Saturday, June 14, 2008

Essbar Frühling (und Mauer)


Just to prove that there is (sometimes) more to life than bargain basement grocery stores here, I share with you a photo from a dinner party/exercise in cooking with others from a few weeks back. Inspired by springtime, three of us gathered at the local organic market and set about finding the makings of dinner. I'm generally a fan of benevolent dictatorships when it comes to deciding what's for dinner, but we overcame the complications of joint-shopping/cooking and made it home with a shopping cart laden with spring delights and a menu plan in mind. Alas, I did not manage a picture of our wild lettuces/greens with lemon vinaigrette, but it really was (for me anyway) the highlight of the meal. We got dandelion and nettle and a host of other lettucey things and edible blossoms. It was a tangled mess of shades of green from pale to purpley ... much more interesting and delicious than the same old "mixed greens" you always see (well, not in these parts, but stateside anyway) and certainly a gigantor step above the fatherland's beloved iceberg with prepared (preservative-laden) dressing. We also made orecchiette by hand to go with a spring veggie ragout: pancetta, artichokes and favas (shown here!), asparagus and purple-hued spring onions ... lots of lemon zest and splashes of wine and cream. I must admit the pasta was just a bit on the heavy side, but all in all, the dish was really, quite tasty. End-of-rhubarb-season panic had set in, so we (still basking in the deliciousness of our previous rhubarb tatin) settled on rhubarb clafouti, which the British among us enjoyed with a nice splash of heavy cream.

We've been having a quiet weekend over here (try starting the most very simplest of businesses in Germany and your head will also spin so much that you can't see straight enough to leave the apartment (pity mein Mann: he gets to go to work all week and then come home and help me decipher this nonsense). But, in case your head is fine and you happen to be in the neighborhood tonight and looking for something food-related to do: eat the wall! This is some bizarre and hysterical art-related event in which artists have been invited to make edible bricks (I wonder if they have valid food handlers certificates like me!?). The bricks will be used to build a wall (a la the Berlin Wall, they suggest) and tonight "we will eat our way through the divide in a grand communal catharsis." Somehow this doesn't sound so much yummy (or effective) as scary, but....if you do go, post back and let us know about the catharsis!

1 comment:

Diana Pittet said...

Is it still considered spring in Berlin or have you moved onto the socks and sandals of summer?

And did you go eat the wall?

I loved the description of the shades of green of your democratically picked veggies. Those artichokes are definitely purple-y green.