A German Photoessay

Everyone should have a German in their lives. Those people know food. I recently had the pleasure of having a wonderful German friend cook a wonderful German meal - and not complain when I got in her way to snap tons of photos. She was even kind enough to write out the recipe.

What I present to you today may be one of a handful of vegetarian German recipes in existence – no pig, no cow, not even a lowly chicken thrown into the mix. Don’t mistake it for a healthy meal, however – it is made of equal parts white flour and cheese (are you drooling yet?), and it’s just so good. Spaetzle, little boiled beads of flour and egg, are a perfect winter food, a perfect hangover food, and perfect with beer (I don’t see a contradiction here, do you?). The Germans, they know a little something about all three of these things.

The secret weapon in making this German delight? No, not David Hasselhoff. It’s the spaetzle maker – kind of like a slide set on top of a large bore colander, in the picture at the head of the post. The slide is filled with batter, forcing drops of it though the holes and into boiling water as it is pushed back and forth.

Spaetzle can be browned in butter and served as a side dish to just about anything. Alternatively, the spaetzle can play the starring, entrée role when layered with ridiculous amounts of cheese and topped with fried onions, German lasagna style (if it's not against the law to call it that).

The following is a visual guide to the making of your very own German delight, provided you have a spaetzle maker handy. If this doesn't make you want to run out and befriend a German with kitchen access, nothing will.

Here goes.

German spaetzle lasagna
Pan fry roughly chopped onions in olive oil until deeply browned. Keep warm. Have a medium-sized pot of salted water boiling.

Count on 100 grams of all purpose flour combined with 1 egg per serving (My lovely hostess combined 300g flour with 3 eggs... I think). One cup is ~125 grams, so you can use it as a general guide for the amount of flour you need.

- Combine flour, egg(s), and salt in a bowl.

At this point, the spaetzle can be gussied up quite a bit. My lovely hostess defrosted and squeezed dry a package of spinach and mixed it in with the batter, under the pretense of off-setting the dietary nightmare that is two pounds of melted cheese layered with white flour and egg. Not that I complained, mind you. I asked for seconds. I can imagine a grating of nutmeg being really nice in there, or maybe even some mushed up peas, for a German-British fusion sort of thing… if that’s not against the law.

Mix the flour and eggs (+ additives of choice) and add enough water such that the batter drops slowly from a spoon in a thick ribbon – sorry that I can’t be more specific as I was just a spectator to this wonderful event. I can tell you that the batter is quite liquid.

- Place the dough in the spaetzle maker set over a boiling pot of salted water.
- Move the spaetzle slide back and forth over the grid, effectively “grating” the batter into the water. See the beads dropping into the water? Maybe? Stir to prevent the batter beads from sticking to the bottom of the pot.

- The spaetzle are ready when they float to the top. Remove spaetzle as they are ready with a slotted spoon and transfer to a dish.

- Layer spaetzle with big handfuls of grated Emmental and Gruyere cheeses – the heat of the spaetzle melts the cheese.

- Top with browned onions.

- To serve, scoop all the way from the bottom of the dish, and have fun battling the strings of melted cheese. Yum. Consume with copious amounts of red wine and a salad on the side. Note: salad is optional.

Poor Impulse Control

Curses upon you Williams-Sonoma, curses. That store is a crack den for me. I assure you that at the time of purchase, I absolutely needed every single one of those items.

I now have a mandoline (as if I didn't cut my fingers enough as it is) and can make a wonderful salad that did not benefit from my less than masterful knife work when I made it last. I have an oven thermometer to keep my wayward oven in line. I have real pans like all the grown-ups do, along with all the bakeware, utensils, and mixing bowls my irrational heart desired. Now all I have to do is cook!

I am not allowed back in that store. Not for a whole month.




