Every once in a while, I take some time to browse the menus of some Michellin-starred restaurants in the area – without any delusions of grandeur or urges to pay more for a dinner than a week’s vacation in a nice hotel on a remote island involved. The reason for this peek into these world-class kitchens is relatively simple: in recent years, a lot of those restaurants have made a habit of ditching the usual, descriptive menu in favor of a list of 2-3 main ingredients per course. An absolutely fabulous habit in my book, scrambling my neurons in exactly the right way!
Continue reading “Creamy Kohlrabi & Fennel Soup with Blueberries and Goat’s Cheese”
Have you ever had that moment where you wish you could just share one of your favorite comfort dishes in a sophisticated, stylish manner, fit to wow a dinner crowd? I usually get that kind of If-only-I-could idea when I’m rotating around the kitchen, juggling three or more dishes, wishing I had remembered to pick at least one dish I can breeze through on auto-pilot. Well, during this past New Year’s Dinner prep-work, my tummy did a wonderful job of nudging me into the right direction~
I think I’ve mentioned this before, but coming up with the kind of intricate dessert – the ones that make you gawk at them in awe, quivering spoon in hand, at a ponzy restaurant – is, thanks to my not-that-sweet tooth, quite the challenge – which I happily accept every time, what with me trying my best to grow in the kitchen and all that jazz.
Coming back home from a heavenly vacation is never easy I suppose, but this time was exceptionally nasty. We boarded our airplane on Madeira at comfy, sunny temperatures around 28°C just to be rudely dumped into the 9°C nighttime ick of Frankfurt Airport. After a week of absence, our appartment was bonechillingly cold as well, of course, so we took the chance – after we had avoided to have both PCs running for a longer period of time during the summer in order to avoid major heatstrokes – for one hell of a content crawl through the new chapters of the GW2 living story.
We’re back from our trip to the little piece of heaven on earth that is Madeira~! We’ve just returned last night, so I still need a bit of time to get my feet back on the ground and sift through the mountain of pictures hubby and I took – prepare for some scenery shots of showstopping proportions and, of course, some dinner-time yum-shots in the near future.
On our usual Saturday trip to the farmer’s market a couple of weeks ago, I was over the moon as something really large, round’ish and pale yellow blinked at me from one of the large displays of beautyful produce. Since our summer this year, with the exception of 3 horrendously intense heatwaves of 2-3 days each, was cold and wet enough for most of our regional yumtastic mushrooms to start shooting up 2 months early, I half expected those pretty-in-yellow balls roughly the size of my head to be early quinces. Quinces are one of those seasonal things, like asparagus, I look forward to all year in a ticking-days-off-the-calendar-kind of way, I simply love them.
There’s something to be said for classic combinations. Goat’s Cheese and Beetroots is one of them – regrettably underrepresented on the big stages of the food circus for years, lately I’ve been delighted to see more and more beety things appearing on menus. While I’ve always loved beets, goat’s cheese was an acquired taste. One specific pivotal moment almost closed the lid on the whole goat’s cheese thing for me, but in the end, while it made me tread more carefully around that cheesy matter, it not only made me really like the stuff but also brought on the answer to the “why” of cheese being so often combined with fruity or sweet things.
„42!“ some of you might think at the mention of a „Heart of Gold“. And yes, you’re correct. For those of you who might jump to the conclusion that I’m loosing it, here’s a perfectly sane explanation.
Nahdala's Kitchen 