Cooking under pressure

Being a prolific cook, my mother didn't believe that a meal was complete without soup. She made soup nearly every day of her married life, and her secret weapon was a pressure cooker. She dutifully hoisted that ugly but powerful thing onto the stove and cooked soup in abundance.

Her old-fashioned pressure cooker made our kitchen a somewhat uncomfortable and noisy place, as it sounded not unlike a steam engine's piston, and it always fogged up the windows.

All the same, my mother's chicken soup was unquestionably a big hit in our family. She brought home a fat chicken from the weekly farmer's market, threw it in the pot with some water and a bouquet garni which consisted of a brightly-colored carrot, a piece of flavorful celeriac, a gleaming green leek, a crunchy parsley root and half of a sweet onion all tied together with kitchen string. She cooked it in a remarkably short time and the result was a clear and aromatic broth tinged golden and boasting with tons of flavor. She served it in white soup bowls adorned with little pink flowers, and it was full of tiny al dente star-shaped pasta, shredded tender breast meat and a sprinkling of finely chopped, fragrant chives.

As for me, I am scared of pressure cookers. In high school home economics one year, I managed to have the cooker spew all its contents on the school kitchen ceiling. I learned early on that it takes certain finesse if you don't want to damage your home while cooking.

So I make my chicken soup in a stock pot instead. It may take a little longer, but it's just as delicious and my kitchen is calm and happy when the pot is simmering quietly on a low flame on my stove. Maybe one day I will take on a pressure cooker again, but for now, the only sound you hear in my kitchen is coming from someone noisily slurping up a flavorful chicken soup.

Photo by Annika Patel

Chicken Soup

For 4

Fill a large pot with 4 quarts filtered water, salt lightly and add the following:

2 organic free-range chicken breasts

2 organic free-range chicken wings

1 leek, cleaned, removing top 1/3

1 onion, unpeeled, cut in half

1 carrot, scrubbed

1 parsnip, peeled

Stems only of 1 bunch parsley

6 whole peppercorns

8 oz fine egg noodles

1/2 bunch fresh chives, finely chopped

Bring first eight ingredients to a boil, all the while skimming the white foam from the top until broth is clear. Simmer gently for about 1 hour or until breast meat is tender and shreds easily. Pour through a fine strainer and discard the vegetables and peppercorns. Season the broth with additional salt if desired and maybe a few drops of soy sauce. Remove the meat from the wings and shred the chicken breasts into bite-size pieces. Add the meat and the cooked pasta to the hot broth. Serve in bowls with chopped chives sprinkled on top.

Some things Christmas

A Southern California Christmas takes some getting used to after growing up in Germany, but through years of practice, I can almost embrace the clear, bright and warm 68 degree t-shirt weather which often times marks our holiday season.

I actually love Christmas here, it’s so exciting and cheery and never fails to put me in an uplifted and happy mood. Some of my favorite Christmas reminders are:

uniquely-wrapped gifts in stiff wrapping paper with festive bows

the greatest holiday movie ever “Love Actually” which makes me laugh and cry at the same time

adorably cute and very silly songs like “Santa Baby” which I will play over and over until Kevin turns off the stereo

my favorite Christmas gift of all times

turning on the oven, taking my old German cookbook from the shelf and baking buttery, cinnamon-scented, jammy star-shaped Linzer cookies deliciously nutty with a dusting of snow-white confectioners’ sugar. Just like the ones I used to know (sorry, I couldn’t resist) early on in my baking career with my sweet and patient nanny Marianne

And then for the briefest of moments, I am longing for just a little snow….may your days be merry and bright, and may all your Christmases be white.

