Umzug

From now on, I'm writing about my adventures in Berlin's "ethnic food" scene here!

Albanien: Dieses Mal, Kein Witz

I actually own an Albanian cookbook (thanks to the aforementioned crazy New York job), but like too many of my worldly possessions, it resides on the other side of the Atlantic, so I was forced to turn to Google to brush up on the ins and outs of Albanian cuisine before conquering the second country of the alphabet. Randomly enough, when you google "Albanian food," one of the first links that pops up is a youtube clip from a movie I didn't know existed, "My Mom's New Boyfriend," in which Antonio Banderas (playing some sort of gangster who's actually an undercover CIA agent (this I gleamed for you from the clip and Wikipedia)) takes Meg Ryan to an underground Albanian restaurant complete with belly dancers and drug deals. There were some men smoking in the back room at Sofra Shquiptare and a highly informational special on boob jobs gone wrong on the wall-mounted television, but the similarities pretty much end there.

The part of me that really loves a good hole in the wall really wanted to like this place. And there is something charming about it, starting perhaps with it's unpronounceable name, the website is all in Albanian (!), and the glittery murals of Albanian folklife that decorate the walls. In the end, we had a good meal and both left plenty full for less than 12 Euros. I have all too often had worse meals for a lot more money in this town. Basically, although there is a seating area and they will bring the food to your table, this is basically an Imbiss (the kind of place you might get a Döner Kebap in Deutschland or a plastic plate of dumplings or a burrito in New York). The menu includes pizzas and other fast food items, but there is a corner devoted to Albanian dishes and we focused our attention there.

We shared a cheese borek, a stuffed pepper, some stewed vegetables (eggplant, peppers, tomatoes), an order of cevapcici (casing-less beef sausages), and what might have been Sheqerpare for dessert (basically a lady finger soaked in sugar water). Ultimately, most everything was tasty and tasted like it had been made by someone, which is saying something in my book. For this kind of money, you can't really expect the best ingredients and this was most evident in the stuffed pepper, whose filling was basically just rice and ground beef. Unfortunately, the beef had the cat food-y texture of cheap ground beef. The borek, however, was pretty decent, as were the cevapcici (no doubt the same cheap meat, but less noticeable in sausage form) and the stewed vegetables. I may have ordered the wrong dessert. As mentioned, it tasted like a soggy, overly sweet lady finger. I didn't come close to finishing it and I pretty much always clean my dessert plate. The surprisingly large dessert case was filled with several intriguing options: a towering marshmallow of a cake with a thin pastry crust, a very thick sliceable vanilla pudding-type cake, something from the churro family (Tulumba), Baklava, as well as the god-awful local version of a strawberry mirror cake (hugely popular here for reasons I have yet to fathom), and tiramisu. I regret not ordering the marshmallow thing, but I was really full and went with the smallest option. I did get to live vicariously through an Albanian man (or at least he spoke Albanian with the owner) who came in as I was poking at my soggy pastry and ordered a huge box of desserts. I'm guessing that Sofra Shquiptare is probably the only place in town to load up on Albanian sweets. Actually, I think we may have found the Albanian cultural center in Berlin.

A final sad note, there is not a single Algerian restaurant, Imbiss, or market of any kind in Berlin. This I report based on my own very thorough internet research and a phone call to the Algerian embassy here. The man who answered the phone and delivered the unfortunate news agreed that this is really a shame. I don't have much hope for an Andorran restaurant, but I'm off to check it out.

Sofra Shquiptare
Pankstraße 61

Berlin von A bis Z: Chraazan

When I lived in New York, I had this crazy job as a cookbook editor for a very minor publishing house. It was crazy in many ways, the first being that I was hired with basically no editorial or publishing experience whatsoever. To top that off, I was in charge of the entire cookbook department with essentially no supervision because my boss was rather elderly, disabled, and a little bit senile. To add to the fun, one-quarter of our four-person office was a total wack job: paranoid, prone to semi-violent temper tantrums, etc. Oh and he had a ton of photos of his mom's cat in his cubicle. This job was seriously underpaid in a seriously underpaid industry and because I was the entire cookbook division, I was responsible for everything from acquisition to editing to marketing. Until my off-kilter coworker really started to lose it, this job actually had some perks: I got to read cookbooks all day long, minimal senile supervision meant I could focus on the projects that interested me and disregard my boss' dumb ideas (he wouldn't remember that he'd had them), and once a week we ordered lunch for the office. As the cookbook editor, it was naturally my job to coordinate this and of course I used my powers to influence the decision as to which restaurant we would order from each week. Also (being seriously underpaid and overworked) ordered way more food than I could possibly eat at lunch providing me with several extra meals. One of my favorite restaurants on our ordering rotation was Bamiyan, an Afghani place on E. 26th Street. After a few meals, I had my order down and would always order Fesenjen, a chicken dish with a pomegranate and walnut sauce and Mantoo, meat dumplings with spiced tomato and yogurt sauces.

