the birthday cake

today i want to share another heirloom with you - our classic birthday cake, the beloved käsekuchen. it is a recipe my mother got from her cousin who lived in australia for like 20 years. i have no idea if our recipe has been altered compared to the original from australia and i don't even know if this is a traditional australian thing. it might be american too ...

it is just the best cake ever.
really.
trust me.

and it is a pretty easy and quick recipe. you don't have to bake the cake, just make some room in the fridge!

i remember my mum made me a "regular" cake for my birthday once when i was a teenager and i was terribly disappointed - which mama noticed of course. i did not want to be an ungraceful teeny, but this cake is some sort of a ritual dish at any of our birthdays, and so my mama smilingly sneaked out for groceries and made the cheesecake later that day. she understood. because a birthday without the cheesecake is no birthday.

250 g graham crackers (just take plain butterkeks, it's the best!)
125 g melted butter
250 ml cream
250 g curd cheese
1 small can of crushed pineapples, drained (about 300 g)
3 tbsp of vanilla sugar (you can even skip this!)
10 g gelatine

01 crumble the crackers in a food processor and pour crumbs in a cake tin.
02 melt butter and mix with the cracker crumbs. press firmly in the tin until the cracker crust is very solid. chill until topping is ready.

03 in a bowl, combine cream and curd cheese until smooth, add sugar if you like (though it is not really necessary).
04 fold in the drained crushed pineapples.

05 let gelatine soak in a little water for a few minutes. drain exess water and let gelatine dissolve completely over low heat.
06 combine gelatine with the cream and pinapple mixture and quickly pour topping onto the cracker crust.
07 cover the cake and chill for at least 2 hours. (plus, i allowed myself a little *i heart you, mama*-decoration )
08 enjoy!

best.
cheesecake.
ever.

well, actually i did never try any other recipe. what about your killer cheesecake? do you want to share the recipe with me? i might want to expand the horizons of my cheesecake universe just a tiny little bit ... maybe there even has been a imbb-foodblog challenge for cheesecake recipes in the past ... for there must be a at least thousand different variations of the classic cheesecake ... hm ... worth a thought, don't you think? if i would ever want to host a foodblog event, this would be it!

technorati tags:cake, birthday, mama, 52, imbb

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a shepherd's pie situation

getting rid of my leftovers in a creative way is a number one task in my kitchen. so how can i make something nice of a leftover chicken leg from the evening before? here's what i did:

1st layer:
2 tomatos
2 bell peppers
a little teriyaki sauce
1 left over grilled chicken leg

2nd layer:
3 medium potatoes
cream
salt
parsley

01 cut up all the ingredients into tiny pieces, put in a pan an saute until tender
02 add a little teriyaki sauce for taste
03 cook potatoes and mash them
04 add cream and parsley to make smooth mashed potatoes
05 in a little dish first add a layer of the the cooked veggies and chicken
06 top with the mashed potatoes
07 voila, leftovers cooked shepherds pie-style!

its nice to see that i inherited the economic way of cooking my family has practiced for generations. does not taste bad at all and saves a lot of money :)

technorati tags: pie, potato, chicken, bell, pepper, tomato

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things to eat before you die

it has been going on for quite a while now and i did not expect to get tagged :) but ulrike tagged me! but give me a minute, that one is tricky ...

1.) jambalaya (preferably on location in the gulf coast area of the usa)
2.) white truffles (from piemont, italy)
3.) fried green tomatoes (again preferably on location in the usa)
4.) i could never live without good austrian farmhouse bread. good bread is a substancial part of my diet, it has been my culinary companion for all my life. i could feast on farmhouse bread (fresh from the oven) and plain tap water drawn from the springs of my hometown (freistadt draws its water from waterprotection areas around the town). it is soft, absolutely delicious and i can really tell a difference if i compare it to the tap water here in linz.
5.) there is a "taboo food and drink" section on wikipedia. though i could never eat a cat, a dog or a guinea pig, i have eaten rabbits before as my grandfather was breeding them when i was a little child. i was playing with them, sure, but when they ended up on the dinnertable they where not the fluffy little animals anymore, they where just food. incredibly tasteful food my grandma had prepared for us. i have to admit that the fluffy little rabbits where haunting me and i have not eaten much rabbit ragout anymore since i witnessed by accident that my favorite bunny was being slaughtered when i was like 5 years old. gosh, this is a horrible childhood memory ... but i was going somewhere with this last thing to eat before i die ... call me crazy, but i always wondered what some insects taste like (there even is a a scientific expression for "eating insects"). sure, i'd have to overcome my sense of disgust first but i think i might try one of these fried little buddies. after all, it is rather common to eat them in non-european cultures. try everything at least once, right?

