New: Raw food in Berlin!

As the weather is getting colder (only +5C now), it's natural to think of nothing but eating. I got the opportunity to write an article about new vegetarian restaurants in Berlin, so the past week and a half my life has revolved around food. 2011 has been a great year for vegetarians and vegans in the city: NINE veggie restaurants have opened since February. When my mom was here, I dragged her along to Lucky Leek and Kopps, and since then I've been exploring raw food with A. There are two new raw food restaurants in Berlin: Gesund & sündig in Wilmersdorf and café style LebensfRoh in Kreuzberg.

Gesund & sündig
Germany's first raw food restaurant opened in June. The location and the opening hours reveal that most of the diners at Gesund und sündig come from the sports centre that the restaurant is connected to. Luckily it's along the Ringbahn and thus within reach even for a Friedrichshainer. A more central location is under consideration for the new year, we were told. Everything on the menu here is raw and vegan. As a starter we share a plate of delicious "Sweet and sour sushi" (€7.90): a mixture of sunflower seeds and sauerkraut replace the rice, and the centre is carrot, zucchini and pineapple sticks – because of the seaweed, it still clearly tastes like sushi. In Pizza Crudo del la Casa (€7.90) the base is made with dried seeds and has a slightly bitter, nutty flavour which the tomato sauce and roasted vegetables balance with their mild and sweet taste. The "ricotta" on top is made of cashews. Pasta is replaced with sliced courgette in the "lasagna" (€8.50), and the side salad is instantly a new favourite: rucola and pear with a garlic dressing. Everything is as bright and colourful on the palate as on the plate. I tried a super healthy green smoothie (€2.80) while A played it safe with a fresh apple juice (€3) – we pretended to be health nuts and skipped beer and wine. Gesund & sündig is definitively not just for hippies, but dinner there was delicious, interesting and filling. If only it was a little closer to home: I'm certain we'd visit again and bring tons of adventurous friends with us!

LebensfRoh 

This homely café opened next to Görlizer Park in August. They're not very busy on the Tuesday morning when we've decided to have breakfast there. The café is filled with sunlight and the lonely voice of Kurt Cobain singing from the Unplugged album – I had the song "Jesus don't want me for a Sunbeam" stuck in my head all day afterwards. For breakfast the choice is between raw müsli (€4) and chestnut porridge (€3), but a plate of raw food crackers with assorted spreads, olives and veggies sounds like Berlin breakfast to me (small plate, €5). The porridge is nice: slightly sweet, sticky and a little grainy. For another euro it comes with fresh fruit or warm fruit puree. The Hertzhafter Teller is simple: two crackers piled with different spreads, a salad, olives and some grapes. They're out of many items, and so I'm asked if it's ok to use a milk-based spread, too, rather than vegan. The plate is nice, but not exactly as filling as a Berliner might expect after having paid €5. If I'm around the area, I might want to pop by again to try their raw courgette pasta or one of their daily dinner specials to really make up my mind about LebensfRoh.

A city in the cloud - or - Vegetarian Dinner Club visit

All of Berlin was covered in a beautiful cloud of fog today. I wanted to take photographs of everything I saw: the TV tower disappearing into whiteness, the windows of the Park Inn Hotel slowly fading into invisibility, the Volksbühne's outlines blending with the grey veil around it, the traffic lights glowing insistently, multiplied by reflections in the fog particles. It was a beautiful day, even if you couldn't see much more than a few buildings ahead.

Work was a hurried affair. Lately, I've been up reading all night and today I had turned off my alarm and slept until noon. And then I closed my eyes again and slept another hour. At work I noticed that I had double-booked myself by promising to sit in on a meeting at 2pm, as well as have a tandem lunch with K. Back in the office at 3.30, my colleague W reminds me that I made dinner plans with him only yesterday – for 5pm.

I've wanted to check out the Kurukshetra Vegetarian Dinner Club for over two years now: ever since I saw their flyer in Mauerpark. W and I lock our bikes outside an Indian shop that looks just like any other hippie store specialising in incenses and wooden pearl bracelets. A blond girl with markings painted between her eyebrows tells us that if we're here for dinner, it's through the backdoor. She opens it for us and points us in the right direction: take a left after the yoga hall. Luckily we get some help and we find the homely dining room decorated with a half of a straw hut and pillow strewn chill out corner.

