Fine and strong essences

The making of good beef, chicken or vegetable broth is described in millions of cook books. Broth – no matter which kind – is a basic essence of all good sauces and it is an irreplacable fundament of fine cooking. Considering the chinese nutrition science broth is an absolutely basic and important element of food to provide energy to your body. That is because broth in the chinese understanding contains the essence of all its ingredients: the essence of the meat, the spices and the vegetables the borth ist cooked with. Meanwhile you can buy all kinds of broth – so-called "fond" – ready to eat, some with a quality that is not too bad. But if you have ever tried selfmade broth, and if you have ever worked with it in your kitchen, you would never use broth from the supermarket shelf or even from your organic supplier anymore. Therefore be careful: if you try fresh broth it will change your culinary life from scratch :-)

The basis: vegetables, herbes, meat or fish of high quality

If you want to create a high level broth with magic taste and smell you have to take care of two basic things:

First of all buy or use high quality organic ingredients only, be it meat, fish, vegetables or herbs. The whole essence of all you put together is in your soup later!

Secondly: cook it very, very slowly and at least 2 hours.

The mixture of ingredients will turn into a fine composition of taste and smell in your soup or sauce later on.

Fine strong and spicy beef broth

For this variation of a broth you need the following ingredients:

2 onions

1 leek

5 carrots

piece of ginger

3 red little chilis

fine olive oil

pepper

raw sea salt

clove of garlic

5 balls of pimento

3 leaves of laurel

Last time I used laurel being brought into my kitchen from a friend of mine. This laurel originated from Ticino. It was an herb with an unbelievalble taste, comprising all the smells of the warm climate of the south it has grown up. So take this example to be aware that little changes in your combination of ingredients can be the reason for an extraordinary, small but important change in the taste of your broth.

As meat for your beef broth you can use oxtail, beef shank and a few marrowbones. Cook the meat 10 minutes in extra water before adding it to your soup pot because it dispenses a foam of protein that should not be used.

Your broth can be boiled at a very small heat for round about 4 hours. After that time you own a real treasure to savor it immediately or for use with your further cooking. Broth can easily be kept for a week in the fridge or also be deep-freezed. But don´t forget: nothing will ever be comparable with a fresh broth.

Beef broth with filet, ginger and coriander

A very fine and easy version of a beef broth is to serve it with fried beef filet stripes, very thin sliced ginger and a bit of minced coriander.

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds

Best Bites

There are some basic products of fine food that I do not want to miss moving to a lonsome island. One of those basics is a really good, fresh, white bred.

Tasty bred, even if it is a real simple thing, often comprises all the characteristics of a country or a special region. Some bake it with more salt, some use less, some regions like it very light, in some bake a more heavy variation and so on.

Two of my favourite white bred shops in berlin should be mentioned here: one is a bakery - Sowohl als Auch -in the Prenzlauer Berg area with handmade ciabatta. They run a very nice tiny little fine food store beside the bakery and the so called cafe. The other one is a more industrial but very tasteful ciabatta from the (too big) spanish restaurant - Tauro - on Schönhauser Allee, which has also a little counter for spanish fine food besides the restaurant.

Ciabatta with...

I would like to introduce three of my very favourite ciabatta sandwich versions.

No1: Sweet Home

One of my favourite combinations for fresh ciabatta is as follows: spread a good half centimeter of handmade, fresh goat cheese on a slice of fresh caiabatta.

Then cover it with a bog spoon of creamy honey. Afterwards spread fresh crushed black pepper on it and one of the best homemade sandwich bites is ready.

No2: Mr. H´s best

There´s a wild man living in Berlin, who created this favourite ciabatta version No 2. Take a slice of fresh white bred, spread some butter on it. Then cover it with two very thin cut slices of a fine spanish serano ham. On the ham you apply a very thin layer of peanut butter and finish it with a bit of crushed black pepper.

No3: Sheepstarlet

Another very tasty variation is with a black pepper pecorino, fig jelly and rosemary. Spread a little bit of butter on the white bread slice, and add thin slices of a good pecorino with black pepper bowls in it. The best ones of this kind of peccorino cheese often come from Sardinia. Cover the pecorino slices with a thin level of fig jelly an add a small amount of fresh very fine minced rosemary - you will get the whole feeling of the south on your tongue.

