Sunday night I made a Southern meal for Georg's parents, Georg, and me. I didn't make the super-traditional fried chicken, collard greens, etc., but I did make twists on some classic Southern dishes.
To accompany the deviled eggs, I made some cheddar cheese straws. These were delicious and surprisingly easy to make. They're made pretty much the same way as biscuits, except with a lot of added cheese, and they're rolled out thin and cut into strips.
I couldn't have had a Southern meal without cornbread! I made a sweeter cornbread made with honey and rosemary. The recipe originally called for sage, but I couldn't find it in stores. The rosemary was a good substitute. The cornbread turned out well. It wasn't too dry so I didn't have to put any butter on it. Well actually, there was already a ton of butter in the recipe, so it's not like I saved any calories. Not that we were counting calories on this night anyway!
For the main course I made smashed potatoes with root vegetables (turnip, carrot, and horseradish), smothered pork chops, and green beans. I smashed the vegetables and potatoes with butter and buttermilk, so they were really rich. I wasn't too impressed with the pork chops. I bought the thickest ones I could find, but they were still too thin and they ended up too tough. I like American pork chops better. Even in the most average of supermarkets you can find the fattest, juiciest pork chops ever, and here you must have to go to some special butcher or something because the ones I see in the supermarkets suck. The gravy was good, though, I made it with the pork drippings and some buttermilk. Buttermilk makes really good gravy, I've realized. The green beans are just regular old boiled green beans.
For dessert I made a lemon chess pie with a coconut crust. Chess pie is a characteristic Southern dessert, although it is usually made without lemon--just eggs, butter, sugar, and vanilla. I think the lemon was meant to make the pie less cloyingly sweet, and the raspberries I put on top helped, too. Here's the recipe if you're interested in making it. Making the coconut crust was a tedious chore which I wasn't entirely sure would be rewarding, but it was worth it. It ended up pretty flaky and good. The consistency of the filling is custardy, but it contains a lot of sugar, so the top gets lightly brown and achieves a slight crispy texture.
Of course, I underestimated how many eggs I had and one of the yolks broke, so I had to adjust the flour since I had less egg matter. I pretty carefully calculated how much flour I'd need for 1.5 less eggs, so the recipe still turned out pretty well.
Then there is the hand-mixing: the logic behind making the nest is that as you hand-mix the eggs, just a tiny bit of flour at a time gets incorporated into the eggs. The technique works--it took me nearly forever to finally form my pasta dough. I was proud of myself for being patient, though.
Finally, all my hard work yields this beautiful, yellow, shiny, elastic dough:
I decided to make butternut squash ravioli with the pasta dough. So next, I cook and mash butternut squash with thyme and a little olive oil to go inside the ravioli.
Meanwhile, Georg surprises me with some Valentine's Day flowers!
While my squash is cooking, I trimmed and blanched some green beans that I planned to serve alongside the little piece of tenderloin I bought for the occasion.
Then I began assembling the ravioli. This was equally-so or more hard work, because I had to roll out the dough really thin to make the raviolis. The dough was really elastic, so it wasn't exactly cooperating. I also had to be sure to cut the dough into squares all the same size, hence the ruler.
For our starter, I boiled the ravoilis briefly, then browned them a bit in butter mixed with thyme. These were good--the dough was rich, and I love butternut squash and thyme together.
For our main course, I served the romantic-sounding dish Beef Tenderloin with Red Wine and Chocolate Sauce. Besides being romantic, this was seriously good stuff. I browned a small piece of beef tenderloin in a pan, then removed it to a plate. I deglazed the pan with red wine, then added chopped carrot, celeriac, and garlic. I seasoned the sauce with rosemary, thyme, and a bay leaf, and added more red wine and some beef broth. Finally, I allowed a single square of rich 70% dark chocolate to melt into the sauce. I put the beef back into the pan and let it simmer for a few minutes while we ate the ravioli. By the time I cut it, it was cooked to medium well. I served pieces of the beef with the sauce, along with the green beans, which besides blanching, I had sauteed in garlic butter.
