Alle Jahre wieder...

This year, it was the 33. And as always, I celebrated the occasion with a little party at home. Alright, so we are in the UK: English people would expect to arrive to a party full of sausage rolls, crisps, beer. But then... hey, luckily I do not know many English people ;-)
So I can be a bit more adventurous when it comes to party food.
I decided to go for finger food only this year. Makes the tidying up after the party so much easier!
To find finger food that exceeds the usual canapes, puff pastry thingies, chicken skewers etc proved to be a rather difficult task! But after some online research I think I came up with a pretty good mix.
Drinks though always prove to be a challenge: exciting, yet simple. After all, I do not want to be the bartender for the rest of the night.
I do quite like G&T. In Cocoon in London they serve it in a tumbler with a slice of cucumber. Tried and tested at home: Looks good and tastes great. Still, I opted for a not quite so simple version of G&T for drinks: El Bulli inspired Jellied Gin & Tonic on lime crisps. Shame, somehow everyone forgot to take a picture of it :-( Plus, we had Dawa, an African Caipirinha... lime, brown sugar, vodka, crushed ice and a dowel stick dripping of honey.
The food: Cumin laced parmesan cones with horseradish ice cream, sweet and spicy broccoli cake, mini potatoes with wasabi sour cream and caviar, cream cheese filled wan tan cones, feta-mint parcels, buckwheat crackers with venison pate and rose wine jelly, almond gazpacho.

And of course, the cake: mini Sachertorte with peppery chocolate ganache. Yes, I do like my peppery chocolates ;-) Strictly speaking, it wasn't a Sachertorte: a real Viennese chocolate cake would be filled with apricot jam. However, apricots and peppery ganache on top? Nahh... raspberry jam works so much better. Step1: nick your daughter's Barbie cake tin or get yourself a mini sort-of-muffin tin.
Step2: "glue" 2mini cakes together with some raspberry jam (smoothen the jam by adding some raspberry schnaps or vodka while warming it slightly up - on a very low flame).
Step3: make a quick ganache with double cream, min 70% chocolate, butter and egg yolks.
Step4: cover the top of the cakes with ganache and sprinkle over some crushed pink peppercorns.
Step5: eat!

The unloved one...

Even I have my dislikes when it comes to food. Celery and yes, aubergine. With celery, it is the taste, with aubergine, it is the texture.
But in the attempt to live healthy and eat a wide range of vegetables and I decided to welcome the aubergine into my life. I still wouldn't go out and buy one, but I get a weekly organic delivery of seasonal vegetables and it seems that aubergines are always in season: at least there is always at least one aubergine in my box!
... and now? Well, I remember the times when I really didn't like kohlrabi: Kohlrabi-Erbsen-Sauce... OMG, one of my childhood traumas! Dice some kohlrabi, place it in a saucepan together with frozen peas and some water and boil them until the kolrabi is soggy and the peas totally shapeless, thicken with flour, spoon a plate, heap on some potatoes mash and serve to your children.
Years later my guinea pigs showed me that raw, crunchy kohlrabi can almost be a delight.
And luckily a friend once showed me how to make an aubergine dip. Put the whole aubergines under the grill until they collapse, spoon out the soft flesh, add feta cheese, garlic, olive oil and pepper and mix to a smooth paste. But to make it into a real delicacy, try to add some salty capers as well! Lovely on freshly baked sundried tomato bread; or spread the aubergine dip on tortillas, roll them up and voila...

Silky chocolate pots with crushed pink peppercorns

One of those days: it would be nice to prepare something impressive for dessert. After all, you have guests round and don't want to present them with something out of the sumermarket's deepfreezer. But then, you cannot really be bothered with making a Michelin-star worthy dessert either.
So how to creating something easy and quick which still looks like hours and hours of hard work?

Well, the inital idea was to recreate
the Pink Peppercorn Encrusted Flourless Chocolate Cake. But slowly the cannot-be-bothered mood built up... Followed by a strike of genius: why not just have the cake topping with pink peppercorns! Or in nicer words: Silky Chocolate Pots with Crushed Pink Peppercorns. It worked out beautifully and looked beautiful.
The ganache will sit on my hips forever, but so what?! These pots are worth the extra hour in the gym!

