Haydenei

When I read the khymos.org blog, I stumbled over a sauerkraut chocolate cake and thought that is nuts. What an absurd kind of an idea. But on the other hand, I was also intrigued by it and decided to try it at some time. All of the friends I talked to about it made funny faces - probably partially in disgust. That was more or less the same thing I did. Since I didn’t wholly

trust the idea, I searched Google and found some more recipes. All what the people wrote was how surprised they were and that you couldn’t really taste the sauerkraut on its own.

The theory behind all this and why it works, has something to do with similarities on a molacular basis. Chocolate as well as sauerkraut share the same volatile aroma molecules and for that reason, the two make a good pairing. This concept was first appreciated by François Benz. He was also the first to introduce a creation of pork liver and jasmine on one of the first workshops on molecular gastronomy. And from what you read - it worked. Since then Hervé This and Heston Blumenthal are doing a lot of experimentation in that field of work. The latter one also uses the results of his search for interesting flavor pairings in recipes of his restaurant The Fat Duck.

The recipe is more or less the one khymos.org used

• 170g butter
• 300g sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 pack of vanilla sugar
• 150ml cold coffee
• 100ml water
• 250g all purpose flour
• 50g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder
• 1 Tablespoon soda
• 1/2 Tablespoon salt
• 300g chopped Sauerkraut (pressed)

Step 1:

Mix all the ingredients except the sauerkraut in a bowl and prepare a smooth batter. After that stir in the sauerkraut.

Step 2:

Put it in the oven for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180° Celsius). When a toothpick comes out clean, take the cake out of the oven and let it cool.

As a tradition in the holiday season, this weekend we met with friends to bake some cookies. And at this time of the year, it is definitely a must to get the spirit. But as usual, if one starts early, one can finish early. And after a half days work, nobody wanted to go home, so we decided to pop in a DVD an have something to eat. But what we would eat was mine to decide. Since going shopping on a Sunday is hardly a choice in Germany, I roamed the fridge and shelves and found some dried tomatoes and artichokes in oil, goat cheese and some anchovies. With some yeast and flour it should be possible, to prepare something decent. But since we didn’t have enough cheese, the pizza was out of the race. So we settled for the big cousin – Focaccia.

Foaccia and pizza are more or less the same when it comes to the dough. But for the focaccia you don’t spread the dough very thinly. The basic dough consists of flour, yeast, a bit of salt, a bit of sugar, water and some olive oil. Depending on your taste, you can add further things like nuts, dried tomatoes, olives, or fresh herbs to the dough. I also saw some recipes adding pieces of San Daniele ham and roasted fennel seeds. Like with the dough, depending on the taste, you can put stuff on top and sprinkle olive oil over it.

Since we couldn’t settle on one topping, we just had different sections with different toppings.

Basic recipe for the dough:

• 500g all purpose flour
• 20g yeast
• 350ml warm water
• 1 Teaspoon salt
• 1 Teaspoon sugar
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil

Step 1:

Dissolve the yeast in warm water and add the sugar and salt. Add the water with yeast and the olive oil to the flour and knead it to a smooth dough. Knead in all additional ingredients you want to add to the dough. Let it rise for 30 minutes at a warm spot.

Step 2:

Knead the dough, that should have risen by now, for a second time and let it rise again for another hour.

Step 3:

Give the dough a short kneading and spread it thickly on a roasting pan. Poke with your finger a couple of dents in the dough and add the topping you like (for example dried tomatoes in oil, ham, chorizo and the like. If you don’t want any topping, it is tasty to add some fresh herbs like rosemary and thyme along with some salt and pepper. At the end sprinkle some olive oil onto it, so it can settle in the dents.

Step 4:

Let the dough rise for some 15 minutes an put it in the oven for 20 – 25 minutes at 220°C.

Tips: I wouldn’t use chopped pickled artichokes as a topping, because the can become real hard due to the baking. If you put on anchovy fillets they add a real tasty salty note to it. When you bake them, afterwards, they have a real pasty texture and kind of melt with a salty taste on your tongue. If you eat the focaccia while it’s still warm, it’s really soft and tasty. But even if it’s cold, it’s still very good, because it is more like a bread.

A quite easy way to prepare a turkey is in my opinion the maple and cider buttered turkey. To prepare it, you put the butter on and under the skin of the turkey. If you don’t dread this kind of task, you have hardly any work afterwards. Until it is done you just have to reduce the heat after 30 minutes, cover the bird with foil and you are rewarded with a real juicy turkey. In the meantime you can prepare the side dishes (but remember, your oven is occupied by the turkey), set the table or you can just kick back and relax before the big feast.

