Hungry in Berlin

As a native Californian, I speak culinary Spanish (with an emphasis on the Mexican dialect). Four years of college in San Diego proved that a person can gladly and happily live on rice and beans (and salsa and tortillas) alone. And although my Heimstadt gave birth what has come to be known as the “San Francisco burrito” (see Dolores in Mitte for an up-market, but not totally authentic, version), nothing beats a homemade feast of carnitas, frijoles refritos, handmade tortillas and smoky, spicy salsa. Us gringos celebrate Cinco de Mayo (Mexican military victory over the French, 1862; gradually morphed into a “hooray for all things Mexican” celebration in the U.S., sponsored by Corona) with food. I’m going to focus on the proteins in this post — how to make carnitas, or boiled-then-fried pork shoulder, and refried beans. See “part dos” for a how-to on flour tortillas and chipotle salsa — with ingredients that can be found all here in Berlin. Read the rest of this entry »

For a very short time, it’s asparagus season in Germany. No matter that asparagus fields will continue to produce into the early summer: local tradition decrees that it is over on June 1. Only clueless foreign vegetable stands (ie, those run by Turks or Vietnamese, which is where I prefer to buy my vegetables anyway) will continue to offer any.

And now let me introduce some heresy: I just don’t like white asparagus, which is what you mostly find in the markets here. It’s flavorless, has no discernable vitamins, and is usually masked by some ultra-rich sauce to distract you from its blandness. Nope, I grew up with green asparagus, and that’s what you’ll find on my table.

There are some advantages to having this preference: for one thing, the elevated cost of thick white spears is outrageous, as is the fetishistic insistence on all-white (as opposed to “purple,” which has the tips in the process of turning green — horrors!). Green asparagus — when you can find it — is cheaper. Plus, the best green asparagus is thin, and, thanks to our overlords in Brussels, listed as Class III. The best, cheapest asparagus I’ve ever found in Berlin was courtesy of a couple of ladies who’d set up in the Winterfeldtplatz market to dump this “trash” at about a Euro a kilo.

You can find green asparagus for €1.50 to €2 a 500-gram bundle all over the place at the moment, coming in from Greece and Spain, so make the most of it. I like it steamed and covered with a garlicky balsamic vinaigrette, or garlic butter, but I also make a killer pasta dish out of it.

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Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m a lazy cook a lot of the time. The main reason for this is that I’m nearly always cooking just for myself, but although I don’t tolerate bad food from me any more than I tolerate it from a restaurant or another cook (although Ward’s Rule does apply: any dish made by someone else automatically tastes 20% better than it really is), I do make a lot of stuff I generally won’t make for guests.

One of my favorite solo dishes is chicken curry. It’s so totally inauthentic — but, when I’m in the mood, so totally delicious — that I generally wind up making it once a month. It’s also so simple that any idiot can do it, and thus I figured I’d share it here — especially because this week I finally figured out an equally inauthentic and equally delicious vegetable dish to pair with it. Read the rest of this entry »

Gray winter days call for baked apple crumble, a topping otherwise known as “streusel” here in Deutschland. It’s a simple concept: “streusel” means crumble. Streusel (not to be confused with “strudel,” the super-thin pastry dough) is essentially a lazy pie “dough” that never quite gets its act together, baking crisp yet crumbly over fruit or cake. To make a streusel topping, all you need is flour, butter and sugar, and perhaps a touch of spice. The American and British versions of crumble tend to be a bit more, well, crumbly than the German versions — German recipes seem to call for more sugar (and a bit of egg), which makes the crumble more of a crunchy (and keeps the topping on the cake, rather than the table or your lap). I’m really more of a fan of the messy, brown-sugary and cinnamon (think coffee cake) kind of crumble, which goes especially well with baked fruit. You don’t need to do much: peel, core and chop some apples or other fruit that bakes well. Assemble a streusel: there’s suggestions for recipes here, and here, and here. (I added some granola and chopped hazelnuts to mine, for the crunch factor.) Sprinkle the streusel on top of your fruit and bake until the fruit’s bubbly and the streusel’s browned and slightly crunchy. Not a bad way to pass yet another gray Berlin day, eh?

I’m a little late to the Christmas cookie-making party, but for heaven’s sake — it was -8 degrees this morning. What else can one do but bake to warm up the blasted apartment? But before I get ahead of myself here, first, some good news for Yankee bakers: eagle-eye HIB contrib John spied this lovely bag of brown sugar (see photo) at our Asia Markt on Kopenhagner str. It’s the first we’ve found in the hauptstadt. Not to be confused with granulated, or “natural” brown sugar, this is the soft, moist and packable brown sugar used in lots of cookie recipes and sometimes barbecue sauces — and apparently is also key in Thai cooking (news to me, but explains the packaging.) Our bag of light brown sugar is the real deal, if not a bit rustic — we found a few small, dark chunks of sugar amid the fluffy stuff inside. Didn’t seem to bother the cookies a bit.

So to celebrate the new year (and the cold weather), here’s a quick recipe for chocolate “flake” cookies that use one hard-to-find item (brown sugar) and one re-purposed German item (“raspel Schokolade,” or chocolate flakes.) Thin layers of chocolate flakes melt together to create a cookie that appears practically stuffed with chocolate. It rules.

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