Category: Savory

Spaetzle. The secret to the fluffy pasta.


My grandma was from Southern Germany and was always very strict on traditions. Every – I mean every – Sunday there would be a huge roast on the table, alongside with a little salad, lots of gravy and spaetzle. As my family lived some hundred kilometers away, those Sunday feasts were quite a rare thing that I looked forward to. In total contrast to my dad who grew up having a roast on Sundays and having to eat the rests throughout the following week.

But I was a fan of those spaetzle which my grandma made every time from scratch and with the most time-consuming method possible. This was by smearing a thin layer of dough on a cutting board and then kind of scraping the dough off with a large knife so that long strips are formed and fell directly into the boiling water. Every Swabian “hausfrau” is proud to make spaetzle that way and everybody daring to use other, less tedious methods would not be accepted as a good housewife.

Sometimes I still get the craving for a Sunday roast and spaetzle, but if I’m making spaetzle for more than one person, I leave the traditional scraping method behind and go for the pressing method. Either through a colander by scraping with a large silicone spatula or a press – think potato ricer but with bigger holes.

Oh, and if you’re not a fan of Sunday roasts and gravy (read: vegetarian), stack them into a large bowl with Emmental cheese and roasted onions and heat it up until the cheese melts. Serve with some fresh salad and you have really nourishing soul food.

SPAETZLE
for 2 as a main course, for 4 as side dish

300 g / 2 1/2 cups / 10.5 oz flour
3 eggs
250 ml / 1 cup water (or milk and water mixed)
salt and pepper
nutmeg, freshly ground
butter
fried onions


Weigh out the flour and make a little well. You don’t have to be 100 percent exact here, but I’m a little manic that way. That’s why my other electronic scale has increments of 0.1 grams. For measuring out really small quantities like baking powder and such.

In this case, it’s not really important to weigh out the flour. In fact, my grandma just scooped out some handfuls depending the amount and size of the eggs.


Measure out 1 cup of milk and water mixed – no special ratio needed. Personally, I like 50/50, but if you’re lactose intolerant, skip the milk and use only water.

+++ EDIT +++
According to my aunt and uncle, you should only use water – if you use any. My aunt uses only eggs and flour, adding just enough water to give the dough the right consistency.


Now add the eggs, milk/water mixture as well as the spices (salt, pepper, nutmeg) to the flour and start stirring with a large wooden spoon. I know, it will be lumpy at first. But don’t be tempted to reach for the hand mixer. You need to beat it by hand, otherwise they will be hard and rubbery if you overbeat the dough with a machine.

So the first secret is – elbow grease…


Beat the heck out of it until it looks mostly smooth, sticks to the bowl and flows like thick lava from your spoon.

Now comes the tricky part where it is impossible to make pictures without getting dough on your camera. This is sticky stuff.


Bring a pot with salt water to boil and have a colander, your largest rubber spatula, a slotted spoon and a bowl with ice water ready.
Set the colander on top of the pot. Before you start anything else, check that the colander sits a couple of inches above the water. Now ladle in a big spoonful of dough and press it through the holes with the rubber spatula. Remove the colander from the pot and fish out all the swimming pasta strands and put them into the ice water. Check their size. If you think you want them longer and thinner, add some more water, if you want them small and stubbly add some more flour. Repeat pressing batches of  dough through the colander until you have used it all up.

It’s important to get them out as soon as they float to the top, or else you will get rather hard and chewy pasta. You might have guessed it – that’s the second secret.

Or, if you happen to have a potato ricer with interchangeable hole plates, then take the one with the biggest holes. 


Melt some butter in a casserole and gently cover all the pasta with butter, while reheating it. You can also place the hole thing into the oven and reheat it gently in there. Just be sure to put in enough butter, or all will be sticking together. 


Now top it off with fried onions and more butter. Serve with your favorite pot roast or gulasch.

By the way, on the photo above you see the leftovers I layered in there with cheese and heated it up the next day in my company’s microwave. That was a satisfying lunch!