There are many other favourite variations for combinations of good, fresh, white bread. The most simple and delicious one you can only degustate in the countryside: take a slice of ciabatta and put some fresh handmade butter and a bit of sea salt on it – an unforgetable taste!

dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert

Amazing Daisy and her snowflakes

The low pressure area called "Daisy" dipped Berlin into a whole white city today. Amazing! Everyone moves slowly and the usually hectic town almost feels like a slow motion silent movie. All things are covered with snowflakes like a bakery with powdered sugar. The powdered sugar brings me on to my one of my favorite cookie recipies called "snowflakes" or sometimes "vanilla clouds". Let´s call them snowflakes - it´s Daisy´s day today:-). Snowflakes are very simple to prepare and easy to bake, but very nice concerning their flavour and their mellow texture: they nearly melt in your mouth.

Ingredients for snowflakes

250 g creamy butter, 100 g powdered sugar, 2 vanilla beans, 100 g flour, 270 g cornflour.

How to bake snowflakes

All you have to do is to mix powdered sugar and butter together to a very creamy consistence and then add the mush of the bourbon vanilla interiour and the flour mix. Keep the dough cold for a while. Then take it out of the fridge, form rolls and cut slices of a half centimeter of this rolls. Make a little bowl out of each slice, lay it on a baking tray covered with parchment and press the little bowls down to flat with a fork.

Bake the cookies for around 12 minutes at a medium heat.

Snowflakes are cookies not only for wintertime. Their fine taste also improves an afternoon tea in spring or summer time. You can refine snowflakes for these seasons with lemon or lime peel to give them a little bit of freshness.

dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert

First tulips

My personal end of every X-Mas period has definitely come when two symbolic things happen in my appartment: the fir tree branch is replaced with the first fresh tulips of the year and all the X-Mas presents find their place in my daily life. The best thing this year: the presents were 99% eatable or connected with food, so they will inspire and delight me each of the following days.

X-Mas favourite dish 2009:

lamb filets with espresso and black pepper

Nevertheless X-mas is over, something remains every year. During my usual six-

day period of Christmas cooking for different friends a few new ideas - combinations or variations of recipes - just "happen" while being passionate about cooking all these dinners every evening.

The X-Mas favourite of 2009 was lamb filet with a dry marinade of black pepper and coffee. Similar to Vincent Klinks cold marinade for the salmon (please see the last böog entry), the marination of the lamb follows the same process. The filets were covered with a 50/50 mixture of espresso and black pepper - both powdered roughly - and kept in the fridge for 24 hours. Before you fry them slowly in olive oil the next day, you have to remove the marinade carefully with lukewarm water and dry the filets with kitchenpaper. The taste of coffee and the hot pepper goes excellently with the special taste of the meet. After having fried the filets put some good rough sea salt on them and let them rest at least 10 minutes in aluminium foil.

Together with these smooth lamb filets a sweet-hot tomato-carrot-chili-chutney was served.

For the chutney frie a sliced onion and a garlic glove with salt and 3 little hot chilis in olive oil. After the onions look glassy put in the carrots (about three big ones) in small pieces. Turn down the heat immediately and put on the lid.

After another 10 minutes add 6 fresh, tasteful, cut tomatoes and another 10 cut dried tomatoes. Add a big tablespoon of brown sugar, a dash of aceito and let the whole stuff boil very very slowly - lid on - for minimum 45 minutes.

Remove the chilis, the garlic and taste it again, if necessary add some sea salt and serve it with the fried lamb filets. This meal goes excellently together with good white bread, fresh high quality olive oil to dunk it in and a smooth strong tempranillo besides.

There was a very severe tester with me the evening I served the lamb:-) He immediately became a fan of this dish and on his scale from 1 to 10 (best) he gave this meal a 10, what decorated the face of the cook tomato-red around the cheeks:-)

2010: Chaos, sensuality and fine food:-)

The motto for 2010 I established according to one of my very favourite Christmas presents, a little tee candleholder with the inspiring slogan from a play about margravin wilhelmine (1709-1758).

"So it has to be: Chaos, sensuality and fine food." What a slogan! I totally agree with the last two points of the sentence but the chaos I hope to conquer in 2010 better than in 2009, even if I believe that someone needs a bit of slight chaos to be inspired anew and to stay creative.

dolce vita ahoi • monika ebert • mobile minds

X-Mas matters of taste

There are these december weeks... you all know them:-)

They come back every year and every year nearly everybody feels stressed again because of these litte holidays and their organisation around x-mas – be for private or business life.

Sometimes it seems to me as if the 24th of dezember is a suddenly upcoming little catastrophe nobody ever heard about and no one ever knew before... and most important impression: everybody acts like if everything not being finished before the 12/24 will never have a chance of being finished. Therefore the world MUST finish everything under every circumstance until the 24th of December or better before the 21st of December.

