strudel, the sequel

apfelstrudel

i have made a couple of strudel's here, but i never managed to make a decent apfelstrudel before. finally i have an excuse for making one: i am currently collecting austrian goodies to send of a parcel to the lovely kate in america. she kindly offered to swapp food and i could not be more thrilled about that. kate, if you read this: i know you sent off the parcel already and i should have mine ready over the next couple of days. just in case you want to make an apfelstrudel when the austrian parcel finally lands on your porch ... here's a recipe! i just phoned my mama to get the recipe for my grandmothers strudel dough.

strudel dough
250 g flour
salt
2 tbsp vegetable oil
150 ml lukewarm water

these measurements actually yield one large or two small strudels. i divided the large ball in two small balls, using one for my apfelstrudel. i store the second one in my fridge (wrapping it in plastic wrap) and make a savory strudel tomorrow

filling
400 g peeled, cored and thinly sliced apples
4 tbsp of sugar
2 teaspoon of cinnamon
a hand full of raisins (my mama never uses rasins, she hates them!)

• sift the flour into a large bowl
• add a pinch of salt
• pour in the oil and lightly scramble with a fork.
• slowly add the lukewarm water (you might need less or more than 150 ml, it depends on your flour)
  
  
  
• knead until soft and smooth
  
  
  
• brush with a little oil
• cover the bowl with a towel and let the dough rest for at least one hour

my mama always lets the strudel dough rest for a couple of hours. i think that does the trick, because elasticity is developed by all the gluten, and that takes a little time! she often makes the dough in the evening and prepares the strudel the next day.

when you stretch your strudel by hand it should be paper thin! my grandmother always said "you should be able to read a newspaper through it". the best way to stretch it is if you put a large towel or an old table cloth on your table and you should be able to easily move around the table to stretch it evenly on each side

apparently stretching strudel is an art of it's own. don't worry, mine always has some holes in it on the edges ... only my mama can do that propperly (and my grandmother could, of course), i am just not that experienced yet :D my sister is also mastering this art quite nicely. she made a strudel the other day when i visited, check out the pictures i made that day:

• brush the stretched strudel dough with melted butter
• add the filling but leave some space on the edges
• sprinkle apples with sugar, cinnamon and raisins
• some recipes also require toasted breadcrumbs. if you want to add that, just toast 50 g of breadcrumbs in a little butter and sprinkle them over the filling too
  
• lift up the table cloth to roll the strudel
  
  
  
• make sure that you roll the first layer pretty tightly, otherwise it will get bent out of shape
• put your strudel in buttered a casserole, the seam should be on the bottom
• brush with melted butter again
  
  
  this one looks a bit like a catterpillar, don't you think?
  
  
• put in the oven and bake at 200 °c until the surface is golden brown. the apples will be tender then

i let the studel cool down completely because i had to leave for work while the strudel was still in the oven. and coming home to a nice plate of this delicious treat is indeed very lovely!

a sparse meal on a holy day

it might be a catholic guilt thing or i might not be as agnostic as i like to believe, but on high catholic holidays like today i celebrate a day of abstinence. i even avoid to eat meat, mainly because this dogma has been rammed down my throat all my life. i have to admit that i bought and ate a turkey bacon sandwich today before i remembered it was good friday. and i felt a tiny bit guilty because of that too. again, this must be my catholic upbringing :D

i was not allowed to eat meat on good friday growing up and i was always pretty upset about this. as i might have mentioned before i only know the bare necessities of my faith. apart from an extensive interest around the time of my confirmation i just never was a very religious person, i was not raised that way. but i highly admire people with a strong faith, whatever faith that is. and i am really interested in various different religions.

so while we where not raised particularly religious i found it always pretty strange that my mother was so strict about those specific days of abstinence.

over the years i found my own meaning in those days: serenity. i try to reflect and recollect. and i try to reinforce my state of mind with traditional food i know from my childhood, a very sparse meal of topfensterz for example.

it is hard to really describe topfensterz. a sterz is similar to polenta, it is a very simple dish, very rural and very austrian. it has probably been eaten by farmers and servants out on their fields for a few centuries. many variations exist, it is mainly made of buckwheat in styria, made of cornmeal in carinthia and known by the name of frika in slovenia. it can also be made of potatoes.


our family sterz is made of curd cheese though. i have never seen anyone prepare this sterz just like we do, but apparently it is heavily influenced by bohemian cuisine. it seems that up to this day my family is deep-rooted in rural history, and i really like that idea.

topfensterz

500 g curd cheese
500 g flour
1 egg
salt
3 tbsp of butter - usually 5 tbsp of lard are used here, but i don't have that in my kitchen and 5 tablespoons would be way to much for my taste ...