Cheese Fondue. Gooey and delicious.


People who have visited me might know that I own more than 60 cookbooks. Yes, I collect them, yes, they are sorted by color, and what surprises most people: I read them. Really. From beginning to end. OK, not every single recipe, but I do open every page, look at every picture, read every recipe name and skim over the ingredient list and – once in a while – I read the entire recipe. If it sounds interesting, it gets a little pencil cross as a reminder. When I have the time (and the ingredients) I try a new recipe – and either the little cross will be erased (for example in the case of the cranberry brisket fiasco) or it gets a circle around it as sign of approval.

And if it was really good, I tend to make it over and over again. And at a certain point, I won’t need the recipe anymore as I understand the ratios. As in the case with the cheese fondue: half the amount of wine as you want cheese – by weight (a pint’s a pound, and a cup is half a pint). And regarding the cheese, that really depends on what you like and how much you can eat of it… My fondue cookbook says 100-150 g / 3.5-5 oz cheese per person, but in my family it’s more like 200 g / 7 oz per person. We really like our cheese.

CHEESE FONDUE 
for 2 really hungry ones

1 loaf of your favorite bread
500 g / 1 pound hard cheese, eg Emmental and Gruyère (50/50)
250 ml / 1 cup white wine, eg Riesling
1 tablespoon corn starch
2 tablespoons kirsch (min. 40% alcohol)
1-2 garlic cloves
dash of nutmeg (freshly ground)
salt and pepper


This is a recipe where you really have to set up everything before you begin to cook: lay the table first, set up the rechaud, fill the burner and have your matches ready.

Then, grate the cheese – and here’s a good rule for using the right cheeses in your fondue: if it is too soft to grate (for example a young Gouda), better not make it the main ingredient of your fondue or it will taste boring. And don’t be afraid of throwing in the rest of Roquefort, Stilton or Parmesan that you might find in your fridge. I know, this will make half Switzerland cringe in horror, but one of the best fondues I had was made entirely of cheese rests I found in my fridge.


Next, measure your wine and mix the starch and kirsch to form a little slurry.


Then, cut the garlic clove in half and with the cut side, rub over the entire inside of your pot. Make sure every bit is covered in garlic juice. Personally, I don’t think this is about taste, but about the oils covering the surface of the pot so that the cheese won’t stick so much.

And regarding the pot: DO NOT ATTEMPT THIS IN A METAL POT. It sticks. It tastes awful. It gets too hot and burns. The cleaning is a mess. And worst of all: the scratching noise of metal forks on the metal pot. Makes my teeth hurt worse than scratching with your fingernails on a black board.
Better use an earthenware pot (mine has a special black bottom so that I can use it like a regular pot on my stovetop) or an enamel pot.


Last preparation step: cut up enough bread into bite-size chunks (1-inch cubes). I like a heartier bread with a thick crust and try to cut it so that every bit has crust on it. A French baguette would also be nice or a nut or rye bread.


So, everything ready and prepared? Have a look around and check. Everything there? Then let’s cook.

Pour in the white wine into your pot, add the rest of the garlic (I like to crush it) as well as some nutmeg, salt and pepper. Start the heat on low, slowly turn up higher and wait until the wine boils.

As for the white wine: only use a wine you also like to drink. And in this case, aim for the more acidic varieties, like Riesling or Pinot Grigio. Stay away from Chardonnay. I’ve tried it and it tastes very strange.


This is the point where you will not be able to walk away, even for a few seconds.
When the wine boils, turn the heat down to medium-low, grab a handful of cheese and sprinkle it in. And always stir in the form of a number 8 or just back and forth through the middle. Never in circles or you’ll end up with a big cheese blob floating in a milky wine solution – not very appetizing. Did I mention this is about getting an emulsion? You’ll need fats and water getting the same temperature and to get them together you need to agitate/stir constantly.

When the first batch of cheese is melted, get the next handful of cheese, sprinkle it in and never stop stirring. Continue until you have used up all the cheese.