P.S. Now explain to me how this makes sense. S'pose you are a pan maker. You make frying pans. Pans that are, as stated, for frying food over a flame or other form of high heat. Why would you then use nothing short of super-glue to adhere a large sticker to the inside of the pan for frying, where the food goes? Why?? Explain it to me, because I do not understand. Not only do I not understand, but I also have an omelette pan with no omelettes in its immediate future because it has a big circle of super-glue smack dab in the center. I just don't get it.

Scarred Cooks Club

I have finally joined the ranks of true cooks. I cut myself. Badly.

I didn't exactly cut myself. It would be more accurate to say that I cut a piece of myself off. [All together now: Eeeeewwww!]. I was chopping garlic in the last stages of dinner preparation, using my most favorite of all exceedingly sharp knives when it happened. I was distracted, preoccupied, not thinking about what I was doing (all fitting synonyms for "asking for it"). Oooh I so vividly remember the sensation of the knife going through my fingertip. Lord almighty it felt alien and awful.

After I recovered from almost fainting, I saw that I had taken a little chunk or divot out of my left index finger. While nothing serious ( I don’t think), the bugger wouldn’t stop bleeding (I like to think of it as gushing) for hours. Hours! I briefly contemplated going to the hospital but couldn’t stomach the thought of pulling a nurse away from a gun shot or stroke victim to take a look at the booboo on my finger. That would just be embarrassing (this I know for a fact because I once had to go to Urgent Care to get a glass splinter removed from the index finger on my right hand. I am not so good with the index fingers, it would seem).

I took an ibuprofen (smart girl that I am... taking a blood thinner while desperately trying to stop bleeding), put the hand above my head, took pictures to distract myself, and proceeded to sulk and whine for a good long while.

Time has passed, my finger hurts less, but my divot is still impressive. I am done sulking. I have joined the scarred cooks club and am feeling slightly hardcore and just a little bit cooler for it. Cooks and chefs are covered in scars from cuts and burns. While I hope never to actually be covered in them, I am pretty excited to have my first war wound. I prefer to think of it as a war wound, as opposed to a memorial to my astounding clumsiness and stupidity. Incidentally, my plov turned out remarkably well. Could it have been the special seasoning I added? Eeeeewwww.






P.S. No one wanted to see my finger! I kept offering but people kept running away… why is that, I wonder? The head of my lab accused me of trying to make her vomit. Hee. If you don’t want to see it (wuss), don’t scroll down.

My divot is not very photogenic. It's much more imposing in person, I swear.

Off The Topic

I had it all planned out. I knew exactly the post I wanted write and how I would set it up. I was going to call it something completely corny, like “A Tale Of Two Chickens,” and would once again go into how I am a kitchen experimenter and like to compare two different preparations of the same thing (dork, I know). I was full of the drive and determination that can only come from a well-laid plan.

I cooked chicken breasts coated with breadcrumbs and parmesan, both in my favorite cast iron skillet and in the oven, to see which I prefer. So far so good. I then sat down to dinner with a piece of each preparation of chicken.

That's the oven-baked chicken on the right and skillet chicken on the left. Oven chicken won by a narrow margin.


This is when I got sidetracked. Problem was that the chicken was painfully unremarkable (and, therefore, un-bloggable) in both cases. My innocuous and unoriginal steamed sweet potato on the other hand, was quite noteworthy.

It wasn’t the potato itself that led to my derailment from the chicken plan – it was the salt I doused the potato with. An ardent supporter of Sunday Night Dinner, (and wonderful friend) Jonathan, had been kind enough to send me a jar of Himalayan Pink salt, for no reason at all (that I can remember). I had the jar stashed away in my spice jungle until a recent shopping binge led me to buy a salt grinder.

I coarsely ground some pink salt on my potato, topped it with some olive oil and black pepper and changed my blogging plans with one bite. Wow. I found that the pink salt isn’t really very salty – it is very mild, both in salt content and flavor, which allows it to be left in larger chunks. The coarse pink salt added crunch to the smooth (and super sweet - thanks Boston Organics!) potato along with a soft, un-intrusive salty taste. That’s the only way I can describe the taste of the salt – soft and smooth, just like it’s pink color.