The dinner club serves a vegetarian all-you-can-eat meal for €4.50 every work day between 5-8pm. Each day of the week has it's own menu that you find out there, or by signing up to the newsletter. As we take a seat, an older woman with long, gray hair comes to ask us if we want some of her own blend of magical herbal tea. We politely accept and I ask her if how long the Club has been around? She tells us that she's native American, a wold citizen who's travelled everywhere, teaching and uniting people in peace and love. I compliment her tea and ask her if there's licorice in it – there are six herbs in it, that's why it's magical, she replies. The conversation is interesting, but not very informative. We are brought a plate of pasta and tomato sauce each and dig in. The sauce has a great taste, but the pasta is watery and over cooked, so I leave most of it. We converse about Norwegian black metal bands and mass-murderers, as well as about work and ecstasy parties. Another plate appears in front of both, this time with a veggie burger and a stuffed bell pepper. The veggie burger is fantastic: it has great texture, great flavour and is completed by a slice of cheese, tomato and cucumber. I'm so stuffed that I can barely look at the bell pepper, but out of curiosity I have a bite anyway. Luckily I concentrated my efforts on the burger, because the pepper is really bland. We get a refill of the magical tea and dessert bowls with a generous cut of chocolate cake. Somehow, neither one of us has a problem with finishing the whole piece. Even if not every single component was to my liking, everything was all right – and when the dishes were good, they were fantastic. If we were only served the burgers, cake and tea I would have been happy to pay €4.50 for that alone! Surely this is one of the best dinner deals in Berlin.

Vegan restaurants with mom

After a week-long visit I walked my mom to the TXL bus stop on Alexanderplatz. Depending on how you see it, my mom is a really easy or a really difficult guest: she doesn't want to do much and has no demands. She's been to Berlin four times and prefers to stay local and take it easy. For me it's really trying, because it means that we sit around our flat a lot and all the little things that annoy a daughter about her mother stew. But all in all I was a well behaved adult for the whole week – I found that a glass of wine worked wonders on the nerves!

We did do something; a visit to TK Maxx in Charlottenburg (the Neukölln shop is nicer and less crowded), coffees with my friends who are learning Finnish, watched Christiane F. – Kinder vom Banhof Zoo, spent a Sunday afternoon at Mauerpark... And I managed to lure my mom and A with me to try two new vegan restaurants in Berlin: Lucky Leek in Prenzlauer Berg and Kopps in Mitte.

Lucky Leek
Lucky Leek offers sophisticated vegan food in a cosy, candle-lit, basement. We arrived early and the only other diners were a tourist couple, seated in a candle-lit corner. I realised that they, too, are Finnish and they try to stay quiet as not to get caught. That's how I know, because that's how Finnish people react to meeting other Finns abroad. The menu is short and sweet: four starters (€4.90-7.90) and four mains (€11.90-12.50), two dessert options (€6.50 each) and the daily specials. Tofu, seitan and soy are given the spotlight in only one or two dishes. In order to sample as many dishes as we could, we went for starters, mains and desserts. My Balinese spiced tofu, topped with a chive pancake and apricot chutney, was refined and hit all the right notes in terms of balance and texture. A's essence of shitake mushroom turned out to be a bitter broth with root vegetables and pearls of barley – the only disappointment of the evening. The mains were all wonderful: linguine with zucchini mini-schnitzels, pumpkin maultaschen with fried mushrooms and a creamy (vegan!) hollandaise and a roasted aubergine and bell pepper picatta served with thick chestnut noodles and a flavourful ragout of tomato and orange. Our plates were practically licked clean when our waiter came to clear up. Asking if the amazing nougat-chocolate tiramisu really was made in-house was clearly an insult: all the desserts are home-made. My mom said the tiramisu was the best dessert she ever had. I would not recommend anyone to skip dessert at Lucky Leek!