Now stir in the kirsch slurry, heat it up for another minute until the cheese mixture thickens up a bit. This step is entirely optional, but I think it tastes good and makes a nicer consistency.


Bring the pot to your table (you see, my earthenware pot is straight from the seventies), light the burner and start to eat. Once in a while, check the heat and that the bottom doesn’t burn too much.

Dip in a piece of bread, let it cool for some seconds and put it directly into your mouth. Or sprinkle it with a bit of paprika powder. And yes, at the right you can see chili sauce – my husband likes everything on the hotter side (this will make all the Swiss cringe in horror even more).

You remembered to serve the white wine and a shot glass with kirsch, right?


This is for advanced fondue eaters: Before you dip the bread into the cheese, let it soak up a little bit of kirsch. Just for kicks.

When all the cheese is gone, you will see a dark brown circle at the bottom of the pot. Don’t throw this out, this is the BEST part. Tradition says that the person who eats the crust has to do the dishes.
You might think this is a real chore getting all that gooey cheese out. It would be, if you started scrubbing right away. But if you fill the pot with cold water to the brim and let it soak over night, you can simply rinse out the cheese.

Aurora. Pasta for the undecided.


Pasta Aurora. Just the name sounds smooth and velvety. I call it pasta for the undecided, as my husband and I often argue, if we should have pasta with a tomato-based sauce or rather a cream-based sauce like carbonara or al limone. So most times if we can’t convince each other, we settle for a compromise: cream and tomato in equal parts.

It’s easy, it’s delicious and consists of things I always have at home. This is just a very basic recipe – you can change it and go as minimalistic (just tomato paste, cream, salt and pepper) or as exorbitantly creative as you like. This time, I went for onions, garlic and red wine – just because I had those things within reach and find them delicious…

PASTA AURORA for 2

250 g of your favorite pasta
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, diced
1 garlic clove, chopped
1/2 cup / 125 ml red wine – optional
1 cup / 200 g tomato paste
1 cup / 200 g cream
salt and pepper
fresh basil
Parmesan cheese for serving


Those are your two main players: cream and tomato paste. You’ll need approximately equal parts, but please adjust the ratio to your taste! If you generally like your sauce on the creamy side (like I do), just add as much more cream as you like and you have in your fridge.

Here’s a tip for keeping tomato paste: I prefer to buy it in big cans but I don’t like keeping open cans in the fridge – even if they say it’s OK if they are coated on the inside. Anyway, I fill the rest of the tomato paste into a jar and top it off with oil – better vegetable than olive oil as the latter will crystallize in the low temperatures of your refrigerator.

Heat up a fairly big pan – regular or nonstick is up to you – on medium heat and put in some olive oil. Dice the onion and the garlic and let them get translucent and very slightly browned.

While you’re at it, bring enough salted water to boil and cook your pasta – test if they’re al dente and drain them.


This step is entirely optional – I simply had an open bottle of red, so I just thought: why not? It would be equally tasty with white wine or perhaps a little bit of vermouth.
Just pour the liquid on top of the onions and let it cook on medium until it’s almost gone.


See, most of the wine is gone and the rest looks like syrup (chefs call that a reduction). Go ahead and add the tomato paste. Stir it into the onion paste.


Time to add the cream. Don’t be shy. I will be delicious.


Stir slowly until you have a uniform sauce with approximately this bright orange color. Add the seasoning you like – salt and pepper are a must of course. But perhaps some Italian herbs or a little bit of sugar and balsamic vinegar would be nice.


Drain the pasta and mix it together with your sauce. Serve on your favorite plate with heaps of freshly grated Parmesan cheese and some basil.

Gulasch. Because autumn is arriving fast.


Do you also have an obsession of going to supermarkets in foreign countries? Personally, I think it’s exiting to see what’s similar, what’s different and to find things I’ve never seen before.
When I was on vacation in France in September, I found fresh “Piments d’Espelette”, or Espelette pepper. Espelette is a small town in Basque Country, near the Spanish border and famous for the houses covered with festoons of drying peppers. When the peppers are fresh, they are bright red and look like regular Hungarian peppers, but are definitively hotter. When they dry, they get darker until they look almost black. They are not extremely hot, but definitely too hot to be eaten as such.

