0/Tür: “Whiskey & Cigars” from Schokoladerie Estrellas
1/Steak Sandwich
Meat from Hoeve Biesland because Boris “was looking for something other than the supermarket”. Caramelized last tomatoes (from a Polish farm who sells at the Nordbahnhof Ökomarkt), rosemary focaccia with Hungarian-style garlic treatment (just rub raw garlic on the crust of hot bread), arugula. I followed Judy Rodgers Zuni Café advice of salting the meat (but only about 4 hours in advance).
2/ Salad of 19 things
Between 2008 and 2010 Duro and I ate several times at a restaurant called La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar in Buenos Aires (now closed). The chef, Alejandro Digilio, had worked at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli. Digilio had returned to Buenos Aires inspired to reinterpret Argentine ingredients and recipes in a 16 courses set menu. This salad, called “Gargouille” is considered a “historical artistic creation” of chef Michel Bras. The presention at La Vineria de Gualterio Boliver stuck in my memory “This is the salad of 19 things. It has some roots and some shoots. Some herbs and some flowers. Some leaves and some fruits. Some are cooked. Some are raw. Some are hot, some are cold…” This is the first time I have made this salad and I didn’t know what to expect, I just started collecting on Wednesday and tried to get to 19. I wanted a very soft dressing, but couldn’t find champagne vinegar in Berlin, so asked my co-chef George Kostas to do something with lemon. I had forgotten the name of original chef of the salad, but I was sure the chef at my auspicious neighbor Bandol Sur Mer would know, and when I stopped in yesterday on my way home from the market, I asked and he did! Making this filled me with delight!
The ingredients are the very last of fall from our region: postlein, radiccio, toasted sage, parsley, Aurélie’s carrots from her farm in France, schwarzkohl/dinosaur kale/cavolo nero, tomatillo, last cherry tomatoes of 2016, asian pear, plum, dill, delicata squash, Aurélie’s black radish, tiny red radish, blue potato, jerusalem artichoke, kohlrabi, sußkartoffel, raspberry.
3/ Cheese Berlin 2016
I spent hours at Markthalle 9‘s annual Cheese Berlin festival last Sunday and brought the two most interesting cheeses. Young Buck is a one month old raw milk single-herd cow-milk blue cheese (still white) from Mike’s Fancy Cheese in Northern Ireland. Tyri Tou Lakou, “Cheese of the Grave”, is a sheep-milk cheese wrapped in grape must, mountain herbs, grape leaves, and then buried 3m deep for 3 months on the island of Serifos. One of the few remaining cheesemakers in this tradition was found by the purveyor, Kafenion who brought the cheese to Berlin.
• regional walnuss • regional Fenchel (because Zuni Café founder Judy Rodgers writes in her cookbook that it’s the best accompaniment to cheese) • dried apfel and apfel wein from ApfelGalerie
4/ Handmade pasta with Dandelion
This is one of my comfort foods. I often make pasta alone, as I can make pasta for one or two people in the time it takes the water to boil. I love to eat bitter dandelion, which I pan roast just until I smell a slight sweet aroma. I just add a lot of salted butter to this. This is a cultivated variety of dandelion, in the chicory family, from BioKräuterei Oberhavel.
5/Chocolate Pudding Cake
De-veganized recipe. with George’s coffee-mascarpone sauce. Quai Sud Cocoa, from Schokoladerie Estrellas. Coffee from Röststätte.
