Wild Raspberry Jam

The very, very best jam in the world is made from wild raspberries and jam sugar, nothing else. Most years I will go berrying and get a liter of blueberries and a few tiny wild raspberries. If it's just a few I'll eat them myself, but since the neighbors who water our plants when we are gone really like the jam too, I tend to make that extra special effort to find enough for a smidgeon of jam.

This year, everything is different. There are almost no blueberries - I have enough for decorating fruit salad, nothing more. But raspberries, oh my! The bushes we planted years ago against the fence ducked under and are now loaded with big, thick, sweet berries. But the sides of the roads and the woods are filled with wild raspberries, some as big as cultured berries are most years. And they are soooooooo sweet! I got half a liter in just one hour, so I cleaned them, put them in the fridge and went out the next day for another half a liter. With a liter of berries I can make four little jars of jam. That's one for the neighbors and three for me ;)

A friend just tried making jam herself for the first time this week. When she was done, she
twittered: Why do people *buy* jam? It's so easy to make and so much more delicious! Indeed, you have complete control over the contents (save a bug or two). So what are you waiting for? Make your own jam today, it only takes a liter of berries, 500g of 2:1 jam sugar and some sterilized jars, you are done in half an hour.

Munch's Hus

The past 10 days or so have been exceedingly chaotic and stressful, I've pretty much just been using the apartment as a place to sleep, change clothes, get a cup of coffee and go on to the next thing. So when the person we had invited to dinner this evening begged off at short notice, we decided to have a nice dinner on the town.

WiseMan had been to Munch's Hus before, as they do the catering at the Nordic Embassies. We made a reservation for early evening - and were glad we did. When we arrived they were busy on the phone, telling people that all the tables were taken but they could come have a drink at the bar if they liked. When I made the reservation and gave our name, the guy asked "Is this Famous-Person-with-the-same-last-name?" Uh, no. And if you want to have people like that in your restaurant, you need to be very discreet and pretend they are just normal people - but treat all guests like royalty.

We started off with "Elk Blood", a wonderful aperitif of vodka and blueberry juice. I'm addicted to anything blueberry, so that was a great way to get started. WiseMan chose the porcino soup and I had a lovely salad with crayfish tails and a wonderful cured salmon steeped in aquavit.

The main dish was of course fish, I had a spit with salmon, a delicious white fish, scallops and Greenland shrimp, on top of delicate pea pods with some rosemary potatoes on the side. We had white wine with the fish, just an open wine, good for washing it down.

For dessert I had a pancake with - you guessed it - blueberry sauce. I wanted to wash it down with a Linie aquavit, but the aquavit and the espresso came quite a long time before the dessert, and both needed immediate attention.

It was a delicious evening, even if it was rather crowded. If they manage to serve the dessert together with the coffee that would have been just the crowning touch on a lovely Norwegian meal in the middle of a Schöneberg wasteland.

Mulukhiyah

We decided to do a Turkish meal with friends this evening, so we drove down to town where there is a local Turkish market. I looked around at what he had and decided to make Burek (sigara böreği) with Sucuk, because I didn't know if the teenage kids of our friends were vegetarians or not.

Sucuk was easy, and I found some yuffka, but it had sugar in it, which didn't sound right. I explained to the guy behind the counter what I wanted, and he showed me the freezer. Thin Chinese spring roll leaves are just the think for börek. Okay, and I saw what I thought was frozen spinach, so I just grabbed a bag of it and we paid.

When I went to pitch it in the freezer, I discovered that I had a bag of mulukhiyah. The English instructions called it mulukhia. Never heard of it. We decided to use it anyway, since it kind of looked like spinach. I fried up two chopped onions in butter, then added about 200g of the frozen stuff cut up in chunks, some sour cream, some salt, and a can of piknik börek peyniri (picnic burek cheese). This is a feta-like cheese made of cow's milk.

When everything melted and began bubbling we took it off the heat and started the production line. Teenage girl with long fingernails picked off the next spring roll leaf. I put a teaspoon or so of the stuff on it, experimented with different rolling and pinching techniques, and piled them on a plate. Teenage boy (who wants to be a cook) fired up a pan with lots of olive oil in it, and we made about 50 of the things.

