Honey

Talking about food journalism... Inspired by an article in the NY Times last year about single-flower varieties of honey, I started on a quest of finding my favourite. Berlin is blessed with some really neat weekly markets, some featuring exotic varieties of honey, so finding material wasn't too difficult.
The problem with this enterprise was, however, that honey is rarely sold in samplers or small quantities. Making purchases for the sake of a real grand-scale objective cross-variety comparison would have cost me an arm and a leg. Also, you buy some and you're stuck with it and the less you like it, the longer it stays with you.
None-the-less, given some time, I have managed to sample some pretty nifty ones. Here's my recent list:

1. Ulmo - Chile. A truly unique and incredibly fragant honey. Elusive, tasting somewhat like liquorice.
2. Leatherwood - Tasmania. Fragrant, woody, earthy. Almost overpowering, so use sparingly.
3. Thyme - New Zealand. One of a few varieties that reminded of the raw material. Unique but limited usage because of distinctive flavour.
4. Chestnut - Italy. Like thyme, reminds of the related produce. Also hard to use due to distinct flavour. Dark, not very sweet, even slightly bitter, so a good alternative for the less sweet-toothed consumer.
5. Acacia - Hungary. A great standard single-flower honey due to its ubiquity, at least in Europe. Fragrant, flowery
6. Orange-Blossom - California. Cf. thyme and chestnut. Tea-lover's favourite, but too sweet and flowery for cooking, spreading or pure consumtion.

There are people who swear by honey for a variety of reasons, including its medicinal and anti-septic qualities, or because they prefer mead over beer. Maybe the anti-septic qualities can cancel out the sugar, preventing tooth-rot. It's a known anti-oxidant, it enhances calcium absorbtion, it's anti-allergenic and a preservative. Hair treatment, over-weight, cancer, you name it.
What are other people's favourites?

In the News...

One sometimes wonders why it is that, in the age of food-blogging and specialty magazines, major daily newpapers continue to maintain wine and dine sections. After all, how can a single organization lay claim to unbiased reporting about the Middle-East alongside the latest in decanting technologies.

While elsewhere reductionism seems to be the modus operandi, most major papers seem to resist, and often excell. Excellent examples are the New York Times and L.A. Times food section, but hardly any paper seems to do without one.

My answer as to why is, in short, that for the rest of us, food collumns often represent a vehicle for otherwise unattainable experiences, saving us some serious time and money.

This includes, for example, vicariously being tossed out of Michelin decorated restaurants and cooking with your favourite 2003 crand cru wines, just to see if it really is any better than cooking with those cheap ones that you (well I) keep around just for that purpose.

In that light, here's a quick food journalism redux for this week:

• a rather interesting article (in German) at FAZ online, concerning civility and etiquette at highly decorated restaurants.
• from the New York Times, a definite answer to the question whether to "Never cook with a wine you wouldn’t drink."
• what it is like, being taught by the best.

Fillet of Beef in Creamy Grape-Mustard Sauce with Paté

Here's a fantastic meal my uncle prepared about three weeks ago. This really struck a note with me, so I thought I'd record it here.

Ingredients:
A small onion - chopped, about half a dozen button mushrooms - quartered, one fillet of beef - sliced very thinly, some flour for coating, lots of butter, 250ml of cream, a cup of grapes - halved, one tablespoon of ground mustard seeds, 150g of cranberry paté.
Preparation:

• Melt butter in a pan, fry chopped onions and mushrooms. Meanwhile, melt more butter separately to coat fillet slices. Turn slices in butter, then flour. Add to pan when onions are glassy, brown on both sides.
• Turn heat to low. Puree the halved grapes, strain, add grape juice with mustard seeds to pan.
• Add cream, let simmer for about 5 minutes.
• Add paté, mix in well with a spoon or fork. Let everything simmer for another 5 minutes.
  
• Season, serve over butter spätzle.

As in all good cooking, I find the properties of this meal are not the sum of its parts.

Knorr Oxtail Soup

Whenever I feel sick or have a hangover, there's nothing better than package soup. Personally, I prefer Knorr Oxtail for its unbeaten consistency and colour.