Linzer Stars

Makes about twenty stars

Adapted from Bon Appétit and various German cookbooks

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 1/3 cups almonds, pulsed in food processor until finely ground (you could also use a coffee grinder)

1 tsp cinnamon

Pinch of sea salt

2/3 cups sugar

½ cup (1 stick) butter, unsalted, at room temperature

1 large egg

2 tsp dark rum

¼ tsp vanilla extract or 1 little envelope of vanilla sugar

½ cup raspberry or plum jam

Confectioners’ sugar

In a large bowl beat sugar and butter using an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat an additional minute. Add rum and vanilla, combine well. Beat in almonds, flour, cinnamon and salt and mix on low speed until ingredients start to come together. At this point, you will have to knead the dough gently by hand until well combined. Form into two balls and wrap in clear plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least two hours or over night.

Take out one of the balls, cut in half and keep the rest of the dough chilled. Roll out with a slightly floured rolling pin to about 1/8 inch thickness. Using 2 – 3 inch star cookie cutters cut out cookies and transfer to a parchment paper lined baking sheet. Half of the cookies need to have an extra cut-out in the middle (a small star or a circle) for the jam to show through.

Just a little forewarning, you need to work quickly since the dough is fickle and works best when cold. So chill all the dough scraps sufficiently until all is used up.

Bake cookies at 375 degrees for about 11 – 13 minutes until light golden brown and just firm to the touch.

Stir jam until smooth and spread on cooled whole stars flat side up. Dust the cookies with cutouts with confectioner’s sugar. Assemble and enjoy!

Hey Pumpkin!

When I moved here from Germany practically half of my life ago, I was immediately drawn to the vast and brightly lit grocery stores which stayed open 24 hours a day. This by itself seemed like a small miracle. Mostly, I spent my time in the produce department with its beautifully stacked shiny apples, perfectly laid out bright red tomatoes and pale green iceberg lettuce mounds. Never-before-seen items fascinated me: cilantro which tasted like soapy parsley, celery that wasn't a knobby ugly root and snow-white jicama as big as a man's fist.

I was particularly intrigued when in the fall, all the winter squash were displayed. I couldn't even begin to understand what to do with these gorgeous gourds that looked almost too pretty to eat. I loved their different shapes and colors and sizes: pumpkin, butternut, acorn, delicata, kabocha, hubbard, such pretty names! No wonder pumpkin is used as a term of endearment, which I think of as endearingly American.

Slowly but surely, I learned to tackle these sometimes unyielding vegetables, often times using great force with a hammer. I pureed, roasted, cooked in stews and baked them into silky pies or, best loved, aromatic pumpkin bread. 

Pumpkin bread to me looks and tastes like fall--not overly sweet, satisfyingly moist with a gorgeous burnt orange color and slightly darker crust, exuding aromas of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. Since most squash are interchangeable, it's just as easy to use butternut or kabocha puree and no one suspects that it is not-pumpkin pumpkin bread! Baking it slowly warms and scents my kitchen just when it starts to get nippy outside, and I can never wait for it to cool before I have my first bite.

Pumpkin Bread

1 ¾ cups flour

½ tsp salt

1 ¼ tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 cup sugar

1 cup cooked pumpkin, butternut squash or kabocha puree

1/3 cup vegetable oil (canola or grape seed)

¼ cup whole milk

2 eggs

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp ground nutmeg

½ tsp ground cloves

Sift together dry ingredients with spices until well combined. Use a separate bowl, beat squash puree, oil, milk and eggs until light and fluffy. Combine dry and wet ingredients gently until just blended. Fold in ½ cup of pepitas (pistachios or walnuts will work well too). Pour batter into a buttered 9 x 5 loaf pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until done.

Paris is always a good idea

I once read this quote by Audrey Hepburn, and I take her advice very seriously. So my darling friends Cathy and Mike met me in Paris last May. Since we’d all been there before and had frequented the most obvious crowd-pleasers like the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Champs-Elysées (the list goes on and on), we didn’t see the need to visit them this trip and had a fantastic time just hanging out. Sitting and chatting for hours in the gardens of the Rodin Museum, riding the Bateaux-Mouches without getting off at every stop, sipping chocolat chaud with unbelievable clouds of whipped cream, buying French shoes--now that was our idea of enjoying Paris.

