I enjoy seeing different food innovations, like this shop called Kochhaus which sprung up on my friend Thom’s old block in the year since I last visited. Although I couldn’t read any of the signage, it’s a shop that encourages and educates on cooking and ingredients and how to put together a meal.  Inspiring ingredient and recipe displays are dotted around the open and airy shop with step-by-step instructions and visuals with each recipe.  I’m curious how the shop is doing and whether it’s getting more people cooking. Genius, I say.

I don’t read German, but I can decipher enough to know that  Tomato Bread Salad with Arugula and Passionfruit Vinaigrette sounds absolutely delicious, and I certainly wouldn’t turn down a Rinderfilet with Provencal Ratatouille and Thyme Polenta.  I’m sure Rinderfilet is excellent, whatever it is.

Although pictures of good food transcend language, I still never fail to be childishly amused by certain things.

I perused the amazing photos in this German food magazine while perched on a chair outside Il Syndicato – a fantastic coffee shop in the Mitte area of Berlin. I love how just about every eating establishment in the city has some sort of outdoor dining area whether it’s an elaborate al fresco setup with blankets, coordinated cushions and umbrellas or a few battered chairs from someone’s grandmother’s attic placed by the side of the road.

I also enjoyed seeing the number of bicycles and the number of stylishly dressed small children in Berlin, both captured in the photo above. Peering around for unusual bits of the urban landscape while scouting for The Go Game, I noticed a sign for Slayer Espresso, indicating that Il Syndicato is home to a highly touted $18,000 Slayer Espresso machine. STOP. DO NOT PASS GO BEFORE CONSUMING SAID ESPRESSO.

I chatted with the nice guy behind the counter a bit about their exciting  handbuilt machine and he showed me the wooden paddles that allow the barista to adjust the pressure while pulling the shot to play with the different flavors.  They made this cool little video to celebrate their new toy.

SYNDICATO CELEBRATES SLAYER ESPRESSO from STEX on Vimeo.

The espresso – one of many I had over the next few days – was phenomenally smooth as it hit your mouth for a really pure experience of the underlying flavors. Gorgeous.

***

It’s been more than a few weeks now since that Berlin trip, but I’m still thinking about a few fascinating food things from the trip. First of all, the incredible, steaming, meaty, excitingly-textured ramen perfection from Cocolo.

It’s basically a hole-in-the-wall with about 15 seats, and man, is it good. Feast your eyes upon the tonkasu ramen with beautifully fatty pork belly and just the right level of soft boiled egg.

I polished off my own  enormous bowl of ramen and then ate about half of my friend Elynor’s, cause she’s awesome like that.  Elynor is an excellent eating partner and translator, and also joined me at Papa Pane, a recommendation from my friend Jessica, where  we ate this exciting platter. Berlin does platters well, no doubt about it.

Another highlight of Berlin for foodies is the Kollwitzplatz market, right near where a bunch of friends used to live. Breads, meats, fresh fruits and vegetables, freshly grilled borek, tables piled with spices, adorable marketing baskets, and my personal highlight, a truck that appears to be called Lust For Cheese. I certainly did.

Another mandatory stop on my Berlin food tour is the shop Goldhahn & Sampson, which I stumbled upon while wandering my first time in the city, and have returned to every time since.  Cookbooks and fine foods galore, obscure spices and quality chocolate and great wines stacked along every wall. Plus cooking classes and tasty snacks. It’s basically my ideal hangout. Too bad most of the cookbooks are in another language.

Next stop on my food and design tour: I’m a sucker for tea towels and adorable home goods, so obviously this design shop called Pomeranza forced me to empty my wallet in exchange for really cute egg cups and beautifully patterned dishcloths. You can never have enough tea towels. Right?

Also beautifully designed is Oberholz Cafe, which features good snacks, attractive people, and most importantly, free WiFi.

I hope to someday inhabit a house or own a restaurant with such high ceilings and a sweeping staircase from which I took this photo. Berlin has amazing restaurant design, from the more posh and trendy to the quite simple yet charming.

Berlin is really a wonderful city, with a wealth of delicious food options and examples of excellent design. Plus, you can be seduced by the late-night, Jagermeister-influenced neon glare of Das Chicken Temptation. Why did I ever leave?

