Let them eat cake

Something magical is happening in Brandenburg right now. The air is suddenly, for the first time in months, warm and sweet-smelling, the sky is marbled blue and white, the trees are beginning to show blossoms and buds. At work today I was able to sit alongside the river during my long break, reading Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and eating homemade sausage rolls. I fed the leftovers to the ducks and took a long, leisurely walk while the sun warmed my shoulders and the prettiness of it all warmed my heart. And then I tripped and fell over and bonked my head and strained my wrist. Which was embarrassing, to say the least.

Still, a sore arm cannot dampen the joy of springtime, and I was in the mood for something good to eat (reading anything by Julia Child will do that to you), so when I got home this evening, I embarked upon an orgy of cookery. I made cake.

Now, I cook a lot, but I am not always a successful baker. Cakes seem to dislike me, even thoughI love them. But this cake was special. I found it online, via Tumblr, where someone had posted a gorgeous photo of it. Pretty photo, pretty day, pretty cake. Lemon-Rosemary-Yogurt Cake.


The ridiculous thing is that I had all the makings for it right there in my kitchen, ready to go.

Here is the recipe, and the link to the website, Baked Bree, where I found this recipe. I've copied it into the big Moleskine notebook where I write all the recipes I really like (sort of a "mom's cookbook" for the single girl), but I have to share it, because it's so wonderful.

Lemon Rosemary Yogurt Cake
Ingredients

3/4 cup butter, room temperature
1 cup Dixie Crystals sugar
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
Zest of one lemon
2 teaspoons vanilla
1/2 cup Mountain High Vanilla Yoghurt
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 Tablespoon fresh rosemary, finely chopped
Glaze:
1 cup Dixie Crystals powdered sugar
3 to 4 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Rosemary sprigs (optional)
Instructions

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add lemon juice, zest, and vanilla. Add yogurt, and add eggs one at a time. Add flour, baking powder, salt, and rosemary. Mix for an additional minute, scrapping the bowl, until everything is smooth and combined. Pour batter into a loaf pan that has been sprayed with cooking spray.
Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan for 10 minutes. Take the cake out of the pan, and cool completely on a rack.
Make the glaze by whisking powdered sugar and lemon juice. Add more sugar and lemon juice as needed. Drizzle over cake and add rosemary sprigs. Let glaze stand until completely set.

http://tinyurl.com/ctwrnaa

As Julia Child would say, Bon Appetit! :-)

Wednesday night, pasta and opera

Have you ever just needed to have a night in? One where you do nothing but listen to good music, watch a good film, read a good book, and eat good food? That's me tonight. It's been a long and productive day (not in the writing department, alas). I'm working on a longer blog post about the research I did over in Potsdam on Monday; look for that tomorrow. But right now, I'm content to sit here with a bowl of pasta with butter-garlic sauce and a glass of sparkly water, watching L'age de raison (which I highly recommend; it made me cry like a little girl) and listening to opera.

How do you spend nights in?

(Photo from Pear Tree)

Tinydoom's Opera Restaurant and Bar

If I ever had a lot of money, I think I would like to open a restaurant. Not any restaurant, though, but an opera bar. Think about it. There are flamenco bars, dinner-theater restaurants, all sorts of places where people can go to eat and enjoy themselves. But as far as I know, there are no opera restaurants.

When I was in Vienna, I daydreamed about it out loud to a friend as we wandered the backstreets. What if, I said, there were a restaurant where you could go in the evening and hear both a fun concert with professional opera singers. Students, I suggested, or rising singers wanting to pad their resume. It wouldn't be expensive, and the program would change often. And it would be open to everyone. Indie opera companies could put on modernist shows tailored to suit the restaurant space, quartets could come, and it would generally be a fun and hip place to have a good meal and hear some good music.

"You're a dreamer," is what my friend said.
"No, I'm a writer," I replied. "I can't do this in real life, but maybe I'll put this in a book someday."

Maybe I will. All the same, it's good to dream. I'd go to a restaurant like this.

Sieglinde Potatoes

Hey guys, did you know that in Germany you can get a type of potato named for Wagner's Sieglinde? You totally can.