1. melt the butter in a casserole - put it in the oven while you preheat it to 200°c
2. crumb together the curd cheese, the flour and the egg
   
   
   
3. add a pinch of salt
4. make sure that the mixture stays crumbly
5. pour it in the casserole and give it a quick stir
6. put the mixture in the oven and bake until the top starts to get brown
7. turn off the oven. tear up the crust and stir the sterz
8. leave in the oven for another few minutes
9. serve with a glass of milk - the sterz tastes best (in my opinion) if you dip a spoon full of sterz in the milk and then eat it .... mhhhh!

my sterz looks a bit different from the sterz my mother makes.
but still, it tastes the same

the 5th day

this has been my traditional maudy thursday meal for the last 30 years ... well, this is how i remember it anyway. and i think everybody in austria is eating this today. you see, in german maudy thursday is "green thursday". and though i am not particularly religious in a roman catholic way the holy week leading to easter has always been one of my favorite catholic holidays. to me, it still is even more special than christmas. maybe it is because of all the spring awakening and nature getting back in bloom ... i always especially liked that all the bells of a church are rung for a last time on maudy thursday and they then remain silent until easter sunday.

because what i really liked about those few days was that there is this very rural tradition of "ratschen" where i was brought up. it pretty much translates to "rattle". a ratsche is a very noisy (not quite musical) instrument and it is used during christian processions from maudy thursday to easter sunday. little kids make as much noise as possible with this instrument in order to replace the bells that have flown to rome. as a child, i always thought that was literally true. but how could bells fly themselves, i wondered ... i think i was a naive child :D (or maybe i was just plain dumb back then!)

up to this day i really like the rememrance of us kids running around the village where my grandparents lived and being as noisy as we could. most of the time we where told to be quiet and behave well ... around easter we where told to run around and be noisy - how fun is that, huh??! very often we even got easter eggs and chocolate from the neighbours ... it was a bit like going trick or treat-ing, now that i think of it ...

though this tradition is not practiced where i live today (after all, this is a city and not a village or a small town) i fondly remember it and i can't wait to get home this weekend and admire the noisy children all around town ...

on the more culinary subject of gründonnerstag i think i am going to eat what has been on my plate for 30 years on that green day: spinach, fried egg (sunny side up) and fried potatoes. it is a lovely culinary tradition, so why break with it? one exception though: instead of a frozen cube of creamspinach i am going to use fresh spinach this time. i have some lovely spinach in my farmbox this week, so i just go ahead and use that to make the cream spinach myself.

i blanched 300 g of spinach and let the water drip off completely
i put the blanced leaves in a food processor and mashed them up
i made a roux / bechamel sauce:

1. i melted 50 g of butter
   
2. i added 2 tbsp of flour
   
3. i poured in 250 ml of cremefine
   (the sauce will thicken as you bring it to a boil, just like a bechamel sauce)

i added the minced spinach and i was bringing it to a boil again
i seasoned it with a clove of garlic and some nutmeg


voila, home made cream spinach!
nothing on earth is better than that.

hello sweetie!

boy oh boy, i feel like the energizer bunny today!

i did tons of laundry (ooooohh, i am so looking forward to "clean sheets night" !!!). i cleaned my fridge and defrosted the ice compartment and currently i am in the middle of re-organizing the shelves in my living room. i will also totally tidy up the bedroom today!

i think i deserve a little reward in the middle of all this spring cleaning mania ... so i sit down for a minute and browse through those amazing cheesecakes from HHDD#10 because some of those recipes (actually, *all* of them) caught my attention and are on my "to do" list ...

but you see, i bought this fabulous cake tin the other day and while a cake from this silicone thingy would look really cute ... stupid me! did not realize at all that i'd have to fill this mould upside down, which is kind of a handicap if you prepare a cheesecake ... how on earth should i prepare a cracker crust that way?

so what now? i really like the soft / crumbly combination of most cheesecakes, but i have not found an "upside-down"-version of the cracker crust yet ... so should i just ditch the crust? i think i should! because i need something cute today - and my pretty mould will give me a cute little cake anyway!

all the pictures are really stunning! they all make my mouth water ... instead of flipping a coin i guess i should just go check if i have the ingredients for one of these gorgeous cakes in my fridge!

