Canteen: Beetroot & White Chocolate Cake

In the last days of October, Berlin really put all of its might into decorating the city with explosions of colour and light. A giant took hold of the sun, sliced it open, only to discover it was in fact a colossal citrus fruit brimming with potent pigment and radiant beams. He squeezed the fruit with much vigour, expressing puffs of gold, amber and orange down into the little neighbourhoods of the people below. The trees shone in the brilliance of the once mighty and relentless sun, and took on new shades as this heavenly nectar soaked into their leaves, and as time progressed, the brilliant beams that pierced the canopy of the trees became weaker and less frequent, the sun-fruit was drying out, leaving in its wake a chilly grey evening. Quite a sight it was while it lasted, lucky I got some photographs...



Friedrichshain Cemetery 



Friedrichshain Cemetery



Volkspark Friedrichshain

Volkspark Friedrichshain is the nearest large city park to where I live. It's a sprawling, tree filled park and contains two large hills, that haven't always been part of the landscape. During the second world war, the third reich built two fucking enormous concrete air raid bunkers in the park. The larger of the two bunkers was bombed extensively during the war, but was only properly demolished by controlled explosions after the war. The bunkers were then dismantled, filled with rubble, and the leftover 2 million tonnes of debris was landscaped to create the two "mountains"; Große Bunkerberg (large bunker mountain) and Kleine Bunkerberg (small bunker mountain).

Große Bunkerberg after it's demolition in 1946

My thoughts were with the people living in this area after the war, and how they would become the fabric of the GDR, East Berlin. One of the things that often occurs to me is the limited selection of goods available to people in East Germany, of course food was no exception. After flicking through one of my favourite cookbooks, Canteen: Great British Food Birta came across something that sounded very intriguing, a Beetroot and white chocolate cake! 

What has this got to do with East Germany? Well, not a lot, apart from the fact that I have strong associations between Germany and beetroot, and life in the GDR meant no access to anything produced outside of the soviet states. (exotic foods were so unobtainable for common people that the GDR actually used a left over war bunker in Berlin as a high security storage house for precious imported fruits like bananas & pineapples, these were reserved for politicians and other important figures). It's sad to think that something as simple as a banana cake would have been an impossible luxury for poor old East Berliners, but since beetroot is always plentiful, I fantasize that people were being creative & eating beetroot cakes, beetroot donuts, beetroot ice cream - the substitutions are only as limited as your imagination.

So, here begins the Beetroot and White Chocolate Cake process....


















The end result was a pretty humble looking creature, with just a hint of something earthy in the flavour. For me it was interesting because the taste wasn't overpowering at all, you could just detect something slightly unusual. We took this cake to our friends' house in the evening to eat and watch Goodbye Lenin. We tortured them to try and guess the secret ingredient, which they never managed to figure out, and throughout the entire movie, I was distracted by my imagination of East Berliners eating Beetroot Cakes.

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Where does the time go? Berlin Thai Markets & friendly figs.

The daylight hours are vanishing like a thief in the night, Berlin's Autumnal colours are bursting into action, & with the shorter days, the window of opportunity for beautiful food photography is slamming shut & throwing on a deadbolt. So many brilliant dishes have I  prepared & consumed without so much as an attempt to document them, simply because the photographs in these dark hours look like bland, overexposed platters of grey matter. It's a work in progress to find time for this blog & change my cooking habits so the outcome falls within the daylight hours, but it will happen.

However, like a squirrel stashing nuts for the winter, I have a back catalogue of trips & experiments that I have long been meaning to share, here are just a few to make up for the record stint of silence.

Preußenpark Thai Markets

This market is something of an anomally - for one, it's not actually just a Thai market (as most people call it), rather a smorgasbord of South East Asian cuisine, including Vietnamese & Laotian. Secondly, this market evolved out of tradition, rather than a concretely organised happening. The score is that a large Asian population resides in Wilmersdorf, & for some years they gathered on weekends to socialise & picnic in Preußenpark; bringing chilly bins of freshly made treats & hotpots filled with salty, spicy herby deliciousness - what isn't pre packed, is cut up & made before your eyes. This started as personal gathering where the community came to share food, play games & enjoy the sun. Slowly this became an informal market where the food is offered for sale, with all dishes costing €3-6, & by far more authentic & better quality than many restaurants would serve. 

It's quite a sight emerging into a wide open park where families have set up picnic mats & colourful umbrellas, surrounded by tables of their freshly made goods: Sweet, sticky rice puddings wrapped in banana leaves, spring rolls, papaya salads, whole grilled fish, sugary fried plantains, glassy noodles buried in coriander, sprouts & basil, the choice intoxicates one's appetite, but there is no sense of urgency, the vendors are mostly old women sitting cross legged cleaning mushrooms with tiny brushes & smashing chillies & herbs in mortar & pestles. There's something about communicating with other people whose second language is "broken-German" that I quite enjoy, it's like a level playing field for both parties. 

The market is every Saturday & Sunday when the sun is shining, nestled within the park next to the metro station Fehrbelliner Platz, which also has its own flea market that's an absolute goldmine for soiled children's clothes & charmless kitsch (note sarcasm: it SUCKS). 

Vietnamese Pho in faux Chinese China 

Miss Saigon

Staying on the topic of quality South East Asian eats, I was recently introduced to Miss Saigon (the restaurant, not the musical...) which is already well known as a haven for travelers or Berliners on a budget, but this place doesn't sacrifice quality for economy. 

The menu here is south Vietnamese, I have only visited once so far, but the Pho I ordered was very good, I'll definitely return. Curiously, the friend sitting next to me ordered a steak, which wasn't what I expected from a Vietnamese restaurant, but it came out looking fairly attractive & tasting equally good. 

Miss Saigon is on Skalitzer Strasse 38, Kreuzberg.

Figs are Friends

Shopping on the fruit & vegetable markets has given me a new awareness of when produce is in season, it comes in waves & is incredibly cheap when abundant. One of the most recent fruits to boon have been figs, which apparently have a second wave of ripeness in Autumn. I never encountered figs living in New Zealand, actually that's a lie, we had a fig tree in my back yard in Lyttelton, but it yielded very pale, insipid little bulbs, that still excited the shit out of a friend who was the local baker - THAT is how rare figs were. Now I'm acquainted with the brilliant taste, colour & texture of REAL figs. They are such a beautiful fruit with this bell like form, slightly velvet purple skin, white rind & deep red, sweet flesh riddled with dainty little seeds. I've discovered the joy of throwing them into salads, or simply putting them onto bread & crackers - a new favourite is fig, feta, honey & mint on rye bread.

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Moroccan minted roast vegetables

 

I'm just going to put it out there, I'm not above putting ketchup on roast potatoes. WHAT? THAT'S BLASPHEMY, THAT'S....THAT'S - that's fucking delicious is what it is. Ketchup is the sugary, vinegary, condiment of the gods, and I'm standing by this one because I've had a love affair with Heinz ketchup since childhood. I sometimes imagine good old Mr. Heinz as a dapper, 3-piece suit wearing gentleman with a curly moustache & tobacco pipe. 

I gingerly knock twice at the Victorian bureau's enormous oak doors then proceed to enter, After a heavy push, the sweet concoction of tobacco smoke, Earl Grey tea & crabtree & evelyn aftershave permeate the air. A myriad of coloured light spills through stained glass windows on either side of the cavernous bureau, silk shutters, taxidermy animals & curiousity cabinets decorate a frieze around the room. At the far end, a wirey old gent springs forth from his desk & twists his moustache ends.

"DYLAN!"

"PAPPY HEINZ!"

With broad steps he swiftly strides across the room to meet me, almost losing his footing on a couple of white tiger cubs vigorously pawing each other on the office floor. Unperturbed, he meets me with a hug so forceful it leaves me breathless.

"Dylan my boy, such a pleasure to see you! How about we get out of this factory for the day, take our velocipedes to the lake & have a picnic? What do you say to that?!"

And so goes my heartfelt & vaguely homo-erotic image of Mr. Heinz, who for all I know could have been a misanthropic, slave-driving Nazi pedophile. Ah well, c'est la vie.