Somehow in my mind, the visual similarity to the Hungarian bell peppers made me think of Gulasch, the perfect dish for cold autumn evenings. And it’s true what they say, Gulasch tastes much better on the next day!

GULASCH / GOULASH

750 g / 1,5 pounds beef
500 g / 1 pound onions
1 small garlic bulb, peeled
4 piments d’Espelette or bell peppers
3 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 tablespoons paprika powder
6-8 tablespoons tomato paste
750 ml / 3 cups / 1 bottle red wine
250 ml / 1 cup water
1-2 teaspoons salt


You won’t need much knife skills here, everything is cut into chunks. Cut the meat into dice – I like them in the 2.5 cm / 1 in range.
Peel the garlic and leave the cloves as they are. Maybe you could half one or two if you have very big ones.
Also, peel the onions, then dice them very coarsely. I only had rather small onions, so I halved them and cut the halves into quarters.


Now it’s the time to get out your latex gloves – especially if you are wearing contact lenses. Imagine rubbing all the capsaicin into your eyes while trying to get out the lens. No fun! By the way, capsaicin in hydrophobic, so use something fatty to make the burn less painful – like heavy or sour cream, cheese or olive oil.

Depending how hot the peppers are, remove the seeds completely or just some of them, then cut the flesh into nice little strips.


Get out your favorite large and heavy pot – mine is a blue Dutch oven I bought in France. They are called “cocotte” around there and “mini-cocottes” absolutely in this year. You see them anywhere, even at gas stations.

Heat the put up while it’s empty on medium-high heat, test if a drop of water “dances” around, then put in the oil. Let the oil get hot too, you’ll see ripples and just a tiny wisp of smoke, then put in a third of the beef cubes at max. Leave them alone and don’t try to turn them until you find that the sizzling noises sound a bit differently. Then try to turn the meat gently, if it still sticks, leave it alone for another minute or so. Maybe it just needs to get a little bit browner, then it won’t stick to the bottom any more.
When the meat has a nice brown color, put in the next few meat chunks and go on as above. Then repeat with the rest of the meat.

I like to brown the meat in 3 to 4 installments, because putting all the meat in the pot at once makes the temperature of pot and oil drop very quickly – and that results in the meat cooking and losing too much juice, and not frying.


If you have a pot that is big enough, you can simply add the onions and the garlic and let them brown with the meat. But in this case, my meat bits were getting in the way, so I put them out and then the onions in. Let it all get a nice touch of color.

See how the onions release a little bit of water and dissolve the brown bits from the bottom of the pan? This is why I always fry the meat first, and then the onions. I’ve tried it the other way round and ended up with onion coals and the meat not browned at all.


OK, get the meat back into the pot and and add the peppers, too. Then the paprika powder and the tomato paste and let it all get a tiny little bit of color.


Open the bottle of red and put it all in. No, this is no waste. You don’t have to by a Grand Cru for that, just something dry and red and heavy, like a Chianti, Shiraz or Rioja.
And don’t forget the salt…


Now, all you need is time. Cover and let it simmer (on low) for several hours, until the meat is soft. In fact, it should be so soft that you can separate the meat with a fork. Add a little bit of water if the meat is not covered any more.


See, no knife needed! And the onions and garlic are all cooked down to a thick and aromatic sauce.
Serve the Gulasch with potatoes, pasta or whatever else you like. And of course you remembered to buy a second bottle of that red? Then pour yourself a nice glass to go with it.

Hummus. Yet another middle-eastern dip.

This may sound a bit silly, but the first time I tasted hummus was in New Zealand. The reasons for this: My co-worker was vegan and loved it. And it was available in the supermarket in dozens of varieties. From plain to lime & jalapeño to sun-dried tomato. With Turkish salsa was my favorite. It was great just sitting on the Auckland pier at lunchtime and having a little pick-nick with hummus and a fresh bread.