A while back, thinking of how much I miss the quality and variety of "ethnic" restaurants in DC and New York, I had the silly idea of trying to find the best restaurant for every cuisine in Berlin. I'm not sure this is realistic -- I'm pretty sure many cuisines are not to be found in Berlin, but the idea amuses me even if I'm also pretty sure I'll just be disappointed by the quality of what I do find. But, I have to say that I'm not off to a terrible start. Last night found me at Chraazan, which according to my research is the only Afghan restaurant in Berlin. It wasn't quite as good as Bamiyan, which as I remember it was a little more complex in flavor with a slightly fresher product (we were the only guests on a Tuesday night at Chraazan so I'm guessing they don't move things quite as quickly as at Bamiyan ... nor is there any Afghan competition for miles and miles). Alas, Chraazan didn't have fesenjen and when I asked about it the waiter (who seemed to also be the/an owner) didn't light up, delighted that someone was remotely knowledgeable in his cuisine and offer to have the kitchen make it as I had hoped....alas. But, they did have mantoo, which were almost as good as at Bamiyan. The saffron-spiked rice pudding with pistachios, which we ordered to share, was a disaster, though. Mushy rice lacking any flavor of saffron or cardamom or other spice that had been microwaved as it was warm in the middle and cold on the exterior. I don't remember ever having dessert at Bamiyan, but I can't imagine it would be this inedible. Still, the mantoo took me back to a Wednesday lunch in New York washed down with cheap Georgian wine. I don't know if I'd go out of my way for Chraazan, but I might try it again if I were in the area. I'm definitely going to do something about my fesenjen craving now, though....

Heimweh nach Sauerkraut

When I was home over the holidays, I ate a lot of sauerkraut, which may sound odd given that I live in a country that mein Mann refers to as "Krautland." The thing is that my sister has taken to making her own kraut and it's fabulous. Having lost her driver's license, she managed to get a jar of it through airport security armed with only an expired university id and the argument that the amount of liquid in the jar was less than 3 ounces. I'm not so sure about that, but I am sure that I ate way more than my share. Luckily, I was able to continue my kraut binge on the other end of my vacation at my parents' home because my mother has caught the kraut-making bug and hers was equally delicious. I ate bowls of the the stuff straight from the fridge, but I particularly loved a sandwich she created - aged ham, extra-sharp cheddar, plum chutney, and a small pile of kraut. Back in Germany I've been both under the weather and much busier thanks to a new fuller-time job. Somehow the kraut I've been getting at the bio store doesn't quite merit being eaten by itself (even the better stuff I've found here is limper and the flavor a little duller than what my mom and sister make. Clearly I need to be about getting my own crock and making my own batch and I plan to just as soon as I find the time and energy), but since my grocery store trips are less frequent of late, we've been eating more Abendbrot. I know it isn't what the natives do, but I like a little veg with my bread and cheese and I can report that sauerkraut mixed with grated carrot and thinly sliced radicchio (the only vegetables that happened to be lingering in the refrigerator), spiced up a bit with perhaps a dab of mustard and some herbs if they happen to also be dying in the fridge, makes a very tasty slaw. I've also been making something akin to a vegetarian reuben sandwich ... really just grilled Emmentaler cheese with sauerkraut and mustard or Russian dressing because the only corned beef I've seen in Berlin is truly scary. But the other day I noticed that they have pastrami at my local bio store: nearly authentic reuben sandwiches for dinner (a little light on the meat, but that's a good thing because you can really taste the sauerkraut). Finally, why have I never heard of a Krautburger before? Delicious.

ps. I'm having a hard time finding someone exited about Albanian food....but I'm going to make it happen.

Berlin ist für die Vögel

Early summer was filled with work and in mid-July we headed to the US for (gasp, sigh) almost a whole month of vacation. Three days in New York were much too short and I never feel like I really get to spend enough time with anyone, but there was great Mexican food, cocktails below the High Line, sweatshop work, a mechanical bull accident (not mine), and a speed walk through my beloved Union Square Greenmarket. A week in Nelson County was perfect: a cabin tucked right next to a mountain with just enough space for a creek to run between. Terriers and husband spent much time with their feet in the water (looking for mischief and reading American history, respectively). We hiked, kakayed the James River, picked blackberries (cobbler), heard bluegrass, ate our weight in barbecue, and got attacked (well, surprised, anyway) by a bat in the bedroom). Coming back to Berlin after being gone for so many nice weeks was downright strange. The dictionary lists 31 entries for the word home, but doesn't begin to explain the complexity of this word for me.

I never realized how much I like summer weather until I lived in a place without it (actually Berlin did have a few (as in, like 3) hot days this year). Stepping off the plane in Berlin there was a noticeable chill in the air (mid-August, mind you)...so we've tried to make the most of the pre-winter season.
We've been dodging the rain drops and have been canoeing again in beautiul Feldberg and finally took a day-trip to Leipzig, where we wandered the historic center, lunched on wild boar at the much-better-than-expected Auerbachs Keller, which dates to 1530 (Goethe ate here!), and hung out with these birds during a rainstorm. In other bird-related news, we've been waiting all year for a bird to discover our feeder and this week it finally happened. Unfortunately, we've been found out by the pigeon who lives in the tree across the street. Is this supposed to make me less home-sick for New York?

Drausen und auf den Beinen

Despite the less than stellar weather we've had this spring, we've been out and about and on the move a lot. The German May is packed with holidays like Tag der Arbeit (or May Day, as I like to call it), Himmelfart (aka Ascension and here I need to add that the word ascension (especially in Spanish, but even in comely English) sounds like the ascent to heaven. Himmelfart sounds like a scabby disease: You wouldn't believe how bad my Himmelfart is these days....)) and Pfingesten (aka Pentecost), which turn into long weekends, perfect for escaping the city. I can be pretty grumpy about Berlin, but I will say that one of the best things about this place is how easy it is to get out of here without a car. (I'll let you draw your own conclusions as to what it means that my favorite thing about this place is how easy it is to get out of it.)