Picture by Mike Brown

And we ate our way through the city and had amazing meals at elegant restaurants. As it happened, we also had hilarious misunderstandings with more than one French garçon. Our pronunciation must have insulted their French-ness, and so they served us hot coffee when we ordered Calvados as an after-dinner drink, and milk instead of Lillet as an aperitif. Ah, the French with their ridiculous idea that if it’s not pronounced their way, it’s the highway! We still giggle when we order Lillet at home where every bartender understands us perfectly well.

But besides eating fancy food in fancy places, I also loved going to any old bistro ordering a simple dish called oeuf mayonnaise as an entrée, which in France incidentally means first course. Not only is it hard to mispronounce, I love its simplicity: a few perfectly cooked hard-boiled egg halves with brightly yellow yolks topped with a dollop of lovely homemade mayonnaise. The eggs are served on a bed of crisp greens and the tangy creaminess of the mayonnaise mingles perfectly well with the mellow sweetness of the eggs. All this is sopped up with hunks of crunchy baguette. Now this is what I call a good idea.

Oeuf mayonnaise 

Serves 2

2-3 hard-boiled eggs

Dollops of homemade mayonnaise

A couple handfuls of fresh arugula

Homemade mayonnaise tastes so much better than the store-bought kind. This recipe is adapted from Molly Wizenberg and Mark Bittman, incredibly easy to make, all you need is a nice big whisk and some muscle.

1 egg yolk

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

1 tablespoon lemon juice

Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1/2 cup neutral oil, like grape seed or canola and 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil, mixed together

Whisk egg yolk and mustard until light and brightly colored. Stir in lemon juice, salt and pepper and start adding oil, a few drops at a time using a 1/4 teaspoon as you whisk, until a thick emulsion forms. After that, the oil can be added more quickly, a tablespoon at a time while stirring constantly. The finished mayonnaise will be darker than the store-bought one and it should take about 10 minutes to make it. Taste and adjust seasonings and consume quickly! 

I like to serve the eggs on a bed of arugula, since the intense aromatic and peppery flavor goes well with the creaminess of the eggs.

Charlotte and easy-peasy cioppino

My friend Charlotte was chic, creative, witty, well-read, a fantastic cook and an ideal roommate. I was just out of my troubled first marriage, so moving in with her surely was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Charlotte and I lived in a bright and tastefully decorated condo with a glimpse of the Pacific Ocean, and the two of us had a marvelous time together--never mind that she was my mom's age. We cooked elaborate dinners for friends, watched great movies, did fun bike rides and went on 5K walks for causes (sometimes just for the free t-shirts).

Every night when she came home from her job as a real estate agent, she'd measure herself exactly four ounces of scotch in a small Pyrex measuring cup, sipping it all evening mixed with water and ice, and then she’d cook something tasty for herself. When she was young, she lived for a time in the French part of Switzerland, so she taught me a thing or two about French cooking. Charlotte whipped up fantastic garlicky vinaigrettes in her big well-seasoned wooden bowl or roasted a chicken with fresh herbs that would ensconce us in mouthwatering smells. I picked up her skills quickly, although my addition of sugar to the vinaigrette made her eyebrows rise.

I remember her telling me in her catchy voice that a proper French fish stew was very time-consuming to prepare and required a homemade broth fortified with fish heads--ewww-- and bones among other things. So when I asked her about a recipe I found in a magazine for cioppino, San Francisco ’s answer to bouillabaisse, she deemed it as too unsophisticated.