The recipe is for 12 servings:

Ingredients

For the butter

• 500ml cider
• 80 ml real maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram chopped
• 2 1/2 tablespoons lemon zest
• 180 g butter
• Salt and pepper for fine tuning

For the turkey:

• 1 turkey 6 - 6,5 kg
• 150g carrots chopped
• 150g celery chopped
• 350g onions chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh marjoram chopped
• 500ml chicken stock
• 25g all purpose flower
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 bay leave
• 30ml calvados (optional)

The preparation

Step 1:

Mix the cider and maple syrup in a heavy saucepan and boil over medium-high heat until reduced to about 1/5. Remove from heat and mix in the lemon zest, thyme and marjoram. Add the butter, and stir until all the butter is melted. Add salt and ground pepper to taste. Cover it and let it cool for a thicker consistency (the butter can be made up to 2 days ahead).

Step 2:

Preheat oven to 190 degrees C (375 degrees F). Wash and dry the turkey, and place it in a large roasting pan. Slide your hand carefully under the skin of the breast and loosen it. Rub half of the maple cider butter under the breast skin and thigh. If you want to stuff the turkey, now it’s the time. Rub ¼ of the maple cider butter over the skin of the turkey. Tie the legs of turkey loosely together with kitchen string.

Step 3:

Put the chopped celery, onions, and carrot in the roasting pan around the turkey. Sprinkle thyme and marjoram over the vegetables and pour the chicken stock into the pan.

Step 4:

Roast turkey for 30 minutes in the preheated oven. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F), and cover it loosely with foil. Continue to roast for another 3 to 4 hours if unstuffed or 4 to 5 hours if stuffed. The turkey is ready when the internal temperature of the thigh reaches 80 degrees C (180 degrees F) and stuffing reaches 75 degrees C (165 degrees F). Take the turkey out of the oven and cover it with foil for the moment. Reserve pan mixture for gravy.

Step 5:

For the gravy: Strain the pan juices into a saucepan. Spoon the fat from juices and bring it to a boil. In a small bowl, mix the remaining maple cider butter with flour to form a paste, and stir it into the broth. Add in thyme, bay leaf, and the optional calvados. Boil until it is reduced and slightly thickened. Season with salt and pepper.

A good addition - Cranberry-Sauce

In addition to the gravy, a self made cranberry sauce is a real treat. It is easy to prepare and real tasty.

Dissolve 200g of white sugar in 250ml of orange juice. Stir in 350g of fresh cranberries an boil until the cranberries pop. Remove from heat and let it cool, which also thickens it.

My last business trip took me to Paris, where my friend Song showed me around the city as a couchsurfer and suggested dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant. It is one of the restaurants, which offers the traditional Japanese cuisine apart from the everywhere available Sushi. Sure, Japan is well know for it’s Sushi, but it has so much more delicious stuff to offer. On the other hand some rather questionable dishes (this is a purely personal opinion) have made their appearances on the menu. One of these dishes is nattō.

Due to my poor – or to be honest non existent - knowledge of the French language I made my decision with Song’s help and an ordered tuna with nattō as a starter. The waiter kindly pointed out that it has “a very special taste” to it. Song and I thought nattō is a kind of marinade and I decided, can’t be that bad. So I stuck to my order. The polite question of “are you sure” didn’t dissuade me.

A little later they served me a small bowl with some pieces of raw tuna and some kind of bean slop. Fearless as I was, I picked up the chopsticks and tried some of that nattō. When I lifted it even a little it produced spider web like strings. And looking promising is definitely something completely different. To me it reminded me more of food you forgot before you left for vacation and you have to get rid of afterwards. But what could I do? I ordered it, so I had to try it. The taste definitly didn’t convince me and it is hard to describe. For me it was kind of moldy, salty and not very tasty. I tried some more of it, but decided to eat only the raw tuna beneath it. And the latter was definitely good.

Nattō consists of steamed soy beans which are mixed with a bacterium. This way, the beans are fermented for up to 24 hours. The result is a slime of denatured protein.

My personal conclusion – it is interesting to have seen and tasted it, but I definitely don’t have to do it a second time.

