From the Kitchen

As many of you know, I love creating in the kitchen! Not necessarily my own recipes, but creating delicious food from a variety of good ingredients. And my first love has always been and still is baking. My mother was an excellent cook, but she didn't like baking and so I got to do all the baking, much of which I learned from my grandmother and my aunt Inge.

If you like baking bread of if you want to start baking your own bread, but don't have the hours to watch the dough rise repeatedly, these two bread baking books are for you! I use them all the time - and when they say "five minutes a day," it's quite true! The loaf I made here is their European country bread, which I altered a little by increasing the amounts of rye and whole flours. It is soooo good! Each recipe makes enough dough for several loaves. You keep the dough in the fridge and bake the bread as you need it during the week. Fantastic!!

This next cookbook I got at the library. I got a very cheap copy at one point for my kindle (it was one of the almost free bargains one day), but I wanted to check out a hardcopy to get a better feel for it. It's all about preserving - canning, pickling, curing or smoking. Very interesting and it has a few really good recipes I want to try.

Now here's a new cookbook that is quite amazing. It reminds me of the way my mother and grandmother often cooked while I was growing up - farm to table. I read the entire book and want to make almost every recipe in it! Here I tried the mussels cooked in hard apple cider with leeks and apples. They were amazing!!

Ok, these next two pictures are also recipes from this last book. But I need to give you a little background story first. When I was growing up my dad was always into healthy living (and he still is). We kids were not always convinced, especially when we all "got to" drink cider vinegar with honey for a while. Of course, now I know how good all of these weird things really are! The cider vinegar, the grainy bread, nuts and seeds, whole grain everything, etc.

Among other things, my mom made our own yogurt for quite a while, which I always liked way better than the store bought kind.  So again, as I mentioned in my last post, I feel like I am coming full circle now making my very own yogurt. I decided to buy a starter culture for a yogurt that ferments at room temperature. Once this batch is done, I can use a little bit of it to start the next batch.

And then there's kefir! I remember my mom and dad getting a milk kefir culture from some friends of theirs and making and drinking kefir for a good long time. We kids thought it was disgusting. It looked like cauliflower to me and the taste was not something I liked at all back then. The culture I got here is for water kefir, which I've never tried. Both the yogurt and the kefir need a couple of days to be ready, so when they are, I will update on how the experiment is going...

And lastly ... a new love: oatmeal from steel cut oats! How amazing. How creamy. How delicious. How warming. And how had I never tried this before?! It's definitely a staple in my pantry now, especially during the colder winter months!

Here's wishing you a week filled with good food!

With lots of love,

❧ Silke

Friday Food - A Yummy Equation

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Daniel and I decided to get a tagine, handmade in Tunisia, and a beautiful Moroccan cookbook for Valentine's Day this year. We like getting gifts for each other we'll both love and keep using.

Cooking in a tagine is very different and actually quite soothing if you have time, as you can only cook with it over low heat.

Here, we tried the traditional Chicken Tagine with Green Olives and Preserved Lemons, a delicious meal, especially served on fluffy couscous!

Can you tell we love to cook and eat?!?

My Favorite Cook Book

Some may think we have a slight problem with our collection of cook books. However, both Daniel and I love to eat, love to cook and and actually enjoy reading cookbooks. Each one of the cook books on these two shelves contains a favorite recipe or more.

With Daniel's brother visiting, we've been preparing many of their old family dishes from their mother's recipes. There's a special comfort in familiar dishes from our childhood, isn't there?
That made me think of KJ's recent question on of of my food posts about my favorite cook book. And here it is:
It is my mother's handwritten cook book. My mother passed away suddenly when I was 21 and one of the things I always wished was that I had learned more of her cooking skills from her. No matter what was going on in her life, she cooked the most delicious meals - effortlessly!
I only have a few things of hers and this is the most precious to me. A cook book given to her by her mother with a few family recipes already recorded.
To those, she added her own,
and after she died, I added some more. I think there is something intensely personal and sacred in handwritten items and I love this page of recipes recorded by three generations.
And, of course, this book contains many memories, such as the day she cut this recipe from our local paper and made the apricot cake that has become one of my family's favorites.
Of all the recipes, I have to say that the cake and cookie recipes bring back the very best memories...

Do you have a family cook book? And if you do, do you still cook from it?

Friday Food

Ok, so I don't need it to be Friday to enjoy or share recipes with you, but it happens to be Friday and I happen to have tried out a new recipe that was so easy and delicious I had to share it with you!

Two days ago, I found this wonderful Tunisian recipe in Williams-Sonoma's Essentials of Mediterranean Cooking, which I checked out from our local library (a wonderful way to try new cookbooks before you think about buying them).
Spiced Carrot Salad

3/4 lb carrots, peeled and cut on the diagonal into slices 1/4 inch thick

3/4 teaspoon caraway seeds

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 - 1 teaspoon harissa (I made my own, but you can buy it prepared at Middle Eastern grocery stores - it's a past of dried chiles, garlic, cumin and oil)

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1 to 2 large eggs, hard-cooked, peeled, and quartered lengthwise

8 oil-cured black olives

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro (fresh coriander)

Bring small saucepan three-fourths full of salted water to a boil over medium-high heat. Add the carrots and cook until almost tender, about 2 1/2 minutes. Drain and transfer the carrots to a bowl.