When my husband and I returned to Germany, we still had the craving for hummus, but it was nowhere to be found in supermarkets around here. Luckily, hummus is incredibly easy to make.

HUMMUS

1 (400 g / 14 oz) can chickpeas/garbanzo beans
1 lemon, juice only
3 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tablespoon harissa
1/2 teaspoon ras-el-hanout (seasoning for cous-cous)
1 teaspoon tahini


Open the can (haha), drain the chickpeas and put them in a high mixing bowl. Unless you have a food processor, then put them in the mixing bowl of your food processor. But have an immersion blender so I use the highest vessel I can find in my kitchen.


Add the rest of the ingredients and then stick the blender in (or hit “go” on your food processor). Blend it as long as you want, you can make it light and fluffy or – if you’re like me – leave some bits and pieces for an more interesting structure.


Done! But wait, this looks a bit boring. Let’s make a little topping:

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon ground paprika


Heat up the oil and the paprika powder in a point just until it starts to bubble and starts to smell intensively like paprika.


Pour the hot oil over the hummus and enjoy the taste.

Baba Ghanoush. Dip for eggplant lovers.


Basically, I hate eggplants. Especially if they are soggy, mushy, bland and/or bitter. Or even soaked with oil floating in a boring tomato sauce. Horrible.
A year ago I discovered that eggplants – also called aubergines – actually CAN taste good, as long as you cut them in 1 cm thick slices, lace them with garlic and put them on the BBQ until they are dark brown and soft.

And then we went to a Persian restaurant and ordered a mezze platter. There were all those incredibly tasty dips: hummus, some kind of tzatziki, spinach with yogurt, olives, feta and this really tasty dip where I couldn’t place what it tasted like or what it contained. Can you believe my shock when the waiter told me it consisted mostly of eggplant! Since then, I always have to remember myself that I like eggplant, at least in some very specific preparations.

BABA GANOUSH / BABA GANNOUJ / BABA GANNOUGH

1 large eggplant
1 lemon, juice only
3 tablespoons olive oil
2-3 cloves garlic, crushed
salt and pepper
1 tablespoon tahini (or peanut butter)
1 package / 200 g / 1 cup yogurt (Greek style if possible)
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin or ras-el-hanout (seasoning for cous-cous)

Heat up your oven to 200°C/400°F. Stab the eggplant several times with a knife, then put it in the oven and leave it there for 30 min or until the skin is shriveled and black and the whole thing feels soft.
By the way, always punch a few holes in vegetable skins before putting them into the oven, many people report exploding vegetables (just have a go in Google). Not that this would terribly dangerous in a closed oven, but imagine having to clean every nook and cranny!


Get the eggplant out of the oven, grab a large knife and split it in half. Let. It. Cool. I burned my fingers because I was too impatient.
Now it’s time to scoop out the “meat” and I found that the ice cream scoop you see in the picture is perfect for the job. Or just use a regular large spoon.


Once you have removed the skin, place the “meat” into a tall container, add the rest of the ingredients and puree it with an immersion blender until everything is smooth. As I don’t have a food processor I use this method, but feel free to give it a few spins in the food processor if you have one.


I know, it’s not a pretty sight. But don’t let that intimidate you, the taste is great!
Serve with nice pita or focaccia bread, some olives and a glass of cold white wine. Perfect snack for hot summer evenings.

Tzatziki. Greek for dip.


Summer is the best season in my opinion. I don’t mind the heat – on the contrary, I love it – and I enjoy sitting on the balcony in the evenings, feeling a light breeze and waiting for the thunderstorm to break loose. Yesterday we had one of those evenings, and we decided on a light dinner with some pita bread, olives, hummus (recipe coming soon), feta and some taramasalata for my husband (I don’t eat anything that comes from the sea, except tuna).

