Falling In Love

There isn't a lot of baking happening with me these days. Instead, I am still in Germany, traveling, visiting friends and family all over the place, and getting to explore some new places. 

And I have a confession to make: I am in love. And this time around we are not talking about Florin or Vancouver (we know about all that already), but rather about Munich. During my stay the city was bathed in bright sunshine and the sky was clear and blue. Perfect conditions to enjoy the beautiful English Garden with the Eisbach, a fast creek that flows through the park, and invites you to jump in to refresh yourself and drift downstream, and then walk back and do it all over again. And when you've had enough of that, you can just take a moment and watch the surfers on their boards, riding the Eisbach's man-made wave. Pretty cool!

Traditional food in Bavaria: lot's of meat, but apparently as a vegetarian you can't go wrong with Obatzter, brezen, and maybe a beer or two. Obatzter is a delicious cheese dish, made with camembert and lots of different spices, such as onions, paprika, caraway, etc. Mmmm. And brezen, of course, are pretzel, and often they are quite humongous, at least 15 inches wide. I would love to get into pretzel baking, just because they are so beautiful and so special. Maybe I'll give it a shot when things are slowing down, and I finally get to spend some time baking again.

Obatzter

Ripe camembert

Fluffy beaten butter

Finely chopped onions

Lots of paprika

Caraway

Some salt and some pepper

Beer

Turn all your ingredients into a spread, or firm dip. Season to taste.  Ideally, you should have it outside in the sun, with some Bavarian lager and freshly baked, oven-warm pretzel. 

Pasta, Pesto and ... Pinot

This is not a post about baking, but rather about homemade pasta and pesto. And about a fantastic Pinot Noir (2008) from the Okanagan Valley. A sunny Sunday evening that makes for a good end of our week - and that promises sunshine in Vancouver for the coming days. Finally! We all needed it.

Pasta 

Pasta is so much fun to make. And so easy too. Unlike with baking bread, you don't even have to plan ahead. If you have some eggs and flour at home, you can start right away: Use one egg for every hundred grams of flour, which should result in a very stiff dough. Kneading it properly is quite a bit of work, but you need to develop the gluten really well. You want your dough to feel smooth and silky, not rough and floury. Wrap the dough in saran wrap and let it rest in the fridge for at least an hour before making it into pasta. You can turn it into anything you wish: ravioli, spaghetti, fettuccini, lasagna sheets, etc. You can either dry your pasta or cook it right away in plenty of boiling salt-water until al dente. Serve fresh.

Pesto

We very rarely find commercially available pestos that we really like. We rather stick to fresh and homemade pestos. All sorts of them. And we love them. For this Sunday evening it was the classic pesto alla genovese, made from fresh basil, Grana Padano, pine nuts, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil. Sweet!

and ... Pinot

We love to get our wines from our friend Michael, who runs a wine shop in Kitsilano that offers only BC wines. The Pinot Noir was already open from the night before and now even better after having all that time to breathe. The flavours came out very nicely and subtle; it has a very well-structured medium body with notes of red plum, cherry and tobacco. Give it a try!