My soup career started, when my father introduced me "Rennfahrersuppe" [racing driver soup]. Probably, this is the first hot thing I was ever able to cook myself. Even today, I'm always curious about what happens, when you open the paper bag, pour the powder into the water and turn on the cooker. Apropos: there are two questions, which I woud like to ask:

1. Some soups require to be poured in cold, others into hot water. Why?
2. In former times, the racing driver soup used to be shipped in small boxes, which I prefer. Why did they all switch to bags. Why?

Bratwurst

I don't know, how much time [valuable] I spent with discussions about the best Bratwurst ever. I do not think, that I found the answer to the question which seems to span all cultural gaps. But! I found Vorderer Sternen, which satisfies my demand on high quality wurst and sharp mustard. Whenever you have the chance to get there, take it! Even the chancellor would like it.

Tomato Sauce

OK, since this is going to be my first blog entry ever, I will also start with the very first recipe, which brought me into my cooking career and which serves as a joker, whenever there are children around: the amazing, original, simple tomato sauce.

Ingredients

• 900g fresh, ripe tomatos (blanched, for special cases) or 500g tomatos in conserve (the usual case)
• 75g butter
• 1 onion (peeled, cut in half)
• Salt
• 500g Pasta (Spaghetti, Penne or Rigatoni)
• Parmiginao Reggiano

Preperation

1. Put tomatos, butter, onion and salt in a pot and let it cook on slight flame for 45 minutes minimum until the fat is seperating. Sometimes you will have to stir a little bit.
2. Throw away the onion and mix with pasta. Serve with Parmesan.

That's it. Truth is always simple. This is a homage to Marcella Hazan, the godmother of Italian cooking.

Cold-Poached Fish Fillets

I've posted a variation of this before elsewhere, but I like the cold-poaching technique, so I thought I'd repost here.
Cold-poaching involves pouring boiling (or nearly boiling) liquid over fish and letting it cool to room temperature. It works best with lean, white, flaky fish. I used Flathead, which worked quite nicely. For liquid, fish stock is recommended, but I used a quick home-made broth of green tea, fennel and chili. I served this with home-made tartar sauce and fennel-mashed-potatoes.

• Place fish fillets in a ceramic or porcelain dish. Remove stalks, dill twigs from one large bulb of fennel. Set aside twigs and bulb. Bring one cup of water to boil per fish fillet. Add fennel stalks, a few dashes of chili flakes, herb to taste (thyme, mint, rosemary), some lemon zest. Add a bag of green tea for 2-3 minutes but remove. Strain liquid and pour over fish, cover and let stand until at room temperature.
• Chop rest of fennel, coat well in olive oil, place in oven dish, sprinkle with a few pinches of rock salt, cover and bake at 180C for about 45 minutes. Remove cover for about 10 minutes or until crisp and caramelized.
• Boil a handful of quartered potatoes for the mash. When soft, drain water, mix in a spoonful of butter, a half cup of milk, one extremely finely-chopped small onion, a clove of minced garlic, rosemary and thyme. Mix in the roasted fennel and stirr to desired consistency. (Hint: Leaving the peel on adds texture to mashed potatoes, but not everyone likes this.)
  
• For the tartar sauce, mince one clove of garlic, finely chop one small onion, cut 2-3 inches of zest from a fresh and clean lemon, finely chop the twigs from the bulb of fennel. Mix all together, season, and stir into 4-5 tablespoons of mayonaise.
• Serve everything once fish has reached room temperature.

Fish prepared in this fashion has an extremely soft and slightly flaky texture. The lower cooking temperature also brings out very different flavours than that found in fish served hot. You do not need to smother it in tartar sauce, but the lemon and dill made for nice addition to the flavours developped in cold poaching. Broth can be kept frozen and used in cooking later on.

Welcome

Hello All,

This is the official Cooking with Okko & Jochen Welcome Message. You are invited to visit this place as often as you like to follow our musings about the world of food and drink. Here we will periodically post our culinary findings, insights and experimentation - and remember: the more you visit, the more we will write.

We are, among other things, two hobby cooks - cosmopolite masters of disaster on the stove, oven or barbeque. We take ourselves not too seriously, but we know what we like and hope to share that which we like (and sometimes don't) with you.

With that, a great big cheer to what will hopefully become a productive place of for all things palatable.