Then I discovered a package of yogurt and about a third of a cucumber in my fridge – that really screamed out for a tsatziki. So don’t worry if the pictures don’t match the descriptions: I made about a third of the amount mentioned below and that’s just enough for two hungry ones.

By the way, the thunderstorm came much later that night, so we had a nice and calm dinner on the balcony. And it seemed especially calm to us since the workers finished putting a new layer of tarmac on the 6-lane street we live at.

TZATZIKI / TZADZIKI / CACIK

1 cucumber
3 packages / 600g / 3 cups Greek-style yogurt (10% fat)
(OR 1 package / 200 g / 1 cup regular yogurt, crème fraîche and cream cheese each)
3 garlic cloves, crushed
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
fresh parsley, chopped


You can skip this step, but the dip will not be as velvety and creamy as I like it to be. Place the yogurt on a cheesecloth (I only had a regular dish towel, works good but not spectacular) in a colander and let it sit there for a couple of hours.

Of curse you should cover the yogurt with the cloth corners, especially if you have cats that loooove high-fat dairy products…


Peel the cucumber and grate it coarsely. I like to quarter them lengthwise and cut out the seed section, because there’s much water in it and I want to get rid of it. To help eliminate the excessive moisture in the grated cucumber, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt and let it sit for 15 minutes. Squeeze out all the water, I like to use my hands but feel free to use a cheesecloth.


Put the yogurt (or yogurt, crème fraîche and cream cheese) into a bowl and give it a couple of stirs until you have a smooth texture with no lumps left. Stir in the drained cucumber, press in the garlic and season with salt, pepper, olive oil and freshly chopped parsley.

Do not do as I did in the photo above, chances are you’ll have lumps or the yogurt/cucumber ratio is not right.


Give it a taste. Add perhaps a little bit of lemon juice if you don’t know what’s missing. Yeah, dried herbs will do too, but fresh are much better.

Eat it with grilled chicken, bread, vegetable sticks, crackers or even on your classic hamburger.

BBQ chicken. Somewhat Indian.


Summer finally arrived here in Munich – at least for the next two days, then it will be raining again. So I enjoy it while I can… And additionally, it’s the last week before my summer vacation! Just 5 more days to go, then I’ll be staying for 3 weeks in a small house in south-western France, just a 10 minute’s drive from the beach. And I’ll be spending the days at the beach and firing up a real barbecue every night. I really miss barbecues. Because there’s a law and/or regulation for everything in Germany, we’re not allowed to have a BBQ or just a gas grill on the balcony. So I have an electric griddle, but it’s really not the same.

Have you ever heard of the Steven Raichlen’s “Barbecue Bible“? It’s a thick cook book with tons of recipes and general instructions for grilling I find very helpful and interesting (but don’t trust me: I like reading cook books like other people read novels). This is one of the recipes I found work very well, even if you only can use an electric griddle (or a simply pan in winter) instead of a proper barbecue. It works really simple and the chicken tastes best with a side of grilled pita or focaccia bread, some tsaziki and maybe a nice green salad. Because you marinate the meat for several hours, it gets a tangy flavor from the yogurt and tastes exotic (but not too much) because of the different spices.

BBQ CHICKEN Tandoori style

175 g / 2/3 cup Greek yogurt (10% fat)
small pinch of saffron threads
3 large gloves garlic, minced
2,5 cm / 1 in long piece of fresh ginger, minced
salt and pepper
1 teaspoon Garam Masala
500 g / 1 lb chicken breasts


Mix the first 6 ingredients together.


Prepare the chicken breast the way you like them and place them in a Ziploc bag.

You can use whatever chicken parts you like, but I’m super picky with veins and silver skin, so I buy boneless and skinless ones and cut everything away I don’t like. By the way, I gently fry all those nasty bits in a pan with a little bit of oil and – as soon it cooled down a bit – my cat Henry is all over it.