 I eventually did make the cioppino, and she liked it even though it doesn’t measure up to the deep-layered flavor and complexity of a Charlotte stew. Yet it is straightforward--chock full of ripe, juicy tomatoes simmered with garlic in fruity olive oil, emitting the subtle flavor of white wine. My cioppino tastes full and sweet with just a hint of heat. The fish and seafood are perfectly poached and each piece stays distinctly its own. I serve it with crusty French bread or over a little mound of cooked Acini de Pepe (pasta in the shape of a peppercorn), with a sprinkle of finely chopped bright and fragrant Italian parsley.

Sadly, Charlotte is no longer with us, and I still miss her, but then I can always find solace in this simple cioppino.

Cioppino

Adapted from a newspaper, possibly the San Diego Union
4 servings

½ pound ocean scallops

¾ pound non-oily, firm-fleshed fish like halibut or red snapper

½ pound shrimp

1 ½ pounds red ripe tomatoes, preferable plum tomatoes, cored
(I sometimes use really good canned tomatoes)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 large garlic clove, finely minced

½ cup finely chopped onion

1 cup dry white wine

1 bay leaf

1 finely minced jalapeno (with seeds if you like some heat)

2 Tb finely chopped Italian parsley

Leave scallops whole, cut fish into 1-inch cubes and peel and devein shrimp, set aside.

Cut tomatoes into ½ inch cubes. There should be about three cups or so, set aside.

Heat oil in a heavy skillet and add garlic and onion. Cook over low heat, stirring, until onion is wilted, at least 5 minute, add wine.

Cook briefly and add tomatoes, bay leaf, jalapeno, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and cover closely. Let simmer about 10 minutes or until tomatoes have become soft.

Add fish and seafood and stir gently until it’s no longer translucent, about 5 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Adjust seasonings, sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Blackberries aplenty

My adorable five-year-old nephew Rowan knows some of the top blackberry picking spots on Vashon Island, which is a 15-minute ferry ride away from Seattle. Early one clear summer morning, we set out with his girlfriend Eloise-who is so cute I can hardly stand it-in her tiny colorful apron over her bright summer dress carrying a fairy tale basket. It promised to be a great little adventure.

Summer is one of my favorite times in the Pacific Northwest, there is something very magical about it; crisp and bright, lush and green with the great smells of summer: pine trees, freshly cut grass, the intoxicating fragrance of roses and ripe blackberries all around!

Everyone on the island picks blackberries and it’s a good thing that the Himalayan variety, which is considered an interloper, grows abundantly everywhere, dense and thorny, upstaging the wild blackberries. But when I can plop a luscious sweet tart berry in my mouth, do I really care if it is native?

Once we had our fill and our tongues couldn’t get any purpler, we picked lots more berries, squeezing through the bramble with squeals of pain-these thorny vines are vicious! With our fingers stained, snags in our clothes and a few less hair left behind on the vines, we proudly returned home with our booty. We had plenty to preserve deeply purplish-red jam and enough for the perfect summer dessert, a clafouti.

Clafouti is a French thing-lots of eggs, knob of butter, bit of milk, flour and sugar with hints of vanilla and lots of ripe berries. It puffs up nicely to a mouthwatering golden brown like a Dutch Baby tinged with brightly colored dots. The clafouti is wonderfully satisfying when still warm; the baked custard, sweet yet discreet, gives the blackberries all the glory they deserve. Most excellent with whipped cream, Rowan can attest to that.

Blackberry Clafouti

Inspired by a recipe from O, the Oprah Magazine
serves 8

2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted and cooled plus more for greasing

2 cups ripe blackberries
1/3 cup granulated sugar

4 large eggs

1 Tsp vanilla extract

1 cup whole milk

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1/4 Tsp salt

Confectioners’ sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. Fill with blackberries. In a blender, combine rest of ingredients except confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Pour batter carefully over berries as not to move them too much and bake until puffed and golden, about 40 minutes. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and serve still warm with lightly sweetened whipped cream.