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pumpkin soup with zucchini (hokkaidokürbissuppe mit zucchini)

my busy life almost made me abandon my nice little dinnertable here on the web ... but today i am taking on the challenge of cooking another thing i have never cooked before: pumpkin! this might even be strange for some austrians as pumpkin (rather pumpkin seed oil) is a culinary speciality of one of our austrian states, styria.

i don't actually have a recipe for that one. i cut up a medium size pumpkin, i hollowed out the middle part with the seeds. i did not peel it, because you can actually cook and eat the whole thing. i stir-fried rater large chunks of the pumpkin in a little vegetable oil for a moment and later added about 1 1/2 liters of plain water. i let it simmer on medium heat for half an hour. when the chunks were soft enough i mashed the whole thing up with a hand blender. i only added some salt to season to taste. i grated about 1/3 of a zucchini and put it on the soup for garnish, but as i was tasting the soup i figured the zucchini can be mixed in as well. this gives the dish a lovely chunky note and a fine taste too. i also added some creme fin as a garnish on the plate, but if you don't plan on taking pretty pictures for you weblog you can mix in the grated zucchini and the creme during cooking. this would make perfect sense, and if i wasn't so focused on the visual part of a nice picture of my soup i would have done it myself :)

it might be a bit silly to cook an ingredient for the first time and not use a recipe whatsoever, but i wanted it to taste as pure as possible. i have been making soups of chunky vegetables before so i thought i can benefit from my experiences and handle a pumpkin the same way. it actually pays off to try things your way rather than stick to a recipe in every little detail. well, this is my cooking style (an inherited one ...) after all and while i succeed most of the time things can go terribly wrong if you are too careless. then again, i did not only inherit this style of cooking from my mum and my grandmother, i also inherited a bunch of valuable tricks that come in very very handy if you accidentally screw up a dish. i turned many mishaps in my kitchen into successful meals thanks to the valuable legacy of emergency assistance the ladies in my family passed on to me.

i don't have to be afraid of something getting burned, for example. of course i don't set out to ruin my meals but if i get carried away with other things during cooking (mostly digging around on the internet) i am safe to say that i have some neat tricks to rescue anything burned, too salty, to spicey or whatever. so while my soup was boiling away on the stove i was looking on the internet about the history and botanic classification of my organic food, because i usually like to have a little background of whatever i eat. especially if i cook something for the first time. zucchinis and pumpkins for example are actually in the same plant family (cucurbitaceae). i was pretty surprised to learn that they are considered a fruit and not a vegetable. i guess it's because we usually cook pumpkins and zucchinis in a savory way. in some germanspeaking parts of europe the expression "cucumber-pumpkin" is also common for the zucchini (i have never heard of it though). now that i look at my zucchini it suddenly resembles a pumpkin a lot ... hm, strange ...

see? i can get carried away or i can learn new things about my food durning cooking. some might consider this sloppy, i think it's freestyle and very self-confident. well, i think i am in a pretty talkative (writeative?) mood today and before i ramble on for even more paragraphes i think i should grab the ladle and eat some more of my delicious soup!

jam again: plum and cinnamon

those rainy weekends are just perfect for making jam and preserve the spirit, taste and texture of this years pretty hot summer for rainy fall and snowy winter. this year went by so fast, i can hardly belive it. i can preserve summer in a little jar though :)

technorati tags: jam, marmalade, marmeade, zimt, cinnamon, zwetschke, plum

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what better way to celebrate post no. 100 ...