The contrast between mineral-rich salt like this one and the common Morton’s salt is striking. The stuff in the cylindrical paper containers tastes bitter and acidic to me. Chemical, even. For delicate applications that can allow the salt to shine through, such as grinding salt on top of a salad or something simple like a potato, this stuff can’t be beat. It’s a condiment more than a spice. I could almost eat the crystals like hard candy. That’s probably not a good idea, right?

Just goes to show you, even the best-laid plans… Eh. “Tale of Two Chickens” was a lame title anyway.







P.S. As an update, I have already managed to break the salt grinder. I don't know how.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

Like any 28 year-old on a Friday night, I just spent half an hour washing a leaning tower of dishes. My fingers have gone all pruney. Is that not a normal Friday night activity? Huh.

Regardless, I bought a new dish set! I am very, very excited about this. It was way past time for me to get grown-up dishes. Not only did I have to borrow dishes in order to host Thanksgiving this year (because I had none), but I am also starting to get tired of my pink hula girl bowl (and matching plastic glass)… although my Tony the Tiger bowl will never get old. I am now the happy, pruney-fingered owner of a simple, all white dish set with eight place settings.

Getting said dish set into my apartment was far more difficult than picking it out, unfortunately. The box that some geometry and jigsaw puzzle genius shoved the dish set into weighed a *ton*. It was a miracle of physics, really, how something relatively small could weigh so damn much. Did I mention that I live on the top floor? Without an elevator? With a car trunk, three doors, three locks, and three flights of stairs separating me from a well-earned collapse onto my floor? Well, now you know.

Now that my dishes and I are both clean and safely stowed, I can take stock of my kitchen (pun intended). I have the tools and toys necessary for 98% of all recipes I attempt, my pantry is stuffed to the gills with obscure and interesting food stuffs (four different types of salt and four different types of rice, to start), and I have two book shelves filled with cookbooks and food-related books. I am happy with the current state of affairs in my kitchen. It’s full of the meaningful, the functional, the unnecessary, and the fun.

The meaningful: my grandmother gave me this wooden mallet when I first started cooking in college. I am not entirely sure if it’s meant to be decorative or functional but I have been giving the benefit of the doubt for a while now. I am sure the porous wood is harboring the worst kind of chicken-borne bacteria, the head tends to fly off the handle like a small missile, and it doesn’t really weigh enough to flatten anything but it has sentimental value. So there.


The functional: one of my most favorite appliances of all time - electric tea kettle. I drink absurd amounts of tea. I have an entire kitchen drawer devoted to teas. That’s really all there is to say. Functional isn’t terribly entertaining.

The unnecessary and/or fun inhabitants of my kitchen will be covered in future installments of “my favorite things”. Now I have to go to sleep and dream about what it would be like to spend an entire day without going into lab, not even once.

Great Things Will Come Of This

Pretty loud title, I know, but I am so excited! I have been dying for one of these things for ages, and now I finally have one! No, not my long-awaited degree, but close. It’s a masala dabba, or tiffin*. It’s a metal tin with little jars to hold the most commonly used spices in Indian cooking. There is a little metal spoon for scooping out the spices, and a tight-fitting lid to keep it all fresh. It totally beats opening seven little baggies in a row, and spilling, and inhaling… oh not good.

Sur La Table sells a masala dabba for an absurd amount of money, considering what it is. Don’t get me wrong, I would live inside a Sur La Table if I could, but come on! The one I am now proud to call my own is the genuine article, straight from wonderful, food-begetting India (180 rupees = $4. Ha. Oh wait. Combined with the cost of the plane ticket to India… Yeah, maybe it’s not such a bargain after all). It’s good to have friends in high places. Or friends who travel to India frequently, as the case may be.