Anyway, to celebrate (or cure our) Himmelfart, we biked north to Usedom. Or tried. Things went pretty well for the first two days. The weather was unwaveringly gray and chilly, but the scenery was lovely (lots of canola fields and blossoming apple trees), and those of us about 20 years out of bike practice were really appreciating how flat things are between Berlin and the Baltic Sea. Because of the weather, we decided not to camp, but to stay in the hotel in whichever small town we ended up in at the end of the day. The first was the Hotel Panorama, which lived up to its name if you consider a construction site with a pink crane outside your window to be a panorama (defined by www.dictionary.com as: an unobstructed and wide view of an extensive area in all directions.) The food on the trip, aside from our picnic lunches, of course, was nothing to write home about, but the Panorama (which had some odd delusions of grandeur), did have a pretty decent breakfast spread, including pumpkin seed butter, which I'd never seen before (although pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil are typical products from this corner of Germany) and was quite good. We spend the second night in a totally unremarkable hotel in the town of Pasewalk and woke up to pouring rain. There was nothing to do but take the train back to Berlin (and the 10-minute bike ride to the train station was pretty miserable), where we discovered the best (by far) Doener Kebab in Berlin (and I wrote my Masters thesis on Doener, so I'm definitely qualified to make this proclamation), rented videos, and spent the rest of the weekend on the couch under a pile of blankets.

But you can't keep us down for long. Last weekend we headed out again, this time with a few friends, to camp-canoe in Müritz. Somehow, even though the weather was again mostly gray and chilly (and soggy at times), I still managed to get a little sunburn. I also managed to flip my very stable canoe and end up in the water, but that's another story. We did some very good picnicking and campfire cooking this trip, including a giant muffuletta sandwich, marinated sausages, and grilled asparagus. I also continued my crusade to persuade Germans of the absolute deliciousness of s'mores and I think I made some headway this trip, although I can't seem to get the Germans to understand that bar cookies are not all called brownies. They also seem to think I invented oatmeal chocolate chip bars.

Schöneberg ist Schön

We haven't been on any big adventures lately (although the intermittent spring weather has allowed for a few nice outings (a long walk from train station in Potsdam through the woods to Albert Einstein's summer house in Caputh with BR & co. with well-earned Spargel (if all Spargel was this good, I would understand what all the fuss is about), a very nice walk from my apartment past the zoo (great view of lounging kangaroos through the fence) to the western end of the Landwehr Kanal concluding with a delicious picnic with egg salad and homegrown cress, and a long-awaited visit to the Holländische Viertel (Dutch Quarter) in Potsdam (no idea what all the fuss is about) and a lovely stroll through Babelsberg Park.)) While we are gearing up for upcoming adventures (Return to Barcelona (will it be as magical as I remember it? Do I still speak Spanish? How much ham will I be able to eat in three days?) and The Effect of DC Summer Weather on a Certain German (aka almost an entire month on the East Coast!!!), I will leave you with a few cool things in my neighborhood:

1. There is a saddle shop around the corner. I'm not a horse person at all, but I love the fact that two minutes from my front door, I can buy handmade reins and a saddle and other leather horse paraphernalia.

2. A few doors down is a little Italian coffee place, mostly selling expensive espresso machines and other overpriced kitchen equipment, but they also make espresso and capuccino (no Milchkaffee here!) and the like. The store is owned and staffed by real Italians with a good understanding of what coffee can be (it's hit or miss when it comes to good coffee in this town). By now I can usually tell by looking which places will have undrinkable coffee, but so many seemingly nice places have just average coffee. It's discouraging, but a good reason to grind my own and drink at home or patronize our very local businesses). My favorite thing about the shop, though, is their mascot, this funny French bulldog who can always be found lounging on the rug inside the shop or (in nicer weather) keeping watch near the door.

3. A few streets away, over the S-Bahn tracks is The Museum of Unheard of Things (Museum der Unerhörten Dinge), which is about the size of my pantry (another thing I like about my neighborhood is that I have a pantry). This free museum is the pet project of Roland Albrecht and he displays small objects, such as a plastic bird representing the canary of Fraxern, a crystallized rose similar to the one Goethe had, and other totally random things on the shelf and walls lining the tiny room. My completely unfair beef with the museum is that the description for each object is a full page, single-spaced, back and front in German. I am a very, very slow and unhappy reader of German and so I must admit I didn't understand a lot of what I saw, but I really like the spirit of the museum and the fact that I can pop in on my way to the grocery store.

4. I grocery shop a lot. Sometimes six times a week. I love to grocery shop and while I do find food shopping in Berlin not quite up to what is was in the other cities I've lived in (oh the covered markets in Barcelona! or the Union Square Greenmarket in NYC!), things have improved since we moved. I've shopped at more than my share of the organic markets in Berlin and I can say only good things about the Bio Company (at least the one on Hauptstrasse). The produce is fresher than in any of the other organic markets I've used, the quality of the meat is truly impressive, they make a real effort to stock local products (it's not perfect, but I have to take what I can get) and the service is practically American. A good grocery store may not make or break your neighborhood, but it makes a huge difference in my life.

5. One of my main gripes about Berlin is that you can't go out for ice cream after 8 pm. I guess there must be a few exceptions, but most ice cream places close at 8, which means that if you go for an after-dinner stroll or want to grab a cone after an evening movie, you're out of luck. Germans eat a lot of ice cream and according to my observations, most of it is eaten in the late afternoon. This doesn't work for me because it ruins my American dinner (not the case for the Germans who are happy to eat some cheese and bread and wurst (aka Abendbrot) whenever they get hungry. Anyway, once in a while I decide I need an ice cream in the afternoon (early enough not to spoil my supper, of course) and my favorite place is Inka Eis. The ice cream is good if not great and they specialize in Latin American flavors, most of which I know and miss from my former life as a Latin Americanist. I always get lúcuma, which takes me back to my junior year abroad in Santiago de Chile. Lúcuma is a subtropical Andean fruit - I've never seen it fresh and have also never had it outside of Latin America (maybe it has followed açaí to New York?) - it's delicious in ice creams and mousses with a flavor that is something of a cross between caramel, maple syrup, and sweet potato. Who knew I would rediscover this treat in Berlin?