For dessert, I made something quite unconventional. I stewed for about 45 minutes over low heat about 25 small prunes, a cup of red wine, about 3/4 cup of sugar, and some cinnamon. The prunes become plump and the stewing yields this thick prune-wine sauce. To serve, I put some mascarpone cheese on a plate and topped it with the prunes and sauce. We both really enjoyed this dessert. I'd never had plain mascarpone cheese before, only flavored in tiramisu. It's always described on the Food Network by Giada de Laurentiis as "Italian cream cheese," but I didn't think it tasted like cream cheese at all, it was more like a really, really thick heavy cream. It wasn't sweet, but not tangy either like cream cheese. The prunes were sweet, but not cloying, and tasted perfect on top of the mild-tasting cheese. Here's the recipe, although I've seen variations of this combination in several different cookbooks.
So that was my labor-of-love dinner. I literally worked all day on it with the pasta dough and all, and it was definitely worth it. Happy Valentine's Day!
Georgie and I went to Naschmarkt on Saturday afternoon and got some stuff to make a curry--I was craving Indian food. I bought some green curry paste (ground up coriander, turmeric, cumin, ginger, garlic, green chilis, etc.), coconut milk, basmati rice, baby corn, green beans, and butternut squash. Making a curry is pretty easy...you just brown the meat of your choice in some olive oil, saute it with some curry paste (you can make your own or buy it), and then add the coconut milk and vegetables until the vegetables are tender and the meat is cooked. I cooked the rice in chicken broth and both cinnamon and cumin powders, which was pretty delicious. I think curries are good garnished with cilantro, which is refreshing paired with the spicy curry. Cilantro is not too common here, but I found some at Naschmarkt.
The night before I made a nice little soup out of a celery root, lemon and a big bunch of parsley. I saw the recipe here on another food blog, and decided it looked worth making. It was a very nice soup--refreshing and healthy with interesting flavors. Parsley is usually just a garnish, so it was nice to see it take center stage. I topped it with plain yogurt and a drizzle of olive oil as the blogger suggested. I highly recommend it if you can find celeriac. And yes, I do realize that this is the third green soup I've posted on my blog since the beginning of the year. I've got to start making soups in different colors!
Today we took a nice hike in the Wienerwald, a hilly, wooded area that borders and actually extends into Vienna. In fact, I was surprised that you can get there just by taking the U4 all the way to the end and walking a few blocks. I think a lot of city people go here to get some fresh air because it's so convenient. It's really pretty, too, and has a nice view of the city on top of one of the hills. It was not so convenient for us today, however, because when we arrived at the gates of the forest, they were locked! I wanted to just walk somewhere else, but Georg climbed over the fence (which was quite high) and insisted that I did, too. So I did. Not without a bunch of grumbling, of course, stubborn me. I was glad we made it though. It was a nice walk, good exercise, and I got a lot of great pictures. Enjoy!
Here's the view of the city as we start ascending one of the hills.
If you look against the wall, there's a wild pig we spotted. I was kind of afraid it'd charge at us, I think because of that pig Pumbaa in The Lion King...it seemed like all he did was charge at people, eat bugs, and fart. This pig looked up at us as we walked by, but pretty much left us alone.
I wanted a picture of me in action, so I gave Georgie the camera and tried to act natural. It didn't work too well, I am just not a natural in front of a camera. Funny to see me try, though. Haha.
At some point I noticed I was missing a mitten, so Georg ran back to retrieve it for me. How sweet. It turns out I dropped it around where we saw the wild pig. Here's a picture of him running back with my glove, victorious.
A little cabin we saw on our way to the vista point where you can see the whole city.
We got to the vista just as the last bit of sun was setting over the hills.
This was the best I could do at getting a shot of Georg and me with the background included, haha.
I liked the crisp line of the jet against the furry blurriness of the tops of the birch trees...
This tree was already getting flower buds. Made for a nice picture. Oh, I hope Spring comes early this year.
Here's a picture of the dusky sky as we were walking towards the exit of the forest...we barely got there before they closed the gates for the night. I always love this time of the evening...so pretty.