My most awesomest friend’s Mom (Hi Auntie!) brought this tiffin back for me on her last trip. She is kind and patient enough to try to teach me how to cook whenever I come to stay with them. She may just be humoring the funny white girl that hasn’t gotten out of her way in the kitchen for the last decade or so, but I am ok with that. I think I am starting to catch on to the dal thing. Given a few dozen more tries, I am almost certain that my dal will resemble hers. From afar.

The spices that now live in my brand new tiffin, clockwise, starting with the very yellow on the left: turmeric, cumin powder, cumin seeds, coriander powder, garam masala (Auntie makes her own but I may be lacking a few genes necessary to pull that off), black mustard seeds, and red chile powder in the center.

* This I should clarify. A tiffin is (I think) a metal box that is sometimes stackable and is commonly used as a lunch box in India (I have seen Japanese people with a version of a tiffin as well). A masala dabba is a tiffin, but not all tiffins are masala dabbas.

Do As I Don't

I am so tired. How tired? So tired that I am afraid I might fall asleep on my laptop and damage it somehow, which would just about kill me. Tiredness for me glides right into laziness. If there is something I don’t absolutely have to do (for fear of swift retribution), you can be sure I will not do it. My accumulating dishes and the general war zone appearance of my apartment are clear evidence of my new-found laziness.

I am the queen of shortcuts these days (oh how my hair hates me. My hair is a shortcut, I am afraid). I took a few shortcuts that I now wish I hadn’t while making dinner. It was good but it could have been better. It wasn’t in scary in-between land but it was close. To be honest, I was excited enough just to have dinner that didn't consist of chips and salsa. Food shouldn't be triangular.

I got another gorgeous eggplant in my last Boston Organics box. Lacking the energy to do anything involved with the eggplant (or my hair, apparently) I popped it in the oven whole to roast while I… take a guess… worked. I remembered about it about an hour and a half later, and it was just right – wrinkled, collapsed, and smelling rich (I could go places with that but I am, err, too tired). I wish I had taken a picture of the roasted and collapsed eggplant but sadly, that activity fell under the category of shortcut. It sat in the refrigerator till I was ready for it.


I wanted to make something resembling a Georgian (the country, not the state) dish that is frequently on the menu at Russian restaurants. I unfortunately cannot remember what it’s called – any family member reading this is welcome to chime in. Its two main ingredients are eggplant and walnuts, all mushed up together into a sort of spread or cold salad. Curious aside – a “salad” in Russia/Georgia is something quite different from the standard American lettuce-based mix. It’s most often something that is cooked and served cold, frequently drowning in mayonnaise.

I set out to create my version of this Georgian mystery-salad with roasted eggplant, cilantro, walnuts, and lemon juice. When it came time to mush up the eggplant, the thought of pulling out my (beautiful, gorgeous, beloved… and heavy) 11 cup food processor was immediately vetoed. Instead, I used a fork to break up the roasted eggplant. That worked well enough, but the salad would have been better were the eggplant smoother. Mine was still a bit on the chunky side.

I had beautiful raw walnut halves from Trader Joe’s (my sincerest condolences to all those that have to live without TJ's). I briefly contemplated roasting them but that sounded like work, so I didn’t. Should have though! I could hardly taste the walnuts in the final product. I forgot how much flavor roasting brings out in nuts. Despite my shortcuts, I was pretty happy with the result. Lemon and cilantro added freshness to the rich and slightly smoky eggplant and it was all smoothed out with olive oil.

I had this salad, dip, or mush concoction with the most perfect bread from the most perfect grocery store in Watertown. Russo’s is possibly better than Whole Foods for produce, if that’s even possible. I will make a point of taking pictures of it (and possibly of the many posh-looking people that shop there) next time I go. Ok, so Watertown is nasty and scary (in parts). I recommend going with a friend. And a cell phone.

Eggplant and Walnut “Salad”
Do as I didn’t – roast the walnuts and puree the eggplant. Or not.