... than making salted macadamia millionaire’s shortbread

(16 squares) (recipe from waitrose food illustrated)

125 g salted butter, plus some extra for greasing
50 g caster sugar
175 plain flour
150 g roasted and salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

toffee filling and chocolate topping
100 g caster sugar
115 g salted butter
200 g condensed milk
2 tbsp golden syrup
200 g milk chocolate, chopped
50 g white chocolate, melted

01 preheat the oven to 150 °c
02 line a 23 cm square cake tin with greaseproof paper
03 rub the butter, sugar and flour together in a bowl until it forms a very stiff, crumbly dough
04 press into the tin and press the nuts on top
05 bake for 30-35 minutes until lightly golden
06 cool
07 meanwhile, make the toffee by slowly melting the sugar and 100 g butter for 10 minutes until thick and bubbling.
08 add the condensed milk and golden syrup and bring to a gentle boil, stirring constantly.
09 reduce the heat and stir the mixture vigorously for 5-10 minutes, scraping the sides and bottom of the pan, until the toffee is thick and golden. if brown patches start to appear, add a drop of condensed milk
10 pour over the shortbread and set for 20 minutes in the fridge
11 boil 4 tbsp water in a pan, take off the heat and stir in the milk chocolate with the remaining butter until melted.
12 spread over the toffee.
13 chill for 2 hours
14 drizzle melted white chocolate from a teaspoon
15 cut into squares with a hot knife
16 voilá, death by chocolate & fudge!

it has been a good ride so far, i have made lots of new friends. thumbs up for another 100 posts!

don't throw me away, please!

over the last few years i have become more and more aware of global coherencies, especially concerning food and its industrial production. i was raised in a working class family and i was always very aware of the fact that some people have more and some people have less - mostly because i always was at the "lesser" end of the stick. i was used to wear clothes that family friends had withdrawn from their closets. as a teenager this started to bother me, but i guess that was just typical teenage behaviour. still, i never considered our family as "poor".

i always admired the fact that everyone in my big family had good economic sense. nothing was ever wasted (might be a relic of the postwar generation). i am a bit of a hunter-gatherer myself, i have a pretty hard time throwing stuff away :). as far as economic sense is concerned our women where certainly cooking very economically in the kitchen. hardly a thing was thrown out. i have virtually never seen anything rotten in the kitchens of my mother, my grandmother or my aunts.

i have intuitively lived by this rule while i was in my parent's household. but when i moved out i became rather careless about my food and for a few years. i must have thrown out unbelievable quantities of rotten food because i was not able to propperly keep house. but after some years of juvenile flippancy i started to think again. i eat fruits an vegetables when they are in season. i don't have my strawberries shipped around the world. i even became very interested in more extreme alternative lifestyles contrary to the throwaway society. freeganism for example. but since i am not really attracted by hardcore lifestyles (not interested anymore ... being way past my punk/grunge teenage days) i figured i have to follow a more moderate path. of course, mangos don't grow in my backyard and i buy them in spite of that. but to me it's becoming more and more important to support local organic farmers and their products. i can not throw my money out the window either, i am not very wealthy after all, but i don't mind to pay a little more for my locally grown food. to me it's becoming more and more important to lead an economically and environmentally sustainable life. i still know that i will not waste any of my food and that i will not have it laying in my fridge till it starts to crawl out of there by itself. every cent is well invested.

and in the tradition of my "i-never-throw-anything away"-family it's time to rescue some plums i had in my farmer's box almost two weeks ago and send them to their final destination ... my stomache!

so here's my plum dumplings & plum compote:

guilty pleasure

the other day i met lovely johanna from the passionate cook. she was in linz for a couple of days and she agreed on a little "date" at the most viennese kaffeehaus in all of linz. she was so very nice and generous to bring me many fine things - incredible wasabi-covered peanuts, very fancy chocolates, supergood marmelade and (magazine junkie flipping out-mode!) english cooking magazines.
and stupid me did not bring anything. how could i show up to an encounter with a foodie without at least a few little delicious things? (well, i payed her way in the kaffeehaus at least) .
i have been browsing the magazines and checking out the recipes over the last few days, and i came across a handy little conversion table of metric, imperial and american weights and measures. i always have trouble with converting measurements because most of the time i don't really stick to recipes. i will keep this one within easy reach for my next international cooking experiment!
and i will share some of the recipes of those supercool magazines in the very near future ... though the pictures in the magazines are a little intimidating as far as "foodography" is concerned. the recipes sure are all just to die for! i am already indulging in some very guilty pleasures ... i think i will try a naughty little salted macadamia millionaire's shortbread next week ... i first need to rush to the supermarket and get the ingredients for toffee filling and choclate topping ... *yummy*