... i swear, i shrieked when i saw this one over at "the garlic press" - and i am oh so happy that i actually have what it takes to reproduce it (ingredients, that is!).

so here's my twist on the recipe! as always, i took the original recipe as an inspiration rather than something i must religiously obey. especially because the capacity of my mould is only 3 cups, so i need to do some scaling as well as higher mathematics ... you know by now that all these ounces, gramms, cups and what not always have me confused ... (though i have some nifty online tools by now!)


(would you stop taking pictures?!? lick that bowl already, you fool!!)

chocolate truffle cheesecake
inspired by this one by sarah at "the garlic press"

200 g 4,5% cottage cheese
200 g cream cheese (philadelphia)
100 g sugar
50 g unsweetened cocoa powder
25 g starch
2 large eggs
30 g chocolate, melted
pinch of salt
1/2 tbsp instant coffee dissolved in 1 tbsp of hot water


(these ingredients yield exactly 3 cups)

1. preheat oven to 200 °c
2. puree cottage cheese in a food processor until very smooth
3. add cream cheese and blend
4. pour into a bowl and whisk in sugar, cocoa and starch
5. add the eggs, the coffee, the pinch of salt and the melted chocolate
   
   
   
6. pour in a little silicone baking mould
   
   
   
7. bake the cheesecake until the edges are set (about 45 minutes)
   
8. let cool and garnish with chocolate drizzle ...

actually, i have no idea how to get this cheesecake out of the mould! so far it looks really stuck ... i thought you don't have to grease a silicone pan! i might have to scrape it out with a spoon! but hey ... if i really have to destroy a lovely little cake because i can't get it out of the mould i can finally host that "kitchen disasters" - foodblog event i am dreaming about ...


update: look how pretty!! it slipped out of the mould just like that!


... and it is soooo good!

ps: thanks for the tip, zorra!!

a bit fishy, don't you think?

the past few days have been a little confusing for me, but i am also totally overwhelmed by all the support that has swamped my mailbox. your lovely comments and your encouraging emails give me lots and lots of strength and i want to thank every single one of you who has thought of me and/or dropped a line!

actually, i feel pretty healthy at the moment, only a little exhausted. the immediate cortisone treatment was not really a blast (eeeeeek, i don't like needles in my arms!) but the weird symptoms have totally disappeared. my sense of balance has improved drastically and my fine motor skills are totally back to normal. this was the reason i got checked out in the first place - if things slip out of your hand for no reason or you can not tilt your head without loosing balance and feeling disoriented ... well, that's a pretty good sign that something's wrong, right? suddenly i feel really stupid that i didn't see a doctor much sooner ...

i usually don't even take painkillers, i prefer to slow down and take it easy for a while, lay in bed and "cure myself" ... yeah well, that seems to be out of question right now :D ... i took it very easy over the weekend and i started to do some research on MS. i currently don't feel sick or weird, so i can not really embrace that i am in fact sick. all those super-clever webpages only make me go "huh??" at the moment. some suggest an immediate change of lifestyle, diet, workout and what not while others suggest to carry on as always and slowly adjust to this life changing disease ... i am pretty straight forward with my diagnose and not hopeless at all (aren't there supposed to be five stages of ... well, something?) so i think i just take it slow and see what's going to come ... i did so well with going all organic over the past few months, so i think i am heading in the right direction anyway. i don't want more adjustments in my diet right now. so before i get caught up in all these horror scenarios i decided to just take it easy for a while ...

