Thanksgiving Pies II: Apple Cheddar Pie

The second pie I made for the big Thanksgiving Dinner was an Apple Cheddar Pie. The recipe again came from First Prize Pies.
Most important here is to keep the ingredients for the dough really cold and not to integrate them too much. This was quite hard to do - especially with the strips of dough to cover the pie. I had to roll the leftover pieces together a few times and eventually everything turned into a normal dough with no butter lumps left in it. Hence the crust wasn't quite as crunchy as I hoped.

 

Ice cold butter chopped into the dough so lumps remain

For the last fifteen minutes of baking I sprinkled a mild Cheddar, which I bought at The British Cheese Centre in in the Viadukt Markthalle, over the pie. The combination of the tart apples, brown sugar and salty cheese is amazing!!!

http://firstprizepies.com/

/http://markthalle.im-viadukt.ch/

/http://cheeseclub.ch/

Thanksgiving Pies I: S'mores Pie

My friend Garrett and I cooked Thanksgiving Dinner together this year. Garrett is partly American and I have family and friends that live in the US so we have both celebrated Thanksgiving many times before. Yet I'm still no expert and consulted a few friends before deciding what to cook.
I volunteered to make the pies (first time in my life) and asked my friend Allison of First Prize Pies for a couple of recipes. I made S'mores Pie and Apple Cheddar Pie and discovered that it is bloody hard to make a good pie!

The S'mores Pie was particularly difficult - it took forever to make the Graham Crackers for the crust and my chocolate filling was a strange consistency - maybe 'heavy cream' isn't quite the same thing in English and in German.

Making the Graham Crackers 

Runny, bubbly chocolate filling...

After trying and failing to make the marshmallows twice - maybe because it was impossible to find corn sirup in any shop in Zurich and none of the replacements I came up with worked - I began improvising: The chocolate filling didn't taste very chocolatey so I added chocolate chunks for cakes, which I found in my cupboard:

 

Instead of marshmallow I decided to make meringue. I spread it onto the pie, torched it with my new blow torch (hours of fun - wow, I'm such a geek!) and baked it briefly:

 

I really had little luck with the S'mores Pie. I decided to add some toasted Marshmallows on top of the pie (I admit, I was looking for an excuse to use my blow torch again), only to discover that they are highly flammable.

 

It took me fifteen minutes to put seven toasted but unburnt marshmallows on the pie. When I was finally done I walked out of the kitchen holding the pie proudly only to trip and send the whole thing flying down the corridor and splat onto the floor!

I'm happy to say that despite all hurdles and floor dirt the pie was gobbled up with great gusto in no time!

Check out First Prize Pies! http://firstprizepies.com/

Food and memories

Few things bring back memories the way food can.

In September I was in New York for a few days to visit family and friends. I spent a morning at the Neue Galerie enjoying the Klimts and Schieles (I've been obsessed with the art, design and architecture of the Wiener Secession lately and I love Schiele!). While I was waiting for my sister-in-law to join me I felt a pang of hunger and so I went to the Café Sabarsky for breakfast. Just reading the menu made me feel homesick and made me think about and miss so many places I love: Vienna, the childhood holidays spent in the Austrian countryside, breakfasts in Berlin (the capital of breakfasts - at least it was until not too long ago...) At first I couldn't decide what to order there were so many amazing breakfasts on offer: Kaiserschmarrn, Weisswurst, Eier im Glas... I had to go for the latter, one of my all time favorites! It seems it's not a frequently ordered dish - all the wonderful Upper East Side Ladies oohed and aahed when it arrived and looked very surprised to see peeled eggs in a Martini glass:

http://www.neuegalerie.org/cafes/sabarsky

I had a food and memory experience this summer. I was roadtripping around Central and Eastern Europe with two friends of mine, who also thoroughly enjoy food... Everywhere we went we bought a few things at local supermarkets to take home with us. Austria was paradise for this - we bought amazing Kürbiskernöl (pumpkin seed oil), Powidl (plum jam) and Schokobananen. As a kid my family spent every summer holiday in the Austrian countryside with friends in their countryside house. The house is right next to a forest and mountain a few kilometers away form the next village. Lunches and dinners consisted of fish freshly caught by my dad and his friend KTh and rarely a deer they hunted and of the herbs and veggies Gigi (KTh's wife) grew in her vegetable garden. A couple of times a week we would drive into town to buy everything else we needed including Schokobananen - the most horrible, artificial, yellow, gooey stuff covered in chocolate. Us kids loooooved them and luckily KTh did too. Every evening after dinner he would get out one and cut it in slices - one per person. Which meant that every person got an approximately 0.8 cm slice of chocolate banana...

Best buffet ever!

This summer I was invited to the wedding of two friends of mine. It was their church wedding - the civil one took place ten years before. It was a spectacular weekend with wonderful people, fantastic music and lots of champagne! For me there were two highlights: firstly the Appenzeller Trio, which played most amazing local and international folk music and yodelled its heart out. And secondly the buffet after the church service. It was a cheese fest!!!

Eating and drinking in Turin

Despite the constant rain the week in Turin was a joy! Mainly because of the great food we ate.
One restaurant I highly recommend is Il Gatto Nero. We went there twice and not only because the restaurant was next to our hotel, but because it was fantastic. Service was slow (and approx. 80 years old), but when one of the waiters asked us whether his father had already taken our order our hearts were warmed and we didn't mind waiting. Maybe it was also the most amazing wine we drank!

 Il Gatto Nero

Corso Filippo Turati 14

 Torino

+39 011 5900414

One thing we were looking forward to all week was Pasta con Tartufo - truffle pasta. Unfortunately the weather has been very dry the past months so there have been very little truffles so far these season, which means they are small, expensive and maybe not as tasty as they could be. Hopefully the current down pours will change the situation.
For one of our last dinners we went to Da Michele and finally found what we were hoping for:

 Da Michele

 Piazza Vittorio Veneto 4

Torino

 +39 011 888836

Eataly in Italy

I just spent a week in Turin working at Artissima Art Fair. Next to the fair ground is Eatly, an Italian food supermarket chain that focuses on slow food, local found and organic products. Throughout the market are little restaurants where you can eat all the products on sale. The place is huge and you can get anything your foodie heart desires: fresh vegetables, fish, all kinds of meats, sausages and prosciuttos, lots of cheeses, dozens of olive oils, pastas, jars of pestos, sauces and ragus etc
Need I say that I went totally wild and filled my car to the top with wonderful things. It's Schlaraffenland!!!

 Truffle season!

www.eataly.it

Spoilt by my dear friend Katschi

Lucky me recently enjoyed two of the best dishes I've ever had! My friend Katschi cooked Saturday dinner and Sunday brunch.

Dinner started with a thick and creamy pea soup topped with creme fraiche and fried bits of bacon:

It was almost too thick to be a soup but tasted out of this world delicious!


For brunch we had the best Eggs Benedict of my life!!!

Toasted English muffin with creamy goats cheese, watercress, poached egg, Sauce Hollandaise and crispy bacon. Some might call it a heart attack on a plate but it was so worth it!