EBBP#5

my busy day today actually took my mind off euro blogging for once. i hadn't thought of it all day but as i was just coming home being really exhausted and going throug my mail i found a note from mr postman! he wanted to deliver a parcel from sweden, oh my god, check this out! silly me, i go to work instead of waiting at the porch for my parcel!! first thing tomorrow i will head to the post office to pick up my present from scandinavia ... yeah, i am really excited. i have not figured out yet who sent the parcel because mr postman's handwriting is really bad ... stay tuned, i'll post about it tomorrow.

it'll be a full scandinavian day tomorrow. my sister is staying at my place tonight and a parcel from sweden will be the perfect kickstart for our day at ikea!

plus, we will also meet johanna tomorrow, she's in linz for a few days ...

update:

i have been a fan of hers ever since i started foodblogging and as i was rushing to the postoffice this morning it turnes out a lovely parcel from anne was waiting for me!

and how generous she is, incredible!

anne included a lovely note where she told me why she had picked out the things she sent me.

• dried strawberries (strawberries = summer)
  
• dried green iranian raisins (how exquisit!)
  
• chocolate covered sunflower seeds (extremely addictive!)
  
• pocky (yeah, pocky! unfortunately you can't get them in austria)
  
• sesame honey cakes (i just love sesame!)
  
• crisp bread "hales" (perfect, savory crackers are amazing!)
  
• biscotti with lavendar, almonds and chocolate (how thoughtful of you to include selfmade food)
  

thanks, i am really happy that you sent me so many lovely (and delicious) things! i hope you got "the perfect parcel" too, because i sure got my perfect one!

technorati tags: ebbp#5, ebbp5, ebbp

yay!

my parcel arrived safe and sound at aubergine's place in hungary!

obsessive-compulsive "waiting-for-my-parcel" disorder

as i am sitting here thinking about a parcel on its way to linz every single minute (especially after my sister already got hers) i figured i need to get my mind off of it for a little while. and what's a foodie got to do? of course! i need to cook something!

"sort of" pizza margherita

for the dough i was combining 150 g of flour with some salt and half a pack of dry yeast. i made a smooth dough with half a cup of lukewarm water and a little olive oil. after kneading it for a few minutes i let it rise for 20 minutes. in the meantime i cut up one onion and 5 tomatoes and made some fried-tomato-and-onion gravy. i placed the dough on my little baking tray and spread the tomato/onion gravy on the dough and covered it with mozarella.

very yummy.

still ... now that i am sitting here enjoying my litte mini-margherita i am starting to dream about euro blogging by post again ... talk about me being obsessed ... i might just be your regular crazy foodblogger though ... :)

all my prayers have finally been heard!

the one thing i was extremly keen on during my time in london where vinegar chips. when i went back there a few weeks ago the first thing we ate where in fact vinegar chips. over the past 10 years (gosh, i'ts been a long time since i've lived in london!) i have never ever seen them anywhere, neither here in austria nor on any trips i made around europe. you can imagine my excitement today when i found "sea salt & balsamic vinegar" at my local supermarket. i can't wait to try them tonight, i bet they taste fantastic.

i'm beginning to notice that it takes about ten years for all the products, flavours and "trends" that surrounded me in 1996/1997 in london to finally be available here in austria.

interesting.

my mama knows me soooo well ...

now that i am thirty and i have been moving out of my parent's ten years ago i notice that my mother still knows me very very well. a few weeks ago i told her that some of my herbs are slowly dying and how i'd rather have a blooming variety of different herbs instead of some half dead stalks. i never had the time though (or was i too lazy?) to get myself some herbs or some decent soil to plant them new.

thank god my mama knows me so well! she knew that i would not manage to extend my herb garden. since she still likes to be involved a lot in her children's lives (she is a real clucking hen!) she tends to take care of the little things we don't manage to take care of. today she does not mingle too much with the sometimes very different lifesstyles of her children. when i was a teenager though her efforts often seemed like she wanted to control every single aspect of my life. that made me crazy and i am really glad that she learned to let go (and i learned to appreciate her good intentions). she now focusses on peanuts (important peanuts!) rather than where i should live and what i should do with my life ... yeah, my mama is a very dominant woman and i have to admit that it was a relief once i cut the very strong umbilical cord and moved out.

i am her only child living away from our little hometown and i am glad that she still has my sister and my brother around to bug instead of me :) they sometimes complain about the nagging of our mama and i always tell them that they should move as far away from her as they can in order to appreciate what she does for us ... i think she sacrificed a lot in her life to make things better for her children.