1 medium eggplant
¼ cup toasted, roughly chopped walnuts
¼ packed cup roughly chopped cilantro
handful of chopped chives
juice of one lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
pinch of sugar (it must be genetic. My Mom told me that the majority of Jewish food has sugar in it somewhere).
salt and pepper

1) Smear eggplant with a little bit of olive oil, poke a few holes in the skin to allow vapor to escape, and roast at 375F for about an hour, or until its soft and wrinkly, and allow to cool.
2) Scoop the flesh out of the eggplant and mush with a fork (or a food processor, if you are so inclined and energized).
3) Mix in the rest of the ingredients.
4) Nap, if possible. That may have just been me though.

P.S. Entirely off the topic of food (just this once, I promise): I have come to the realization that I *hate* statistics with the fire of a thousand suns. Mr. Bonferroni can take his Multiple Comparisons Test and shove it where those suns will never shine. Oh, and! Has anyone ever noticed that Microsoft Excel rhymes with HELL?
Ok. I am done now.

Welcome Back, Chilean Sea Bass!

Have you heard the news? Chilean Sea Bass is back! It's had a difficult few years but now appears to be on the road to recovery. So. There is much excitement in my life. Get ready for it… Whole Foods has a podcast! Yes, I am that big of a dork that I listen to the Whole Foods podcast while in lab. I now know all kinds of things about Chilean Sea Bass (or CSB, as it will now be known). I shall now proceed to share these things with you. If you find me too big a dork in my discussion of a fish, please feel free to scroll down and read something else… Eh, on second thought, don’t bother. It will be dorky down there as well.

CSB is also known as Patagonian toothfish. The fish-seller-dealer people decided that “toothfish” could not possibly start anyone salivating and changed the name to Chilean Sea Bass in 1977. This was a rather bizarre choice of name for a fish that is neither a member of the bass species nor fished anywhere near Chile. The Chilean part of the name comes from the fact that Chileans were the first to market the fish in the US. The bass part… Not a clue.

Whole Foods stopped selling CSB in 1999 because the methods used to fish for CSB were non-sustainable, poaching was rampant, and the fish was at risk of becoming endangered. Most restaurant chefs supported the informal ban on the sale of CSB. If between the years of 1999 and 2006 you were served CSB in a restaurant it was likely a) not CSB and/or b) smuggled into the country, although some legal CSB was still being imported.

The development of new and sustainable methods of fishing along with the application of highly rigorous standards and control measures have permitted Whole Foods to begin selling CSB once again. Yaaay! The sea bass in Whole Foods stores has been caught off the coast of South Georgia Island, near Antarctica, using eco-friendly methods. The fish is traceable from the boat on which it was caught to store in which it is sold. The fact that CSB has better supervision than half the children in this world may explain why it costs an arm and a leg. But man, is it worth it.

After assuring the fish guy at my Whole Foods that I did indeed intend to purchase the coveted fish and was not just jerking him around (he was looking at me all suspicious-like. I guess I look suspicious), I sped home to try it out. It only got more exciting from there. A small aside: I am now the proud owner of a giant cast iron skillet. Since I apparently have absolutely no sense of dimension, I bought a 12” pre-seasoned cast iron skillet and was surprised to find out that it hardly fits on my stove. It’s giant and not a little intimidating. So, I did what any self respecting cook would do at this juncture – I opened a bottle of wine and set the burner on high.

Once the skillet was almost smoking hot I poured in a bit of olive oil and threw in a piece of salted butter. I say threw because I was trying not to get close to the skillet – it was sputtering everywhere. This is where I became extremely glad that I took the battery out of my smoke detector. Don’t tell anyone. The butter browned right away, I put the salted and peppered fish in the skillet and let it sear and sear and sear on one side until there was a thick brown crust – my very favorite way of preparing fish. A couple more minutes under the broiler and it was done!


And let me tell you, it was perfect. The thick crust was crunchy and salty, giving way to creamy creamy fish. CSB is very fatty, which explains not only its spectacular texture but also its intensely sweet taste. It really is one of the most flavorful fish I have ever had.