Gingerbread spice mix everywhere

There are a few other phenomena in our marketing driven cluture around chrsitmas concerning taste. After the first cinamon christimas cookies in September!!! my nose and tongue get bored faster and faster to smell all those – in general wonderful – spicery like cinamon, artifical orange and overdosed gingerbread spice mixes. Therefore I decided a few years ago to eat exclusively self-made cookies and not to taste any of those overdone x-mas chocolates at any of those before christmas parties anymore. That was a very good decision:-) and I´ve never regretted it, above all my culinary senses:-)

Cinamon

Cinamon for example is a very fine spice and furthermore one of the oldest known ones. Scientists presume cinamon to be used in China already 3000 B.C. From the 16th to the 18th century it was one of the most expensive spices. Its smell and taste are connected in nearly every mind with the experience of Christmas. Nowadays the cheaper Cassia Cinamon, used for all the industral bakery, is even considered to be harmful if you eat a whole package of cookies. But the much more expensive "Conamon Verum" also known as "Ceylon Cinamon" stays one of my favourite spices - if used modestly. For example a pinch of this original cinamon used within a vension ragout with red wine and african pepper could refine this taste ensemble around the meat in a very special way. It is often the same, be it cooking or life(style): quality and dosage are the things that really matter:-)

Cardamon

Another wonderful spice is cardamon. The capsules of this plant of the ginger family, originally from India, have a very strong and exceptional taste. The more aromatic Malabar Cardamon is one of those spices I like to refine my dark, selfmade hot chocolate with, after having cooked carefully the a vanilla bean in the milk first. A whiff of cardamon can also enlight good strong espresso. Therfore you have to mix it into the coffee powder and brew it together.

Last but not least: Staranis

I get to know staranis very late in my culinary life. Not being a fan of all those anis tastes known from liqueurs like the greek Ouzo or the french Pastisse, I used anis very seldom in my kitchen. This fact changed immediately after having discovered a wonderful recipe of one of my favourite cooks, Vincent Klink (www.wielandshoehe.de). He uses pestled star anis and black pepper as a cold marinade for salmon filets and leaves the fish covered with the two spices overnight in the fridge. The salmon absorbs the hot and the sweet of the two spices, smells and tastes slighty after those two different components after being marinated - wonderful! Before frying the salmon filets in butter he removes the marinade. You feel nothing on your tongue except for the soft and tasty fish. Vincent Klink really is one of those masters of the right combinations and the right dosage of spices and herbs in his marvellous kitchen. His salmon recipe is one of my favourite chirstmas dishes. This year it will be the dinner for the evening of the 25th.

So the first half year of this blog is over. I hope you enjoyed the entries and I hope you will be my readers again in 2010! Whish you all a merry X-mas and a happy new year with a lot of fine food, good moments, interesting people and new discoveries, be they big or small!

dolce vita ahoi • best wishes• mobile minds • monika ebert

New café culture in the Uckermark

Driving direction north from Berlin to the city of Prenzlau you arrive approximately after one hour in a region called "the Uckermark". The Uckermark has a wonderful soft lined scenery, beautiful lakes around the Feldberg area and offers quiet forests for extensive walks. The region is the home of a very special mixture of people: The "original Ukcermaerkers" on one hand and the "new Uckermaerkers" on the other. The former have a very special way of communication, better a short-cut-non-commmunication, even if they are very heartful people. The latter – the new Uckermaerkers – migrated by the majority from Hamburg or Berlin to the region. This second part of the habitants tried to settle down and also to establish themselves in the resgion over the past 20 years. So, as a stranger, you have to get used to the short-cut-communcation of the original Uckermaerkers as well as to the very different mind-sets within the groupof the new Uckermaerkers - not that easy, I can tell you:-)

Two dear friends of mine entered the Uckermark 8 years ago as new Uckermaerkers and are now nearly established as Old Uckermaerkers. Since then they have renovated step by step and very carefully a landmarked, marvellous garner in Kraatz near Prenzlau. That´s why I have an extraordinary interest in and a very close relationship to this special region.

As a fan of good cakes I like to explore every new place in the region where people open a café or sell homemade stuff. When I travelled to the Uckermark last time, I visited two very different cafés: the first one, the "Kräutercafé" meanwhile well known, located in Parmen, led by a very nice, native Uckermaerker woman called Andrea Tietz (http://www.naturreich.de/hofladen.html). And a second one in Friedenfelde, called "Salon im Gutshaus" led by family Nowatzki (http://www.salon-im-gutshaus.de).