so as my parents visited me last saturday my mama brought me a whole bunch of new herbs - herbs i have never even heard of! she must have noticed that all i ever talked about was parsley, chives and basil.

i am all set now with marjoram, anthriscus, thyme, parsley, rosemary and a special kind of basil, which is called basil lime (ocimum americanum).

having a colorful mixture of differnt herbs at hand all the time makes even plain old potatoes incredibly delicious and truly is an enrichment for all of my dishes!

pudding from scratch

why did i always think making homemade cocoa pudding was difficult? it's not more difficult than ripping open a pack of dr. oetker chocolate pudding powder, actually! i found a recipe for cocoa pudding the other day at the tea-time blog and i was absolutely thrilled that it was totally easy and quick to have myself a little homemade pudding.

don't get me wrong, i do not shun finished products or convenience food from my kitchen, but i more and more like to look behind the scenes every once in a while. i'd like to know how a dish is actually made rather then shove it down my throat in an attack of the munchies. using instant products normally is way quicker than using the real thing (i guess i never ever prepared vegetable stock for a dish, i always use the instant one!) - but in the case of this pudding "the real thing" is even quicker and muuuuuch much more delicious:

500 ml milk
4 tbsp starch
2 tbsp cocoa
3 tbsp sugar

01 mix starch and cocoa with the cold milk and bring to a boil while constantly stirring
02 add sugar shortly before the mixture starts to boil
03 remove from the stove as soon as it starts to bubble
04 thoroughly whisk for a few minutes (i used a hand blender) until the kokoa creme is cooling down
05 pour in little cups and sprinkle with some pistachios, flakes or any other garnish you like ...

great recipe, quick satisfaction for my sweet tooth!

technorati tags:pudding, cocoa

i am really looking forward to ebbp#5

on this weekend we're supposed to compile a parcel according to the theme "taste of summer" ... can't wait to send it off to its destination somewhere in europe ... this time cooksister is hosting the event.
although i was pretty sceptical at first because of the fiasco that happended to my parcel last time, i finally made up my mind and i also convinced my very own little cook sister (who practically is a foodblog virgin) to participate! i also was very inspired by the parcel i got from christina at ebbp#4. i found it particularly sweet that she included something homemade (pesto, baby!) and i decided to do the same for my addressee this time. so i am making a batch of "marillenmarmelade mit schuss" (apricot jam with a lacing of rum) in order send it off to ******* tomorrow ...

technorati tags: ebbp#5, ebbp5, ebbp

you grow girl, day four

an overnight explosion in my jar! i've never seen them grow so quickly ...

you grow girl, day three

the heat and the humiditiy here in austria seems to accelerate the growing of my sprouts dramatically ... usually it takes about 4 days for them to get that big!

you grow girl, day one

i have to admit, that i have no idea what "sprossen ziehen" is in english. can anybody help me out here? i am throwing seeds of fenugreek, lentils and radish in a jar and after letting them soak for a few hours you can see them grow ... after 3-5 days the sprouts taste marvellous on salads or even on toast ...

steaming, baby!

though i am very inspired by all you fellow foodbloggers out there i am often turning to www.chefkoch.de when i have to make use of various "leftover" things in my kitchen. so i was again going through their files in order to find a recipe for my swiss chard. i was immediatley convinced that i need to combine it with fish and dill ... though dill is not my favorite herb (in fact, i stopped eating it when i was a teenager) i figured that since i had it in my veggie-box this week i could again try if i might like it today ... and i was surprised that i hadn't liked dill for so long, because it is the perfect herb for steamed fish&steamed veggies!

3 frozen pieces of cod
salt, pepper, nutmeg
200 ml vegetable stock
300 g swiss chard
150 g cremefin (or sour creme)
3 tbsp dill