Caffè corretto

When I was in Italy a few years ago, I discovered a quite wonderful drink: caffè corretto. It literally means a corrected coffee, and not only do I like how the words rolls of my tongue, I also like the taste. Caffè corretto is served in every cafe or bar in Italy, and easily prepared at home. I brew a pipping hot, strong espresso, add a quick pour of hard liquor (like grappa, rum or brandy) and a teaspoon of sugar. Downed quickly, it is the best pick-me-up on a lazy or rainy afternoon-it puts me right somehow and brings a smile to my face. And it takes less than a minute!

So when I returned from a recent trip to Nicaragua and to Paso Pacifico, I brought home darkly roasted, fragrant Nicaraguan coffee beans and a bottle of rich, sweet Flor de Caña rum. It occurred to me just then, that these are the perfect components for a caffè corretto, Nica style.

While savoring my little pick-me-up the other day, I remembered some amusing moments that I experienced in Nicaragua:

• Crossing the border from Costa Rica to Nicaragua on foot with my tiny rolling suitcase 
• Listening to teensy frogs in the middle of nowhere that sound like car horns and computer games
• Touching a fruit bat's pregnant belly
• Waking up to booming church bells and obnoxiously noisy parrots at 6 am in the colonial city of Granada
• Peering at pigs busily foraging on a playground in El Ostinal
• Looking into the most expressive face of spider monkey Roberto
• Observing hundreds of Halloween Crabs hastily crossing the street just in front of our car
• Watching the cutest Nicaraguan junior rangers reciting a poem to me in Spanish even though I don't speak a word of it

Cheese fondue, really?

Cheese fondue seems kind of old-fashioned these days, something that was all the rage in the seventies. As a child, I didn't like cheese but I always fancied watching my parents and their friends sitting around a pot of molten cheese, dipping crusty white bread with long, slender, colorful forks.

The other reason I was intrigued by cheese fondue was a very popular comic book: Asterix in Switzerland. I hoped that my parents would enforce the character's obnoxious practices when someone dropped a bread cube in the pot. According to the story, at first offense, there would be five strokes with a cane, 2nd time around, twenty whippings, and at the 3rd wrongdoing, the offender would be drowned in Lake Geneva with weights attached to their feet. That sounded like great entertainment. But this never happened, and we didn't even live close to Lake Geneva.

Nowadays, disliking cheese is no longer an issue, so when we ran into our friends Ellen and John, and, inexplicably, the conversation turned to cheese fondue, we made plans to get together and give it a try. I had a recipe, they had the fondue pot, so one warm evening (so wrong for cheese fondue) we got together.

My recipe is different from the typical cheese fondue, leaving out the Kirsch and using champagne, chives and Dijon mustard. It seems lighter, but that's only an illusion. We are talking a lot of cheese here. I liked standing by the stove stirring the cheese with a wooden spoon in a figure eight until it became soft, then creamy and finally perfectly smooth. Throughout the house we smelled the sweet, nutty and earthy aroma of melted cheese with the perfume of alcohol. 

The Swiss recommend drinking warm tea, but we chose a crisp white wine. We dipped chunks of crusty baguette into the fondue which had specks of chives floating on top, and enjoyed a simple salad on the side. It was just like my childhood memory, except that no one dropped a piece of bread.

Cheese Fondue

Adapted from a cookbook found a long time ago in a beach house in Del Mar
serves 4

1 pound finely grated Swiss Cheese and Gruyere Cheese (any combination works), mixed with 4 teaspoons of flour

1 large clove garlic

2 tablespoons butter

1–1 ½ cups dry champagne

¼ cup finely chopped chives

2 teaspoons Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt and pepper, pinch of nutmeg

Cut garlic in half and rub the inside of the fondue pot, discard. Melt butter and add the cheese together with the champagne. Stir constantly until mixture is smooth, adding more champagne if needed. Fold in Dijon mustard and season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Sprinkle with chives and serve.