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2011/05/10/edible-adventures-in-berlin-slayer-espresso-kick-ass-ramen-and-das-chicken-temptation/feed/ 2 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/02/28/826-food-politics-and-renewing-a-love-for-cooking/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/02/28/826-food-politics-and-renewing-a-love-for-cooking/#comments Sat, 28 Feb 2009 08:03:09 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=425 One of the fantastic things about caring about food and food politics is the convergence of my desires to eat really really delicious food and for that food to be humanely and sustainably produced. As one of the audience members at 826 put it, you don’t really have to make a choice between hedonics and ethics, because for the most part, the most humanely raised cow makes the best tasting beef. Sure, there’s always exceptions, but the cow that lived a long life munching the grass that its stomach was evolved to digest is going to taste better than a cow eating ethanol waste (!) and getting pumped full of antibiotics. The organically raised, locally grown early girl tomato just trucked from the farm to the farmer’s market tastes a million times better than the vaguely reddish balloon-like item at the supermarket that’s been sitting on a truck for a week. It definitely makes it easier for me to fully support conscious eating, because it doesn’t mean restricting yourself. I’d way rather eat a buttery tart filled with organic strawberries than a nasty-ass sugar-free snack cake or Hostess Twinkie and I feel better about where it came from (btw, read Twinkie, Deconstructed for a fascinating yet also horrific account of all the chemicals that go into both twinkies and…rocket fuel!)

The correlation between good-tasting food and well-produced food is a happy one, since I would have a lot of trouble denying myself if they happened to be mutually exclusive. Luckily, a lovingly and thoughtfully crafted croissant or pizza or salad is most likely to be made of the best ingredients. MP noted that most of the chefs who first started serving organic ingredients in their restaurants did so because they tasted better, not because they strongly disapproved of pesticide usage. However, the one place where eating tasty, sustainable food doesn’t align with people’s general food goals is the price. Organic is generally more expensive than conventional. Farmer’s markets in many places are more expensive than supermarkets (although not always!) However, all the panelists agreed that you can eat well and sustainably on a budget. But..you have to cook. And you can’t eat a lot of meat.

Clearly, this would be a huge shift for many Americans who work long hours, don’t want to cook at the end of a long day, and expect their usual 6-8 ounces of meat at every meal. Hitting up the McD’s drive-thru is easy, fast, cheap, and you only have to buy four Quarter-Pounders to consume an entire pound of nasty meat! MP mentioned how the rise in fast food paralleled the collapse in incomes (I think I quoted that correctly) and it just got easier to buy cheap processed meals rather than going through the time, effort, and cost of cooking. He touched upon the importance and value of the feminist movement in dispelling the notion of a women’s place in the kitchen and getting rid of sexist divisions like home ec for girls and shop for boys, but through that journey, cooking has become a chore to avoid for many Americans. In his words, cooking is a key part of evolving food culture that needs to be addressed, and we need to reinvent a way of cooking that is not sexist.

I agree wholeheartedly that cooking is extremely important for enjoyment and appreciation of food and that healthy, sustainable eating probably isn’t doable without it. Cheap, healthy, sustainable cooking is impossible without it. Cooking should be versatile according to your needs and desires, to help you prepare complex and beautiful meals to share with others or present to guests, or to whip up simple, fast, and healthy meals after a long day of work. Cooking should be enjoyable and entertaining and fun and give you an opportunity in your day to share and connect with others. Part of why I so enjoyed my time in Italy was because Italians seriously know.how.to.eat. Think four hour meals with multiple courses (antipasti! primi! secondi! dolci!) and enjoying food and discussion with loved ones. I appreciate that they place true value and importance upon the meal, it’s not something to finish quickly and get out of the way so you can continue on with your day. Americans need to embrace this style of eating, of sitting around a big table sharing food and stories with family, not sitting in front of the TV with a reheated frozen dinner watching primetime.

Seguing a bit for a second – MP mentioned a book he just read that said 97% of societies studied throughout history have had a food culture of women cooking in the home, and men usually cooking for public or communal events. I find this pretty fascinating considering how many celebrity chefs in the U.S. are men. I do think gender roles in cooking are evening out though, with the rise of cooking shows in pop culture and generational change. Maybe it’s because most of my friends, male and female, love food and therefore like to cook in pretty equal proportion. Anyway, my roommate Annie happened to tear out an Economist article for me about the evolutionary role of cookery and the hypothesis that processed food makes people obese because it’s softer and therefore easier to digest and therefore burns fewer calories (I also think processed food makes people fat, although that reasoning is new and interesting to me). Turns out the researcher is the same author quoted by MP. His name is Richard Wrangham, and his book Catching Fire will be released in a few months. Excited!