Kopps
Yesterday we tried Kopps, a vegan restaurant and bar that opened in September. It's great that vegan restaurants don't settle for a homely or a hippie look: Kopps looks like a designer hotel bar with soothing dark wood tables, sleek blue walls and upholstery in sophisticated greens. The menu sounds generic, mid-range: tuna salad, schnitzel, goulasch, roulade, mashed potatoes, serviettenknödel and blaukraut. The difference is of course, that Kopps serves only vegan food – not even your milchkaffee will be made with cow's milk here – which means that the menu has a lot of soy in different forms. The service is prompt and comes with a smile from the healthy looking, tall, german guys, all clad in black. As our drinks arrive, we have already gotten a basket of bread and a bowl of an interesting, butter-like spread that tastes of eggs and fresh onion – but apparently made of chick peas and pasta. I went for the three-course evening menu of pumpkin soup, cordon bleu and a selection of desserts (€19.50). This time it was A who had the highlight of the meal: battered fresh field mushrooms with a dill-remoulade and lemon (€5.90) – the best battered mushrooms I ever had! I'll go back just for those, I think... And they set the tone for a rustic, hearty meal. The braised vegetables with polenta (€8.90) represented the vegetarian dish that you would find on the menu in many ordinary restaurants: not very exciting (except that the roasted polenta comes in slices cut to look like toast halves – fun!). To my joy the cordon bleu did not taste much like processed soy and the crispy breading together with the beefy mash made the dish into real comfort food. The goulash (€11.50) that had me so excited before our visit, had great flavour, but the soy pieces had an unpleasant texture and that distinct taste of cupboard that soy has. The trio of deserts was plenty for the three of us: a little bowl of cremé brulee, marinated pears and a chocolate-orange brownie. The cremé brulee was amazing, the other two were unnecessary: just get me another bowl of the brulee, please!

Paleo dining with the inlaws

When we bought Blitzdeal vouchers for three course dinners at Sauvage, we decided to take A's parents out for a special dinner when they visit. The parents were here last week, with A's nieces in tow, but it was the middle of print week for me so I didn't get to see them much. But we did go for a paleolithic dinner, and I do think we gave them something to talk about at home!

Sauvage opened last spring in Neukölln and is the first paleo restaurant in Europe – probably even the only one. The concept is home-made, sugar-free, gluten and grain free, organic and transfat-free food, and  nothing is processed, sprung from agriculture or a domesticated origin. Be prepared for a whole new dining experience!

The menu is short but sweet. On the night we visited, the mains ranged from about 12-19 euro and for a vegetarian option the rump-steak, chicken fillet and swine medallion could be swapped for fried mushrooms to accompany the inventive side dishes. This was a bit surprising since the portion became considerably less filling. Three of the four vegetarians among us instead opted for the large antipasti selection for a main dish, but that, too, had to be specially ordered as vegetarian. I didn't think cavemen had access to so much meat.

While we waited we curiously tasted and analysed the starter of crackers served with rucola and tomato dips and a tapenade. One of the most exciting things at Sauvage is really their breads: held together by vegetable puree, nuts and seeds replace the wheat and grain you'd usually bake with, and the taste is nutty and full. The main dishes were all delicious and I can warmly recommend the adventure that is the antipasti plate. The only disappointment was dessert – maybe we were just too full to appreciate our hefty slices of carrot, orange and ginger cake, but it tasted like cold baby food mash, spiced with cinnamon. Next time I'll order the intense, unsweetened, coconut-milk hot chocolate and share the big glass with A for a dessert instead.

The atmosphere is very cosy and we didn't even realise that we'd spent four hours at the restaurant until we had to hurry to the U-Bahn to make sure we caught the last train home.

Vegan weekend in Berlin

Last weekend our mutual friend K was visiting E here in Berlin and since she's pretty much vegan, it turned into a vegetarian delight.

One of the best breakfasts Berlin has to offer is the Sunday vegan/vegetarian brunch at Morgenrot in Prenzlauer Berg. We sat down there at just after 11.30 – exactly the same time as everyone else seemed to have arrived. And by 1pm, when we were done, the place was all quiet again. Lesson learned!

We continued to Mauerpark, where I found a really pretty but useless hand made glass bowl for two euro. Unfortunately the park is so popular now that it's not a very relaxing Sunday afternoon spot – but you can always skip the market and just enjoy the sun on the grassy slopes.

Thanks to K I also tried a few new things this weekend. Since we were already in P'Berg, we walked a bit further up north and checked out the vegan supermarket Veganz that's opened on Schivelbeiner Straße – one of the first ones in Europe! It turned out that the shop actually isn't open on Sundays, only their café is, but the girls there were nice enough to let us shop a little anyway. I was happy to find gluten flour because we've been searching for it around Berlin's organic shops in order to attempt to make home made seitan.

For dinner we ended up at Yoyo in Friedrichshain, where we decided to finally try the vegan pizzas – we always say we will, but end up getting one of their amazing burgers instead. To get the full experience we all ordered different pizzas: one salami, one tuna and one with rucola. They were all ok, but the pizza without any processed fake meat was the best one (of course). Also, the tomato sauce was in need of some more love. Next time I'll order a burger.

After a late night with white wine yesterday, today we hung out for one last coffee before K had to fly back to Finland and managed to make that a vegan affair at Cupcake, the American cupcake café on Krossenerstraße in Friedrichshain. I must say that this pink raspberry cupcake was the best one I've ever had and the fact that it was vegan was just unbelievable! It was fluffy, moist, creamy... delicious. The frosting was on the hyper sweet side for us non-Americans and so the cupcake was perfect for sharing.

"The girls" are coming for a visit to Berlin next week and I'm hoping we'll get to try out a few other new veggie haunts then, like the newly opened Lucky Leek in Prenzlauer Berg, Vegikreuz near Ostkreuz, the legendary Cookies Cream restaurant/club and the much applauded Café Vux cake café in Neukölln... And, and, and... :)

Veggie delivery

On Friday our doorbell rang at about 1.30 when our first Regionalkiste was delivered. A crate filled with fresh, regional, organic, fruit and veg from the company Märkische Kiste was handed over. How exciting it was to unpack and find incredible apples and plums, crisp lettuce, carrots, red cabbage, parsley and swiss chard (mangold). The smallest crate size costs about €12 and you can set up a standing order for a weekly delivery. The delivery day depends on what area you live in – Friedrichshain gets its produce on Fridays.

It's like being on Top Chef and getting a mystery box to cook with! I've never cooked with red cabbage or swiss chard before, so these were particularly exciting finds. I can't wait for it to be Friday again, so we get another delivery!

ROA in Berlin

Last week I was in a lot of pain and I went to the doctor again on Friday. I got prescribed more ibuprofen for what apparently was inflamed muscles over my ribs – from all the coughing. As a result I didn't use my free tickets to the annual Preview Berlin and I declined the opportunity to be sneaked in to Berlin Festival, but tried to take it easy and rest a bit. A decision I slightly regret.

On Sunday I, none the less, went to the finissage of the small Skalitzers Contemporary Art gallery in Kreuzberg who were showing an insanely cool collection of art from their 2011 artists. I wanted to see the incredible work by ROA, Belgian street artist extraordinaire. After the gallery visit we decided to go across the street to view some more of ROA's work: at the bottom of a sand pit, the very Pippi Longstocking-esque biergarten called Kjosk (at the corner of Oranienstraße and Skalitzer Straße), is defined by a white brick wall covered in large, black, hand-painted, dead animals. They're very impressive and make this makeshift biergarten worth a visit; we enjoyed a good chat and a cold OBC – Original Berlin Cidre.

Later I also ate at Yellow Sunshine on Wiener Straße for the first time, and in my slightly hung over state their Lappland Cheese Burger was just the best fake-meat burger I've ever had... Mmmm...

Easter sun waisted

It's been insanely sunny and warm in Berlin for the past week. Today was +22°C and full-on sun! I, on the other hand, was baking biscotti.

On our last Easter in Dublin we got invited to a traditional Polish Easter Sunday breakfast with our friends. Not knowing what to expect, we were so impressed by this tradition: a four course meal with mimosas, wine, beer and vodka in the morning! The sun was shining, there was plenty to eat, the company was good – we had a great time.  Ever since then I've wanted to have a similar Easter tradition, so we'll try to launch it this year by doing a super chilled Easter Sunday Brunch: mimosas, brunch, music - and sun on the balcony.

However chilled I always plan our parties to be, I can't help but stress a little. I want to make all these great dishes, have a lot of food, enough to drink, and a respectably tidy house – somehow this is not as easy as it sounds. But tomorrow should actually be under control, as long as we keep cooking tonight; egg salad with chili (!), tomato and asparagus quiche, mac'n'cheese, bulgur salad, lemon squares...

I'm looking forward to having those mimosas, for sure!

Chocolate pistachio biscotti (makes about 35)
500ml organic wheat flour
4 tbsp dark Fair Trade cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda + 1 teaspoon salt
OR 2 tsp baking powder (soda is hard to find in the shops here, or I'm looking in the wrong places...)
200g Fair Trade dark chocolate, chopped; half finely, half chunky
200-300ml peeled pistachios, chopped
4 eggs
350ml granulated sugar
+1 egg white

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Mix flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, pistachios and the finely chopped half of the chocolate together. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until they're light and fluffy: when ready, the whisk should leave a trail on the surface for a few seconds when lifted. Add the other ingredients, also the chunky chocolate, and beat until they're properly combined – try not to overwork the dough.

The original recipe suggests you turn out the dough on a lightly floured surface to divide it into three equally sized pieces and shape them into logs. I found that there was no way I could work the sticky, gooey dough into anything, so I spooned the dough to the shape of logs onto a baking tray lined with parchment paper. It really doesn't have to be that pretty – just not too flat, since the dough will melt in the oven. Brush the logs with egg white and sprinkle with sugar, if you like.

The Latin origin of the name 'biscotti' means "twice baked", so these biscuits literally are baked twice. First round for about 20 minutes, or until the logs are just firm to the touch. Take the logs out of the oven and let cool for another 20 minutes. When cooled off, cut the logs into 2 centimetre thick slices. Arrange the slices, laying down, on the a baking tray and bake them for another 10-12 minuter, until the biscotti are firm and dry, then let them cool off again.

Stored in an airtight container at room temperature, the biscotti will keep for about a week.

Party monster (spring in the air)

This past week I have been celebrating way too much. I've had good reasons, of course: Friday was R's dissertation party at my favourite crazy bar, Zyankali (home at 4am). On Saturday we celebrated S' 30th birthday (home at 6am). On Tuesday we had deadline drinks with colleagues (home at 10pm), and on Wednesday we had a work party – that got seriously weird and crazy with English writers proposing and with friends hooking up with male nannies (home at 6am). On the bright side, I now know that spring is so far along now that at 6 am it's bright and the birds are chirping! This has meant that I have been eating mostly crap, sleeping at odd hours and not checking my emails. Sorry.

Today I was a nice between-parties-day, and A and I got some veggie hang-over food at Vöner – a vegan döner restaurant on Boxhagenerstraße 56. Best french fries in Berlin!!! Good seitan döner, too, really fresh and with great sauces, but slightly let down by the dry dürum bread.

K arrives to Berlin for a weekend of fun tomorrow: she's getting divorced and needs to be cheered up – and Finnish girls like to drink. So after Sunday I can finally try to say: 'I'm never drinking alcohol again!' and pretend to mean it.

No shopping, just brunching

Brunch buffet at Morgenrot, Prenzlauer Berg

 

On Thursday A's friends from Finland were going to fly to Berlin to see Suicide Commando at K-17. Their flight was cancelled, because the Berlin airports ran out of de-icing fluid – unbelievable! It's winter every year, you wouldn't think it would cause such chaos. The boys flew in on Friday instead, and got tickets for Monster Magnet at Postbahnhof. I had a "girls night in German" with S and S, and at 2am we decided to meet up with the guys for a beer at legendary Paules Metal Eck on Simon-Dach-Strasse. I was home at 5am, and needed to be at a photo shoot on Saturday at 11.30.

After the very successful photo shoot some colleagues and I decided to go to Morgenrot on Kastanienallee for breakfast – I still hadn't eaten anything and was feeling pretty weak. Plus I haven't been there in ages and I looooove their vegan/vegetarian brunch! A and I still made a half-assed attempt at Christmas shopping, but were too tired and too uninterested for it to go well. At least I got to visit the new English books store at Kulturkaufhaus Dussmann – thank god I was too tired to shop, even for myself :)

Today we talked the Finnish boys into trying our favourite brunch at Datcha with us. We all agreed, once again, that it really is worth to pay €9.80 per person for. I don't think I'll have to eat all day now! The guys wanted to still make an effort as tourists, so instead of coming to our flat for a nap, they went to the Erotikmuseum in Charlottenburg. I opted to go visit our Kiezweihnacht Christmas market at the Samariterstrasse church. It wasn't very big or special, but I did manage to buy a great Christmas present there... But it's for the secret santa present at next weeks Christmas get-together, so I won't reveal it, at least yet!

Kiezweihnachtmarkt, Friedrichshain

A visit to the kitchen (and Wedding)

J turned three today, hooray! So we were invited to his birthday party in Wedding, and I made chocolate and oat treats to bring with us: they were super easy to make and went down a treat!

We bought J a train cart that goes with his wooden train set – that we then had to watch him play with the whole evening. M had made a cool chocolate-banana birthday cake, topped by a lego construction site. We had such a nice time hanging out with M, M and J, that as usual I feel we don't see them enough. Wedding is really, really far from Friedrichshain, it seems! We invited them for an early Sunday dinner, so we get to see them soon again.

Next week our flat-mate finally moves out and my mom takes over our living room for the weekend...

Chocolate and oat treats (makes about 30)

100g organic butter
100ml icing sugar (confectioner's sugar)
4 tbsp Fair Trade cocoa powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla sugar
300ml oat flakes
1 tsp water
100g Fair Trade, organic dark or milk chocolate
Icing sugar and cocoa powder for decoration

Combine sugar and butter in a bowl and mix to an even paste. Add cocoa powder, cinnamon, vanilla sugar and oat flakes (and a teaspoon of water if it seems too dry), and mix again. Melt the chocolate carefully using a water bath. I don't have a layered pot, so I boiled water in a regular pot, put the chocolate in a cup and placed the cup in the water. Because chocolate burns easily, a water bath an easy way to melt it. Pour the chocolate in with the rest of the ingredients, make sure the mixture is even. Let it cool in the fridge for about 10 minutes. Prepare two bowls; one with icing sugar and one with cocoa powder. Roll (the amount of a heaped teaspoon) of chocolate dough in the palm of your hands into balls, drop them into one of the smaller bowls to then coat them in icing sugar or cocoa powder. Store the treats in fridge if you don't eat them right away.

Recipe from Chocochili.

My week as a tourist

It's been busy: I finished my design project last week, then on Saturday my friend M came to visit us for a week, we met up with both her friends and ours, and on Wednesday my mom moved in with us, too.

M left a cool and rainy Berlin today, I walked her to the U-bahn just over an hour ago. I was very proud of myself: I didn't lose my patience once, even if I find it quite straining to have guests stay for so long. We visited Mauerpark on a Sunday, ate pizzas at A Magica, had vodka-rhubarbs in Kptn Müller, introduced everyone to vegan fast-food at Yoyo, popped by our local Friedrichshain brewery, Hops and Barley, ate at our downstairs favourite-restaurant several times, had a lot of ice-cream, drank beer in Viktoriapark at sunset, showed off horror-bar Zyankali, cycled to Treptower Park to check out the Soviet memorial, did a guided tour at Hohenschönhausen Memorial, the former GDR remad prison, and drank Berliner Weiße mit rot in Volkspark Friedrichshain. Not bad. I think I'll have a nap now. Or go to the Humana second hand department store on Frankfurter Tor with my mom :)

Making the most of it

At least some signs of early summer are here: rhubarb, asparagus and new potatoes.

The plan for today was to make asparagus pizza and drink rhubarb beer, but to celebrate the bizarre German men's day, Männer-Tag, and the official holiday, Christi Himmelfahrt, we're going to Wok Show with L and S instead.

Berliner Weiße mit Rhabarber, €2,80.

And rhubarb beer? Yesterday I met S for a language tandem in St Oberholz, on Rosenthaler Platz. I had been raving about the delicious Berliner Weiße mit Rhabarber they serve, and so we got ourselves a little afternoon buzz going, like proper Berliners. We realised that they mix the beer with home made juice, rather than with an additive-filled syrup like most bars use for the red and green beers. I have a pot full of rhubarb simmering on the stove as I write, to make rhubarb juice and try to mix it with beer myself. All I need to serve my concoction is some sunshine!


Rhubarb juice (Makes about a litre of juice and jar of rhubarb sauce)
1.5 litre chopped rhubarb, the reddest ones you find (roughly 10 skinnier stalks of rhubarb)
1.5 litre water
½ lemon
about 150 ml Fairtrade raw cane sugar

Rinse the rhubarb stalks well. Don’t peel them, just chop to small pieces. Measure the water into a pot, bring to a boil, then toss in the rhubarb and let simmer for 30 minutes. Sieve the juice and pour it back in the pot. (Spoon the soft, sieved rhubarbs into a bowl, purée them if you want, and add sugar to taste – voilá; home made rhubarb sauce!) Pour the sugar into the pot and let it dissolve before you lift the pot to the side, stir in the lemon juice and let the concoction cool. I added a bit of water to the juice later, as it can be quite strong. Chill and serve!

What's for lunch?

It's a pain to try to think of simple work lunches, but on the other hand, it annoys me to spend a lot of money on buying lunches. Usually bought lunches end up being unhealthy crap, because by the time I go to the shop, I'm starving and craving salt, fat and sugar. I often buy a couscous salad from one of the Turkish bakeries: €1,50 for a small plastic box of spiced couscous, tomato and scallions – not too bad. Recently I realised that I can make it myself, make it healthier and make it cheaper! So here goes, my favourite lunch de jour:

Turkish style lunch salad (makes 2-3 lunch servings)
200 ml organic bulgur, coarse
300 ml water
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lemon
3 tbsp tomato paste
2 organic tomatoes, finely chopped
1/3 organic cucumber, finely chopped
Scallions (spring onions), finely chopped
Flat leaf parsley
Salt, pepper
(Optional: 50g cubed feta cheese)
(Optional: 1/2 red chili pepper, finely chopped)

Bring the water to a boil. Rinse the bulgur until the water doesn't turn cloudy anymore, then boil for 10 minutes – you shouldn't need to drain the bulgur, the water should have all been soaked up or evaporated. Add olive oil, tomato paste, lemon juice, salt and pepper in to the pot, mix well and let the bulgur cool off. Chop your vegetables and when the bulgur has reached around room temperature, mix everything else in with the bulgur. Divide the salad in lunch boxes and refrigerate.

Existential crisis in asparagus season

Spring food! Asparagus season! Yay!

I'm experiencing a mild existentialist crisis about my blog. I regret not writing about our life in Dublin and so I wanted to make sure to make notes here in Berlin - but is it useful, really? Who am I writing for? Why? It's not much of a journal really, and I don't write anything that isn't already written somewhere else... But in March, this website was uploaded over 600 times. That's somebody's interest. Anyway, I'll continue the crisis on the down low and just wait and see.

Today is the beginning of Easter, and then next week work will pick up the pace again, so I better enjoy myself! We've stocked up on good food and Kinder eggs, if nothing else :)

Simple roasted asparagus
Green asparagus
Olive oil, good quality
Sea salt
Organic lemon
Handful of freshly grated parmesan

Preheat your oven to 200°C. Rinse the asparagus and chop off the woody, pinkish bit of the stalk, about 1-2 cm. Line them up in a neat row, in one layer, in an oven-proof dish. Sprinkle the asparagus lightly with olive oil and sea salt before roasting them for about 13-15 minutes. The tips will get colour, but watch out so they don’t burn. Plate the asparagus and sprinkle generously with lemon juice and grated parmesan.

Kitchen experiment

We invited my dad, my uncle and their partners over for dinner when they were in Berlin. We made canapes, beetroot soup and for dessert I tried out this chocolate gateau recipe from Effilee magazine. It's meant to be all gooey and runny on the inside – mine wasn't. The consistency was nice, though, rich and smooth like a chocolate truffle. The cakes are flavoured with rosemary and olive oil, which was hardly noticeable, so next time I'll be a little more generous with them. And maybe add a tiny pinch of salt, too.

I ♥ Magazines (with recipes!)

I love reading magazines; my attention span isn't always very long, and a magazine is built to let me take some well deserved breaks :) I've been on the lookout for a German mag to practice my reading skills with, and now I found one; a food and lifestyle mag called Effilee. It was a freebie in the Deutsche Bahn lounge, and I grabbed it because it's "für Essen und Leben". I will definitively return to the interesting article on umami and monosodium glutamate – to make sure my German skills didn't let me down. I will also be re-reading it because I will have to wait until January for a new issue...

My dad and his wife and my uncle and his wife are coming to Berlin tomorrow. Apart from the tourist stuff, they want to see where we live, and my dad suggested we invite them for dinner. I tried to say our apartment is kind of small – but we will fit them all in somehow and make them our favourite soup; it's easy to serve :) I also found a recipe on Effilee's website that will make for a cool dessert: chocolate cupcakes with olive oil and rosemary (in German).

Autumn in the air

Autumn is here, you can smell it. It was quite cool today, even if the sun came out and it was a nice day. I don't mind autumn, and after Ireland and its one, rainy season, all the four seasons seem very exciting. We went to Kollwitzplatz market in Prenzlauer Berg yesterday, and ohmygod, it was amazing! We have only been there on a Thursdays for the organic market, before, and that is a smaller event. Now there was so much yumminess all around us, that I think we could have spent the contents of our bank account in a flash. We were good though, and walked home with only what we came for: organic apples. It's totally the season for apples now, and we decided to preserve some goodness for later, too, by drying apple slices. They are as nice as candy and a really healthy snack – very cheap, too.

There are three different ways to dry the apples that I know of; hanging them to dry in room-temperature, using the oven or using a food dryer. The oven is the least ecological choice, but it was the easiest one for us who don't have much space in our apartment. For comparison we also left some to dry in room temperature.


Dried apple chips
5 big organic apples
organic lemon juice
(sugar and cinnamon)

Prepare a bowl of water and add lemon juice, one tablespoon per 100ml water. This will keep the apples from turning brown. I added a little bit of cinnamon and some sugar, because the apples were quite sour. Wash the apples and remove the cores with a core remover or a knife (be careful!). Slice the apples into thin rings, about 2-5 millimeter thick, if you can. Plop them in the water as you go.

If you hang your apples to dry using string, pat them dry first and then hang them slightly apart. Hang them on a clothesline or clothes rack, for example. This will take a few days. You can also leave apple slices to dry lying flat on baking paper, but I'm sure this is even slower. When using an oven, line up the apple slices in rows on multiple baking trays and fill the oven as much as you can. Heat the oven to 50°C, and if your oven isn't a convection oven (fan oven), you should keep the oven door open from time to time. Rotate the trays every few hours, the top one will dry quickest. This took about 6 hours in our oven, times may vary.

The season for eating

Chanterelle pasta in the cute town of Potsdam

It's great be in a country where we can get most of the foods we are used to and miss. In autumn there are so many yummy, fresh things to eat and we have been drooling at every market. Last week we cooked chanterelles in a creamy sauce – heaven. They are a pain to clean, though, it took us an hour or more. We have also been buying blueberries, and used them for a soup to go with our morning porridge. As I write I am munching on a German seasonal treat: plums. I get very jealous reading all my friends' statusupdates on Facebook, they are all in the forrest picking blueberries, lingonberries and mushrooms. At least we get some here too, unlike Ireland! Also corn seems to be in season, it's fresh everywhere. I'm trying to note our best food ideas in a blog called What Can Me Have?, but I haven't been very good lately, because I have tried to apply for jobs and design a portfolio. Oh, and we enrolled to an intensive German class that starts in two weeks!

Kreuzberg

Yesterday we were meeting our Finnish friend on the stairs of the Viktoriapark monument to watch the sun set. We ended up making a whole day of it, while the poor girl was at work. My favourite thing of the day was to cycle along the Kreuzberg canal, it's so green and leafy and the cars and the noise are far, far away. We followed the canal to reach the Türkenmarkt. I wish we could have done a big food shop there! The tomatoes were plump and red, the fruit so cheap... We did get olives and dolmados' that fit into my over-the-shoulder bag. I wanted to see the Berlin airlift, which turned out to be just a monument in a park. At least I now know who the "Rosinenbombers" were. We also found the veggie restaurant I had checked out in our Lonely Planet guide beforehand; Seerose on Mehringdamm. Why are there so few á la carte vegetarian restaurants?! This one was one of those buffet style places, where the otherwise good food got nuked in the microwave oven and was not as nice after that... But cheap and cheerful.

Today we spent leisurely reading and playing Yatzy in the park. Oh, and we found a new nice park in Wedding, called Humboldthain park. There is a big swimming pool and apparently a nice jogging trail, too. Something for Saturday, perhaps?