Dinner at Christian’s
back from my mom’s birthday christian cheered me up with delicious lamb chops covered with a tarragon-breadcrumb-butter-crust, accompanied by yellow lentils (faboulous!) and a horseraddish espuma. loved it. as both of us couldnt stop eating it became increasinlgy difficult to breathe properly, so we decided to walk our tummies a bit - a chance our feet didnt let slip, they led us straight to the bar ‘NEU’ in 218 greifswalder street where, somehow wondrously, one (okay, maybe two) too many gin tonic (hendrick’s!) helped themselves down our throat. gently, but no the less resolutely!

let’s talk about: happieness!

yesterday we had dinner – outdoor! – at aromi’s, eagerly taking advantage of one out of three awesome warm nights we had so far. reckon that’s all we are put of with this summer - for some dumb reason we’ve been chastised with nothing but shitloads of rain and chilly temperatures since april march feb jan. no-one, by law, should be molested by a climate like this but we are (me very pleased, i’m german, we live on feeling disadvantaged). no idea whom or what to blame for our misery (me not pleased at all, i’m german, i live on blaming others), but at least it can’t be our fault, because you’ll never find any leftovers on our plates (can’t be more pleased, i’m german, me never responsible).

anyway. to accompany our bottle of dry white, christian and me habitually rounded out our precious collection of disgusting german words in order to find the most repelling imposition our mother tongue is capable of. that’s a very challenging assignment and we are very good at it. the lucky wordy sod emerging victorious yesterday was: “schnabulieren” (thx cw!). as a matter of course i looked it up, but no way to find an english word as awful, frumpy, wry and goose-pimply  as “schna-bu-lie-ren”.

to give you an idea of its vibe: there simply is none. there’s just a shiver. try to imagine a person intending to come out foodily by using the term nibbling away or to savour whilst forcing down a dry shred of rubber beef filet, drowned in a microwave-heated-ready-made-sauce as a valentine’s dinner. noisily chewing, dressed in dark green corduroy trousers, a sweaty beige polyester shirt, wearing his grandfather’s sludge coloured spectacles, eyes due to delight and a severe farsightedness almost popping out. now you’ve got a slight clue what “schnabulieren” is about: people like this love to use words like that and they do it quite frequently.

we don’t. we are decent, magnificent foodies, modest and flawless. so yesterday we got exactly what we deserve: a delicious vitello tonnato we wolfed down the very second the plate touched down at our table. 

there’s just one thing i’m wondering about: shouldn’t a proper vitello be soaked in tonnato (thoroughly, at best over nite) instead of just wearing a fancy hat of mayonnaise (add capers, anchovy, lemon juice, salt and pepper)? furthermore (i just started this sous-vide-thingy as my new obsession): what might happen to my palate if i gave the veal a 24-hour-very-very-slow-cooking treatment?

never mind a simple bunch of noodles…

… as long as there’s some truffle attached to it.

time to confess again: since i moved to cape town partially i have a bias towards green asparagus. but nevertheless i still love the white, especially when it comes into season - what definitively won’t happen for another nine months. time enough (for a decent pregancy) to harvest as much nice recipes as possible. 

so: any ideas what to do with green or white asparagus apart from washing all flavours off  by boiling it in water? limb-stem-results are not apreciated! :)