Thanksgiving is one of the mosta American celebrations which brings the family and friends together and marks the beginning of the holiday season. I already had the chance to experience an original big T-day myself and was thrilled. The memory of turkey, sweet potatoes, pekan pie and the sociel get together are still very present even though this was about 18 years ago. For this reason my wife and I decided to also celebrate this holiday? So this year we again invited friends fot the big feast. But since the Germans don’t celebrate Thanksgiving and therefore don’t have a holiday scheduled forthe fourth Thursday in November we just postponed our dinner until Saturday. This left us with enough time for the preparations.

Since there was so much to do, I started of Friday with bying a mountain full of food - allowing us to feed 16 people. On the menu for the dinner were:

• Maple Roast Turkey
• Cranberry sauce
• Creamed Corn like no other
• Yummy Yam Cassarole
• Grandma Green Bean Cassarole
• Day Before Mashed Potatoes
• Unbetable Pecan Pie
• Banana Sour Cream Bread
• Apple Pie by Grandma Ople

Some of these dishes were already approved by our guest last year, that’s why I want to share the good ones with you. But we also tried out some new ones which proofed to be a mistake in at least one case.

After I roamed a couple of stores for all the necessary ingredients (cranberries and pecans are not that common in Germany and you can’t get yams in every store neither) i started to unpack all the bags and it looked something like this.

Most of what we needed for the dinner

But there was not much time to be lazy and the oven would be occupied by the bird for a ling time the next day. So I already started with the first bread on driday evening.

The next day was the actual day of a great battle in the kitchen to do get everything done. Line and I decided to devide the work - she was doing the the dishes and the decorating which left me with the cooking (but that was, what I wanted). Due to all the work, there was only little time for breakfast and we got working right thereafter. The dough were prepared and chilld, the pe shells were made and the contents for the fillings mixed and poured. For the pecan pie we tried a new recipe, because last years Bourbon Chocolate Pecan Pie was just too sweet and rich as a dessert. But as mentioned above, the new recipe proofed to be a mistake. When we started to slice the cake, the mixture of butter and maple syrup started to run away, it just had not set. I don’t know whether I did do something wrong (which is the most probable explanation) or the recipe just doesn’t work. For next year we will stick to the maple syrup and chocolate version and if there are left overs, they make a sweet and tasty beakfast for the next day. And that’s not so bad either - if you think about it.

According to the deal it was my part to cook instead of decorate, which left me with the task to peel the 6 pounds of potatoes and 8 pounds of yams. But what task more varied could you hope for? I then mashed the potatoes, stired in the cream cheese and sour cream, boiled the yams in the microwave (that worked surprisingly good), also mashed them and added pecans and brown sugar. Because there are raw eggs in the cassarole, you have to put it in the oven, which was in our case occupied by the turkey. This left me with only one solution - just before the guests arrived, I stood in front of our neighbours with a smile on the face and two cassarole dishes in hand. At first sh thought I wanted to purprise her with a dinner, but when I asked her to borrow her oven for half an hour she laughed heartily. And of course she was generous enough to let me use her oven.

To prepare the turkey I mixed maple sirup and cider and reduced it. I then added butter, lemon zest, thyme and marjoram which cooled to a real tasty butter which is massaged on and under the skin of the turkey. This is a little bit stange at first, but you are definitly rewarded with a great taste. To get the butter under the skin you carefully put your hand under the skin and separate the skin from the meat. Thereafter, you can get to the actual task. When I got under it’s skin an had my hand in there, it somewhat reminded me of scene from the movie aliens - but hey, I’m only doing it for the taste. And due to the maple cider butter you get a real tender and jucy meat and great, tasty skin. An absolute dream. You put it in the oven for 30 minutes and then simply cover it with foil and wait for approx. another 3 hours until the temperature in the thigh is 80° C. You can hardly make any mistakes here.

Shortly after the guest arrived I got the turkey and the side dishes ready. But since I got myself in the pit with a pack of hungry wolfes who were already seated at the table I didn’t risk to stall them just to take some pictures. And who would be interested in a turkey skeleton and empty bowls? So unfortunatly no pics of the finished dishes.

To sum up the evening I can only say it was a wonderful opportunity to add some pounds with friends. Even though we don’t usually celebrate thanksgiving in Germany, it’s worth it. The sociability in such a group is definitly woth the sweat and you are rewarded with the common feeling of replettion and happiness. For me the decision stand, I will spend an entire day in the kitchen again in about a year. If you have the opportunity for such a sociable get-together with food, I can only recommend to take that chance. It’s worth it.