Grilled Pizza

We've been enjoying a LOT of grilled pizza lately because the weather has been so HOT.  On Friday evening, I finally decided to take a few shots of the action.  We made a pretty simple grilled pizza--no tomato sauce, just pesto on ours and tomato paste on Lulu's.  We did have a beautiful roma tomato from the garden that we used on our pizza in lieu of sauce though.  I think after a couple more tries, we'll have this grilled pizza thing down flat.  (and on the plus side, the grilled flatbread makes a great transfer medium for hummus!)

first pizza of the night (for Lulu)

flipping it over in a thwack works better than sliding it off the peel

Lulu's pizza

the mise en place

such concentration....

our basil pesto pizza with mixed cheeses

adding a little smoky char to the roma tomato

Blueberries

The trouble with going to a greenhouse on the Fourth of July is buying the unexpected....we were there to pick up another Parrot's Beak to replace the one that died while we were gone (too hot, not enough water, outside on the patio, etc) when I came across the Pink Lemonade blueberry bushes.  My eyes lit up and Gropius hung his head and said, "Okay."

Resistance is futile.

acidic soil, sand, and vermiculite

Once we got it home, we had to decide where to put it (I hadn't gotten that far) and ultimately decided that it would be best to rip out the horrible bush/refuge for scary spiders next to the carport and put it there.

action shot with the roto-tiller (i.e., best birthday present ever!)

Then, Gropius did some additional research and discovered that blueberries do better when planted with another species of the same plant (even though they are self-pollinators).  So, we put in two:  a pink lemonade (with pink berries) and an O'Neal (with blue berries).  And we also picked up a star jasmine when we were at Home Depot getting the necessary soil amendments for the blueberries.

pink lemonade on the left, o'neal on the right

two (edible) bushes are better than one

And of course, we decided to do this unanticipated landscaping project on a day when the temperature topped out at 100 degrees F.  Luckily, we could escape into the shade of the carport to elude the sun, and I insisted that Gropius drink water every time I saw him pause, but that still meant he was pretty tired at the end of the day.  And dehydrated.

The finished product with star jasmine in the back corner

But the new plants look beautiful.  And I hope that we get to enjoy some of our own pink/blueberries next spring!

Strudel

So, I have dedicated myself to learning how to make strudel--the real thing with actual strudelteig that you pull until it's so thin you can almost see through it.  The idea of being able to use that strudel dough to make sweet and savory strudels makes my mouth water....

But, before then, this recipe for Apricot Baklava Strudel called out to me from Sunset magazine.  I bought a handful of pistachios earlier in the week and a friend gave me a bag of apricots from her backyard tree--I figured this recipe was kismet!

Once I started getting everything assembled though, I realized that I didn't have the ground cardamom after all.  I had green and black cardamom pods, so I ended up splitting the green pods and grinding the cardamom up myself.  As my friend Hellen told me when she sampled some that afternoon, "You bake with love."

my miss en place, ready to assemble

the ground nuts, sugar, and cardamom

the finished product

Then, because I had plenty of the honey/sugar mixture leftover from macerating the apricots and half a package of phyllo dough, I decided to make a small cherry strudel, too.  Rather than using pistachios, I chopped up some almonds instead.

a little cherry peeking out....

More photos of Hohenstein

Here are some more photos taken on Saturday after lunch in Hohenstein.

view from the terrace of our restaurant

to give you a little perspective

view back down toward the village along the climb upward....

thank you handrail!