They were very, very good. We then looked up what mulukhiyah is on the internet. It is a plant, widely eaten in Egypt and the Middle East, full of good stuff like iron and vitamin A. They are also called mallow leaves. Good job we didn't boil them - boiling apparently turns it into an inedible block of fiber.

I don't know that this will end up my favorite food, but it was an adventure! And I will make burek again soon, that was easy with the spring roll paper.

Better than chocolate

I have a freezer in the living room (for historical purposes, the cellar was being renovated and it ended up with a bunch of stuff piled on top - it is a front door one - and cute artsy-fartsy magnets on the door) that has a special tray for freezing fruit. The year I bought it, I froze a gajillion fruits, bagged them, and forgot them.

On one forage for sweet food I discovered the bag of frozen strawberries. I soon began snacking on them - put 10 or so in a bowl, sit in front of the computer reading blogs and chew on them one at a time. Sweet and cold, I love it.

The bags are empty. So I went out this morning and got a kilogram of fresh, ripe strawberries, washed them, dried them, cut off the tops and arranged them on the freezing tray.

I have had 10 berries already this evening, the kilogram won't last long. Hope the strawberry season holds until Saturday, the next day I can go shopping. This stuff is better than chocolate!

Thanksgiving Dinner

(Damn Blogger! I was almost done with a wonderful, long post, and was adding the pictures, when it ERASED the entire text with the second picture. And would not offer me an undo. Grrrrrrrrrrr.)

Yes, it is that time of year again. Thanksgiving. Okay, I'm a week late - we don't get the day off in Germany, so it has to be on a weekend. And I was gone the weekend after Thanksgiving, so we just did it a week later. The main thing is the food, not the exact date.

I started in Friday evening: Apple pie, Cranberry relish (with oranges, raisins soaked in rum and walnuts added, yum yum yum), stuffing. Saturday morning I got the pre-ordered bird from the open-air market place, almost 8 kilograms (17 pounds for you non-metric types). I did the cornbread and pre-cooked the yams before the bird went in, to attract my undivided attention for 6 hours or so. Basting every 20-30 minutes (no, no self-basting turkeys to be had here), in between working on mashed potatos, succotash, raw veggies, Grandms'a cloverleaf rolls, pickles, what have you.

My friend from the wrong end of the state brought the pumpkin pie and the creamed carrots. Pumpkin is always a pain. The recipes start "Take a can of pumpkin". We have to start with "Take a pumpkin" and cook it down in order to have the puree to start the pie. Another Stateside friend brought the coleslaw.

The only worry was: how many people were there be? Okay, the teenager is not reliable, but I rather wanted a general ballpark figure. I had tried inviting all sorts of people, but they already had prior engagements for this first weekend of Advent. I had 14 definites and 7 maybes on my list, a bit too wide a margin, especially seeing as I have 17 chairs and could only beg 2 from a neighbor. I called one guy, oh yes, he forgot to tell me he couldn't come. Okay, great, we are down to the number of chairs.

I set the table with Grandma's table cloths and the bits of silver I salvaged when selling off my parent's stuff, there were 4 tables in various sizes to fit everyone, and it looked nice.

Eventually, only 13 showed up, 2 of them late (the one had said so in advance, she was on-duty up until just before dinner, and then she parked on the wrong end of our 3km street....). One couple got into a fight in the afternoon and he refused to come. Hey guy, I have lots of chairs, you don't have to sit next to your Significant Other. You can come sit next to me and entertain me! And enjoy the food I made for you!!

But the folks who were there did a marvelous job - no one was shy about having seconds, so they pretty well polished off the bird (I heard reports today that no one ate much Sunday....). There was enough left over for a microwaved plate Sunday evening and Turkey Noodle Soup this evening. And I will sneak the last of the cranberry relish before going to bed, it is like dessert.

But why do people treat an invitation to a sit-down dinner as a "drop in if you feel like it" thing? I am sure that I could have found others to come, if they would have let me know in time, even if many people already had other engagements.

So one thing is sure: I'm not doing a sit-down dinner for my 50th. That would be much too horrible to have food and people not come. I'm currently thinking pot luck......