Now, I realise that slathering roast vegetables in ketchup is not socially acceptable, but this is why people need to be daring with: 

A. Their choice of vegetables to roast. 
B. The inclusion of herbs & spices. 
C. Sauces or dips made to accompany them. 

If I hadn't been subjected to so many roast dinners that just seasoned their potatoes with regular salt, pepper & animal fats, I would never have any reason to abusively unleash thick lashings of Mr Heinz at all. *Groaaaan*. 


Now for the first time in a while I'm giving you a recipe for something I made, because I stole it straight from 101 cookbooks ;) I used sweet potato for this, which is probably a bit dominant to get the best of the seasoning (delicious nonetheless). The real surprise was the cauliflower. I'm not a big fan of cauliflower, I used to like it as a kid because mum would refer to it as "ghost-tree", but now that I'm too old to be calling it a ghost tree, it's a bit bland to me, however it's an excellent carrier of flavours & comes out of the oven very juicy & full. The radishes are also delicious softened up & full of juice too.

Ingredients

You can use different vegetables depending on what's available, pumpkin or other winter squash, or straight potatoes. If cauliflower & radishes aren't available, use green beans and broccoli, asparagus and artichokes.

1 lb / 16 oz / 450 g mix of potatoes, cauliflower, and a few radishes

• 2 1/2 teaspoons dried mint
• 1 teaspoon red chile pepper flakes
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• 1 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
• 2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoon ground ginger
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• a squeeze of fresh lemon juice
• toppings: fresh mint, toasted sesame and/or pumpkin seeds, plain yogurt (seasoned with a bit of salt)

Preheat your oven to 425F / 220C. Wash and dry the vegetables, then cut the potatoes and cauliflower into 1/4-inch thick slices/pieces. Trim and quarter the radishes, setting aside the green radish tops.

Place the dried mint, chile pepper flakes, cumin seeds, and salt in a mortar and pestle and pound a bit, long enough to somewhat break up the cumin seeds. Add the ground cumin, cinnamon, and ground ginger. After that, add the olive oil and stir until combined.

Place the potatoes, cauliflower, and radishes in a plastic bag. Pour the spiced olive oil over the vegetables and toss gently but thoroughly - sqeeze it around until everything is equally coated. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until everything is cooked through.

Remove from the oven and serve on a platter topped with the freshly diced mint, a squeeze of lemon and any/all of the other toppings. A thick unsweetened salted yogurt really works nicely here.

Serves 4.

Prep time: 5 min - Cook time: 15 min

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Iceland: I want to have your babies Pt. II

I've kind of been putting off writing this entry, just because I visited so many fantastic places in the 2 weeks I was in Iceland, the prospect of editing a small selection from all the beautiful photos & trying to stitch together my journey to and from each destination in a clear & cohesive fashion was more than daunting, so this is exactly what I'm NOT going to do. Instead, you're going to get an ambling & mildly incoherent post that has little or no plot. Hopefully you'll be so busy looking at those photographs to care about my lack of journalistic professionalism. Yeah? Oh yeah, right now there are a few (a lot) of place names that I'm not sure of, so I'm going to substitute them with "unknown location", but I promise that I will find out the names from my official Icelandic tour guide & update this within the week, in case you're curious. 


To pick up where we left off, we departed the farmers market in Mosfellsdalur with a huge bag of fresh cale & rhubarb chard courtesy of Clint Eastwood, and a 12 pack of free range eggs from Birta's 10 year old nephew Máni. This market couldn't be more local, the vegetables were grown literally 20metres from where they're sold & are picked fresh the same morning.  Máni is an enterprising young whippersnapper who is offering a better quality product than the supermarkets, at almost the same price. His egg yolks are so rich in colour, they could be raw pigment. We even got to visit the chickens in his pen, y'know, VIP treatment. ( if you're a fan of Portlandia, you might be sniggering to yourself & thinking of the "Is this local?" skit, I don't blame you).

Scrambled eggs on sourdough with cherry tomatoes & rocket pesto.

Organic food really does taste better, Icelandic produce is still sparse, but of excellent quality & as their climate warms up, the potential for agriculture is improving. Because agriculture there is so young, the soil is naturally rich with minerals & vitamins that haven't been depleted by centuries of farming & the low climate means produce really takes time to mature, giving it plenty of time to absorb all of this goodness.