Berlin

How did I manage to stay in Berlin for four days without having Currywurst?! ... but then, I shouldn't complain. The reason for not having the opportunity to grab a Currywurst was simply the sheer amount of lovely Bohemian style cafes with their good value meals and breakfast buffets.

But there is more to Berlin than cafes. In the area in and around Prenzlauer Berg you can find practically everything your stomach could ever ask for. Especially Asian treats. We popped into a tiny sushi place one night. Three tables and one Lebanese sushi chef. It was the first time I tasted deep fried sushi. Ok, admittedly, it wasn't served with 24-carat gold leaves like the one on the pic... but even the less posh version was very satisfying. For us and our purses.

It was freezing cold in Berlin, so we welcomed the idea of going to _the_ Vietnamese restaurant in the capital, Monsieur Vuong, for some soup and lecker tea. And how lecker it was. Freshly squeezed lime juice and lime peel - plenty of - muddled with big pieces of ginger, shreds of Kaffir lime leaves, some lemongrass and cane sugar.

Newly hooked on Vietnamese cuisine we went for a second helping the day after. Well, actually we wanted more fried sushi, but the passionate and apparently moody chef Gingi refused to serve customers that day. So we went for beef broth in a lovely environment instead.

And as for the Currywurst... We will just have them back here in the UK. After all, KaDeWe sells about every kind of sausage there is. Anyway, all an ordinary Bratwurst needs to be transformed into a Currywurst is a generous splash of curried ketchup and a little bit of curry powder sprinkled over it.

New Year's Eve

Yet again I had to introduce the world to Austrian habits and traditions. The "world" consisted this time of friends from Switzerland, Belgium and the UK.
They all loved the party and especially the food. Well, there was nothing not to love about. Pan friend scallops with fried ginger served on black pudding for starters. The most tender organic steaks with horseradish mash for our man course and of course, the dessert: curd cheese-chocolate dumplings on raspberry coulis, garnished with basil.
Plus: a fabulous cheese board for post-dessert. Having visited our families for Christmas, we all brought back special cheeses from our home countries and towns. The culinary tavel turned out to be very successful, although I have to admit that after our giant steaks and planet-like dumplings there wasn't much room left in our stomachs.

At midnight I simply had to present another typical Austrian New Year's Eve delicacy to the crowd: steamed pig's head. Yes, I also brought that one over to the UK from Austria. Wonder, what the security people made of it when they scanned my bags ;-) Anyway, everyone looked at it in total amazement but no one was too interested in eating it. Once we closed our eyes while swallowing parts of the pig's head, it turned out that at least the cheeks were fabulously tender. As for the rest... a well, we have to keep our traditions up!

Big Blob

So what's the big grey blob there on the table (below) I get asked: it is my birthday cake. My boyfriend found this beautiful little cake shop near Greenwich market and asked them to bake me a wonderfully rich chocolate cake in the shape of the Vivienne Westwood logo (I am a sucker for this lady!)

Retro Party

Why did I think that a German style retro party would impress the English audience? But at least the Austrian in me and my Austrian friends were deeply impressed by our efforts. We had all the glory from the 70s and 80s, directly imported in the suitcase of Baerbl, an Austrian friend who arrived just in time for the party preparations: Dreh & Drink, Baerenwurst (Purzelwurst) and Dickmanns.

Plus we spent ages in the kitchen to re-create the Kaeseigel from our childhood days. Take a cabbage or melon, wrap it in foil and now have hundreds, if not thousands of toothpicks at hand: believe me, it is harder and longer work then what it looks like.
Firstly, cut the cheese, preferrably Emmenthal, into cubes. Then stick the cubed cheese, salami, grapes and/or olives on to toothpicks. Finally, stick the toothpicks into the foil wrapped cabbage/melon and take a moment to adore this little piece of art.

Artistic approach is also needed for the Fliegenpilze.
I am not a big fan of hard boiled eggs. But the Fliegenpilze are a definate eye catcher! I could have tried to be a little bit more precise with the dots/spots on the cap, but hey, the whole menu was more fun that haute cuisine anyway!