Pour the yogurt mixture into the Ziploc bag, close the bag while getting out as much air as possible and make sure every chicken bit is covered with it. Put it in your fridge for a couple of hours – 2 are OK, overnight would be even better (don’t forget to put some beers in you fridge while you’re at it).

Fire up your BBQ/electric griddle and grill them until they are done and have some dark brown bits. Pop a beer and enjoy the meat with a good piece of grilled bread.

Flammekuchen. The lazy version.


The weather around Munich is changing every day, from sunny and warm to cloudy and cold. And back. Twice a day. This roller coaster ride really gets me tired. Plus taking some medicine that makes me feel nauseous all the time doesn’t help at all. So yesterday evening, all I wanted was a quick bite, watch a bit of TV and a hot shower before going to bed.

As I recently discovered that I’m luckily not lactose intolerant (as I thought for the last 2 years), I really enjoy eating dairy products again! Fructose, on the other hand is a whole different matter and I still have to find out what fruits and which amounts I can eat.

Flammekuchen (or tarte flambée) means “cake baked in the flames” and is a specialty Strasbourg in France is famous for. The original recipe calls for paper-thin yeast dough, with very thin coats of crème fraiche, onions and bacon, then baked for few minutes with very high heat. This is why one person can easily eat a sheet of Flammekuchen the size of a placemat or a baking sheet. My version on the other hand is much thicker, but it is a quick and lazy one and ready to eat in 15 minutes.

FLAMMEKUCHEN / FLAMMEKUECHE / TARTE FLAMBÉE

1 package pizza dough (ca. 400 g / 14 oz) or homemade pizza dough
200 g / 7 oz /1 cup crème fraîche (30% fat) or sour cream
200 g / 7 oz bacon
1 large onion, thinly sliced
salt and pepper


Preheat the oven to 200°C /400°F. Unroll the pizza dough and place it on a baking sheet, with some baking parchment between them (you can roll the dough even thinner if you like, but I didn’t care yesterday). Thinly spread the crème fraîche on the pizza, then sprinkle generously with salt and pepper. Then, cut onion and bacon into very thin strips, scatter onion and bacon bits on top of the crème fraîche. Pop it into the oven for 10 minutes, or until the dough is cooked through and the corners are getting brown. Serve with a nice glass of chilled white wine and enjoy!

Al limone. Even quicker comfort food.


Pasta. Again.
Having a husband who wants to eat pasta every single day, I end up cooking pasta quite often. Today, it was pasta al limone – even simpler and with less ingredients than carbonara, most of which I always have at home. That is cream, lemons and garlic. The pasta doesn’t look very spectacular – some might even say boring – but the taste is fantastic. And the biggest plus: the whole meal just takes as long to prepare as the pasta needs to cook. That means: hot dinner in 10 minutes. Try and beat that.

SPAGHETTI AL LIMONE for 2
(recipe adapted from Sophia Loren – yes, the actress!)
250 g pasta (I like spaghetti, linguini or fussili)
2 tbsp butter
1 sprig rosemary
2 cloves garlic
1 lemon
1/2 cup cream (min. 30% fat)
salt and pepper
Parmesan cheese to taste

Bring enough water to boil (if you’re in a real hurry, use an electric kettle), add enough salt so that it tastes like sea water and throw in the spaghetti.


Heat up a pan, melt the butter on low heat, then put in the peeled and crushed garlic as well as the rosemary and let it fry on low until it gets a light golden color. In the meantime, cut fillets out of the lemon (or if you’re lazy, just squeeze out the juice).


Pour the cream into the pan, then stir in the lemon fillets/juice. I will thicken up a bit, but it won’t curdle – unless of course, you used anything with less than 30% milk fat in your cream. Come to think of it, that’s not even 1/4 of a cup of cream in this meal per person – one helping of ice cream must contain much more than that.


Back to business: drain the pasta and mix it with the sauce, add salt and pepper to taste. And if you have a nice husband who sets up the table in the meantime, you’re ready to eat. Oh, and don’t forget to sprinkle each plate of pasta with lots of pepper and freshly grated Parmesan…