 

Café of herbs by Andrea Tietz in Parmen

Andrea Tietz is a very nice woman with an awesome herb garden. She knows her herbs deeply and every plant in her garden is carefully signed. 

Her own herbal tea-mixtures and all the other products sold wihtin the little store are lovely creations, evolved from her dedication to the plants. I fell for her tea housemix with citronella, lemon gras, mint and a lot of fine other herbs.

Andrea´s cakes are delicious, real homemade stuff. I´ve never seen a visitor eating only one slice, they all take two. Last time I tried a cake called "mother-in-law-cake" and if I will ever merry I hope my mother-in-law is as tasteful as this wonderful sweet piece of bakery with cherries, nuts, in a white dough, covered by a roof of chocolate. 

 

Café Salon im Gutshaus Friedenfelde

The second one which I like to propose is the Cafe Salon in the Gutshaus in Friedenfelde. This lovely Cafe is owned by family Nowatzki. To Mr. Nowatzki, a very nice man, I had the chance to talk during having my cup of wonderful fresh organic coffee.

The Café offers a nice garden outside as well as a cosy salon café inside. The whole heating of the house is organized by very big tiled stoves, which the owner couple reinstalled carefully in the house.  Another sweet curiosity is a collection of over hundred coffeepots. The cafe sells fine cakes and organic little dishes like fresh goat chese sandwiches or salads.

To sit in the garden of the Gutshaus Firedenfelde in the warm autum sun was one of those marvellous moments in life when the world embraces you softly and your mind takes a total break. For sure I´ll be back soon to sit near the tiled stove and attend one of their literary winter events.

Get to know Mr.Chocolate

Yesterday I met a real master of culinary seduction, the man in the kitchen of one of the most delicious chocolate manufactories of Berlin: The "Chocolatier" of In´t Veld. His name is Christoph Wohlfarth, a young, smart, ambitious and passionated

one. Christoph is the creator of one of my favourite chocolate products: very thin, long, dark chocolate sticks with 1 percent of sea salt. These sticks offer an unusual, deeply seductive and fine taste combination.

The only problem with this high level chocolate is, that the little bit of salt acts like a devil: it avoids stubbornly to bring up the feeling of having eaten enough "sweet" chocolate. Very dangerous stuff:-) Never buy more than one package, unless you are twosome.

Get into it:

the multiple ways to chocolate heaven

I was part of a guided tour including chocolate lecture and tasting. The evening event took place in the kitchenrooms of the manufactory. Christoph´s professional world consits out of two little backyard rooms in Berlin Prenzlauer Berg. With his typical northern, kind narration style - originally he comes from Bremen - the Chocolatier led us to the process of production: from the cacao fruit to the bar, up to the different tastes of handmade, high class chocolate.

He elucidated all criteria that influence the quality of the product in the end: different plants and growing areas of cacao, the combination and amount of the ingredients like sugar and cacao butter as well as one of the main issues in chocolate production: the temperature. Christoph only uses goat milk within his chocolate kitchen and well trainded tastebuds savor that fine difference in taste.

My favourite Italian chocolatier, the man behind Domori, a real enthusiastic maniac and perfectionist in that business, is one of their raw-chocolate suppliers. Domori had also been the manufacturer of their first own product line in the early days of foundation of In´t Veld in 2002. Another manufacturer to be mentioned in the high levels of chocolate heaven is Zotter, a very dedicated austrian Chocolatier, producing "from bean to bar", with an addiction to wild, nice experiments.

Like all good and ambitious manufacturers Holger In´t Veld and Christoph Wohlfarth as well want to produce their own raw material as soon as possible to be able to influence every step of their chocolate.

The tasting

My favourite chocolate within the offered varieties during the tasting was In´t Veld´s 80% dark with goat milk. This chocolate melted astonishingly smooth in the mouth and was at the same time full of complex dark aroma. Maybe the 80% one has the power to replace my current chocolate stick addiction, even if both, the bar and the sticks are not comparable in any way. They are two different sides of chocolate heaven, and as a highly addictd one, I never want to be forced to make a decision between two places in that heaven. I prefer to enter both.

