I always thought being German was about the uncoolest thing you could be. Especially when you’re a kid. At my first Australian school – I was only seven! - I had kids goosestepping and sieg heiling all over the classroom and playground (the worst offender was a Greek kid called Spiro. Oh, the irony). None of this was helped by the fact that my mum made me wear a dirndl (for those of you who don’t know this is a floral, frilly dress with an apron. Yes.) and my lunches consisted mainly of rye bread with “foreign” and “wog” toppings like salami and chocolate spread. This was 1970 remember. Given this early education in how-to-be-cruel-and-utterly-destroy-someone’s-confidence, I don’t think it’s any great mystery why I spent the rest of my school and university years trying to hide my cultural differences (this had to wait until I could actually speak English. Fortunately that only took a few months).
Now I really like all the things I really hated about being different (except I’d really rather be Italian… it’s so, well, cool). I’ve embraced German history (no “don’t mention the war jokes” please, I’ve heard them all); the language and the food and I like to get my hands dirty making some traditional dishes. I also love making things that sound exotic and roll easily from my tongue (my friends sometimes find this impressive). Which leads me to the Gügelhopf, a buttery and moist cake, baked in a special “bundt” pan and eaten traditionally for breakfast or with coffee for afternoon coffee and cake. Its origins are southern German, Austrian, Swiss and Alsatian and can be spelled in a number of ways (Gugul Hupf or Kugel Hupf). The Jewish version is a kugel; in Hungary it’s called a kuglof and in Poland it’s a babka (remember the Seinfeld episode and the hair in the babka??)
Anyway, history lesson aside, I baked one on Saturday as a comfort cake for friends in need of some comfort. They loved it and there was so much of it they got to take some home. And there was still some more for coffee on Sunday. It’s the cake that keeps on giving! The recipe comes not from a German book, but from Austria and Manuela Darling-Gansser’s book Food by the Fireside: Winter in the Alps. Here it is. Enjoy.

My version of the Gügelhopf… Not as gorgeous as the original but tastes amazing.

Gügelhopf

250g unsalted butter, room temperature
200g caster sugar
½ teaspoon salt
4 eggs
1 lemon, zested and juiced
150g raisins soaked in lemon juice
500g self raising flour, sifted
300ml pouring cream
icing sugar to dust


Preheat oven to 180C. Grease the tin thoroughly with melted butter and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Then add flour to tin and shake around and turn upside down to remove any excess flour. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the salt and then the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Add the lemon zest, raisins and any leftover lemon juice and combine. Now add some of the flour and fold in and then add some of the cream. Continue adding flour and cream until all used. Pour batter into tin and bake on bottom shelf for an hour. Let the cake cool for 10 minutes then run a knife around the rim before turning upside down on to a serving plate. Cool completely before dusting with icing sugar.

One of my (sadly very few) followers on Twitter is MrsSew&Sew, a wacky little blog that pretends to be “reporting from the home front during World War II”. From the little personal information on the site I gather that Mrs Sew&Sew spends some time (in real time, I think) coming up with ways to save money “and make the most of our rations and other scarce resources. We’ve got to – there’s a war on, after all!”

“I’ve heard there’s some kind of problem with the banks in 2009,” she says on the blog, “so maybe some of these ideas will come in handy there too. Do let me know if you have any great ideas I can pass onto my neighbours. Or even if they’re not relevant in my time, let me know anyway, and I’ll pass them back to all the lovely people in your time.”

Mrs Sew&Sew’s blogs and tweets are purely fictional but based on factual information from the London Imperial War Museum which sponsors the site. It’s amazing that the wartime mentality is so relevant now. Who would have thought?

The tweets are a bit silly and fun – “Just back from the air raid shelter – it’s important to have provisions ready: candles, matches, blanket and warm clothes” – but the nostalgic information on the blog is as relevant today as it was then. I particularly like the Make Do and Mend section and think I’ll steal the line for a future Notebook campaign. Stay tuned. Have a look at the blog. It’s great. www.sewx2.blogspot.com.

Another couple of blogs I’ve tuned into and that run along the same themes are The Paupered Chef and 30 Bucks A Week. The latter is an attempt to “document spending $30 a week on groceries for two people living in Brooklyn, New York (yes, $15 each). While we’re trying to squeeze all of our weekly home-cooked meals with that $30, we still go out to eat once in a while. New York City has too many amazing restaurants to cut ourselves off completely. It’s still unclear what we’ll do about cooking for dinner parties…

“All the meals featured here are 100% vegetarian, though they will often feature eggs and dairy. We like our cookbooks, but often make some crazy concoctions with whatever we have on hand.”
I’ve always thought that food is quite reasonably priced in New York (depending on where you go) but 30 bucks a week? It’s an interesting journey these two are on and they actually show the dockets as proof. As you can imagine, the blog features some fairly inventive vegetarian dishes. www.thirtyaweek.wordpress.com.