Using a mortar and pestle, crush the caraway seeds until they are finely ground. Alternatively, place them on a plate and use the bottom of a small cast-iron frying pan to press and grind them. Add the caraway seeds to the carrots. Add the garlic, harissa, and vinegar to the warm carrots and, using a fork, toss to mix well. Add the olive oil and continue tossing until the carrots are evenly coated.

Transfer the carrot salad to a serving platter. Arrange the eggs and olives over and around the carrots. Garnish with the cilantro and serve at once.

Served with some toasted whole-wheat pita bread - simply delicious!!

P.S. Last night, I made the bean soup found on Kary's wonderful blog My Farmhouse Kitchen. Click here to find the recipe - tasty, warming and comforting. Thank you, Kary!!

A Bargain Treasure

Years ago, on a bargain table we found this Mediterranean cookbook, which turned out to be a true treasure. Over the years, I have read it many times (yes, I'm one of those people who reads cookbooks for fun) because just the pictures alone are wonderful. On top of that, many of the recipes are incredible, especially if you love the Mediterranean cuisine like I do!
My absolute favorite recipe from the book though is the Olive Oil Roasted Chicken. Here it is prepared with Mediterranean vegetables, but I have since made every variation of it I can think of. If you click on the picture below, you can actually take a look at the recipe. I do use less olive oil than called for - it's very oily if prepared according to the recipe.
This last Christmas, a good family friend gave us this beautiful pasta bowl ...
... and this platter to go with it. To me, the platter screamed "roast chicken" and so I prepared the above recipe with winter vegetables (carrots, parsnips, turnips, a rutabaga, sweet onion, and I think even some celery root). Daniel made a gravy from the pan juices and all was served with mashed potatoes.
Heavenly and comforting! And perfect for cold weather!
Do you have favorite recipes you have varied over time? That are so good that you make again and again?

Thank you so much for all your wonderful comments on my latest blog posts! I can't wait to visit you all and find out what you've been up to. In the meantime, I wish you a wonderful start to the new week!!

Of Food...

“One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating."

―Luciano Pavarotti

I'd been thinking about doing a post on a couple of recipes I've tried out and loved lately, and when this quote came to me in an e-mail this morning, I thought today is the day!

Over the Christmas holidays, we had made these incredible pan-roasted root vegetables as a side dish to braised short ribs - delicious!

Here's the recipe from The Balthazar Cookbook:

1/4 cup olive oil (I used a little less)

3 garlic cloves, crushed, skins removed

1 celery root, peeled and diced small

3 medium carrots, peeled and diced small

4 parsnips, peeled and diced small

3 celery stalks, peeled and diced small, leaves retained and finely chopped

2 sprigs of thyme

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat the olive oil in a large skillet of a medium flame. Add the crushed garlic cloves and saute for 2 minutes, until the cloves just start to take on color. Add the diced vegetables, including the celery leaves, and thyme and cook over high heat, stirring frequently with a spatula, for 5 minutes.

Lower the flame to medium and continue to cook, still stirring frequently, for another 10 minutes. Add a splash of water midway through the cooking time to provide steam. Just before the end of the cooking time, add butter. The vegetables should be tender and lightly caramelized. Season with the salt and pepper, and stir in parsley.

It is a lot of cutting of veggies, but so worth it. So good! And it can be modified to your heart's content. I had a half a rutabaga in the fridge, so I diced it and added it along with the other veggies.

Then yesterday I made a scrumptious Thai Tofu Vegetable Curry I found on a great blog that is all about daily vegetarian slow cooker recipes. Well worth checking out. You can find the curry recipe by clicking here. It was delicious, a little spicy and perfect comfort food for a cold day!
And last, but not least, a little hello from Winslow - obviously he thought that today was a good day to do some gardening...or maybe he wanted to try a new mud facial mask...

In the next couple of days, I may have another painting to show - this current one is proving a little challenging... I also recently received an award and have been remiss in posting about it. I have to state 10 facts about myself, so I'd better get thinking!

Oh, and thank you for all your great ideas for decorating! I will be looking for some branches to bring in, will do some rearranging of our other decorations and I'll go to a nursery to see about getting some bulbs to force indoors. That makes me think that I could be growing an indoor herb garden as well - I miss having fresh herbs from the garden...

Hope you are all doing great!! Off to visit your blogs now...

New Scarves, a Book and a Movie

So much is going on these days that I could do three posts a day if I had the time! I also wish I had more time to visit you all on your blogs - but I'll make the time this weekend and get caught up with what's been going on with you!

In the meantime, I've finished and listed two new scarves in my Etsy shop. One is elegant and lace in violets and rose tones, and the other one is warm, soft and cuddly in a bluish/grey/green color. You can check them out further by clicking here.

Daniel and I like to listen to certain programs on National Public Radio, among them The Splendid Table - because we both love to cook and eat! Lately, I've been trying lots of new recipes from their cookbook and all of them are excellent and delicious. Plus, it has great tips and stories as an added bonus. So, if you like to cook, you might check it out!
Yesterday afternoon, Daniel and I did a rare thing - we went to the movies!! A couple of weeks ago we had heard an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air with Wes Anderson about his new stop-motion animation film Fantastic Mr. Fox, based on the children's book by Roald Dahl. It was wonderful and we both highly recommend it. Here's the trailer if you want to take a look:

I hope you are all doing well and are having a wonderful Friday! I'll be visiting your blogs this weekend!! And, in case I don't say it often enough, thank you for continuing to visit mine!