and in my attempt to take it very easy i fell asleep while watching "finding nemo" on my laptop last night. it seems that springtime lethargy has slammed big time! can you believe that when i woke up all i wanted to do is eat fish? now, i am just cruel, right? i see this charming little movie and all i want to do is to have cute little nemo fried up on my plate!

so i am totally going for fish today. i am not at all experienced with cooking fish, because i usually eat tuna out of a can or i buy a smoked trout on the local farmer's market every once in a while. and i totally crave fish sticks once a year. yes, fish sticks! i am really scraping the bottom of my culinary barrel when i think about cooking a fish ... i am a bit scared to cook a whole one, actually ... so i decided to go for an über-expensive tuna steak from the local store.

tuna steak with a pepper and fennel seed crust

one tuna steak
one teaspoon of ground pepper
one tablespoon of fennel seeds
butter
salt

1. rinse the fish and dry it on a paper towel
   
   
   
2. grind a tbsp of pepper and a tbsp of fennel seeds - i used a mortar for that
   
   
   
3. pour the spices on a cutting board and coat the tuna steak on one side
   
   
   
4. put another board on top and weight it down with a bowl of water or the mortar you used earlier ... let the fish rest like this for 20 minutes
   
   
   
   
   
5. in a pan, melt a knob of butter and fry the tuna steak over medium heat on both sides, the coated side first. i am always going for a well done piece of meat, but if you prefer you can have your tuna steak medium rare too :)
   
6. season with salt before arranging on the plate
7. you can make a nice gravy for your veggies if you pour a little cream in the pan and bring it to a boil once more. add some of the ground spices too, it'll be delicious!
   
   
   
8. the tuna goes well with vegetables - in my case steamed swiss chard and boiled potatos
   
   
   

wow, i tell you, i don't want to blow my own trumpet here, but this late lunch was absolutely fantastic! i did not think that the combination of fennel seeds and fish would work so darn well! i am totally satisfied with this fishy creation ... maybe i'll try to get my hands on some good fish more often!

balinese rice with peanuts, pork, oranges and bananas

a little extravaganza, anyone? well, I absolutely feel like it!

one orange
200 g pork scallops
one tbsp vegetable oil
50 g peanuts
salt, pepper
120 g rice
one banana

1. cut the orange in half, squeeze out the juice of one half and cut the flesh of the other half into pieces
2. cut the pork scallops into stripes (or buy pre-cut gulash meat if you like) and fry it in a tablespoon of vegetable oil
3. add the peanuts and fry them for a while too
4. remove from the pan
   
   
   
5. pour the rice in the same pan
   
6. add water to the orange juice, it should make 0,3 l in the end
7. pour over the rice, add a little salt and bring to a boil
   
   
   
8. turn down the heat again and let simmer until the rice is tender
9. dice the banana and add to the boiled rice. add the flesh of the orange, the meat and peanuts to the boiled rice as well
   
10. turn up the heat again and season to taste with chili pepper and a little salt. decorate the dish with parsley if you like ...
    

adapted from here

now, that tastes just amazing! i've never added oranges or bananas to a rice dish, let alone a rice dish that has meat in it! i have never tasted something so full of flavor! that recipe is definitely a keeper!

so there you go

i was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis today.

i wanted to tell nobody about this at first, but now, a few hours after the diagnosis (and the immediate start of treatment with IV-cortisone for any current symptoms) i feel the strange desire to post it on all of my webpages.

like, really ALL of them.

i marked some recent photos on flickr with MS, i made an entry in my private german weblog where i tend to blah-blah-blah most of the time ... and i want to tell you people here too. your support over the last few weeks was truly overwhelming.

thank you so much!

i just love the show "scrubs" and i want to post a quote from S06E01 "my mirror image" that fits quite well today: "it's not like i can change what's already happended. the only thing to do is move forward and deal with it" ... this picture is very inspiring too ...

oh yes and spring starts today too (although a cold wave brought chilly temperatures and snow a few days ago - can you believe that?! virtually the first "serious snow" we had here this "winter") ... "springtime is seen as a time of growth, renewal, of new life being born, and of the cycle of life once again starting. It is also used more generally as the start of better times ..."

pampering myself

now this one was really close! i barely made the deadline for hay, hay ... i decided to give our heirloom birthday cake a twist and throw in something other than pineapple for a change ... i asked my mama, and though we've had this b-day cake several times every year since i was a little kid she had actually never used any other fruit than pineapple for this cheesecake before.