Mahjong with Rhubarb on the side

My friend Denise is known for her chocolate chip cookies, lemon cake and fruit crumbles. Last week she invited me to join her and some friends for dessert and a game of Mahjong.

When I walked into her home for my very first game of Mahjong, she had moved the old-fashioned table closer to the fireplace to get away from the spring chill. I admired her beautiful Mahjong vintage tiles, which are made from bone and have intricate symbols of dragons, flowers and winds. The tiles felt smooth and cool between my fingers. We spread them upside down and shuffled them running our hands over the tiles, and they made a soft clicking noise as they touched each other.

The rules of Mahjong were easy enough, similar to Rummy, and I sipped crisp champagne while I happily giggled my way through the game.

All along, we could smell the rhubarb crumble, the heavenly combination of fruit, butter, sugar and cinnamon. When Denise served it to us, still warm, on little white plates, we inhaled the whole thing. It was such a perfect combination of sweet and tart, that we quickly forgot all about Mahjong and enjoyed every last sugary morsel. Her three dogs lingered nearby, hoping we would drop some crumbs or let them lick the plates.

At home, I found another equally gratifying recipe for rhubarb in an old cookbook that once belonged to my German nanny. It made a very simple compote, transforming the rhubarb into a silky jumble, smelling faintly like raspberries, and I was happily surprised how easily it came together and how pretty it was in its pinkness.

Rhubarb Compote

The compote has the distinct tartness of the rhubarb which is so unique, but it also tastes sweet and refreshing with hints of vanilla and orange. It’s especially good served with angel food cake, ice cream or ricotta cheese. I strain the left-over liquid through a fine sieve and mix it with sparkling water for a luscious rhubarb soda.

Adapted from “Das neue grosse Kochbuch”, Berteslmann Publishing ca. 1963

Makes about 5 cups

1 scant lb rhubarb

2 cups water (500 ml)

7/8 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (200 ml)

5.25 oz sugar (150 g)

2 packages vanilla sugar (available in German grocery stores), can be substituted with 1 vanilla bean or 2 tsp high quality vanilla extract or more to taste

Use skinny rosy stalks of rhubarb and remove any stringy bits from the ends. Cut the stalks in 2.5 inch long pieces and cut these lengthwise into thin slices. Bring the water with the orange juice and vanilla sugar, bean or extract to a simmer and add the rhubarb pieces. Cook for a couple of minutes or until the rhubarb softens and take it off the stove. Let cool completely and refrigerate. Serve chilled.

A 5 Minute Egg

It is something so very simple yet so delicious, a soft cooked egg. A very German breakfast food, it is traditionally served in an egg cup.


I gently simmer an egg for 5 minutes until the yolk is soft and golden and the white is firm, lovely with a sprinkle of sea salt and served with buttered toast.

I know the chickens who lay these eggs which come out in soft hues of green, blue and brown with the occasional dark brown in between.

Meyer Lemon Baby Cake

We only just planted one tiny Meyer lemon tree, and it already bears so much fruit: Lemon tree, very pretty! Now I am constantly looking for recipes that have lemon in it and ran across this one in my messy recipe box. I think I must have been holding on to it for a very long time, the newspaper clipping is yellowed and brittle. And then I baked these little yummy cakes and dusted them with powdered sugar. I bet a little whipped cream wouldn't hurt and neither would a cappuccino!


1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar (divided use)
2 eggs, separated
juice of one Meyer lemon (or any other lemon)
grated peel of lemon (if not organic, please wash very well in hot water)


Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.
In large bowl, cream the butter; gradually adding 1/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy.
In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks until thick and light in color, stir into creamed butter. Add dry ingredients alternately with lemon juice.
In another bowl (I know, lots of bowls) using clean beaters, whip egg whites until foamy, gradually adding the remaining 1/4 cup sugar, until soft peaks form. Gently fold egg whites and lemon peel into batter. Spoon into 8 paper-lined muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake 20 minutes or until lightly browned.