01 heat vegetable stock in a wok
02 clean swiss chard and cut into smaller pieces if necessary (i like big chunks!)
03 place in wock, cover with a lid and steam for abtou 10 minutes
04 add the frozen pieces of cod and steam for another 15 minutes
05 when the fish is done take vegetables and fish out of the wok and set aside
06 add cremefin (or sour creme) to the stock, add dill, season to taste and reduce until the sauce is getting really creamy
07 arrange the swiss chard and the fish on a plate and drizzle with dillsauce

after posting my pictures to flickr i was a little worried, because a fellow flickr-user pointed out, that cod actually is on a greenpeace list for endangered species ... though i think too that it makes more sense to use ingredients from local producers rather than having your piece of fish shipped around the globe, i would have my troubles with using carp or trout in my everyday cooking. i take pity in the poor fish when i have to cut off their heads and take out their guts ... i'd rather have my dead animals without their actual heads, eyes and guts. if i'd have to kill animals myself in order to get my meat, i guess i would be a vegetarian ... or i would probably eat spiders, because these are the only creatures i don't hesitate to knock off (bah, disgusting thought ... but maybe, if i fry them, and with a little seasoning, they would not even taste bad at all *ggg*)

technorati tags: chard, cod

EBBP#5 - the taste of summer

cooksister ist hosting EBBP#5 and i am in a moral conflict.

on the one hand i'd really like to get a surprise parcel by a fellow foodblogger. the first parcel i got on EBBP#4 was supercool!

but on the other hand my attempt to send david something nice turned out a disaster. i am still disappointed and i guess my adressee was disappointed too when he discovered that the thing i sent where totally rummaged by mice ... putting much effort (and money!) in the parcel and seeing it destroyed is not very funny ...

the thought of a surprise is very tempting, but i think i don't want to join in this time ...

technorati tags: ebbp#5, ebbp5, ebbp

bountiful harvest

looking at my gorgeous gemüsekiste was quite a surprise today. fantastic blueberries! i haven't eaten them since i was a kid and we picked them ourselves in the forrest. as i was going through the box "mmmmh"-ing and "aaahh"-ing i suddenly found myself with an unknown vegetable. it looked like spinach or salad ... being at my wit's end i decided to send my mother a snapshot. of course she came to the rescue. the mysterious vegetable is swiss chard. learned from the master (a.k.a. my mother) and i guess the master has to teach me another recipe containing mangold now ...

a rehearsal lunch

i am afraid of yeast.

honestly.

yeas is an ingredient i have never used before because i really think yeast is always getting out of control no matter if i precisely stick to a recipe. i've watched the women in my family cook with yeast like a million times, and i was always terrified by the duplication of the dough's volume.

i might not fully understand the concept of yeast. this is a "living" ingredient and i guess that's what makes it so uncontrollable for me. you never know what those little fungi are about to do. is it to cold for them to rise? am i killing them by pouring too hot fluids over?!

well. today i was taking on the challenge and overcoming my fear of the fungus.

as my sister and my brother are coming over on saturday and i have never ever made anything with yeast before i needed to make sure that the lunch my sister "ordered" was turning out fine. i mentiones before that we give eachother little presents for no reason and my sister gave me a lovely (and again colorful! yeah!) oven/serving dish that perfectly fits for a single household like mine. and the dish is perfect for buchteln, as she told me.

so i will rehearse a recipe for sweet yeast dumplings and berries for lunch today because i want to try out whether the fungus will obey me.

buchteln
200 ml milk
60 g butter
375 g flour
1 pkt of yeast
50 g sugar

01 sieve flour into a bowl
02 add sugar to the bowl
03 warm up milk and let butter melt in the warm milk (leave a little of that mixture to pour on the dumplings later)
04 dissolve yeast the fluid and pour over the flour/sugar mixture
05 add one egg and combine to a smooth dough
06 cover bowl and let dough rise for about 40 minutes at a warm place
07 the dough should be easily removed from the bowl
08 knead dough and make little dumplings
09 place them in a greased oven dish. arrange the dumplings closely, touching each other.
10 cover and let rise again for about 20 minutes
11 pour over the rest of the milk/butter mixture
12 bake for 30 minutes at about 200°C

berries:
300 g frozen berries
50 g sugar
1 tbsp starch
50 ml water

01 heat berries in a small pan
02 combine water and starch, add to the berries and bring to the boil
03 pour the berries over the dumplings while still hot

though the dumplings where not as fluffy as i would have liked them to be, they tasted quite okay for my first ever yeast-experience.

technorati tags: yeast

a little update:

my second experience with yeast was finally a winner! while i was on skype with my sister and my mom (her first time skyping *alone*) they both suggested to be more patient and let the dough rise a couple more times. i guess that was the whole trick!! i can't wait to have those little babies for breakfast tomorrow!

traditions, memories, changing habits and a recipe

angelika from the flying apple had a nice quote on her page yesterday: "the united states and great britain are two countries seperated by the same language".