I highly advise everyone to go get CSB from whoever will sell it to you. It’s ok now! The fishing methods are eco-friendly, and earth conscious and all that. You will be doing the planet, the long-suffering (and now, eco-friendly) fishermen, and yourself a favor.

A Love Story

I have been remiss in my blogging. I have kept my personal life locked away and shrouded in mystery. The time has come to divulge all. So here goes. Clotilde has Maxence, Michelle has LB, Beckham has Posh Spice, and I…
... I have my Wusthof 8” chef’s knife.

We have been through a lot together, my knife and I, both good and bad. I owe my knife a great deal. It was the reason I started cooking as much as I do now. I have always baked, even when I was little (weird, huh?) but never cooked. I had been making the same three things my Mom taught me, interspersed with the occasional veggie burger. That was pretty much the extent of it. For some unknown reason, likely to do with the need to divert the attention onto myself, I convinced myself that I really really need a really really nice knife…while registering with Gopi for her wedding. Unlike most fairy tales, our love was not the instant, at-first-sight kind. I weighed my options, deliberately and carefully. And I do mean weighed. I tried a number of different knives to see how they would balance in my hand and how heavy they were.

The final decision came down to a Global chef’s knife and the Wusthof. Upon consideration, I realized that my feelings for the Global did not run deep, they were not were not true. I was being seduced by the Global’s connections - it was featured in a GQ article earlier that year. In actuality, I found the Global’s handle slippery and uncomfortable. It just didn’t fit my hand well. The tip of the blade kept wanting to point down - the handle wasn't weighted enough. Once the veil of unfair influence was lifted, I realized that it is the Wusthof and I who must be together. It felt right - heavy enough to cut through dense things yet light enough for minute manipulation. We were meant to be together. At this point, the Bed, Bath and Beyond sales guy said he had to walk me to the register with the knife, totally ruining the romantic moment. Apparently, they don’t trust people to walk around the store with a potential murder weapon. Pity.

And so I brought my knife home and everything changed. I realized that I didn’t cook much because it always took so damn long to chop everything with the awful knife I had been using since college (*shudder*). Hmmm… I guess size does matter. With the Wusthof, everything was so much faster and easier, requiring far less effort. It even cut through butternut squash. Squash used to be the bane of my existence, regularly reducing me to tears as I tried to pry my unfit college knife out of its clutches, having to utilize limbs that don’t belong on cutting boards. Herbs and garlic got minced by milling, just like on TV. Tomatoes were cut without shaking the knife off their slippery skins directly onto my finger. It was brilliant! Somehow, making dinner after getting home from a full (and likely shitty) day in lab didn’t seem like such a horrendous proposition. Dinner, in actuality, became an event – an excuse for me to spend time with my awesomely significant other, my chef’s knife.

I put the knife to good use and, eventually, all the chopping and the milling and the occasional falls to the floor (narrowly missing my bare toes) took their toll – the blade had dulled and was all out of whack, the edge no longer straight. The magic had seeped out of our relationship. The same problems I had with the college knife came back to haunt me. Everything was taking far too much effort, too much time - chopping became a chore again. The Wusthof was even starting to draw blood from my hands as it slipped off the item being chopped.

An immediate intervention in order, I took the knife to Sur La Table to be sharpened and honed. Sharpen it they did, but left their mark. The sharpening left scars, scuffs along the blade. [Also, the few (ok, many) times I tossed the knife into the sink in a semi-drunken haze without washing it straight away led to some discoloration of the blade.] I happen to think that scars add dimension, to knives and people both, so I was ok with it. And it cut just like new! It was back, and I was happy once more. I won’t wait so long to sharpen it next time.

So now you know my story. That’s it. Nothing else to tell. I owe my many dinners, and likely this blog, to my chef’s knife.


P.S. No, Wusthof did not sponsor this blog post, although I am willing to entertain any offer that comes my way.