The Paupered Chef was started in 2006 by two blokes in their tiny Manhattan apartment “when we knew only a little about cooking but were forced into the kitchen to save money”.

“The blog has been sustained since the beginning by relentless curiosity and the pursuit of pleasure. From cheese-making to curing pig jowls in the living room, to the perfect technique for cooking hamburgers - no project is too absurd or misguided. If you can make it homemade, we’re willing to try it.”

Since they started the blog the boys have gone their separate ways – Nick has gotten married and moved to Chicago and Blake lives in Estonia with his fiancée – but they still update regularly with interesting food and travel posts. Definitely worth a look.  www.thepauperedchef.com

P.S. While I think of it here’s a handy little hint that I learned from my mum about how to make the perfect potato mash: add your butter to the milk and heat until quite hot (but not boiling). Add to potatoes and whip until smooth and creamy. Delicious.

As promised in my story on marinades in July’s Notebook: here is a very basic recipe for Sauerbraten (sour roast) from my grandmother’s 1956 edition of Die Deutsche Kuche (The German Kitchen).

As you can see from the pictures here, the book is rather well-used and well-thumbed. Dirty, actually, and definitely showing its age. And there are also pages that are ripped, scribbled on and scrunched up by my much younger self. I don’t remember doing it but I really wish I hadn’t.

I refer to the book quite a lot, especially if I want to make something from my mum or oma’s favourites. I know it’s probably easier to do a google search (no translating involved) but there’s something seriously special about returning to this book, knowing my oma’s DNA is embedded deeply in its pages. Also, the illustrations really make me laugh.

They are stereotypically German (just look at the one of the frau with sleeves rolled up making dough). There are also some seriously non-PC ones of poor animals running from farmers with shotguns, knives and other instruments of death. Now that’s something you wouldn’t see now.

And, as for the reason for making something called a sour roast, it’s not just for the piquancy of the vinegar and juniper berries. It’s all about tenderising cheaper cuts of meat and preserving – and slow cooking which is very much all the rage right now.

Time to dust off the old crock pot.

SAUERBRATEN

1kg beef silverside
salt and pepper
60g speck, cut into small cubes
1 onion
250ml marinade (recipe below)
250ml water or stock

For the marinade:
3 litres water
250ml red wine vinegar
1 bay leaf
12 whole black peppercorns
12 juniper berries
1 onion, sliced
1 parsnip, sliced
½ stick of celery, sliced

1. Combine all ingredients for marinade and simmer on medium heat for 15 minutes. When cool, pour over beef (seasoned with salt and pepper) and marinate, covered, in fridge for two days. Turn occasionally.
2. When meat has finished marinating, pierce flesh and push in the small pieces of speck. Add meat and remaining ingredients to baking dish and roast for two hours. Turn occasionally and baste meat with liquid.
3. When meat is cooked, remove and set aside. Strain the marinade and place in saucepan over medium heat and reduce until thickened. Add flour to thicken if necessary.
4. Slice beef and serve with sauce.

I’ve never been a trendsetter – or even an early adaptor as the forecasters call it – so I’m always surprised and delighted when I latch onto something that isn’t well and truly over. My problem is that when I do discover something I love, I tend to become obsessively addicted (such as footless tights, which I’m finding impossible to give up) and end up buying numerous versions of the same thing (cushions, white antique jugs and tent dresses spring to mind).

So, anyway, I was leafing through one of my very favourite French home decorating mags the other day and what do I see? A blackboard fridge. Yes, the whole finish is blackboard and it even has a dinky little tray to hold your chalk. You may remember I talked about painting my fridge with blackboard paint in a previous post. Naturally disaster ensued because of lack of primer and I, bored by the board, just let it be. Turns out this was the best thing I could have done because I gave it one more shot (writing on it) and it worked and has ever since. Just goes to show you don’t really need to follow instructions to the letter. Or at all, really.
Anyway, said board has become incredibly useful in the kitchen. Not only can I just jot down when we run out of something in my best school teacher handwriting, I also get to play out all my childish writing-on-the-blackboard fantasies. There’s also something quite satisfying about cleaning the board and I’m sure that harks back to school, too. Ah, the smell of chalk dust.

I strongly recommend it. Everyone’s doing it and everywhere. On walls, on cupboards, ceilings (have only seen this in a French restaurant and wouldn’t recommend it for your kitchen). Also, in kids’ bedrooms, but that could get a bit messy.

I’m the only one allowed to write on it in my household. And only white chalk is allowed. Another obsession.