Returning to this whole idea of cooking as an essential ingredient to eating healthfully, sustainably, and affordably, it helps a lot if cooking can be easy, fun, and not an intimidating endeavor where you may burn the house down or set yourself on fire. Some people may never like to cook and would prefer to take a pill for their daily caloric intake, but I feel that if you like food and enjoy eating then you will probably have a good time playing around in the kitchen. I’m certainly no expert chef, but I know what I like to eat and what tastes good, and I feel that’s all you need to make good food. And I haven’t set myself on fire yet (although it’s been close). So one of the things I’d like to do with this blog is show some easy recipes for food that can be made quickly, cheaply, healthily, and sustainably whenever possible.

So. Coming soon from a kitchen near you…fun with leftovers!

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/02/28/826-food-politics-and-renewing-a-love-for-cooking/feed/ 1 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/02/25/smackdown-savory-bacon-recipes-for-your-cooking-pleasure/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2009/02/25/smackdown-savory-bacon-recipes-for-your-cooking-pleasure/#comments Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:05:12 +0000 mei http://familystyles.wordpress.com/?p=355 here’s an overview of the recipes i used for last night’s bacon-off, in case you’d like to plan your own iron chef-style smackdown. the full overview of the evening can be found here…

to take you into the list of dishes, recipes and photo, enjoy this starting photo of a selection of my three pounds of assorted pork belly product. yowza.

course one:  porkpeños, as named by iron sous chef jess – here’s a this is why you’re fat-style photo of the uncooked items, surrounding a pool of pancetta:

these are a great kinda trashy barbecue item, since they’d be best cooked on a grill so the jalapeños collapse into a blackened pile of cream cheese ooziness. you’ll need jalapeños, cream cheese, chipotles in adobo (fuck yeah) and bacon, plus some toothpicks. wash and seed the jalapeños (hold in your left hand and stick a small knife in the center, attempting not to stab yourself, and twist in a circle to cut out the center). dice some more jalapeños, some crispy cooked bacon, and some chipotles from your third can of chipotles purchased in the last five days. mix in with cream cheese until it’s a tasty smoky bacon-y hot mess of deliciousness. poke into empty jalapeno torpedos (yeah, that ñ is getting super annoying to insert) and then wrap in bacon and secure with toothpicks. fyi, depending on your cooking method, you should probably remove the toothpicks or soak them in water prior to cooking so you don’t set them on fire and have your porkpenos go down in a fiery ball of flames like goose from top gun.

next up, creamy white bean soup with truffle oil and crispy chunks of pancetta. i first had this soup at an amazing restaurant in old town san juan, puerto rico called marmalade, and then found a recipe here.  fun to serve in shot glasses or martini glasses. i forgot to take a photo of the finished presentation, but beans are pretty:

for my ‘entree’ course, i made fried pork belly dumplings and bacon fried rice. fried rice is super easy and tasty and can be made deliciously from scratch or with leftover rice and assorted meats and vegetables you might have in your fridge.  dumplings are way more effortful, but can be made fairly simply by buying dumpling wrappers from your local asian market and probably a lot of supermarkets now. then it’s just a matter of learning to fold dumplings, which is pretty simple and will easily impress your friends:

fried rice is extremely forgiving and versatile, here’s the way i usually do it. here’s a bacon fried rice recipe:

1. cook some rice (usually white, but could also be good with brown) or pull some leftover rice from the fridge (if it’s been in there for a few days and gotten hard, pour some water in and stick it in the microwave for a little while).

2. fry some bacon in a pan. set aside the bacon, but leave the fat to infuse your fried rice with bacony goodness. if you’re doing this non-bacon-style, you can use pretty much any kind of oil except olive.

