Greek Allure

When my aunt wanted to marry Dr. Evangelos M., my stiff and stern maternal grandmother was not very pleased that her daughter had fallen in love with a foreigner, a Greek. So they eloped to Athens instead. But my grandmother came around, and Evan, as everyone calls him, visited her often, trudging around her apartment in her slippers (he has very small feet).

I had no such reservations about him, as Evan was the coolest uncle anyone could want. He drove up in his Renault R4 wearing dark glasses, greeting us with his melodic accent. He was young, energetic, different, and best of all, he genuinely liked hanging out with his new German family. We'd go sledding in winter and he'd scream with delight when some snow got into his pants, yet he would never wear long underwear like my father or other uncles. We went on many fun outings, did handicrafts together and one day, he even brought a 33 record with popular Greek music and taught us enthusiastically how to dance to the Zorba-the-Greek tune.

Evan also introduced us to Greek food, which at that time was still an anomaly in Germany. His snowy-white Tzatziki with pale green flecks was undoubtedly geared towards our weak and inexperienced taste buds. It's slightly but pleasantly tangy since the recipe mixes mild and creamy quark, a German-style Fromage frais with just enough yoghurt. It explodes with the flavors of sweet and melon-y tasting cucumbers and a little pungent, freshly crushed garlic. Stirring in fruity Greek olive oil and a dash of mildly acidic white wine vinegar gives it the needed complexity.

Evan is now retired and lives with my aunt in a small German town close to the Czech border. He has always been a Wagner buff and when we Skype, he fills me in on all the operas he has recently attended. He is still a very cool uncle.

Tzaitsiki

Serves 6–8

8 oz cottage cheese

4–6 oz plain Greek yoghurt

3–4 Persian cucumbers
or 3/4–1 English cucumber, peeled

2–3 small garlic cloves, crushed

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

Sea salt to taste

Cottage cheese is a perfectly acceptable substitute for Quark, but should be whirled in a food processor until smooth. Stir in the Greek yoghurt until well combined and creamy. Grate the peeled cucumbers in a separate bowl and squeeze them hard to get out all the excess liquid. Fold grated cucumber into the cottage cheese/yogurt mixture and add the crushed garlic. Mix in olive oil and vinegar and season to taste with sea salt.

Tzaitsiki is a worthy accompaniment to all sorts of grilled meats or chicken and best enjoyed sopping up with crusty French bread or soft chewy pita bread.

There's something about Nutella

Nutella arrived in Germany when I was young and it made me a very happy little girl. Many a morning I gleefully skipped to a nearby bakery to pick up fresh bread for my Nutella breakfast. I loved being the first one to poke a hole in the tightly-stretched gold foil of a new jar; it made a most wonderful popping sound. I lathered the mocha brown spread on a crusty roll, and it felt pleasantly smooth on my tongue and tasted headily of cocoa and hazelnuts.

I've been thinking about Nutella lately and started reading on how it was invented in Italy in the 1940s by confectioner Pietro Ferraro. The catchy name was made up, from the English word nut and ~ella, the Italian form of indicating smallness, so it's a little nutty, but cute! All the browsing confirmed that Nutella has not yet gone out of stye.

Nutella to us kids was (and is) what peanut butter means to our American counterparts. It traveled with us in form of sandwiches on summer outings, where it melted and dripped onto our arms and we had to lick it off. We enjoyed paper-thin rolled up pancakes with Nutella filling; it was, in truth, a legitimate excuse to have chocolate. Not too long ago, I tasted a tweaked “Velvet Elvis” which is basically a toasted peanut butter and banana sandwich with an added thin layer of Nutella. Sort of a culinary meet-cute. I was sold!

On the home front, I reworked an OK-tasting almond tart into a Hazelnut Nutella tart that makes me happy in so many ways. A quick buttery pâte sablée (a fancy word for sweet pastry dough) is filled with toasted hazelnuts and a glob of Nutella, which brings out the exquisitely and uniquely deep hazelnut flavor. After it's baked, I spread on a thin layer of sweet-tart raspberry jam and finish it with a spirited drizzle of a lemony powdered sugar glaze. It does Nutella proud.

Hazelnut Nutella Tart

Serves 12

Bake at 350 degrees

Tart:

1 1/3 cup flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

½ cup butter, chilled and cut into cubes

1 egg, lightly beaten

Filling:

½ cup butter at room temperature

½ cup sugar

4-6 oz toasted hazelnuts, finely ground

2 tbs Nutella

2 eggs

Finishing touch:

½ cup raspberry jam

½ cup powdered sugar, mixed with 2-3 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice

In a large bowl, sift together flour, baking powder and sugar. Using a couple of pastry blenders or table knives, quickly work in the butter and the egg just until combined and press into tart pan one inch up on sides. Chill.

Toast whole hazelnuts in 400 degree oven until fragrant, 8 - 10 minutes. Using a clean kitchen towel, rub nuts until all the loose skin flakes off, it doesn't have to be perfect. Finely ground nuts in food processor. Beat butter and sugar, add nuts, Nutella and eggs, one at a time.

Spoon filling in prepared tart shell and bake 35 – 45 minutes until filling is set. Cool. To serve, spread with a thin layer of raspberry jam and drizzle with glaze.

Serve with a dollop of barely sweetened, stiffly whipped cream.

Goddess and others

America, without a doubt, must have the largest variety of salad dressings in the world. Many are not just simple salad dressings--they also have their own unique history. You almost need to take something like Salad Dressing 101 for the full picture.

The Green Goddess Dressing for instance was created in 1923 in San Francisco 's Palace Hotel for a famous actor who was in a popular stage play of the same name. The Caesar Dressing was dreamt up in 1924 by an Italian immigrant who lived in San Diego but opened a restaurant just across the border in Tijuana, Mexico to escape the dreaded prohibition. The Louis Dressing was most likely created in Seattle’s Olympic Club circa 1900 to dress Dungeness Crab, a favorite of Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, who was performing at the opera at that time. Thousand Island Dressing also dates back to 1900 and was named after the 1000 Island area between the US and Canada by a fishing guide's wife who dazzled her husband's clients with her salads.

Classic American dressings are as a whole robust and rich, flavored with garlic, herbs and spices, sometimes chili sauce, and made creamy by the addition of mayonnaise or buttermilk. They work exceptionally well with a salad of crisp iceberg lettuce, sweet and juicy cherry tomatoes, julienned carrots and a few buttery, crunchy croutons.

For my homemade dressings, I prefer them a tad less creamy but with a few splashes of mild vinegar and grassy olive oil. Lately, I’ve been using deep and complex sherry vinegar, tiny dice of mild shallots, a dollop of smooth Dijon and a few sugar crystals, sorry Charlotte. My dressing is inspired by Mark Bittman, who knows how to cook everything.

So then here is yet another one to add to the assortment.

Santa Barbara-Salad Dressing

2 tablespoons sherry vinegar

1 teaspoon mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

½ shallot, minced

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1/4 teaspoon sugar

Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

Whisk the vinegar with the mayonnaise and mustard vigorously until smooth. Add the olive oil slowly until the dressing emulsifies. Add shallot and sugar, whisk some more and season with salt and pepper.

This dressing is more than enough for a salad for 4 people. Any leftover dressing can be refrigerated for another day. I use assorted greens mixed with Arugula, 3 tablespoons of toasted pepitas or pistachios, 1 small avocado, cubed and a handful of tiny pearl tomatoes, cut in half. Toss the whole salad with enough dressing to lightly coat all the leaves. No dressing on the side!

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.