0/Tür: Domberger Brotwerks sourdough with browned Gläserne Molkerei butter and Peter Kovacs Waben Honig aus Ungarn
I tasted Florian Domberger’s bread at the Stadt Food Land Festival a couple of weeks ago. It was served from the stand where they grilled the afternoon’s onsite made sausage wrapped in the afternoon’s onsite made bread. It was perfect. After finishing this concoction, I yearned to eat this bread with butter and honey. I am honored to have become the first wholesale customer with a pickup for Café Tangoloft in the first week of the new bakery in Moabit. Florian told me he was a logistics expert until 18 months ago, when he devoted himself to learn bread baking from Chad Robertson. The browned butter was stolen from the menu of Bandol Sur Mer, where Luis took me to eat before I moved to the same block! Of the entire intellectual menu, the browned butter was my favorite thing, and I ate two servings of it.
1/Alte Milch: Husumer und Deichkäse von Thilo Metzger-Petersen in der Rohmilchkäserei Backensholz
• regional walnuss • borage blossoms • regional Fenchel (because Zuni Café founder Judy Rodgers writes in her cookbook that it’s the best accompaniment to cheese)
2/Chopin: Celeriac, Chanterelles, Burrata from Puglia, Bobalis buffalo mozzarella, Hummel Villány Walnusöl (Hungary)
A few weeks ago Mona Isabelle asked me to teach a class about dancing to Chopin, and I found that the dance I know isn’t delicate enough for Chopin. I had to figure out how to make it more delicate. It’s the season for celery root, but when I tried to make gnocchi with it, I found it too delicate. So this dish is an exploration of delicate. I hunted for other delicate flavors …
3/Pugliese: Gerste from Grete’s Biogarten, pan-roasted Schwarzkohl, butter, smoked Atlantic halibut
Pugliese is my comfort music, dramatic enough to sooth me, like the California coastline. And this dish is my comfort food.
4/Rajas: roasted kurbis from Biokräuterie Oberhavel’s Nachbarbauen, Polish peppers, onions, Kourellas Greek feta
This is a meditation on my life in Santa Barbara. A friend’s father was a local politician who had the connections to bring an entire family from México to open a restaurant serving exactly the kind of food he wanted. Once it was successful, he sold it to them. It didn’t have a sign, but it was called La Super Rica. It was a taco stand, always with a long line of people covered in diamonds. The tortillas were made by hand all day, simultaneous with the cooking of your taco fillings. My favorite was Taco de Rajas, which was onions, Pasilla/Poblano peppers, tomatoes, oregano. After it was cooked, mild cheese was stirred in, so it was gooey and melty. Also in Santa Barbara Tony and I developed a post-bar snack which was a Pasilla roasted over the gas flame and put into a pita bread with a fried egg and mild French sheep feta. Tonight the tortilla/pita is replaced by pumpkin.
5/Postre: Salt-roasted Brandenburg pears from ApfelGalerie with caramel sauce made with German beet sugar
Recipe from Martha Stewart. The beet sugar is very white, so the caramel sauce won’t brown as it says in the recipe. This is why we overcooked it and ended up with pralinish lumps which some people liked. The owner of ApfelGalerie is Caty Schernus. After studying German literature, she realized her family’s farm was not going to survive, so she opened this shop which sells directly the products from her farm and the neighbor’s.
Markts:
- Winterfeldt Platz: *BioKräuterei Oberhavel (borage, kurbis, onion), fische, chanterelles, peppers, honig
- Nordbahnhof Ökomarkt (regional fenchel and celeriac from Alf)
- Vom Einfachen das Gute (gerste, walnusöl)
- Markthalle Neun (Alte Milch, walnuss)
- ApfelGalerie (birne, onion)
- BioDeli: feta, burrata
- BioCompany: butter, sugar, salt, mozzarella
