Hunger
Roxane Gay
Finanz-Tsunami
Ernst Wolff
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders
Charisma
James Salter
Die Geschichte des verlorenen Kindes
Elena Ferrante
Falke: Biographie eines Räubers
Helen McDonald
Das Genie
Klaus Cäsar Zehrer
The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
Peter Frankopan
Die Kieferninseln
Marion Poschmann
Nannion
Andreas Androutsellis-Theotokis
The Bees
Laline Paull
A traditional recipe to fight the arctic temperatures. It pairs well with duck and pheasant, with potato gratin, gnocchi and mashed potatoes. Or simply on its own, just the buttery cabbage with the sweet aromatic apple.
Flemish red cabbage
1 red cabbage
2 tablespoons aceto balsamico
salt and pepper
2 generous tablespoons soft butter to spread onto the pan
2 apples
a heavy pan with a heavy , well closing lid.
Preheat the oven to 150°C.
Quarter the cabbage, remove the white core. Cut the cabbage in fingerthick stripes.
Butter the pan generously, bottom and sides.
In a large bowl combine the cabbage with salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar. Immediately (before it starts releasing any liquid), transfer the cabbage to the buttered pan, close the lid and put it into the oven. Cook for 2 hours.
Cut the apples in halves, remove the core and sprinkle with icing sugar. Remove the cabbage from the oven and place the apple halves onto it. Cook in the oven for another 1/2 hour.
It is wheat-free, egg-free and dairy-free, yet super good – with a deliciously crunchy crust when it comes out of the oven.
German apple pie (not Grandma’s classic)
300g spelt flour (or a mix of spelt and chickpea flour)
1 sachet baking powder
100g muscobado sugar
160g unsweetened apple sauce or fresh apple pulp (leftover from juicing)
160g nut milk
100g ground almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
5 – 6 apples
In a bowl mix flour and baking powder.
In another bowl mix sugar, apple sauce, nut milk, ground almonds and cinnamon. Sieve in the flour and the baking powder always stirring until well combined.
Preheat oven to 180°C.
Peel and quarter the apples and cut them lengthwise.
Scrape the batter into a buttered baking dish (coconut oil for the vegan version). Arrange the apple quarters on top of the batter pressing them down to the bottom of the dish.
Bake for 30 -35 minutes until golden brown.
Serve with custard or cream Chantilly.
This is the time of the year when Erzgebirgian Arches and the beautiful stars of the Moravian Church shine through our wintery darkness.
It’s also high time to start with the Christmas bakery. These dried fruit and oat cookies are equally delicious made with fresh fruit pulp instead of dried fruit. My favourite version? Fresh fruit pulp + raisins! Or… dried fruit + a handful of chocolate chips?? As the fruit is the last ingredient to be added, I suggest you divide the dough and make both.
I double the amount of dough when the whole family comes together.
Dried fruit and oat cookies
(yields about 25 cookies)
100g butter, at room temperature
100g brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla powder
1 egg
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of sea salt
80g flour (I use wholemeal flour)
50g oatmeal
40g dried fruit (apricots, raisins, cherries, chopped); + optional: a handful of chocolate chips
or fresh fruit pulp left over from juicing (apples, ginger, orange, pear)
almonds for topping
Preheat oven to 180°.
In a large bowl and using your hands combine butter and sugar. Add vanilla, egg, salt, baking powder and flour. Work in until the mixture is uniform. Finally add the oatmeal and the fruit (plus chocolate chips to your liking).
Using a teaspoon drop little heaps of dough onto the baking sheet and flatten them. Top each one with an almond.
Bake the cookies about 10 minutes if you like them soft, 15 minutes if you like them darker and crispier.
creamy mustard salad dressing
(yields about 10 servings)
2 cups raw, unsalted cashews
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons raisins
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 cup almond milk or any other plant based milk
1 teaspoon tamari sauce
It is not necessary to soak the cashews, if you use a high speed blender. Blend until creamy. Keep in the fridge for at least 1 week. If the dressing thickens (it does!) whisk in some water to each serving..
Spin-off:
thousand island dressing (kind of)
2 cups unsalted cashews
1 cup balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons raisins
1 cup almond milk
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon tamari paste
Blend until creamy.
I stumbled upon the method of caramelizing butternut squash in Donna Hay’s cookbook Fresh and Light. Perfect to turn any autumnal salad into a more substantial meal. What are your favourite pumpkin recipes? Mine are these
caramelized pumpkin and green bean salad
1 butternut squash, sliced or diced
2 tablespoons agave syrup or honey
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
sea salt and cracked black pepper
250g green beans, trimmed and blanched
tomatoes
flat-leaved parsley
for the dressing
2 tablespoons native olive oil
3 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon peel
a pinch of salt
Preheat oven to 200°.
Place the pumpkin on a baking tray lined with non-sticking paper. Mix together the agave syrup, vinegar, salt and pepper and brush the mixture over the pumpkin. Roast the pumpkin for 25-30 minutes or until golden.
While the pumpkin is roasting, blanch the beans , slice the tomatoes and prepare the dressing. To make the dressing, mix to combine the oil, vinegar, lemon peel and a pinch of salt.
Divide the ingredients between serving plates and spoon over the dressing to serve.
beetroot carpaccio
4 beetroots
about 75g fresh goat cheese (feta)
2 spring onions (the green parts) or chives, thinly sliced
for the vinaigrette:
3 tablespoons sherry vinegar
60 ml olive oil
a few dashes of Tabasco sauce
salt and black pepper
Bring a pot of water to the boil and add the beetroot. Cook for about 20 minutes. Refresh under cold water, peel and slice 2-3mm thick. Spread on a platter in a fan shape. Drizzle generously with the vinaigrette and top with crumbled goat cheese and sliced spring onions.
Late summer days. Abundance of plums, apples and mirabelles in every garden…. Before the season slips away don’t miss to bake this Tarte aux Mirabelles et aux Amandes. It’s worth it!
Tarte aux Mirabelles et aux Amandes
250g tart dough with almonds
700g mirabelles (golden cherry plums)
3 eggs
150g icing sugar
80g finely ground almonds
a pinch of cinnamon
100ml liquid cream
1 tablespoon melted butter
30g sliced almonds
Preheat the oven to 160°.
Wash and pit the mirabelles. In a bowl beat the butter and the sugar until creamy. Add the ground almonds, the cinnamon and the liquid cream. Beat until all ingredients are well blended. Finally mix in the melted butter.
Roll out the dough (26cm circle or 20 x 30 rectangle) and and fit it into the base and up the sides of your tart pan.
Distribute the mirabelles evenly on the dough. Spread the filling and the sliced almonds onto them. Bake for 35 minutes. Serve cold.
Meine geniale Freundin
Elena Ferrante
Die Geschichte eines neuen Namens
Elena Ferrante
The Secret Life of Colour
Kassia St Clair
the Airbnb story
Leigh Gallagher
Die Angst, das Risiko und die Liebe
Omer Meir Wellber
JFK Staatsstreich in Amerika
Mathias Bröckers
Alexander von Humboldt und die Entdeckung der Natur
Andrea Wulf
Kew Gardens Das Kochbuch
Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
The Nix
Nathan Hill
Nights at the Circus
Angela Carter
That’s how we started (picture below). With a slightly completely adjusted Ottolenghi recipe in order to veganize it…
We knew that probably the little cakes wouldn’t come out like in the photo of the cookbook, but having in mind the delicious Tuscanian chocolate cake with a similar ratio of ingredients we began the experiment.
The result after 20 minutes in the oven? Very crisp, very oily, utterly flat (let’s say concave) uhm.. tarts?!? Hard to name a thing that had never been seen before. We ate 2 of them with coffee; the flavour was great, but not great enough to ignore the ugliness and oiliness. After much consideration we only saw one solution, to combine the whole mess and make a new dough. Final outcome, hopefully: cookies. So we decided to go ahead by adding more hemp flour, by re-kneading, re-forming and re-baking.
Hemp and red currant cookies (improved recipe)
100g coconut oil
100g brown sugar
60g pistachios
60g almonds
grated zest of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons of a mashed banana
120 g hemp flour
a handful of red currants
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Put the nuts, flour and sugar into a food processor bowl. Work to a coarse, bread crumb like texture. Fill it into a mixing bowl and mix it with the coconut oil, lemon zest and mashed banana. Work it with your hands to combine. Finally fold in the red currants.
Let it rest in the fridge for 1/2 hour. Form little gnocchi or Matterhorns.
Bake for 20 minutes.
Final taste: delicious. Final texture: pleasantly rough.