Nördlich für Ostern

You have to hand it to the Germans for stretching Easter into a four-day holiday (even the Italians cram it into three days). But, when in Rome, as they say, and so we packed our bags and headed north to visit mein Mann's godmother at her country cottage in Bergenhusen. It was a little chilly (Bergenhusen is way up north, almost at the Danish border), but even so, it is one of the prettiest parts of Germany I've seen so far (although I may be subconsciously biased as two of my ancestors hail from the region of Schleswig-Holstein where Bergenhusen is located). The land is above all else, flat (think: lots of storks (who appreciate the flatness b/c it enables them to see for long distances) and windmills). There are lots of farms and many, many sheep, including, these days the tiniest of lambs. Traditional houses have straw roofs, which you might be able to see next to the stork nest here. We spent most of the mini-vacation in the village, but did manage to take two excursions. One to visit a friend of mein Manns who hails from a nearby village and looks strikingly like a distant cousin (a lost lost relative perhaps?!). We also drove out to the Hamburger Hallig, a low-lying area, which floods twice a day so that all buildings (there were only a few) must be built on man-made hills (Warften). Because of the frequent (salt water) flooding, the sheep that graze in these areas (I guess they know to go up on the hills when the tide comes in?) are pre-salted and supposedly quite delicious. Unfortunately, we didn't have lamb for Easter dinner (many Germans, including our hosts, claim not to like lamb (they usually associate it with the scary southern and/or "immigrant cuisines" that deal in (gasp) garlic and/or have only had grocery store lamb, which, at least in Germany, is pretty bad), but I did manage to have a lamb patty (Frikadelle) at the little restaurant at Hamburger Hallig and it was quite tasty.
(Culinary side-story: Germans sometimes give Easter presents, which I don't quite understand, but willingly accept. This year Mein Mann (who arrived a day ahead of me, which happened to be market day, got me lamb ham (a la turkey bacon (tastes like corned beef), really excellent regular pig ham, and some tiny locally harvested (?) shrimp, which my godmother-in-law made into a delicious Abendbrot or evening bread, the German dinner of open-faced sandwiches. (They do look a bit like worms, though....) We also stopped to wander through the town of Husum, which has a fairly standard Schloss surrounded by a breathtaking field of purple crocuses. I was particularly taken by these napping ducks.


And finally, a few of my own Easter creations: Easter egg nest cupcakes for some of my most annoying clients to date. And, marbelized Easter eggs (thanks, Martha). I am in love with my egg holder, it definitely lives on the bar of at least one of the imaginary restaurants in my head.

Ausflug nach Dresden

A recent visitor took pity on me and left behind a copy of the New Yorker (an international subscription costs $120), which happened to contain a really interesting (although, not without serious faults that I won't go on about here) article on the city of Dresden. Dresden is only a little over an hour from Berlin by car, but somehow despite our wandering ways, we had never made the trek. A few weeks later, my Schwiegervater (aka father-in-law) made an unexpected visit to Berlin and suggested a day-trip, which, of course, we had to accept. We only got a taste of the city (along with a tiny sampling of Meissen, the nearby town, which you probably know for it's porcelain manufacture). I can, however, recommend the Residenzschloss, which houses the Grünes Gewölbe (or, Green Vault), an exhibition of the collections of the Wettin rulers. These Wettins were serious collectors and you can check out such treasures as a cherry pit with 185 faces carved into it, a massive and extremely ornate diorama of the Royal Household of the Grand Mogul, and about 1,078 other beautiful, but useless items.

I can also recommend stopping for snacks at the self-proclaimed "most beautiful dairy (store) in the world," Pfunds Molkerei. It is a bit touristy, but the dairy products were actually pretty tasty (I seem to be making a habit of visiting dairies of late, so I'm definitely qualified here). We shared an east German cheese plate (which made me wonder what the store was like during the GDR, when as I understand it, there were only a couple types of cheese available) and glasses of fresh milk/buttermilk.


In other news, it seems to have finally stopped snowing here (knock on wood): once last week I went out without a coat (!) and there are even little buds on all the trees! It's exciting. To inaugurate the change of seasons, we S-Bahned out to the Pfaueninsel where we strolled among fake ruins (very cartoonish in appearance and just plain odd) and real live peacocks (also odd, but quite nice), all of which I neglected to document, alas. There was actually a Meierei (dairy) there, too, but it was closed....luckily, we had packed our own cheese sandwiches (with pickled pepper for me and extra mustard for mein Mann) for the first official picnic of the year!

Waffeln und mehr

In our new (maybe not so new) role as Jetsetters, mein Mann and I spent the weekend in Brussels. I was there several years ago with my sister on our European Backpacking Adventure and remember rainy weather and discovering real Belgian waffles (gaufre de Liège to be specific) purchased from a stand in the subway or train station (I also remember that for some reason we (both non-French speakers) found the word gaufre quite hysterical). It was, for me, a waffle epiphany: the waffles sold all over Brussels from snack shops and carts are similar only in shape to what they call Belgian waffles in the States. These taste like caramelized brioche and there is no need for maple syrup. Actually, here I'm a purist - you can order them with whipped cream and chocolate sauce, but this only detracts from the basic deliciousness. Anyway, the flavor remained with me over the years (in my head), so I was very excited at the chance to sample them again. I think mein Mann was already sick of waffles by the time we got there as I had been talking about them so much. The waffles were every bit as good as I remembered and I'm determined to make them at home soon. But, if I'm lucky, mein Mann (who I left behind so he could hang out at NATO for a couple days) will return with one more for me... (I know they're best hot off the waffle iron, but they're really pretty good at room temperature, too.)

