Schnitzel

We were stymied in our quest to have pretzel dumplings in a chanterelle cream sauce by the Bavarian Bread Lady at the farmers market. She only had one pretzel, so that kinda threw our dinner plans into flux.

So, we re-vamped and had schnitzel with the chanterelle sauce, spatzle instead of dumplings, and carrots.





Yes, that IS a TV in the background. It's Sunday night and The Family Guy is on. Gimme a break!

Biscotti

I decreed Saturday a Day of Baking (tm).

This morning for breakfast (before going to the gym), I made almond poppy seed muffins with the leftover sour cream and yogurt from making kugel and chicken curry last weekend. We always have nonfat vanilla yogurt in the house, but this was plain lowfat stuff, so I figured I'd use it up in baking. In poking around the pantry, Gropius found some sliced almonds that we threw into the poppy seed muffins and I added a splash of almond extract to the sour cream/yogurt mixture. Got them in and out of the oven in 30 minutes, including 20 minutes of baking time. Who says home-cooked breakfast takes too long?? :)




So, while I'm (still) waiting for my Schwarzwalder Landbrot to finish its initial yeast-maturation (4+ hrs), I made chocolate coconut biscotti with macadamia nuts. The biscotti have both dutch-process cocoa powder and chunks of 65% Valhrona in them with a sprinkling of macadamia nuts (about 1/2 c) and coconut. I've never made biscotti before, but I've watched Martha Stewart do it several times (have her shows from the mid-late 90s on video--yeah, yeah, I know--I need help), so I felt prepared to give it a try. The dough came together pretty easily and all in all, they were easy to bake. I'm interested in trying out different flavors now...I know that Martha has a pistachio and cranberry version for the christmas holidays that I might give a whirl in a few months. For now, I am going to try NOT to eat all of these and take a few to school on Monday to share in the mailroom.




And, I've still got about 6+ hrs of bread-rising time before the brot is done. I haven't made this bread since we moved from Ohio, so I'm a little rusty on the German rezept I have, but luckily I have Gropius's trusty German-English dictionary to help me muddle through phrases like "In die Mulde gießen und mit wenig Mehl vom Rand her einen Vorteig rühren." It will be interesting to see how it turns out using the dough hook on the KitchenAid mixer (we didn't have the mixer last time we made this recipe and did all the mixing/kneading by hand).

Will post pictures of the finished product tomorrow, along with pictures of the Knödel mit Soße (made from pretzels and chanterelles, YUM!) that we're planning on making for dinner tomorrow night.

Muffins, JLA, and Bohemia

Yesterday for breakfast, Gropius and I had muffins. Technically, it was supposed to be an almond pound cake, but I converted the recipe into muffins to speed up the baking time so we could have breakfast earlier. The results were great.




Breakfast had to be quick yesterday because I attended the Provisional Retreat of the Sacramento Junior League from 11am-3pm. I enrolled in the provisional class, ONLY because Hellen really urged me to. It brings back all sorts of conflicting feelings from being in a sorority in college. Here are a few pictures of what I experienced for several hours (fun, fun, fun!).





For dinner, Gropius treated me to beef goulash and Czech wine at Trattoria Bohemia on J Street. If you haven't been, you should. It's a great little restaurant--one of those neighborhood joints that you will to stay open, Richard Florida-like. They serve Italian and Czech food and their pizzas look great. I've never had one though because I've been too busy stuffing my mouth with their Czech dumplings and red cabbage! No pictures of food (too busy stuffing my mouth), but here are a few of the restaurant.

tomato paella

from the NYTimes & Mark Bittman (The Minimalist) series (recipe here ):




And a few pics of our cherry tomatoes from the garden (almost seems a shame to eat them):

Hellen's Tuesday dinner

Gropius and I took pity on poor Hellen. Derek has a one-year visiting position at Oberlin that has him gone Monday-Weds of every week. And Hellen doesn't cook. At. All. (which is how I know she loves me as my long-lost evil twin)

After we got through with our 5K running group, Hellen and I picked up Gropius from the Rubicon where he was flirting with a table of blondes, including a rather persistent one I nicknamed Bambi (who ironically enough works in the wildlife dept?!). Then we made our way home and cooked dinner: galangal soup with chicken. Very tasty!




The soup had chicken breast, chilli, fresh chinese noodles, galangal, sherry, napa cabbage, and chicken broth. We served it up with a nice Rose from Bonny Doon.

I think Hellen was done before either of us were:

richtiges deutsches Essen

Gropius and I had a proper meal that would make his family (with the possible exception of his vegetarian father) proud:



I made a German potato salad receipe from Martha Stewart (pre-prison, so she didn't cut corners in an attempt to win more readers to the magazine).



Gropius single-handedly managed to create BOTH sauerkraut AND bratwurst (from Niman Ranch) while I made the kartoffel salat.




And we ended the meal the way you *should* end most traditional German meals, with a 2-2.5 mile run a couple of hours later....

Pork with Peppers

Gropius wanted me to update the blog with pictures from our dinner on Saturday. We made Pork braised with Peppers from Lynn Rosetto Kasper's Italian Country Table cookbook. We had a plethora of sweet and hot peppers and cherry tomatoes and thought it would be a nice meal with some polenta (and we were right!). Plus, Whole Foods had a dry rose from Bonny Doon on sale that just screamed, "Drink Me!"

Cherry tomatoes from the Capay Valley

Peppers from Hellen's mom in LA (& some spicy peppers from our garden!)

Slowly-braised pork shoulder (w/parmesan grated over the top)

Tasty, tasty polenta (the next best thing to grits)

We also made an Italian bean salad


Yum!