Oven-roasted Broccoli

S'nice cafe in Park Slope had the most beautiful looking roasted broccoli the other day. I was inspired to make some. So easy. And infinitely better than plain old simple steamed broccoli (though I admit I like that too)!
The ultimate test will be when my parents visit and I try to feed this to my dad. Until then, it's unclear whether I'm just a vegetarian nut or whether broccoli can in fact be for everyone. I'll keep you posted....


Oven Roasted Broccoli


1 head of broccoli
4-5 tblsp. extra virgin olive oil
salt
pepper
4-5 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced


Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees.
Cut the broccoli into relatively large pieces. In a bowl, use your hands to toss with the olive oil. Spread out on a sheet pan.
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, and with the sliced garlic.
Bake for 20-25 minutes.
Optional: Grate some fresh parmesan on top or sprinkle with nutritional yeast.


P.S. : If you have a super-thoughtful friend who brought you Himalayan rock salt with its own grater as a house-warming gift, then your broccoli will taste extra good and full of love!!

Hands down, the moistest vanilla cake!

Although I love my usual vanilla cake recipe, I decided I needed to finally try the "Magnificent Moist Golden Cake" from Shirley O. Corriher's book "Bakewise." All the recipes in the book are diligently researched by someone who understands the science of baking, and so I have so far found them all to be completely failsafe.

This is the moistest cake you will ever make! There are a few more steps (as well as a few more eggs) involved than in your average cake, but it is so worth the effort.

I filled with blueberry jam and frosted with vanilla buttercream.

I doubled the recipe below, because I wanted a taller cake. As is, it makes one 9" pan. 

Here's what I did:

Moistest Vanilla Cake

4 tblsp. unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/3 cup canola oil

3 large egg yolks

2 large eggs

1 3/4 cups cake flour (all-purpose will not work)

1 3/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/3 cup buttermilk 

1/2 cup heavy cream

Whip the heavy cream. Cover and refrigerate.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the shelf in the lower third of the oven.

Grease your cake pan and line the bottom with parchment.

In a mixer, cream the butter at medium speed until it is light in color. Add the sugar and cream until light and fluffy, scraping the sides of the bowl at least once. Blend in the vanilla and the oil.

Blend in the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing until just combined. Repeat with the whole eggs.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

On the lowest speed, blend half the flour into the batter. Blend in half the buttermilk. Mix in the remaining flour, then the remaining buttermilk.

Fold a quarter of the whipped cream into the batter to lighten it. Then fold in the rest of it.

Pour your batter into the pan and bake for approx. 40 mins. or until a skewer comes out clean. Let cool before unmoulding.

Two Days in Berlin

We spent the last two days of our Germany trip in Berlin. By this time we were a little tired of the typical German fare of potatoes with meat, fish or, in my case, salad. So we were looking forward to exploring some more exotic restaurants in the capital.
On the first night we stumbled on the Indonesian restaurant Good Time, while strolling around. It's a huge space, but somehow still very warm and cozy. And all the napkins were folded into lotus blossoms:

We had a tofu curry and some fried tofu with ginger vegetables. Both totally hit the spot and I would absolutely go back.

Our hotel was near the Hackesche Hoefe, a series of courtyards, designed at the turn of the century to combine living space with commerce, art and culture. There are some great little stores and the architecture is absolutely worth a visit. There is also a huge, beautiful cafe called Oxymoron, where we had breakfast the next morning. For a while we were the only ones there and felt a forlorn, but several groups soon wandered in. One thing we noticed in Berlin is how big most of the restaurants and cafes are. Coming from New York, it seems impossible, but I guess rents are cheap here, so why not go big?!

This is our his and hers breakfast (V. had the English breakfast and I the vegetarian):

Every place we ate at served loose leaf tea in individual tea pots...a true sign of civilization, if you ask me!

After visiting the Reichstag (which you now have to book at least 3 days in advance on the internet, but which is totally worth it as a first stop because it gives you a great sense of the layout of the city), we strolled down "Unter den Linden" to Cafe Einstein, which all the guidebooks celebrate as one of the original, classic cafes of the city. 

When the waitress finally came, 20 minutes after we sat down, we ordered Sachertorte and Apple Strudel.

The strudel was soggy and the Sacher was so dry it really needed the tea to wash it down. We only ate a few bites and left. Spare yourself the trip if you're tempted to visit!

We had dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called Cookies Cream. To get there you have to cross a parking lot behind the Westin, pass a series of dumpsters, ring a doorbell and climb a very dark stairway. Then you find yourself in a fully packed, very charming restaurant with an open kitchen. V. begged me not to bring my camera and look like the dorky tourist I am, so there are no pictures of our dinner. It was a very creative meal, with flavor combinations I've never tasted before that completely blew us away. And they make a surprisingly refreshing cocktail of vodka, rhubarb juice and lime. Yum!

On our last day the highlight was a visit to the Bauhaus Museum. It's small, but it does a lovely job of explaining and chronicling the movement. And, surprise, surprise...they have a delightful cafe that serves cake that looks completely homemade, and probably is. We were still full from breakfast, but I couldn't resist the Nusskuchen (hazelnut cake)...a total throwback to childhood!

