Well, I’ve been even worse at blogging so far this year than I was last, but having spent January doing our annual no booze, no meat, no sweets regime and been ill and mostly off my food since then (both unheard of and torturous), there hasn’t been much decent eating in to report on, let alone eating out. This week, however, randomly generated a couple of culinary treats.
First off, picking up a bit of pork for a roast last weekend (and I’ll readily admit I only do it for the crackling), I discovered that my favourite butcher in Wiesbaden, Metzgerei Bellwinkel, have started handing out loyalty cards. For each purchase over 10€ you get a stamp and after your tenth, you are rewarded with a whole great homemade ring of Fleischwurst. I love Germany.
This week I was also surprised by my brilliant husband, who rustled up a good classic hearty German dinner on Tuesday, making use of some lovely, meaty Kasseler (cured and salted) pork chops with Sauerkraut – both purchased from the aforementioned butcher – with a pile of buttery mash.
I don’t personally believe any drink goes better with pork than one made of apples. Given the amount of dry cider that had gone into the pork and cabbage dish (and the fact it was a schoolnight), I was excited this week to discover a new range of fruit juices on offer at Karstadt. Made from various varieties of various fruits, from Elstar and Jonagold apples to Framboozen rhubarb)(me neither), I picked up a Kaiser Wilhelm apple juice to try (pictured top) which, in its little glass bottle at 1,49€ for 0,29L, was in my opinion a bit of a bargain: it tasted above and beyond your average supermarket fruit juice – refreshing, flavoursome and not too sweet – and although I drink so much water that I don’t usually consume much fruit juice, I’ve got my eye on the Williams Christ pear drink next.
This week was also a bit of a winner on the gluten-free front: yesterday, having recently been a bit more adventurous with the Schär bread products available in DM, I ate my first bacon baguette in, well, years – heaven; and last night I managed to cobble together a very tasty collection of gluten-free pizzas from scratch. I followed recipes online by Gluten-Free Girl and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and, having never made pizza dough before, used an awful lot of guesswork; I must say that despite the fact they looked a bit chaotic, they turned out ruddy delicious. Gluten-free gold star for me.
So, that’s all for this week, and I’ll try not to leave it another six weeks till my next post. In the meantime, has anyone else discovered anything tasty of late?!
Metzgerei Bellwinkel, Schulgasse 7, 65183 Wiesbaden (no website)
Van Nahmen juices (website) available in the Karstadt foodhall, Kirchgasse 35, 65185 Wiesbaden
Schär gluten-free products (website) available at various branches of DM
Made pizza last night to today (no-knead process takes time) and I am pretty happy with it — I’d give us an 85 out of 100. Details on the Regensblog soon — especially once we perfect it.
Haha good! I look forward to that – and especially learning about not kneading it. How does that work?! (I kneaded mine for ten minutes then left it for half an hour or so to rise.)
Yeast will happily do the work of stretching the gluten strands out for you in doughs if you give them enough time and a hospitable environment (warmth and moisture). So it takes longer (8-24 hour rise time) but it’s much less work.
http://slicken.it/-v shows our adaptations to the recipe.
AHA. Looking at your recipe, I’m not sure whether I added enough yeast but my dough probably rose about a third of its size (at most) in half an hour. Mind you, there probably weren’t many gluten strands available to stretch 😉 I was in two minds about whether I should have added Xantham gum for that purpose (I used plain gluten-free flour). I don’t suppose you have any idea?
None at all, sorry!