tomato blossom

one of my favourite fruits at the moment are elderberries. they taste good, they are easy to spot during walks in parks or wienerwald, can be stolen from branches hanging over fences (an old family tradition) or bought at farmer markets.

i made elderberry compote which goes very well with grießbrei (semolina cooked in milk, vaguely resembling warm custard).

grießbrei mit hollerkompott

• 2 cups of milk


• 3 tablespoons of semolina


• 2 tablespoons of sugar


• one tablespoon of butter


• vanilla and/or lemon zest to taste


• eight to ten panicles of elderberries


• five plums or an apple or a pear
  
• honey to taste


• cinnamon to taste, a pinch of ground cloves

bring milk to the boil, wisk in semolina and cook until soft (about five minutes). stir in sugar, butter and vanilla extract/lemon zest.

strip elderberries from panicles into a saucepan with a fork. add halved plums or diced apple/pear, spices and a little water to prevent burning. bring to the boil and simmer until fruit is very soft and mushy. adjust sweetness with honey to taste (about two tablespoons).

serve together in bowls

grießbrei is often considered babyfood but it has a long tradition as comfort food in my family. i like it sprinkled with cinnamon or chocolate shavings and with chunks of banana stirred in. you can prepare a sort of pudding by cooking grießbrei until it is very stiff, cooling slightly, mixing in three or four eggs (separated) and baking it for fourty minutes on medium heat.

i also made a batch of elderberry jam but i won't post a recipe because i just followed the basic rules for canning: equal amounts of sugar and fruit (added a couple of plums and a pear here as well), cinnamon, cloves, sterilized jars - you know the drill.

next time i will use a little less sugar though, because the one to one ratio produced a very sweet jam (well to my taste at least, other people don't seem to mind that).

Posted by iris at 00:21 | Permalink | Comments

a while back melissa at the traveler's lunch box started compiling entries for her food blogger's guide to the globe. everybody is invited to participate but as usual i need an extra kick in the *** to get moving and thus didn't post my suggestions for what to eat before you die - anyway as soon as you have recovered your appetite after having pondered over this grave matter - until matt tagged me.

i decided to exclude fresh fruit and vegetables of all kind simply because nearly every freshly picked sun warmed fruit/vegetable at the peak of its ripeness tastes divine. i also do not include dishes that are realistically not reproducable.

1. deep fried paneer in tomato sauce
   i came across this gem during our last stay in dublin at govinda's vegetarian restaurant. the paneer cubes are crispy golden on the outside and chewy and milky on the inside and the sauce is simply spectacular. if you accidentally find yourself in dublin one day, try out one of the two restaurants. if your are not so fortunate, you can still test your skills at this recipe (in dublin they omitted the egg plant and chili though). it's part of the hare krishna cookbook the higher taste which can be accessed online. if you are not interested in religious doctrines, jump directly to the recipe section.



2. (greek) rose syrup over vanilla ice cream
   so far my favourite kind of rose syrup is the one used in the greek restaurant plaka in perchtoldsdorf near vienna (austria). it tastes a bit like greek rose incense smells and has a very subtle aroma. but then nearly every (high quality) kind of rose syrup i have sampled had its own characteristic, delicious flavour, so don't despair if you prefer to stay where you are.
   when making this divine dessert at home, keep in mind that rose syrup is very sweet so don't choose an overly sweet ice cream.



3. risotto alla milanese
   there is no excuse not to make a really good version of this classic dish. i have developed my own ideas concerning the best texture and ingredients (and will post my recipe as soon as possible) but i think with so simple a recipe and so few ingredients everybody should be able to produce a good risotto. and don't leave away the saffron if you can afford it - don't take everything angelo pellegrini writes too literally (as much as i like his book).