Dinner that night was at Volt (again, no camera). It's located in a former electrical switching plant, so it has an industrial, modern look, with warm lighting, augmented by very friendly service. The chef prides himself on his vegetarian options, but while V. was raving about his monkfish, my pumpkin ravioli were just so-so. We shared a bottle of Dornfelder (excellent German red, that I wish was more available in New York) and overall it was a lovely evening.

The real surprise came the next morning on our layover in Munich, when Vernon decided to order roast duck (in an airport restaurant. At 10 am!) and it turned out to be one of the best ducks he's ever had. You have to love travel for the amazement it offers!!

Favorite breakfast

Talk about eating the rainbow!
This has been my breakfast all summer, and I'm going to miss it a lot when the variety of fruits is no longer available (any day now).
Banana, peach, kiwi, raspberries, papaya, orange, grapefruit and raisins. With a tiny splash of dark rum. Just for flavor!
That's at least 7 or 8 servings of fruit, which is a lot for breakfast, and a lot of sugar. But it's better than a jelly doughnut breakfast! And I do try to share with V., but he picks out the raspberries and leaves me the rest.

Off to Hamburg for a Berliner

Whenever I'm in Hamburg I have to eat as many jelly doughnuts as I can find. They are traditionally eaten on New Year's Eve. You buy a whole bunch, and one of them is filled with mustard, bringing good luck to the person who finds it....I guess the idea being that if you're unlucky enough to start the year with a mustard doughnut, things can only go uphill from there.
Luckily, the non-mustard variety is available all year, with lots of delicious fillings, like raspberry, strawberry or plum jam, or even applesauce. Some bakeries are offering non-traditional fillings like chocolate or eggnog custard, but I haven't had the urge to try either! When it comes to pastry, I'm sort of a traditionalist (see my post about chocolate puff pastry)!

This one came from one of the chain bakeries (which most of them are, nowadays) but it was still fabulous. As long as they were made fresh that day (some bakeries sell them for 2 days, so it pays to ask), they are always moist and soft. And the jam is always full of fruit. Not like the gelatinous goop you get at American doughnut chains.
Berliners come either in this granulated sugar variety, or with powdered sugar, or icing sugar. I should have bought all three to photograph for you, but I only thought of that now (you know, as I'm back in New York and not distracted by doughnuts i need to eat), so I'll leave it to your imagination.

Late summer bright veggie pasta

Ok so I'm still on the asparagus kick. It's really a spring veggie, so I have no idea what it's doing looking so good in the local produce section in September, but I won't ask too many questions!
This is my favorite kind of pasta to make, because it's so easy and so flavorful!
Cook the pasta of your choice. Clean 2 ears of corn and cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Remove, let cool and then cut off the corn. chope, then steam some asparagus, so it turns bright green but retains its crunch. Chop 2-3 heirloom tomatoes.
In a large skillet, heat some olive oil with chopped garlic. When garlic becomes fragrant, throw in the veggies and the pasta. Toss. Done!

Excellent Strawberry Sorbet

Really good homemade, non-dairy ice cream has thus far eluded me. It either gets too hard, or has a funny aftertaste. Or I've made it with coconut milk and then it's coconut-y. Which is great, unless that's not what you're going for, which sometimes it just isn't.
So I got very excited when I found this recipe for non-dairy strawberry ice cream on David Lebovitz's blog. It's made with rice milk, so there's no weird aftertaste. On the other hand, it's not very creamy, so it's really more like a sorbet. Despite what he says it's also not vegan because of the honey. No matter. It was a big hit because the strawberry flavor is very intense. I found V. in the kitchen last night, after all of our guests left, eating the leftovers right out of the ice cream maker.

Here is the recipe!

Vegetable Coconut Curry Take 2

We eat a lot of curry. It's such a flavorful dish and it comes in so many delicious varieties that we never seem to get tired of it.
This one comes from Myra Kornfeld's book "The Healthy Hedonist." The only things I changed were that I cubed my tempeh, instead of cutting it onto larger triangles. And I added asparagus, because it always calls to me at the market:

See? How could you walk by something so beautiful?

Tempeh Marinade

2 8 oz. packages of tempeh, cut into the kind of shape and size you like

1 1/2 cups water

1/4 cup apple juice or mirin

1/4 cup shoyu (or tamari)

One 2" piece of ginger, not peeled, sliced

2 tsp. curry powder

1 tsp. paprika

Place the tempeh in a large skillet and add all the other ingredients. Cover and bring to a boil. Lower the hat and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove tempeh from skillet and set aside. Discard marinade.

Curried Coconut Sauce

1 tblsp. coconut oil or extra virgin olive oil

1/2 cup minced onion

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 14oz. can light, unsweetened coconut milk

1 tbslp. maple sugar or succanat (I used maple syrup...also worked)

2 tsp. curry powder, preferably a spicy blend

1/4 tsp. garam masala

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. fresh lemon juice

Warm the oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add onions and garlic and sautee until golden. Add coconut milk, sugar, curry powder, garam masala, and salt. Bring to a boil. Lower the heat and simmer, uncovered, until the sauce starts to thicken. Stir in the lemon juice.

At this point, if you want to add any vegetables, you might want to lightly steam them.

In your tempeh skillet, heat some coconut or olive oil. Lightly sautee the tempeh until golden-brown. Add tempeh and any veggies to the coconut sauce. 

Serve with rice. I folded some toasted coconut into my rice for extra coconutty-ness!