3. chop up some garlic and scallions, heat them in the bacon fat, and beat some eggs. pour them into the pan, let them cook for a few minutes on medium heat, then add the rice and the bits of bacon (or whatever meat you want). mix up the eggs, bacon and rice so the eggs get distributed around the rice, then let it all fry for a bit in the pan. add in cooked veggies if you want, make sure all the bits and pieces get hot and fried, then stuff it all in your face.

for the dumplings: appetite for china has a great recipe, so i won’t reinvent the wheel. i added king trumpet mushrooms for more flavor in the filling and made a tasty sauce by adding soy sauce, sesame oil, smashed garlic, scallions, and some spicy chili sauce.

i’ll do a separate post on the wonders of bacon desserting and cocktailing in a bit…

i knew you wouldn’t be able to resist that sugary and creamy goodness. most of the following photos are of kwame’s dishes, since i took more photos of my own dishes throughout the cooking process, but i’ll do another post tomorrow on my preparation. i’ll cover all the dishes here though, with as many photos as possible. first off, the amuses. kwame prepared a spoon of perfectly scrambled eggs with a sprinking of bacon dust on top. i made a bacon-wrapped jalapeño stuffed with a jalapeño-chipotle-bacon cream cheese. this is not a particularly good photo, but check it:

for course two, i made a white bean soup rendered with bacon fat, poured into shot glasses and topped with a sprinkling of fresh chives, a drop of truffle oil, and a spoonful of crispy pancetta. kwame made an truly unbelievably delicious trio of pork nigiri, something i’ve never really seen before. i think the three pork cuts were a wet-cured prosciutto that was basically a straight up slab of fat on sushi rice, a dry cured prosciutto that was more typically striated like bacon (i.e. had actual meat involved, not just uber-fattiness) and finally some sort of dark sweet almost candied bacon.

that’s a photo of kwame torching the fat on top of the nigiri. holy shit, pig fat tastes delicious. salty and surprisingly not that greasy, a perfect complement to the understated taste of the sushi rice. you can’t even imagine how good it was.

for our third course, i made fried pork belly dumplings with trumpet mushrooms and napa cabbage on top of a bacon fat fried rice with eggs, scallions, and crispy pancetta. kwame made one of the tasties pieces of pig i’ve ever had, a brined pork belly with seared crispy skin and the most tender meaty belly meat ever. apparently he brined it with a whole ridiculous assortment of spices i can’t remember for the life of me, except i do remember that it included star anise and juniper berries. WTF? who is this guy? several of us said, in all seriousness, that it might have been one of the best pork dishes we’ve eaten in our lives. here’s a picture of the belly cut:

and here’s a photo of kwame searing up the skin into an amazingly crispy outer layer like a sweet lacquered candy shell:

good lord. there were a couple of vegetables involved – brussels sprouts with pancetta and both purple and and orange-y roasted cauliflower, but, while delicious, they defiinitely couldn’t compete with the porky perfection brined , roasted and seared to deliciousness. finally, we finished with a multi-part dessert offering from each of us. i’m glad that both of us independently decided to get all intense and make a dessert of several components, otherwise it would have been embarassing for the person who showed up with a twinkie and a piece of bacon poking out.  kwame made an insane french toast with sugared bacon strips on top, homemade espresso ice cream (i know, insane) with some sort of steamed milk beverage, and a creme anglaise type of sauce spooned on top. don’t you just want to lick your computer screen right now?

i made  a warm maple oatmeal bacon chocolate chip cookie topped with vanilla gelato (made by ciao bella, i must admit) and drizzed with bourbon bacon fat caramel sauce with a chocolate dipped bacon slice rolled in maple nuts. for an accompanying bacon cocktail, i infused some maker’s mark bourbon with bacon fat, then added a splash of guinness and a scoop of vanilla gelato for a thoroughly bizarre end to the evening of pigginess. here’s a photo of the cookies fresh out of the oven…

i made bacon-themed judging sheets for the eaters, which was an iron-chef style scoring system of 1-10 points given for taste, 1-5 points given for originality, and 1-5 points for presentation, to combine for a score of total bacon awesomeness.  i’m happy to announce that once votes were tallied, the scores were neck and neck but finally gave the ultimate bacon top iron chef smackdown competition title to….KWAME HARRIS!!!! i was so thoroughly enthralled and overwhelmed by the deliciousness of his dishes and the effort and thought put into his creations that i’m super happy about how it went down and am proud to have just held my own in the competition. i should have known that a dude with 7 cartons of farm-fresh eggs and a whole chicken with feet in his fridge would produce shit that is seriously gour-FUCKING-met. overall, it was a fabulous assortment of food-loving and food-knowledgable friends getting together to enjoy and appreciate the wonders of the pig and the creativity of their friends. next up – the sodium-free smackdown…BATTLE CITRUS. more info to come…