Lulu exploring a bit with Daddy

the Burg with red/white shutters for Franken

additional perspective on how high up we were

view from behind as we walked to our car

And some sweet ones of Lulu and her Oma:

Kirwa or Kirchweih

When we arrived back in Rothaurach yesterday, the town's Kirwa celebrations had shut down the main street to get to Walter Hoffman's house.  Kirchweih, or Kirwa in the local dialect, is literally "the church's birth."  It is an annual summer festival to celebrate the "birth" of the local church which happens after Pentecost/Pfingsten, of course.  One of the traditional celebrations of Kirwa is the erection of a Kirwa Baum which resembles the Maibaums of southern Bavaria or the Schwarzwald/Black Forest region.  Traditionally, men from the neighboring villages are supposed to sneak over and steal the Kirwa Baum the night before, so the local boys have to stay up late "guarding" the tree with lots of drinking...  They had closed the street to erect the Kirwa Baum yesterday afternoon, complete with a small oompa band for accompaniment.  Unlike southern Bavaria or Austria, this festival is also one of the few occasions when you see everyday folks wearing traditional clothing or tracht.  (I learned from Elisabeth, Hoffman's friend, that they don't call them dirndls around here--they're tracht)

Once we got to Hoffman's house, I could resist walking down the street and taking a few snapshots of the Kirwa Baum's erection and even shot a short video to give you a feel for the celebration.  Once the tree is up, then everyone goes back across the street to the local Wirtshaus and drinks and eats some more!

the big picture

teams of local boys working with poles

the "crown" of the Kirwa Baum
blue/white = Bayern/Bavaria, red/white = Franken, red/yellow/black = Germany
not sure, but I think the green/white = Rothaurach?

the top of the Kirwa Baum

another perspective on events

the oompa band, with toddler accompaniment

And here is the promised video to give you a spectator's birds-eye view:

Lunch

We took a short drive to the Fränkische Schweiz this morning for a(nother) walk in the woods, a wonderful lunch at Hohenstein, and some really beautiful pictures.

We stopped at a Wirtshaus (restaurant) in Hohenstein that had a beautiful terrace out front on which to eat lunch.  Everyone else was hoping for forelle (fresh trout) but had to be satisfied with (Norwegian) salmon steaks or schnitzel instead.  (I guess the local fisherman hadn't had any luck lately?)  I had a beautiful pork chop with delicate onion rings on top and perfectly sauteed potato wedges that went perfectly with my wine (Nordheimer Vögelein for those of you keeping track at home).

Afterwards, we enjoyed a local speciality called a windbeutel which is a type of profiterole stuffed with ice cream and whipped cream and topped with powdered sugar.  Gropius really wanted the sour kirschen one, so he and Lulu split one while I had another (small) one with gingered pears, walnut ice cream, slivered almonds, and caramel sauce.  My in-laws split a big strawberry one.

I had Isaak's Lieblings-Windbeutel

Afterwards, we hiked/climbed up the short trail to the top of the Hohenstein Berg to look back in the direction of Nürnberg.  According to my father-in-law, they built the Berg as a look-out/signal tower for the folks back in Nürnberg, to warn them if someone was coming because it's the highest place in the Fränkische Schweiz.  And sure enough, we could see the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) of Nürnberg in the distance!

Enough description already!  A picture's worth a thousand words anyway....

my wine

Gropius's beer (locally brewed, of course!)

my meal

everyone else's
(and for the record I *did* finish and eat my salad, too!)

sour cherry windbeutel

the in-laws' strawberry windbeutel (the BIG size!)

my small one enjoyed with a cappucino

pure deliciousness...and the windbeutel wasn't bad either!

On this episode of My Frankisch-American Kitchen...

We are putting an American spin on the most traditional of Frankisch specialities, the Nürnberger Bratwurst!

Given the food items on hand in the pantry, we are going to try our hands at making Nürnberg Pigs in a Blanket.

I have my mise en place assembled:



And here they are all rolled up:



And finally, a look at the finished product:



Some point on the learning curve:

1.  Given a larger working space, I would roll out all the dough and treat it like one piece, rather than several triangular pieces of dough

2.  I would also cut the dough into strips for better rolling around the bratwurst

3.  I would also probably cut the bratwurst up into sizes more closely resembling the traditional lil Smokies.

4.  Lastly, corn that comes packaged like this:



tastes as nasty as you might expect.  The French do NOT do packaged foods well.