Cosima Underwater

It was one of those days today.

The sun was shining, but to be honest I was hoping for rain. Sometimes it is just wonderful to have a lazy morning in PJs without feeling guilty about it.

Little man had a relapse into the terrible twos, and kept his mama on her toes. Why?

Because it was one of those days.

I was toying with the idea to take a break from our Christmas cookies test series, but then I thought that baking may get little man’s mind out of his rebellious state, and give him something fun to do.

Initially it helped, but somehow baking wasn’t enough for a little six-year old with boundless energy this morning. He disappeared after a while to make paper airplanes, and came back after five minutes to ask mama to help him with folding. Busy mama with dirty hands, had to say “no, sorry”. Unfortunately, little boys with a bossy streak do not take no for an answer. So while I was explaining to little man why he has to wait, and he was saying “but I want my paper airplane NOW”, and I was saying … etc etc… I messed up the recipe.

I ended up with a very soft and sticky dough, and wondered why.

Because it was one of those days.

Because in my side-tracked state of mind, I had taken only half of the recommended amount of icing sugar, but the full quantity of egg whites. Something to do with initially planning to half the recipe but then eventually deciding to do the full amount, and somehow forgetting what the final plan was midway through.

Anyway, here is the recipe for Zimtsterne from “Unser Kochbuch Nr. 1″ (Our Cook Book No.1), which my parents, clearly worried that I would starve, gave me when I moved out of their house about 20 years ago. It has 700 recipes with a special how-to section for dummies. You can half the recipe or not, or can, or not, or can, but don’t forget what you settled on:

For 60 Zimtsterne (cinnamon stars) you need:

400g ground almonds, 5 egg whites, 400g icing sugar, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of ground cinnamon (I used 3 though), additional icing sugar for rolling out the dough

Beat the 5 egg whites until very stiff, add the icing sugar one spoon at a time, and then the lemon juice. The mixture should look like shiny whipped cream. Take 4 tablespoons from the egg white mix and put it in a separate small bowl for later use as icing.

Fold the ground almond and cinnamon into the mixture.

Preheat the oven to 140 degrees Celsius (285 Fahrenheit).

Roll out the dough to about 1cm thickness on icing sugar or corn flour (we did two batches, one 1cm thick the other only half a centimeter, while the thicker cookies stayed chewy in the middle, the thinner ones were crispy, I liked the crispy ones better, little man the chewy ones).

Cut out stars with a cookie cutter, brush the egg white creme on top, and put them on a baking tray lined with baking paper.

Bake the cookies – it is more drying than baking – for 30-40 minutes.

So far the theory, reality didn’t go as smoothly. Even after adding the forgotten half of the icing sugar, the dough was still too sticky. I have done this recipe several times and it always worked out fine, why not this time?

Because it was clearly one of those days.

Or because I didn’t use ready-made ground almonds, which are fairly dry. Instead I used unblanched whole almonds, which I ground myself in an old coffee grinder. They smelled wonderful, but were fairly greasy.

I had to add corn flour to the dough to make it manageable. First, we folded a paper airplane, then we rolled out the dough on icing sugar.

And as you can see, we didn’t have a star shaped cookie cutter. We made a modernized version of Zimtsterne with airplanes, trains, cars, and other merry Christmas folk, and it suddenly hit me why these “Christmas cookie cutters” had been such a bargain.

Then little man brushed on the egg white mix, and we put the cookies into the oven. After only five minutes, the icing turned slightly brown. It is supposed to stay as white as snow.

Say it with me please: Because it was one of those days!

I blame my prehistoric gas oven, for which it is very hard to control the temperature and keep it at a low level.

They don’t look very pretty, but taste delicious nevertheless.

It was one of those days. But with cookies. And so the day had a happy cinnamon star ending.

This is turning into a food blog, and that’s how it should be. What do you really need? Love, of course, and other nourishments. And is there a better way to share and tell that you love, than cooking and eating and savoring food?

This is a Thanksgiving post from a professed atheist, though I know that God loves me nevertheless :).

I was craving for food that I grew up with. I am quite adventurous with new foods. I eat what smells good, and that is 99% of the food I have encountered. The big exception is Durian, but one day I will be brave enough to try it too. It smells of dogsh*t, but people tell me it’s as good as custard. Maybe, one day, I will try it.

I was dreaming of calf’s liver. In Berlin, it is dusted in flour and seared shortly on each side, and served with fried apples and onions on top and mashed potatoes. My mum makes yummy calf’s liver.

Some people get grossed out at animal innards, frankly I don’t get it. If you eat a steak (which necessitates to kill an animal), you should also be able to eat its innards, especially if they are as tasty as liver. Isn’t it more humane to eat as most as possible from an animal, you kill for food?

I know people who eat goose liver (expensive, French, you need to force feed geese to get it) but turn their noses up at liverwurst (cheap, German, you only need to quickly kill the pig). I eat both of them.

Where am I heading? Gosh, I don’t know, but the oxtail stew (the very end of a cow) cooking away on my stove smells lovely. I can’t get calf’s liver in my neighborhood supermarket, but fortunately they have oxtail, and chicken with the heads still on, and other animals that we eat but sometimes don’t want to know we eat.

One thing I admire about Asian Food, and there is lots more that I admire, is that they are still aware where the meat comes from. In western-style supermarkets, more often than not, every reference to the animal is removed. Clean cut steaks, minced beef and pork, cutlets, chicken breasts. We have that here too, but you can also get chicken feet, whole chicken with their heads on, and fish that is taken out of the tank and killed for you. Sounds gross? It’s the reality. If you don’t like it, become vegetarian.

