having summer when we have winter, something with the sun and rotation and blind sides and solstice and astronomical stuff such as that going on, but I digress. Anyway, salade niçoise, this lovely dish from Nice, France tastes fine in any season, at any time, with any ocean next to it, the Mediterranean Sea or the Pacific, but if you prefer some heat to go with it, just turn it on. Bon appétit!

Every Castle Should Have A Moat

Some days ago, or weeks rather, on one of these greyish autumn weekends, I visited a castle nearby in the beautiful region of Münsterland, a castle not so much known for its architectural significance, although having been around since the 11th century, the “new” main house with its splendid black and white shutters was built from 1540 to 1545, and not a single one of its many stones has ever crumbled, it’s only known for one of its residents, Baroness Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, a well known German author from the early 1800s. On January 12th, 1797, Burg Hülshoff was her place of birth, just imagine, at that time, in the late 1700s, the castle had already been over six hundred years old. Six hundred! The Frankfurt apartment my parents lived in when I was born, was merely 80 years old at that time and was already considered Altbau, meaning old architecture. I’m a sucker for tradition, as you might guess… Anyway, besides all this history and ancient glory, besides the little neo-Gothic chapel added in 1880, just imagine having your very own chapel to pray in, just like the marchioness of Brideshead in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited, what struck me most was the moat the castle is surrounded by. All that peace and quiet, protected by ever so tranquil a moat. Not even the ducks that are to be spotted here and there dare to make any noise. I really need one, too.

My Favourite Animal, The Duck

We’re all schizophrenic beings, I think. Otherwise, how could it be possible to name a duck your favourite animal, and still love the very same guy served for dinner, à l’orange or Peking or roast with some yummy sauce? As for sauces, I came up with a totally new one. Lots of rucola, haché menu, some garlic and spring onions, aka shallots, also chopped and minced in as tiny little pieces as you can manage, some fine aceto balsamico, from Modena of course, ever finer olive oil, from any Mediterranean origin, I prefer Sicily, lots of crushed white pepper, chillies, and some honey, not a lot, all of it gets stirred, not shaken, and you end up having the most aromatic condiment for your roast duck. It’s so good, you want to give it a name! Donald, or Daisy, or as you please. As I said, we’re all schizophrenics…