one thing i was always strangely proud of was my dialect (you can probably compare it to the thick southern accent of some americans which not everyone who knows english is able to understand). i grew up in rural austria, in the north of the country in a region known as the "böhmerwald" (bohemian forest). i think i mentioned my strong bohemian influence in the kitchen before. there's a sarcastic comment used a lot in our region: "standard german is the first foreign language you need to learn". i always found this was actually true. nothing is as hard as being eight years old and having to answer questions by word of mouth in proper german. our teachers really had to drill us back then in the 80s ... today this is practically irrelevant because kids grow up with both standard german and dialect and most of them are not shy at all to switch to standard german. i was always pretty embarassed if i had to lose my dialect because i simply was unexercised - there was never really a need to speak standard german until senior grades. i had to communicating a paper to the class every once in a while but i never really had to do the talking part in standard german.

i was entering a whole new world when i finally moved to the bigger cities of upper austria after school. and three years ago i moved to the provincial capital of upper austria, linz. ever since i have settled here things have changed a lot and i was rather oblivious to that. i still talk mostly dialect, but now that i am taking my vocational baccalaureat diploma in arts my friends come from all parts of austria and germany as well. and i have to adjust my talking a little. sometimes a lot, and sometimes i have to really speak propper german in cheerful talks or private conversations if i want fellow students from the ukraine, serbia, or even vorarlberg to understand me. vorarlberg is a federal state of austria whose dialect is pretty much schwyzerdütsch (swiss german). i often whip out my best german and this fellow student from vorarlberg only notices his relapse into his dialect by the questionmarks floating over my head.

i hadn't really noticed that the same thing happens from time to time when i am with my folks back home. my articulation really has changed and my folks unconsciously call intention to the fact that i modified my vernacular. they raise their eyebrows when i use "sprechen" instead of "redn". and only that reaction makes me notice that i have shunt another dialect word from my vocabulary. of course, give me one afternoon and i fall back into my dialect as though nothing had happened.

one thing i painfully realized lately is that i substitute the beloved word "erdapfel" (earth apple) with the standard german "kartoffel" a lot. erdäpfel are a staple food cultivated by virtually every household in the smaller villages of the bohemian forest. my grandfather still stores his potatoes in an "erdkeller", a cellar near the house excavated around 1900. it is located on a hillside and has a stone-vault and a time-worn wooden door. this cellar always was a magical place for me, my siblings and cousins. we would always sit on top of the hill with the cellar underneath us pretending that gnomes and dwarfs where living behind the wooden door of the cellar ...

(thank you for taking the pictures, karin)

my grandfather wants to give up this earth cellar as it is getting too difficult for him to store his potatoes and wine far away from the house. i think this is pretty sad as there are so many childhood memories connected with this magical spot. i hope he just leaves the cellar empty instead of really flatten the area in one go and also destroy the nearby meadow arranged as a garden by my late grandmother.

every member of the family currently is using up the big pile of potatoes in the earth cellar from the last harvest. and now we actually get to the point of my rampant post. i have an easy savoury potato spread for you that has a long tradition, especially in rural areas of austria. we mostly eat it as a snack with bread, a "jause", which is a light meal taken in the afternoon. today the spread is very popular for barbecues or parties: it's the famous "erdäpfelkås"

(about 20 servings)
1 kg potatoes
250 g sour cream (i use cremefin instead)
250 g onions
salt, pepper, parsley, chives

01 cook potatoes and let cool down
02 peel cold potatoes and mash roughly (using a fork)
03 chop onions very finely and combine with potatoes in a bowl
04 add sour cream / cremefin, add herbs and season to taste

technorati tags:recipe, potato, potatoes, onion, onions

oh my god, somebody stop me please!

i am going all domestic right now with that newfound inspiration for cooking. i have never made jam for example - and right now - guess what - i am making jam. actually, it might be marmalade, i have no idea what the correct definition is. in german this would be "pfirsichmarmelade" and i can't wait to put some on my toast tomorrow morning.

i guess i am finally ready to be a housewife. and since the way to a man's heart is through his stomach i only need to find myself a decent stomach now ... oh, sorry, i meant man, so we can eat, drink and be merry ...

oh and, thanks nerissa, i forgot to mention that this is actually peach marmalade :)

technorati tags: jam, marmalade, marmelade, peach, pfirsich