4. erdäpfelnudeln (lit. potato noodles, austrian specialty)
   erdäpfelnudeln are (obviously) made from potato dough . the thick fingershaped noodles are usually tossed in butter with a mixture of ground poppy seeds and powdered sugar ("mohnnudeln"). they can also be served with breadcrumbs roasted in butter, powdered sugar and a fruit compote ("bröselnudeln").
   either way they are yummy, especially when prepared by my grandmother. she makes the fluffiest melt-in-the-mouth erdäpfelnudeln you can imagine. personally i am still working on producing acceptable results, but i might share a recipe with you in the near future.



5. sformato di spinaci
   in my family we call it simply "spinach pudding" because at the time my mother first made it, my italian was non existing (it is converging towards that state again but this is another matter). basically it consists of bechamel sauce with parmesan cheese, sauted spinach and eggs (like a soufflé). sformato di spinaci is steamed in a pudding mold lined with breadcrumbs. and as usual the mere ingredients and my clumsy description can not do justice to the finished product. the recipe can be found in a time life series on international cuisine (unfortunately out of print i guess, it's not on their website). the closest approximation i could digg up online (in english) is this. an italian recipe site comes even closer to what i have in mind. anyway - some day i might get around to post my own recipe...

well, that's it.

i considered including more typical austrian dishes but i realized that - probably due to being vegetarian - mostly dumplings came to mind how boring. and with autumn and winter approaching fast i will be posting more about things like that anyway, that is if i actually find the energy to do so - see above.

oh yes, and as there are almost no food bloggers - whose blogs i read of course - left over who have not already been tagged by someone or other, i tag sebastian and andi. i know they both care about food in their own strange ways and their choices might be interesting.

Posted by iris at 00:27 | Permalink | Comments

when i was a child i didn't really like powidl per se but i indulged in sweet dishes and pastries that use powidl as a main ingredient most willingly (like germknödel).

i never thought of making powidl at home because i imagined the long cooking time and frequent stirring to be rather tedious but it was half as bad. so far i have made two batches of powidl - one at my aunt's in styria and one here in vienna. they both came out great though different in consistency and taste because i only added cinnamon to the first and cinnamon, cloves and a swing of rum to the second.

powidl (my version)

• about seven and a half pounds of very ripe plums
• one pound of sugar
• cinnamon and/or ground cloves, two generous teaspoons on the whole
• optional: a glug (or two) of rum

remove stones from plums, throw into a big pot and heat slowly while mashing the plums a little to help release their juice. you can now turn the heat on medium/high and let them bubble away until they are almost covered in liquid (this takes about half an hour).


add the sugar (yes, there is no sugar added in the hardcore traditional method but adding just a little sugar reduces the cooking time and does not harm the taste too much, it's a good compromise in my opinion) and spices and continue to simmer on medium heat, stirring occasionally. after one hour the mixture should look like this:



i decided to stop the cooking process after about three hours to achieve pasty, spreadable powidl. this should be the case when the mixture is more or less homogenous, dark purple to blackish blue in colour and drops heavily from the spoon like cake batter.

the more traditional method is to cook the powidl until the mixture is pretty stiff and the surface feels like a rubber ball when cooled down (after about four hours of cooking). the required amount is then diluted with rum or some such directly before use.



sterilize glass jars and twist-off lids during the last half hour of the cooking time: put the opened jars and lids into a pot of water, bring to the boil and leave on high for five minutes.¹ carefully (!!!) fish out of the water with tongs and place upside down on a clean tea towel to dry.

pour/spoon piping hot powidl into the prepared jars (it's best to use one of those special funnels with an extra wide opening to avoid dripping the lava-like mixture on your fingers and the rims of the jars. in case you do not have one of these, be careful not to burn your fingers and wipe the rims with a slightly dampened paper towel should there be any "accidents".) close tightly with twist-off-lids, turn upside down and cover with one or two tea towels. leave to cool a couple of hours et voilà...

¹ Of course you can't actually sterilize anything as simple as that, but you get the idea.

Posted by iris at 23:37 | Permalink | Comments