Viennese Postcard

I have managed to fall completely, one hundred percent in love with Vienna. I love it even more than I loved Paris (which was a lot when I was 15 and not so much when I was 25). The sights! The food! The people! Vienna has an atmosphere of culture and history that Berlin lost in the last days of WW2. Oh, and it has everything-except Versailles-that I studied in college. For those who don't know, I specialized in the 18th century, with a focus on the Habsburg and Bourbon dynasties. And I'm a massive music nerd. So, you know, everything is there, all in one gorgeous package.

Because I am a Hopeless Romantic at heart, I succumbed to the tourist trap that is the Sacher Cafe, home of the Original Sacher Torte (they're very particular about being the Original: they took everyone else to court about it forty years ago). Sacher torte is a decadent chocolate cake with apricot jam between the layers, smothered in dark chocolate immediately after it comes out of the over. Not chocolate frosting. Pure chocolate. Oh, and that's a chococcino beside it. :-)

The nice thing about Sacher Cafe (aside from the excellent cake and the sumptuous decor) is that it's right across the street from the Staatsoper (so I could have my cake and eat it, too...). The group I was with was none too thrilled to have to go see a "boring old opera house", so we parted ways and I spent a good half hour tooling around taking pictures and trying not to buy everything in the gift shop. I, uh, didn't succeed.

Yes, that is totally a Mozart Christmas tree ornament you see there. And "Faust" starred Jonas Kaufmann the night of the poster I bought (for 50 cents-what a steal!)

This is the kind of thing you see when walking down the street in the Innere Stadt.

I found the Augustinerkirche, where the hearts of 54 Habsburg emperors live. You can't tell from the picture, but there was a man absolutely rocking out to a Bach fugue up on this organ. The whole church was shaking; it was wonderful! I love old churches and cathedrals, and how they smell of old stone and dust and the wax of a thousand candles. Love it.

Finish off the day with some yummy goulasch and a basket of bread from a tiny out-of-the-way beisl. Perfection!

Soup (and music) to die for

Do you all like French Onion Soup? I do. I didn't until last week, though, and now I am a hardcore convert to the church of French Onion Soup. How did this revolution come about? Funny story.

My brother's heating blew out completely a few weeks ago, rendering his apartment an ice cave, so he moved back in with me until they fixed it. However, he continued to do things like paint the walls, assemble furniture, and play his bass in his own place, which meant that he contracted the inevitable death blargh known as the Common Cold. So on top of having a grown man sharing my one-room apartment, I also had a sick and pathetic grown man on my hands. So I did what I do when I'M the sick one: I made soup.

I found the recipe on Epicurious.com under the heading "Easy Dinners". We were low on food, so when I saw that all I would have to buy was a slab of Gruyere, I caved and made the French Onion Soup.

It was a revelation. An epiphany. A small miracle of onions and beef stock and cheese. I ate all of mine and finished my brother's (typically, he didn't like it).

Yesterday I bought a magnificent three-year-old Gruyere from a cheese vendor at the Gendarmmarkt's Christmas Market. He told me to eat it with crackers, and I did. Half of it. With the other half, I made soup. Today is a bleak, tired kind of day: cold outside, but not cold enough for snow, and I had a tough German class on top of that. On the train I realized that I desperately needed hot soup and comforting Mozart. So I came home, pulled up a Mozart playlist on YouTube and found this:



Play it while you eat the soup: it makes it even more delicious.

Simple French Onion Soup:

2 medium onions, finely chopped
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon Calvados, Applejack, or other brandy (I don't have brandy, so I used apple juice)
4 cups low-salt beef stock
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
4–8 1/2"-thick slices baguette (I use German multigrain bread, and always will)
1 cup grated Gruyère or raclette cheese

Special equipment: Four 10-ounces ramekins (I used regular bowls; they work fine)

Preheat oven to 450°F. Cook onions in a 12" nonstick skillet over high heat, stirring constantly, until soft and caramelized, about 15 minutes. Add butter and toss onions to coat. Remove pan from heat and stir in Calvados. Return pan to heat and continue cooking until Calvados is absorbed, about 30 seconds. Add stock and bring to a simmer. Simmer until soup is reduced to 4 cups, about 5 minutes. Season soup to taste with salt and pepper.
Place ramekins on a rimmed baking sheet. Divide soup among ramekins. Top each ramekin with 1-2 slices of bread. Sprinkle 1/4 cup cheese over each. Transfer baking sheet with ramekins to oven and bake until cheese is bubbly and browned in spots, about 4 minutes.