Both books have been important to me.

The former was for many years my favourite book, and if I hadn’t read it, I might have been much worse at English (I had already stopped doing English at school, and it was only because I wanted to read Douglas Adams in the original language that it didn’t slowly get worse, but that’s really a separate blog posting).

The latter is a fine cookbook, but it’s actually been more important to me because it taught me not to regard the US a one homogeneous country.

It has divided the US into six regions: New England, the South, the Heartland, Louisiana, the Southwest and the Pacific States, and the food in each part is clearly quite distinctive.

I have often in the years since then used these regions to understand American issues, and most often than not it has helped my understanding of them.

Share and enjoy:

I’m sorry to read that El Bulli will close down.

Given that it’s been rated the world’s best restaurant for several years, I’ve always had a desire to go there, but I had to contend myself with a book about it Phyllis gave me for Christmas two years ago.

I guess it was inevitable, though. That type of innovative cuisine can’t stay at the top forever, so they had to choose between slipping down the rankings at some point, or closing while they were still at the top.

Hopefully the academy they’re creating instead will eventually lead to even better restaurants.

Share and enjoy:

Most garlic presses seem to have been designed on the premise that most people will use just one or two cloves.

However, given that we’re normally cooking for at least six people, we use more garlic than most households.

So it was a huge relief when our friend Sabine gave Amaia a garlic press as a welcome-to-the-world present.

Just look at it!

It can hold three big cloves side by side, and it’s heavy, chunky and sturdy!

Just perfect!

Share and enjoy:

It’s always a bit sad when kids drop their homemade words in favour of the real ones.

For instance, Anna’s love of ɬa (“meat, sausage”) meant that she had a whole list of words for types of meat, including ˈmuːɬa “beef”, ˈmɛːɬa “lamb” and ˈbuɬa “sausage”.

However, the latter word (which sounded like a hypothetical Welsh word “bwlla” or Zulu “buhla”) has now been replaced by ˈsɔsɪs.

Share and enjoy:

Min søster, Miriam, har givet ham flere Rasmus Klump-hæfter og fire DVD’er med den lille bjørn, og resultatet har været en glubende appetit efter pandekager, der er rullet sammen om jordbærsyltetøj.

Det er ikke en ret, der kendes her – pancakes er mindre og tykkere og spises flade med smør, og crêpes er større og spises sammenlagt med fx sukker, citronsaft eller chokolade.

Léon – der ellers foretrækker at bruge engelske ord frem for danske, når han kan slippe afsted med det – kalder dem derfor altid pandekager med jordbærsyltetøj, aldrig pancakes eller crêpes.

Men nogle gange blander han det alligevel sammen. På Charlottes fødselsdag fik vi amerikanske pandekager til morgenmad (med smør og ahornsirup), men han ville han dem på dansk, og han var meget skuffet, da han opdagede, de var for små og tykke til at blive rullet sammen.

Heldigvis for ham kunne han godt bruge lidt mere sul på sidebenene, så hans pandekageindtag er kun begrænset af min dovenskab!

Share and enjoy:

Min far og mig bruger hvert år denne opskrift fra dk.kultur.mad+drikke, når vi skal lave juleand (tak til Stig Bergmann):

Ænder bør altid veje 3.000 gr og derover, der er ikke megen kød på mindre ænder.

Anden renses og gnides ind og udvendigt med salt og peber. Til fyld renser du og skære 3-4 æbler i skiver, det må gerne være Belle Boskop eller endnu bedre Cox Orange. bland de skivede æbler med en håndfuld svedsker uden sten, luk anden med kødnåle.

Læg anden på bradenpanden, fuglen skal vende brystsiden nedad. Lad den stege i en 130 grader varm ovn i 4 timer. Vend derefter dyret om og lad det stege færdig i 2 timer. Den er nu så mør at den knapt skal parteres.

I år er jeg dog kommet for sent i gang, så jeg har været nødt til at skrue lidt op for temperaturen.

Glædelig jul, i øvrigt!

Share and enjoy:

In southern Germany, Brezeln are a beloved type of bread.

Being half Swabian myself (and the great-grandson of Stuttgart’s best Brezel baker), of course I miss them, and I would love to be able to bake them myself.

I’ve sometimes baked some with Miriam (my sister), boiling them in a mixture of natron and water, and although the taste was OK, they didn’t get the proper dark-brown colour.

However, I’ve now found a recipe that looks like it might be just what I’ve been looking for.

It tells you to soak the unbaked Brezeln in a strong caustic soda solution, and it says you can either get this at a pharmacy or a baker’s shop. (“36 % Natronlauge bekommt man aus der Apotheke oder vom netten Bäcker, der einen etwas abfüllt.”)

However, when I googled caustic soda, all the shops that sell it in the UK (such as Boots) seem to be selling it as a drain cleaner, and I have my doubts it’s really food-grade caustic soda.

If I’m willing to buy 10 metric tonnes, I can get it, but I’m not sure I can eat that many Brezeln.

Any ideas?

Share and enjoy:

The kids wanted a cup of hot chocolate yesterday, and wanting to try out a new recipe, I opened my well-used copy of The New Joy of Cooking (which I normally rely on for American pancakes and that sort of things).

It had three recipes to choose from: American, French and Italian.

Charlotte opted for the French one, and that turned out to be a good choice, it was lovely, thick and creamy.

I modified the amounts a bit and made some optional choices, so here is what I did, not a verbatim copy of the recipe:

Bring 165ml of whipping cream to a boil, remove from the heat and whisk in one plate (150g) of plain chocolate, broken into pieces. Whisk it well. (The recipe states you should strain it through a sieve at this stage, but there was no need.)

Now add equal amounts (about 250ml) of milk, and return to the heat until warm but not boiling.

Add 2tsp Kahlúa, pour into cups and top with marshmallows.

Especially the marshmallow bit doesn’t strike me as being particularly French, but it was lovely!

Share and enjoy:

The kids and I have a secret plan (actually it’s so secret that they don’t know of it yet!) to make boiled sweets (“bolsjer” in Danish) ourselves.

However, whereas it’s easy enough to get hold of sugar and other essential ingredients in the UK, finding suitable flavourings and colorants seems to be almost impossible unless I’m willing to buy them by the bucketload (500g seems to be the absolute minimum).

A few oils (peppermint, orange etc.) are available, but they seem to be mainly intended for aromatherapy, rather than for cooking.

However, Denmark seems to be full of places selling everything you need. For instance, Urtegaarden sells almost any flavouring you can dream of – pineapple, Bailey’s, cream, kiwi, cranberry, apple and many, many more. All of them in small bottles at reasonable prices.

Of course I can just order them in Denmark, but given the collapse in the value of the pound, I’d much rather find a local shop.

Do British people just never make their own sweets?

Share and enjoy:

Not only will it give you the recipes for dishes you’ve encountered in restaurants, but it will also teach you how to pre-cook the sauce and the meat, so that you can cook two curries in half an hour after work.

So when the New Curry Secret was published, I bought it immediately.

I assumed it would just contain more recipes and better illustrations (the old one was a black-and-white paperback, but this is a proper cookbook with colour photos), but I was pleasantly surprised!

It turns out he’s moved with the times, and whereas the old Secret would advocate ground spices and food colouring, this one cheerily tells you to put in whole cinnamon and cardamom pods and leave them in, just like in the best modern restaurants.

If you only want to own one Indian cookbook, buy this one!

Share and enjoy: