Swiss princess soup with jerusalem artichokes
Derek really likes jerusalem artichokes (also called sunchokes) when he gets them at restaurants. Although I’m not as big of a fan, I have had some very tasty sunchokes at restaurants in the States. I’ve never seen sunchokes on a German menu, but I often see sunchokes (labeled Topinambur) at my local Turkish store, so someone here must eat them. I’ve tried cooking them myself a few times, but the texture has always turned out quite odd, so I stopped buying them. But I’ve recently been re-inspired to learn how to cook with jerusalem artichokes, as I’ve been reading about how healthy they are. Read the rest of this entry »
Chilled cucumber soup with mint
I wanted to make a soup for the first course of my dinner last night, but it was too hot to make a normal soup, so I went looking for a cold soup. I would have liked to make the Hungarian fruit soup that my friend Sarah made for me last time I visited her in Israel, but I forgot to ask her for the recipe. So I made the chilled cucumber soup with mint recipe from Peter Berley’s Fresh Food Fast instead. Read the rest of this entry »
Sticky toffee pudding
Derek has been raving about sticky toffee pudding for a little over a year now. I finally got to try it when we went to Scotland last September. I tried a number of different restaurant versions, and although I don’t know exactly what it’s supposed to taste like most of them seemed to miss the mark a little. Derek wanted to try to make it at home, and I said fine–next time we have company. Well, a few weeks ago, right before leaving for Spain, we ended up with 5 guests over for dinner. The menu was mostly Italian (salad with roasted winter veggies and walnuts, white bean soup with fennel and rosemary, and cacio e pepe pasta). But our dessert was Scottish.
Derek looked around online to try to find a recipe for the kind of moist sticky toffee pudding that he prefers, and ended up selecting a sticky date toffee pudding recipe that had excellent reviews on epicurious.com. I printed out the recipe, but unfortunately didn’t read the reviews myself. If I had, I would have been more prepared for what followed. Read the rest of this entry »
Basic cucumber raita
On my sister’s final night in Saarbruecken I made dosas and an Indian dish with okra and onions. Hanaleah claimed not to like dosas (too spicy) or okra, but she really liked both my dishes. To go along with the dosas, Hanaleah decided to make raita. She started out with this Epicurious recipe for traditional cucumber raita, substituted red onions for the scallions, and added lemon juice and salt. Her raita was excellent, and although the recipe is quite simple, I wanted to remember it, so decided to post it here.
- 1 cup plain yogurt
- 1 cup finely chopped cucumber (unpeeled)
- 2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh cilantro
- 1 Tablespoon finely chopped red onions
- 1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1? Tablespoon lemon juice
- 1/4? tsp. salt
Here’s a raita recipe from the cookbook “Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking” by Julie Sahni:
- 1.5 cups plain yogurt, whisked til smooth
- 1 cup peeled, grated cucumber
- 1/4 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 1/2 tsp. ground roasted cumin for garnish
- 1/4 tsp. paprika for garnish
- cilantro or mint for garnish
She says it can be made 5-6 hours in advance, and makes 4 servings.
I went over to my friend Anusha’s for dinner and she made a really tasty raita. It didn’t have cucumber in it, but it had lots of onions. She gave me her recipe:
- 3 onions, chopped
- 1 pinch black salt
- 1-3 tsp. lemon juice
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1.5 cups yogurt [depends on how thick you want it to be]
- 1/2 tomato, chopped
- 1/2 tsp. dried parsley
The captious vegetarian 