I eat meat as a treat. I use meat to flavor, not to get full. I remember the pigeons, rabbits, chicken, and pig at my grandmother’s neighbor’s house. We ate them, they tasted lovely, they were prepared with care, they were prepared as a rare feast.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Can you tell we are gearing up for Christmas?

Little cookie monster and I are trying out a different recipes every weekend. Only the best will be on our final Christmas cookie list. Last week’s biscottis were my favorite, but little man didn’t like the hardness of them. So this week, we tried a more kids-friendly recipe:

Muerbeteig cookies with lemon icing and a ton of colorful sprinkles

Knead 70g of caster sugar and the mark of one vanilla bean into 140g of unsalted butter. This works best if you cut the butter into little cubes. Add one egg yolk, and 210g of flour. It’s a 3-2-1 Muerbeteig dough (3 parts flour, 2 parts fat, 1 part sugar), which also works great for tart bottoms. You can leave out the egg, but I find for cookies adding one egg yolk works best.

I don’t have a fancy kitchen machine, so we used our hands. There is something very satisfying about grabbing a handful of buttery dough and pressing it through your fingers. Through experience I have learnt to only put one hand into the dough, so that you still have one clean hand to prevent a little cookie monster from eating half of the dough or eating all the sprinkles :).

Wrap the dough into cling wrap and let it rest for at least 15 minutes in the fridge. You can also make the dough one day in advance and leave it in the fridge over night.

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees Celsius (320 Fahrenheit). Roll out the dough to about 5mm thickness on a floured work top, and then use cookie cutters or a small glass to cut out shapes. We got about 65 cookies. Lay them on a baking tray lined with baking paper, and bake for 10-15 minutes. We watched them all the time, you want them to brown only lightly.

Let them cool. For the icing, mix about 120g of icing sugar with a few tablespoons of lemon juice, until it becomes a gooey sauce. Brush the cookies with the icing, and then let little cookie monsters add the final decoration.

It was such fun to see little man enjoy making cookies and eating them. We agreed to only eat the broken cookies today. You know, the reindeers without horns and the Christmas trees without tops. There were surprisingly many of them. I am counting making cookies with little man today. He is such a sweet little cookie monster :).

… will you?

I should have made more.

I had such a craving for something sweet this afternoon and there was plenty of flour and a big bag of almonds in my kitchen cupboard. After a bit of surfing on the internet, I decided to make almond biscotti. I love them, but had never baked them myself before. The ingredients and instructions below are a combination of several recipes I found on the internet. They are surprisingly easy to make.

Almond Biscotti

100g of whole blanched almonds (go here on how to blanch almonds)
125g of plain white flour (but have plenty more at hand)
125g of brown sugar
1 pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
mark of 1 vanilla bean
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit). Lightly grease a baking tray or line it with baking paper.

Lightly dry toast the almonds in a frying pan, or on a baking tray in the oven until fragrant. (Side note to self: Do not eat too much of the almonds, even if the smell is intoxicating. You’ll need them.)

Mix the flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder in a bowl. Don’t add the almonds yet.

Scrap out the mark of one vanilla bean. Beat the eggs and vanilla mark in a separate bowl until light.

Combine the eggs with the dry ingredients, but leave out the almonds. Knead the dough until it becomes elastic, adding more flour if it is too sticky.

I ended up adding a lot more flour than in the original recipe, about 100g more. How much flour you need probably depends on the particular size of the eggs and also how the flour that you use absorbs moisture. (Note to self: Keep the flour bag open and close at hand, so that you don’t need to rummage through cupboards with fingers full of sticky dough, leaving traces everywhere.)

Add the almonds and knead them into the dough.

Form long loaves about three fingers wide and one finger high, and put them on the baking tray. I ended up with two loaves about 40cm (16 inches) long.

I baked the loaves for 30 minutes, then switched off the oven, and let them sit in the oven for a further 30 minutes. They should not color much.

When I baked them, the smell of almonds and vanilla permeated the whole apartment. Little bubbles of almond oil oozed out of the biscotti loaves.

Take them out of the oven.

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) again.

Let the loaves cool for a bit, then cut them diagonally into one centimeter (about half an inch) thick slices. I used a serrated bread knife.

Try stopping yourself from eating more than half of the biscotti at this point. Nibbling away the loaf ends is allowed though :).

Spread the slices out on the baking tray, cut side down, and bake for a further 10-15 minutes, turning them over after half the time. It’s better to keep a close eye on them while they bake for the second time. They should be completely dry but not color.

In theory, biscotti should keep for a few weeks in an airtight container. In reality, they will be gone by tomorrow. We are a two person household, so double or quadruple the ingredients if you are baking for more people. The original recipe called for 500g of flour and 500g of sugar.

Mmmm… crack … sweet… crack… full of almond aroma… crack… yummy!

I am preparing lunch while trying to stay abreast with the election results. 297 electoral votes for Obama. Seems that I can throw the veggies into the wok without the risk of burning them to charcoal.

Please help spread the word that communism died twenty years ago. Just yesterday, I received an email that Obama is an evil communist. I guess we will find out whether he also eats small children in the coming four years.

PS: Uh oh, control of the House too. Having seen Barrack Obama coming onto the stage in Grant Park, I think he knows the expectations laid upon him and the many responsibilities that await him. But his daughters had pure joy in their eyes, and that was wonderful to see too. Lol… a prep talk is underway. To lean back and blame others is not going to be an option during the next four years.

Off to eat dessert.