We did manage to eat a few things besides waffles: We started the weekend off with moules-frites and a healthy serving of Belgian customer service - when we tried to order 1.5 kilos of mussels to share (plus the frites and beers), we were told this was not acceptable and we would both have to order our own kilo, which is not exactly obscene, but is a lot of mussels (especially when you have the frites and beer and impending waffle binge to consider). Usually I try to go with the local customs, but this just struck me as too stupid so we put our foot down (sort of). They agreed to let us share if we also ordered a salad, which was mostly Belgian endive as it turned out and quite delicious.


Someone else wrote about the delicious Moroccan crepe-like wraps that you can buy at the Marche du Midi on Sunday mornings. The market itself was not all that spectacular - the kind of place you can buy your underwear, a toaster, and a case of avocados for a Euro - but the Moroccan "crepes" were really delicious and the sun came out so we could sit at the wooden tables on the side of market eating while we scarfed (the only way with these messy treats) and sipped fresh mint tea. Sorry for the bad documentation of this snack - the mob around the stand was a testament to how good they were, but posed a challenge to the tourist-photographer, and once you're holding it, there's nothing to do but eat.

Haben Sie Wien schon bei Nacht gesehen?

We had a lovely time in Wien. It was a touch too cold, but that only helped us appreciate the museums and stellar cafes. Why doesn't Berlin have cafes like these? Why doesn't Berlin shovel the sidewalks like they seem to have done in Vienna? Sigh. (On the other hand, why does everyone smoke so much there? Way worse than Berlin.) I spent lots of time wandering while mein Mann was saving the world. Vienna (or at least the Innere Stadt) is full of so many beautiful buildings (lots of cute old ladies in fur coats and good hats, too!), even in the cold it was lots of fun just to walk and look. A few noteworthy bits: I loved the Dorotheum, an old auction house where you can wander around and admire the very cool things that are coming up to auction - jewelry, furniture, old weapons, you name it. The tiny sandwiches at Trezniewski were a lot of fun. The apple strudel at Demel was great (although, in my humble opinion, such good strudel should be served warm. And the surly waitress wouldn't bring me any Schlagobers (aka: whipped cream): hmmph). Tafelspitz is basically brisket served in beef broth, but in Vienna they do it up. First one eats the deliciously flavorful broth with the veggies. Second, you are to spread the marrow (you get a marrow bone in the broth) on toasted bread, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, and eat it with your fingers. Finally, you get to the meat, which is served with bread sauce, horseradish, applesauce, fried potatoes, creamed spinach, and creamed cabbage (way better than it sounds). The whole thing was spread out on the table in a secession of beautiful copper pots. The Austrian cheese selection at Meierei was good if not life-changing, but it was served with some of the best bread I've had in ages (Looking back, that bread may have been the best thing I ate in Vienna) and it was fun to sit by the water and watch the people (and dogs pass by). I tried twice to visit the Secession. I semi-succeeded on my second attempt, but the floor with Klimpt's Beethoven Frieze was closed due to the opening of a new exhibit, which consisted of a lump of concrete, a book of squiggles, and a pile of 20,000 ugly posters. I did, however, see this cool older lady with polka dot hair.The art in the Kunsthistorisches Museum is world class, but the building itself is so amazing, I kept wanting to leave the galleries to admire the entry hall and amazing dome. I only wish I'd had a chance to visit more cafes and eat more cakes. In hindsight, I was a bit too focused on strudel...though I suppose there are worse things to obsess over.

Now, another response to another mystery reader! I'm very sad to hear of your brownie woes. You should most definitely try again because brownies are pretty easy to master and (especially in Berlin) people can't seem to get enough of them. (For work, I make brownies more often than any dessert.) As I wasn't in your kitchen, I can't say for sure what went wrong, but if you didn't forget any ingredients it sounds like you might have underbaked them? (Underbaked brownies are not-so-secretly one of my favorite things - in high school, we would half-bake a pan of brownies and dump ice cream into the warm pan. yum.) I can see, however, that you might actually want to cut squares and serve them to civilized people. For brownies, the flour you use shouldn't make a huge difference, but I use 550 for most dessert-baking and 1050 when I make bread. I seem to get better results when I don't use a cheap brand (such as Ja!), although I tend toward the Bio, so I haven't experimented enough to say if this is real and I don't think Ja!-type flour would ruin brownies either. I admit to running out of one or the other from time to time, though, and substituting without too much catastrophe. In terms of substituting the German granulated brown sugar for white sugar, that shouldn't have made a huge difference either. Try again and bake them until a toothpick or the point of a knife comes out fairly clean with just a few crumbs clinging to it. Or send the pan my way....I have a new freezer (!) so I can even add ice cream now!

Valentinstagschenken aus einem Karton

Lest you think I had forgotten, heart-shaped food is still my favorite part of Valentine's Day. I managed to score a box of avocados while working my latest random job: making finger food for a Dutch fruit-importing company during the recent Fruit Logistica trade show. (Oddly enough, they did not want any fruit in the finger food???) If you've ever been to a big trade show, you're familiar with the stands that the presenters set up to show case their wares. The Dutch fruit importers build a little kitchen of sorts (no stove or oven...) in the back of their stand. This was basically a box without a top in the middle of a giant room without any windows. I spent three days in said box constantly shooing the hostesses (these girls in tiny dresses who make espressos and giggle at the offensive comments made by fruit (or other) business men are a way-outdated trend that needs to be retired) out of my way. Anyway, Dutch fruit importers pay really well, as it turns out, so it was well worth it, though I wasn't too sad when the job ended and I could come out of the box. Anyway, by the time I had a chance to make the rounds, most of the fruit that was up for grabs had been distributed (they do sell fruit here, but it's so much more fun to score things for free), but I did manage to snag a bunch of American pears (the American pear people had a poster of Obama in their stand and I saw one group of fruit people taking their picture with it...heehee) and a box of avocados, which we enjoyed in a variety of preparations (I've discovered that the big Turkish grocery store near us sells very decent, almost Sonoran-style flour torillas (who knew?) so quesadillas and burritos were on the menu). The most picturesque, however, was our Valentine's Day breakfast: heart-shaped avocado on a roll pretending to be a bagel with cream cheese and lox.