PS: If you run out of money and need a cheep and tasty "Barcelona Chair" go to http://www.intveld.de/ and satisfiy your need. No idea is ever safe from being rebuilt in chocolate:-) Maybe at the next guided tour you will see a "Le Corbusier Chair".

dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert

Floral summer salad with apple-lemon-dressing and handmade goat cheese

A mixed summer salad – fresh form a garden – is a real luxury if you live in the middle of a big city. Nasturtium with flowers is nearly top of the city summer luxury level. The fresh flowers of this plant are very sensitive to handle, therefore rare to get and then mostly overpriced. I have to admit: I adore them deeply.

Nasturtium with flowers is not only wonderful to look at, the whole plant is magnificant and sapid. To feel the slightly acrid taste and the smooth texture of the flowers on the tongue evoces immediately my personal high summer feeling.

Wild salad mix of the day

The salad mix I had yesterday came from my beloved organic food store, directly brought from their own little farm, freshly cut in the morning. This really means to have a salad almost as carefully treated as in the own garden. I bought their wild, randomly arranged garden salad mix of the day which consists out of nasturtium, orache, a special salad gabbage, a very fine young rocket, small dandelion leaves and red oak leaf lettuce.

Fresh, handmade present from the farm

Furthermore, one of the ladies gave me a very nice present: a fresh, handmade, wonderful gentle goat cheese. Lunch of this day seemed to become a real feast. To perfect my feat of the day I bought a fresh baguette, a lemon and a bottle of unfiltered natural apple juice. Arrived at home I mixed the goat cheese with a bit of fresh crushed sea salt and stored it in a few spoons of mild tuscan olive oil until lunchtime.

The dressing

For the garden salad mix I composed a fresh dressing with a very mild olive oil as a basis. To this basis I added  tea spoon of lemon juice, a spoon of apple juice, a bit of a mild honey, sea salt and minimum of fine crushed white pepper and stirred it altogether until it became a gentle, creamy 

vinaigrette. 

I didin´t add any herbs or other ingredients because I did not want the sophisticated flavours of the salad being overlayed. Fortunately lunchtime arrived quickly and I sat down, met the dressing over the garden salad, cut a piece of fresh baguette and dipped it into the goat cheese. I was very happy to have time to savor this feast for lunch and thought about the next dinner invitation for friends to share it, with a spark of hope, that the wonderful goat cheese is for sale next time.

dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert

Stewed vanilla apples with orange peel 

and calvados

Last sunday I was invited to a wonderful afternoon coffee. The event took place in a tiny little allotment in the south of Berlin. To be honest, I´m really no fan of 

allotments because of their narrowness and all those neighbours sitting so close to you that they can understand every word you say. My personal conception of a 

garden is wild and big, neighbours far away. But I have to admit that being there under a sunshade on a lazy hot afternoon, having coffee and nice cakes combined with interesting talks was cushy and very recreative. 

Furthermore, the smell of the little wooden house there reminded me to the smell of our old sailing boat at the Chiemsee. That was why I fell in the mood of thinking about other tastes of childhood. One of those tastes were light warm stewed apples with cream of wheat sprinkled with cinamon and sugar. 

Different garden apples as inspiration

Having the opportunity to get a few fresh garden apples to take with me, I did not hesitate a minute. Driving home with this nugget of a frist-class ingredient, having their fresh smell in my nose, I invented a huge amount of combinations for stewed apples with different spices and flavours in my mind. The one I nominated as the winner I tried later on in my kitchen. 

Taste enhancement: Orange, vanilla, brown sugar, 

butter and calvados

Important with my winner was to use spices that enhance the apples very own flavour. Cinamon and cloves, the first spices that came to my mind, are also very tasteful in combination with apples. But I regarded them as too strong together with the bright and sour natural taste that fresh garden apples donate.

My idea was to add more slight tastes that enhance the apple aroma and so I decided to use orange, a bit of vanilla, butter sugar and last but not least Calvados.

I started to brown butter and sugar softly with an opened vanilla bean in a flat pot. Afterwards I added the peel of one orange cut in stripes. 

Shortly before the brown suggar-butter became dark, I added a bit more than a quater of fine calvados in sips and reduced the heat. 

After having met the peeled and sliced apples, more or less 750 grammes, in the pot, I stirred it altogehter carefully. It really has to be cooked very slowly about 20 minutes – lid on. Before the stewed apples cooled down completely I lifted the lid and was very content about the smell:-) I put a small amount of stewed apples into a bowl and served them with a spoon of double cream and a few fine stripes of orange peel. This was an unbelievable harmonic finale for a lazy sunday afternoon in august spent in an allotment.

dolce vita ahoi • mobile minds • monika ebert