The other day in my food writing class I had the joy of meeting the charming Beatrice Peltre, or Bea, of La Tartine Gourmande. For two hours she talked to us about her experiences as a blogger, her choice to go full time (!!!), and especially about her fabulous food photography. As someone who is trying to get her blog up and running, improve hits, and generally make sure I keep the quality of my work constantly improving, it was amazing to meet a fellow perfectionist.
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January 25, 2008
La Tartine Gourmande
January 17, 2008
New Year, New Blog!
Welcome to the newest incarnation of Beyond Burgers and Bratwurst. I’m glad you made it over. Please don’t forget to update your links and bookmarks to:
http://burgersandbratwurst.wordpress.com
Check out my latest post on Graham Crackers below, and stay tuned for my new weekly series (details to come!).
December 13, 2007
Menu for Hope 4
It’s that time of year again: the holidays are upon us and we are all hustling and bustling for presents for loved ones. While you’re out shopping, or better yet while you’re procrastinating that shopping, hop online and join the food blogging community in its biggest fundraising event.
Menu for Hope was started by the wonderful Pim of Chez Pim after the tsunami affected millions in southeast Asia four years ago. It started as a humble effort to raise money and has turned into a major online charity event, last year raising over $60,000 for the UN World Food Program.
This year bloggers have come together again to donate cooking supplies, gourmet gift baskets, one-of-a-kind tours, meals, and interviews, cookbooks, and more. Take a look at Pim’s website to learn more about the gifts you can buy raffle tickets for.
How it works:
You look at the list of offered prizes and choose which ones you would like to buy tickets for. Each ticket costs $10. Then you go to the FirstGiving site and make your donation. Make sure to write your gift’s code in the comments line, or you don’t get your ticket (though you’ve made a donation and your money still goes to a good cause). You can buy raffle tickets from December 10th through December 21st. Winners will be announced January 9th.
Long story short: please help us help others. It’s an important event. You can give as much as you can. You may even be a lucky winner of a prize!
For more information and detailed rules please visit the Menu for Hope site at Chez Pim.
March 19, 2007
I’m feeling a bit nutty…
Here is another edition of my series “A Glimpse into Other Blogs.” This
one is David Lebovitz’s blog. David lives and works in Paris, after having spent many years working, among other employers, for Alice Waters’ restaurant Chez Panisse. His humorous and informative blog on living and baking (as well as cooking) in Paris is a wonderful read. During the holidays he posted a recipe on mixed nuts, that I have adopted and love. It is the quintessential snack of bars and cocktail parties in many cultures, including both the US and Germany. Although there are differences (Germans tend to shy away from sweet and salty and stick to their favorites like “Erdnuss Flips,” which are deliciously unhealthy peanut-butter-flavored puffs) these nuts seem to appease both taste buds, perhaps due to the spices involved.
Of course, I have to admit that I liberally changed and added ingredients to fit the contents of my kitchen “pantry” (i.e. the nuts in my bread box, the sweet syrups in my cupboard, and the spices in my spice rack). In my version of the recipe I replaced maple syrup with a mix of sugar beet syrup and honey. Instead of cinnamon (and the second time I made it along with cinnamon) I added cumin, which added a very interesting spice to it. I experimented with all kinds of nuts, including pecan, walnut, peanut, almond, and cashew, and both times they were received very well: the first time I made it I ate the whole bowl myself, the second time I made a lot more and my friends gobbled them up at the birthday party I took them to.
My version becomes quite sticky – I believe David uses less syrup than I do – but no one complained about that as they ate the delicious snack. It’s a very simple recipe to make with rewarding results. Just try it for yourself at your next dinner party and see how much your friends will ooh and ah (that is, if any of it survives your munchies!).
February 27, 2007
A Glimpse Into Other Blogs
This post is not so much about German or American cooking, but about cooking in general and the joy of finding new recipes and techniques. It’s part of a new section of this blog that I am starting, to embrace the wonderful food blogging community and give my readers a glimpse of what I find interesting going on in the blogosphere.
I spend a lot of time reading other blogs online. Probably too much time. But with my job only keeping me busy for about fifteen hours a week (not counting lesson planning), I have the time. My sisters make fun of me for not appreciating the “sweet life” I have, but I have to say: it gets old quickly. My parents, and my time at Smith College, have trained me to embrace being busy and multi-tasking. This is the first time in a very long time that I have not been busy, and I don’t know what to do with myself.
So, I try to keep myself busy by reading a bunch, including food blogs. I have quite a few favorites (see the blog roll in the navigation bar, which lists all the blogs I read regularly) and I enjoy reading their stories and recipes. I realized one day that I hadn’t ever actually tried a recipe from the one blog that got me into the blogging world, Clotilde’s “Chocolate & Zucchini.” How can this be, you ask? Well, I’ve always gobbled up her beautiful pictures, her sweet, down-to-earth, and incredibly good English prose (she’s actually French!), and when I first started reading her a year and a half ago, I didn’t have a kitchen in which to try out her recipes. So, earlier this year (it sounds like a long time ago, but this was only about two months ago!) I felt that after waiting much too long, it was time to try her recipe. I gave her absorption pasta a go and let me tell you: if her recipe for absorption pasta is anything to go off of, I have been truly missing out!
This pasta is incredibly easy, incredibly flexible (great for improvising to create fancy dishes or to just empty out the contents of your fridge), incredibly delicious and (the best part) perfect for a person living and eating on her own. It’s not so much a dish as it is a technique (think rice risotto but for pasta and you’re getting the idea). Like Clotilde, I tend to use water instead of broth for a liquid, but I add a bay leaf and some spices (usually a mix of coriander, cumin, and nutmeg). Sometimes I make it spicy and add a bit of crushed hot peppers. I love throwing a dash of cream and a handful of grated parmesan in just before serving, which mixes with the starch and makes for a wonderfully creamy, flavorful pasta. As for other ingredients, the pasta is as flexible as risotto: I’ve only made a vegetarian version using on occasion zucchini, broccoli, and/or red peppers. I’m sure it would be excellent with salmon or chicken, perhaps even thin strips of beef, cooked with some tasty spices and stirred in just before serving. In any case, it’s perfect to give your improvisational cooking techniques free range. I have yet to eat a version of this that has gone bad, and believe me, I have had this dish more times than I can count since I discovered it.
Now, for the the next project: David Lebovitz’s mixed nuts.