happy saturday
summertime potato soup
My grandfather loved it because it was reliably followed by a cake or by sweet yeast dumplings with a divine salty crust. My mother continued the tradition and we all loved it.
I am the one who changed it for just potato soup accompanied by baguette, some olives, a bit of pizza or what else the kitchen offers. The quick and easy way!
Potato cucumber soup
4 tbs olive oil
4-5 spring onions, chopped
about 750g potatoes, diced
1 large fresh cucumber, peeled, seeded and chopped
1 ts salt
a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
about 1l vegetable stock ( I use vegetable stock powder from the wholefood store)
Heat the oil in a saucepan and cook the spring onions and the potatoes over low heat, stirring, until the vegetables soften and begin to turn golden. This step is very important, because it gives a special flavour to the soup. Much better than the raw vegetables simply thrown into the stock.
Add salt and pepper.
Pour in the stock. Should cover the vegetables by about 3 cm.
Simmer for about 10 minutes.
Add now the cucumber and let it simmer for only 5 minutes more. (No longer!)
Liquidize it in a food processor until smooth.
You can pimp the soup with a bit of sour cream, freshly chopped parsley, croutons….
And of course, have a piece of cake afterwards if you like to follow the old traditions!
White Lady
Sunday’s cocktail comes on a bad-weather-Monday!
However, are you ready for a summer series of fresh sours and punches? Being the White Lady still a true classic, my next drinks will come along much more creative with fruit, cucumbers and herbs muddled in the syrup and the spirits.
Ah? Do I see that some of you are raising the eyebrows?
Don’t worry, Paul Carr, an English composer and big aficionado of cocktail mixing, once taught me, that a good cocktail always and first of all has to be CLEAN (whatever that means). By intuition and knowledge I exclusively prepare CLEAN cocktails… Trust me!
How mix the White Lady:
2 parts gin
1 part Cointreau
1 part lemon juice
Mix in a shaker half full of ice, strain and serve in sugar-rimmed glasses (I took Muscobado sugar and added more ice).
Enjoy!
on painting
In the end it’s all about pigments. Their origin , their amount, their very special character… As for wall painting I’m addicted to the colours of Farrow&Ball. They are so subtle, so elegant…. Yes, I know, I know: it’s a personal and an emotional thing.
However I’m happy that we now have a stockist in Dresden. Time to think about a makeover for my guest room, west-oriented, with a big red-leaved tree in front. So I imagine a very soft and bright pink for it.
This, for example, is the colour Rectory Red in my hallway.
Talking about colours, we have got a new attraction at Pirnaischer Platz in Dresden: two traffic islands painted in ocean blue! The colour has been chosen to remind past times when this place has been a lake area.
It’s impressing how these blue traffic islands inspire people’s fantasy. In the biggest rush hour there has been a man relaxing on a sunbed, yesterday a flashmob had brought plastic ducklings.
Italy street peek
happy saturday
Negroni
Eighty-year-old Grandma arrived to celebrate Easter with us. Knowing she loves the bittersweet taste of Campari and and its beneficial effects on the digestive system, we decided to mix a Negroni to welcome her. I admit we felt a bit worried the high content of alcohol could harm her (dizziness, sudden tachycardia, sleeplessness…). Instead she enjoyed it a lot, slept perfectly well and asked for repetition tonight…
The original Negroni was invented in Florence, in 1919, at Caffe Casoni, now Caffe Giacosa. Count Camillo Negroni invented it by asking the bartender, Fosco Scarselli, to strengthen his favourite cocktail, the Americano, by adding gin rather than the normal soda water.
How to mix it:
2 cl Vermouth rosso
2 cl Campari
2 cl Gin
Serve on the rocks, poured over ice. Enjoy!
a splendid foretaste of summer
Lately I spent an awesome time with my daughter in Florence. We were strolling around all day long, visiting palazzi, museums and fashion shops, sunbathing on roof terraces, and, as a special challenge, we never ate twice in the same place! I swear to you I hadn’t been served so simple and so delicious meals in a long time… salads, grilled vegetables, carpacci, gelati, BIFTECA A LA FIORENTINA, panini, capuccini….just paradise!
So, if you agree, I’m going to dedicate my next posts to Florence and to the delights of Tuscan cuisine.
And here, my dear readers, comes the aperitivo:
roofs of the old town
so ripe and colourful and inviting to stop by
Santa Croce, my favourite church
Piazza di Santa Croce
Piazza della Repubblica, from the roof terrace of the department store La Rinascente
subject of big interest: the “love locks” at Ponte Vecchi
yoghurt, strawberries and pine nuts for breakfast
my proposal for your summer breakfast
A few months ago I bought an amazing Almwiesenmuesli (= MOUNTAIN PASTURE MUESLI). Beautiful to look at, in a bottle, with dried yellow and blue mountain pasture blossoms between grains and roasted nuts.. I know you understand me, I just had to buy it because it looked fresh and healthy (still colours are reason enough to buy something!…)
We all know this: too often nicely coloured food looks better than it tastes. NOT THE ALM MÜSLI! It tasted so good that when I had finished the original Muesli bottle I decided to buy all the ingredients and assemble my own slightly improved (additional choco chips!) version.
Intrigued?? This is the recipe:
Almwiesenmuesli
3 cups of oat flakes
3 cups of wheat-barley-buckwheat flakes
1cup of amaranth poppies
1/2 cup of green raisins
1/4 cup of hazelnuts, chopped and roasted
1/4 cup of almonds, chopped and roasted
1/4 cup of pine nuts, roasted
1/4 cup of apricot nuts, chopped and roasted
1/4 cup of cedar nuts, roasted
1/4 cup of pumkin seeds, roasted
1/4 cup of psyllium
1/4 a cup of chocolate chips
and not to forget: some dried, edible flowers . If you shouldn’t have the possibility right now to harvest your own mountain pasture flowers, take flowers from your garden or get some from the wholefood shop.
Put all the ingredients into a big bowl and mix well. To store I recommend a high glass jar or a paperbag.
For breakfast fill a handful of Muesli into a bowl, add a bit of hot water to smoothen it, add half a grated apple or pear, a teaspoon of flaxseed or a teaspoon of flaxseed oil (for the culmination of positive effects) and voilà: the perfect healthy summer breakfast. Of course, you may substitute my finishing proposals by milk, yoghurt, fruit juice or whatever you prefer. Enjoy!
antipasti in the sun
Lazy sunny weekend- like the beginning of an amazing holiday on a wooden three-master in the Mediterranean.. or at least in an ancient monastery in Florence.