i on the other hand took the bold step of changing a recipe that has travelled from australia to austria 30-ish years ago and has not been changed since.

i decided to submit a cherry cheesecake to hhdd#10:

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 pickled cherries, drained (about 300 g)
3 tbsp of vanilla sugar (you can even skip this!)
10 g gelatine

1. crumble the crackers in a food processor and pour the crumbs in a cake tin
2. 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
3. in a bowl, combine cream and curd cheese until smooth, add sugar if you like (though it is not really necessary)
4. fold in the drained cherries. add some of the liquid for a nice pink colour if you like
   
5. let gelatine soak in a little water for a few minutes. drain exess water and let gelatine dissolve completely over low heat
6. combine gelatine with the cream and cherry mixture and quickly pour topping onto the cracker crust
7. cover the cake and chill for at least 2 hours

that oughta cheer me up, dammit --- actually, it does a little, because it is just delicious!







[roundup]

real life is catching up with me. not in a good way

i want to thank everybody so much for your concern!

my mind has been a little distracted over the past weeks, because it seems that i might have the same chronic autoimmune disease that my sister has been diagnosed with seven years ago.

it is not a death scentence, but it certainly is life changing. i have not been diagnosed with it yet, but i have been seeing many doctors over the past couple of weeks to figure out what is wrong with me.

and i don't like to go to doctors.

i tried to "ignore the symptoms away" for a few months now, but now i felt weird enough to have the thing checked out. and ignoring symptoms that i know all too well from my little sis is not really wise, after all. it might be another couple of weeks though before i get a definite answer. i am really afraid, to be honest.

i don't plan to go on hiatus here, but i might cut back posting over the next few weeks simply due to a lack of time. cheers again for your support!

yeah, i am done

how lame is this?

recipe # 10: bean soup

one small onion
1 tbsp of vegetable oil
75 g (5 tablespoons) of white beans (from a can)
150 ml water
parsley
salt

1. over medium heat fry the diced onion in one tbsp of vegetable oil
2. add the beans and stir for a while
3. add the water and bring to a boil
4. cut the parsley and add to the soup
5. season to taste

that's weird - i see an inflationary trend, soup-wise. the more i think about soup the less i crave soup. my recipes are becoming more and more plain though i want them to be more unusual and unique.

it sucks if you promise to make a different soup every day during lent and you are already out of ideas and out of motivation - only 10 days down, 30 more to go. i have never been good at resolutions, so i hardly ever make some. why on earth did i think i could stick to my vow this time?

i might be done with the soup thing. it bores me.

another quickie

it is not really the french onion soup, it looks like i just have the time for fast food soups these days ... but i keep my fingers crossed for a very high profile soup tomorrow ...

recipe # 9: onion soup

1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 tbsp oil
300 ml of vegetable stock
1 tbsp flour
one slice of bread

1. brown the onions in one tbsp of oil
2. sprinkle over the flour and stir well
3. pour in the vegetable stock and bring to a boil
4. toast a slice of bread and cut into 4 pieces
5. pour the soup in a dish and arrange the toasted bread on top

red plate day

don't you think all the green in my soup dish is getting boring?


it bores me a little, so i thought the only thing green added to today's soup will be the fresh herbs and as a contrasting colour for the soup itself i'd totally go for RED. instead of chopping the tomatoes in my farm box, i thought i'd make a much quicker soup if i finally used up those canned peeled tomatoes in my kitchen cupboard.

recipe # 8: very fast tomato soup

1 can of peeled tomatoes (250 g)
1 tbsp oil
3 cloves of garlic
fresh herbs (i used oregano and thyme)
1 tbsp crème fraîche (i take the lean rama cremefine)
salt, pepper

1. give the peeled tomatoes a quick blizz with the hand-held blender to hackle them
2. in a pot, quickly fry minced garlic and the herbs in one tbsp of oil
3. pour in the blizzed tomatoes and bring to a boil
4. whisk in one tbsp of crème fraîche
5. season to taste
   
6. you can strain the soup if you want, but i actually like it better if it's not too smooth