Now we're are off to Vienna for a long weekend. Alas, mein Mann, has to work for two of those days, but I intend to devote my attention to the strudel, Tafelspitz, schnitzel, and other delights (maybe a museum or two, as well)!

Eingeschneit

Berlin always has winter (sometimes even in summer), but this is the first year we've had significant snow. I really enjoy the snow - I think I have a Pavlovian reaction and associate it with the excitement of a day off school. Snow spices things up a bit - it's like a decoration for the chilly weather. I chose to go to college in central Maine, so don't get me wrong: I like snow. But things are getting out of hand here: we have a healthy amount of snow on the ground (and it is snow again as I type, but nobody here shovels the sidewalks and only the most central of streets are plowed. Temperatures haven't gone above freezing and the sun hasn't even peaked through the clouds in the two weeks we've been back so the snow is just accumulating, lingering on the sidewalks, tripping old ladies and making a short walk to the grocery store feel like a long jog on the beach. I have personally witnessed how different locales with varying climates handle snow successfully, from snow-panicky DC to unphasable central Maine: I know snow can be dealt with! (On a semi-related note, in Barcelona they literally hosed the city down every night.) With snow (and not a single ray of sunshine, I might add) forecast on and off for the next ten days, I fear that the situation is getting a little out of control. Do I need to invest in a nice pair of waders?

There is one thing that almost makes up for this barbarity (I know, I touched on this last year, too, but I'm trying not to be 100% negative): small children are now pulled everywhere on toboggans (some of them have little seats to strap in toddlers)! It's really the cutest thing ever and so delightfully old Europe, don't you think? (I do have to add that the picture to the left where there is obviously a bit of sunshine, is from last year. We have had no sunshine at all in 2010.) Check out these toboggans locked up in front of an elementary school (where you would normally find bikes). Is that not charming?! The other day I saw two guys pick up a huge package from the post office and take it home on their toboggan! If only someone would pull me around town....

Wunsch abgeleistet

We actually walked by a cab with this sign on top just before we left for our American holiday.

It was great to be home. Even the things that drive me crazy about the US feel comfortingly familiar. My three-year anniversary in Berlin is fast-approaching (when did this happen?!), which means I've lived outside the US for about 4 years now. I am certainly used to Berlin at this point and it is also home, but it still lacks the familiarity of the US.

To answer my mystery reader's question, (side note: why do people keep trying to sell things in the comment section here? I think I have about 13 regular readers...) considering that I didn't speak any German upon moving here (words like Bier and Bratwurst and Radio aside), I have learned a lot of German. It was actually easier to learn than I had been led to expect: the whole deal with putting the verb at the end of the sentence is really not such a big thing to master. I tend to be quick to gain comprehension in foreign languages (although my sample size is pretty small) and I can follow most any conversation (unless it's very technical), watch movies without subtitles, talk on the phone, etc. I can also mostly always say what I need to say in social situations, as well as more formal settings like the doctor or the bank, but I struggle a lot with expressing complex or subtle concepts and I'm still not at the point where I really feel like my personality gets across 100%. In case you're wondering, yes this is frustrating if you are trying to market your small business auf Deutsch. Of course more immersion would do wonders, but I work alone most of the time and mein Mann and I have only in the last few months really started speaking German together at home. If I had a Euro for every person who told me/us that we should have spoken German together from the start, I could buy something of consequence, but they were wrong (and I'm not a good consumer anyway (except at the grocery store)). Of course I wish my German were better today, but I didn't move to the Fatherland to learn German, I moved here to get to know a German and 2.5 weddings (to the same person, of course...) later, I think I did OK. So that was probably way more on learning German that you, mysterious reader, wanted, but there you have it...

Anyway, it was great to be stateside: the food (dungenness crab, broccoli rabe (why in this land of Italy-worshippers and bitter green-eaters, do they not sell this here?), eggnog, multiple Mexican meals, late-night dumplings in Chinatown, olive oil-poached squid, early birthday cake), the people who care about food, the in-house cookbook library, the over-the-top Christmas decorations, having most of my favorite people in one timezone, the tangible New York Times, top sheets, blue skies, snow in Central Park, 2xTerriers....

Beschäftigt in der Küche

It has been a while - but 'tis the season and I've been busy in the kitchen....

As proof/justification for my lack of writing, I offer a few images:

Thanksgiving pies waiting to be picked up (I can accept the fact that I had to import pie pans (though you do have to pity a culture that doesn't even know about, let alone appreciate (worship?) pie), but the fact that I was forced to house them in pizza boxes (which work OK for pumpkin, but are seriously too shallow for a proper apple) because this supposedly cosmopolitan city doesn't have a single store selling baking supplies (a la New York Cake Supplies). You must be able to order them from somewhere, but still....

Christmas Linzer Cookies (particularly delicious delicious with my foraged plum jam). Thanks to Martha Stewart for the Christmas tree cut-out idea (and the recipe, which I highly recommend as the dough is surprisingly workable and the finished product even better than I had expected: after sampling a single cookie, one customer immediately ordered a kilo.)