So we’re not eating steak any more; trading down instead to snags. And we’re swapping expensive cuts of meat for chicken and eggs, and branded products for generic and private label goods.
Such is the reality of the economy. In a recent newspaper article, Coles’s merchandising boss, John Durkan, said that he had seen similar shopping behaviour during economic downturns in Britain, where he spent 17 years working for major supermarket chains. He said the number of units of chicken sold over the past three months had increased by “double digits” when compared with sales during the previous six months.
Sales of eggs have also increased rapidly and the Coles brand tuna and baked beans had grown “substantially”. Apparently, in bleak economic times it’s the expensive proteins that are first to go.
This, I have to be honest, doesn’t bother me at all since I’m already a huge fan of the chicken. And eggs. I’d go so far as to say that eggs are the perfect food – versatile, relatively cheap, healthy and exceptionally yummy. We’ve even dedicated a whole story to eggs in an upcoming issue of Notebook: with a number of divine recipes.
Of all the things you can do with chicken, a pot of chicken soup is about as close to perfection as things get. It’s taken me years – and many tasteless, fatty stocks – to find and perfect the perfect chicken soup recipe. I’m feeling generous so I’m going to share it. I substitute the noodles with tortellini or spatzle (little German dumplings that look a bit like Twisties). Good old egg noodles are just fine too.


BEST-EVER CHICKEN NOODLE SOUP

For the stock:

1 chicken (halved and cleaned)
6 chicken wings
3 carrots, trimmed
1 onion, peeled
2 leeks, rinsed
4 celery stalks
2 parsnips
1 bayleaf
½ bunch parsley
1 lemon

For the soup:

2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion chopped
3 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
2 tablespoons of chopped dill
500 gr egg noodles
salt and pepper


To make the stock, just throw everything into a saucepan, cover with water and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for four hours, skimming the scum when it rises to the top (this is important). Strain. Discard the solids except the chicken, which you need to shed into bite-sized pieces.

To make the soup, heat the olive oil on medium heat, add the veges and cook for 10 minutes. Add stock and cook until the veges are tender. Add shredded chicken into soup with dill and noodles and cook until noodles are al dente.

Enjoy.

Okay, we still haven’t managed to take inventory and make lists. But I have an excuse – a very good one – in that we’re staring down the barrel at a house move and, well, what’s the point in getting this pantry organised when we’ll have to do it all again in six weeks’ time (all things going well).  In the meantime, we have become composting converts. We’re lucky that we live in a progressive apartment building where the environmentally friendly body corporate has introduced composting bins and rainwater tanks. And while I feel wonderfully worthy being part of the green gang it’s not all that easy going (I really want to say it’s not easy being green at this point but it’s just too naff). We live on the top floor you see, which is lovely except you have to go down two flights of stairs to get to the lift, which then takes you to the ground floor where the compost bins live. Consequently the ice-cream containers where we throw our vegie scraps regularly languish too long in the cupboard under the kitchen sink and by week’s end it does start to smell a little earthy in there. That’s a polite way of putting it because it’s really not very nice. (Obviously we need something a little more airtight, but we were trying to recycle the ice-cream containers. Arghhh!!) The other thing that makes me a little squeamish is the throwing of the vegie scraps into the big compost bins because when you lift the lid you face attack by a squillion tiny bugs (all the while holding your breath because I’m sure it can’t smell too good, but I’m too scared to breathe to actually know if this is true). And the lid is slimy so it’s all a delicate balancing act trying not to touch anything. As a result, some days you just want to throw the scraps in the bin and be done with it. But I feel too guilty to do that now, especially when we’re throwing out edible food. There hasn’t been that much this week but I’ve kept a list.  Here it is: • ½ a lemon (left over from the morning hot water and lemon detox that I am so over. I also read that it strips the enamel off your teeth). • A plate of shoulder of lamb à la boulangère (fancy name for meat and potatoes) left over from Saturday’s dinner party. • ¾ bunch of basil (from boulangère recipe). • Smallish chunk of brie (from dinner party. Too fattening to eat on your own). • ½ pack of water crackers (yes, from aforementioned dinner party. I find they never stay fresh, even in plastic containers). • Punnet of three-week-old strawberries. • Feta cheese (was going to make Greek salads for lunch, but….). • ½ trail mix bar. • 500g of gourmet pumpkin ravioli that cost $7.99.  This was the worst food waste crime of the week. I had to go interstate. Didn’t store it properly. What can I say?  P.S. My friend Vera says we have bugs in our compost bin because the “balance” isn’t right. I don’t know what it means but will investigate. Or tell the body corporate – might as well make use of them before we have to fend for ourselves in the new house.