And a marshmallow snowman awaiting his perch atop a chocolate cupcake. This guy and his cohorts were sold at a Christmas Bazaar at an international school here (part of my attempt to teach myself marketing/self-promotion). I really can't tell you how defenseless small children are in the face of these guys. I felt almost guilty. (Again, I have to give some credit to Martha (the woman (or her staff) does have good ideas), but not all that much as hers look a lot more like birds than snowmen. And I couldn't get behind the beret look...).


Finally, on a totally unrelated note, a shot from the cemetery down the street. While I'm not a cemetery person, I have to admit the Germans do this better than we do. Each plot is almost a little garden with loved ones regularly tending to the plants, making cemeteries feel less desolate, which I think is a nice thing. Who wants to spend eternity in desolate sterility? One of the cemeteries in my old neighborhood had an actual and frequented playground within its walls. And a different cemetery in my new neighborhood (where the brothers Grimm are supposedly buried) includes a cafe. But, of course they are still German cemeteries so the plots are neatly arranged (no wild flowers growing into the neighbor's plot now!). And in this photo, you can see that the various people who come to tend to the mini gardens keep their personal watering cans on-site and they are all Germanically locked up so that nobody can steal them!

Berlin: eine angsteinflößende Stadt

Not a new expat sentiment, but holidays outside of the US (or wherever it is you call home) are not the easiest of times. Especially holidays that are totally ignored (or worse, incorrectly celebrated) by the rest of world. I will say that my neighborhood threw a pumpkin/squash festival (in German Kürbis is the word for both). It was fairly tame and not all that pumpkin- or squash-focused, although they were selling over-priced pumpkins and squash. My absolute favorite part was the kids running around in giant plastic bubbles. Alas, I didn't have my camera with me, but of course somebody else documented this bizarre activity at some other festival. I guess they are sort of pumpkin-shaped?

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday (after my birthday, which Germany has also yet to do justice to). So this year, I decided to take matters into my own hands and we threw a Halloween party (costumes mandatory). I have to say, I was really pleasantly shocked that almost all of our guests wore costumes (maybe the Germans take "mandatory" literally?). We had cowboys and indians, pirates and angels, Cruella DeVille, Karate Kids, James Bond, and some generally creepy-looking Krauts. And, to our great surprise, we even had a group of trick-or-treaters! They say Halloween is taking off here (and if you were a German kid, isn't it the holiday you'd want to copy?) - the costume store down the street had a line out the door for three days solid. Still, living in an apartment (as opposed to a freestanding house with a welcoming front porch light) a ways from the areas of Berlin known for high numbers of expats, we were were not prepared. We lamely offered them our bowl of unwrapped candy (gummy rats, bats, and cats) from our party buffet (it seemed like a safer choice than finger pretzels or lychee eyeballs). I think the American paranoia regarding tainted candy hasn't made it here yet and they seemed pretty excited that some fairly unimpressive costumes merits free candy.

ps. For those keeping count, my New York Times columnists in Berlin sightings count is up to three!

Himmel und Erde (mit Bäume)

We are still working our way through those Jüterbog apples (the pears having been mostly dealt with thanks to Susan's vanilla pear jam recipe and a somewhat disappointing pear & chocolate torte). If I were in possession of a freezer, I'd no doubt freeze a bunch of applesauce for applesauce cake and muffins in the coming months, but as I am not and the pantry is jam-packed (no pun intended! Could this be where this phrase comes from?!) with jars of jam already.... I decided to take advantage of the sale on Blutwurst (blood sausage) and have another go at traditional German food (which as previously mentioned, I seldom cook or even eat strange as it may sound, but I have important work to do here, like converting mein Mann to pimento cheese, which I made today for lunch).

Himmel und Erde or "Heaven and Earth" is, according to Wikipedia, a typical west German dish with a bunch of regional variations. Basically, it's mashed potatoes with applesauce or cooked apples mixed in. In some parts of Germany, potatoes are called Erdäpfel (earth apples) and thus the source of the dish's name: Heaven (from the tree apples) and Earth (from the earth apples). I associate it with Blutwurst (perhaps because the recipe in my mother-in-law's German cookbook says to serve them together), but after a bit of internet research, it turns out that this combination is the Cologner/Dusseldorfer way, whereas other towns pair it with regular old Bratwurst or the German equivalent of fried bologna. I'm sure other porky things have been known to make an appearance. Caramelized onions are a common topping.

Himmel and Erde was, if I do say so myself, delicious (if not particularly photogenic - sorry). I was a bit worried about the combination of cooked apples and potatoes ... it seemed a bit like a baby food experiment gone wrong, but it was creamy and tangy and we ate it all. I've had the good fortune of living in several blood sausage-loving countries so far and today's version is giving Spain a run for its money. I think if you ordered Himmel und Erde at a restaurant, you would be hard pressed to find anything green on your plate, but while I can put away blood sausage with the best of them, I do like a bit of veg to round out my plate. So the version of Himmel und Erde typical of my apartment has trees (Bäume), which seems like an obvious addition to heaven and earth if you ask me....

Büffel-Besuch + Plünderung

We certainly ate our share of fresh mozzarella while we were in Campania, but somehow we didn't manage to hang out with any water buffaloes. Who knew that our chance would come in the 1,002-year-old town of Jüterbog (whose name is very fun), just south of Berlin? It wasn't the nicest of days, but we had wanted to visit Bobalis since returning from Italy and it's only open one Saturday a month. (Somehow, I who have plenty of days off, always ended up having to work on these Saturdays.) So we weren't going to let a bit of gray sky keep us away. The Buffaloes were extremely cute - there were lots of calves (waiting in line at the milk trough with the same patience found in human toddlers). I was a little disappointed that they weren't actually making cheese during the visiting hours and were only selling mozzarella that was already two days old. Am I wrong? Isn't "the fresher the better" the whole deal behind fresh mozzarella (although I will say that Provolone is pretty hard to find in the Fatherland). The cheese has a nice buffalo tang and I'm all for supporting a herd of happy German water buffalo, but ... it (along with the grey sky) does make a girl long for those days in Campania. Bobalis also butchers some of their buffalos and the sausages and liverwurst we brought home are delicious. I suppose it's not all that surprising that Germans would make better Wurst than delicate Italian cheese.

The town of Jüterbog is a collection of some really amazing very old buildings with the fairly depressing, shut-down vibe often found in Bradenburg/former East Germany as a backdrop. A rinky dink carnival set up in the lovely town square supposedly in honor of Oktoberfest didn't help matters. For some very unknown reason, Fläming, the region surrounding/including Jüterbog also boasts "Europe's first and largest skating path." I have no idea if or why in-line/rollerskating (skateboarding?) would be especially popular in this fairly out-of-the-way spot, but we biked around part of the 200-and-some-kilometer route and it is really very nice. To our delight, it's also full of fruit trees and once again we came home with saddlebags full of plums, pears, and apples (mein Mann has just discovered his love of scavenging/gathering and couldn't bear to leave any fruit behind). Our pantry is already very, very full of jam and chutney now and we are eating our weight in apple cake/tart on a daily basis. We're also developing somewhat of a reputation among our friends for being weird people who spend every weekend in the country in search of abandoned fruit trees.

Die (Aus)Wahl von Keks

As has been widely pointed out, the recent German election was a bit on the dry side. (Barely related side story: I hung out (briefly) with Roger Cohen at the reception following a foreign policy panel discussion I attended this week (making him my second New York Times columnist sighting in Berlin! He was next to me in the buffet line and asked me what I did for a living. I think I was the only non-politics person in the room (if you don't count that silly bachelor's degree or my brief stint saving children) and he seemed rather amused to talk about something besides the boring election). In any case, there was an election going on here. I suppose it wasn't all that different from elections at home, except that we didn't get phone calls during dinner from Bill Clinton (or Merkel for that matter) and because we don't have a television we were't subject to nonstop political ads (though I hear they are not so pervasive here). There were a lot of posters up around town for the various parties. Mostly they serve to illustrate that German politicians do not use stylists (or it would seem, professional photographers). One poster in particular illustrates the ability of the German people to take some things more lightly than Americans. This poster displays the cleavage of Chancellor Angela Merkel and another politician from her CDU party, claiming: we have more to offer. While I can't say that I find this poster particularly convincing, remember what a fuss they made about Michelle Obama showing her arms?! (In the end, she lost.)


For the most part, I leave the German politicking to mein Mann, but I did see fit to make one (fairly neutral) contribution to the election. We went to a little election party to watch the results come in (Germany only has one time zone (and only tiny scandals) so you can actually find out the results and then go have dinner!). I brought along some election-themed cookies - the different sprinkles represent the colors associated with the four main parties. Freakily enough, most of the red (red being the color of the SPD, which lost badly) cookies turned out really poorly (weird holes in the centers and melting around the edges) and yellow (of the co-winning FDP) turned out perfectly. Hmmmmmmmmmm....

Julia auf Deutsch

Julia Child and I go back a long way. I haven't cooked my way through any of her books (or anyone else's for that matter, though I sometimes wish I had that kind of patience and didn't always feel the need to make something with whatever I think I need to use up in my fridge), but she was on my Sesame Street-Mr. Rogers rotation, and I continued to watch her shows long after Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers had faded from my television screen. Thanks to a roommate/friend who worked at the American History Museum, I was able to visit her kitchen before the exhibit opened in DC and I got to hold her balloon whisk. It's true: I have photographic proof and a witness.

I moped around for weeks because I was sure "Julie & Julia" wouldn't be playing in Germany -- nobody in Europe has any idea who she is. Of course, they are familiar with Meryl Streep so, to my delight, the movie is showing in Berlin after all. I moved here with my DVD of "The French Chef" in tow (naturally) so mein Mann had already been persuaded of her charms and did not even need to be begged or bribed to come along. So there we were last week, sitting in the theater and waiting for the movie to start when it occurred to me I hadn't double checked that the movie was in English (for reasons I have yet to fathom, most movies here are shown dubbed and only a few theaters show the original version). I had stupidly assumed the film would be in English because who would want to hear a dubbed version of Meryl Streep's spot-on imitation of Julia's voice? A small handful of Germans who have no idea what Julia sounded like anyway (or Meryl Streep for that matter because these people always go to see the dubbed version) that's who. I panicked. For about 2 seconds I thought maybe I could sit through it in German...the story is the same right? And it would be good German practice, no? Much to the bewilderment and irritation of mein Mann I announced that I had to leave. He could stay, but I could simply not bring myself to see Julia in German. Much to my satisfaction, after we finally saw Julie & Julia this week in the lovely English language, mein Mann pronounced that we could never have seen it auf Deutsch. Ha!


In other news, I have a new bike so last weekend we took it out to the country for a spin. It was one of the last (sigh) really nice days of the year and it was a lovely bike ride other than the fact that it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to long for someone who had only ridden a bike once in the last two decades or so. I am now fully recovered, though, and can say that it was totally worth it because along the way we discovered countless plum trees (the sort my family calls Italian prune plums, but I understand are also known as damsons and in these parts, Zwetschen), as well as an apple orchard at the Cloister in Chorin (actually we knew this was there, having stumbled upon it last year - you may recall my adventures in making 100 or so tiny jars of jam?). The bike was even less fun to ride with saddle bags full of fruit, but the apple cake I made last Sunday and the particularly delicious plum jam I made yesterday (plum chutney, brandied apple butter, and a sour cream apple pie to come) have a way of helping me forget that part