Every other morning we would trek down to one of Reykjavik's most renowned cafés,  Kaffismiðja which is a pretty serious café & roastery, part of the 3rd wave coffee movement,  primarily using from beans sourced by direct trade out of Columbian micro-lots. The number of certificates & awards lining the wall of this place takes up almost all of their wall space, but the proof was in the pudding, they make really nice coffee, in a jar nonetheless?
 

It's a really homely space with seating inside composed of a charming ramshackle of second hand furniture, artwork & records (yep, a turntable in the corner playing Fleetwood Mac).

Massive outdoor seating area made from wooden pallats & stuffed hessian coffee sacks. The week was punctuated with several day trips out of Reykjavik, every time it was somewhere with its own awe inspiring natural characteristics. One evening we drove somewhat blindly off the main road down a windy rocky mountain trail, that would have been no challenge to Bjork in her white Hummer, but it felt like it was going to rip the undercarriage off of poor Toyota Yaris, our trashy city car. Still, we threw caution to the wind, and within 15 minutes were lost deep in a volcanic desert of lava, moss & mountains. 

 

Our quest was to locate a natural hotpool that's unmarked from the roadside which was allegedly another 20 minute walk from the nearest rocky trail. We parked Yaris on a level clearing, grabbed our bags & hoped for some divinity to show us the way to the springs. The cool evening air pulled at my hairs, they stood to attention as dusk briskly settled in. A wash of grey saturated the valleys & crevices of the landscape, while the hard light gave its final burst of illumination before fading. We trekked on towards a distant  steam cloud in hope we would find our geothermal saviour. Approaching the shadow of the valley, the crackle & scuff of loose gravel underfoot broke the silence of the eerie landscape, an escalating hiss of steam escaping from the wheezing earth confirmed that we had found our bearings, our little secret paradise. It's a very special location where a heavy flowing boiling spring meets a fresh water stream, the water mixes & is eventually is cool enough to bathe in down stream.

We bathed our weary bones for hours, until our flesh nearly dropped from its bones. Leaving steamy vein we trekked back over mounds of volcanic rock, earth & moss under the moonlight, watching other distant hot springs bellow smoke into the air, I had the acute feeling that I was a tiny creature on the surface of an enormous living beast.

Don't think that all of this soaking in hot water was going to mean a casual dinner of beans on toast, oh no. 

When we got home it was straight into the kitchen to whip this together.

Icelandic cod baked in lemon juice & fresh coriander with baby tomatoes, new potatoes & diced shallots with white vinaigrette & rocket / baby spinach with lemon juice & hemp seed.

Our next excursion was to Gullfoss waterfall, or "golden falls" in English. We had been blessed with another crisp blue day, so it was picnic time we had in mind. On the way we stopped at a series of hotpools which are also the location of Iceland's two geysirs, Strokkur & Geysir. I hadn't realised that the word Geysir is Icelandic, and that all other geysirs are named after the one here. Strokkur, the smaller of the two erupts about every 8 minutes to about 30m in height, while Geysir perhaps only 3 times a day.

Deep blue hot springs.

This guy was standing around all casual, like he couldn't give a flying-fuck about the wonder of nature he was about to witness, but a split second before the eruption, he whipped his camera up & furiously snapped away. I guess he had his street cred to protect. Stay wild, Wild Biker Schönfeld.We arrived at Gullfoss downright starving, but we had plenty of sourdough, gouda, kale, rhubarb chard, tomatoes & hummus to end that problem, so a quick picnic was in order before a walk along the ravine edge to the mighty falls.

It's mesmerising to watch this huge body of water continually fall, and difficult to comprehend the power of nature when we spend so much time living in cities in control of our light, our water, our heating - you almost expect there to be a tap to cease this flow. The most inspiring thing about Iceland for me is the lack of human interference with the land, you can drive for kilometres & see no other roads, no fences, no plantations, no farms & when you do encounter some kind of manmade construction, it's dwarfed by the immensity of the landscape, as you can see in these assorted pictured from the week below.

The view from a hill we climbed in an unknown location.

Well deserved nap on the hilltop.

Wild blueberries were everywhere on the way down!

I just want make an aside to talk about a guilty pleasure in Iceland, and that's candy. I really ate way more chocolate and licorice than anyone should in a two week period, but part of the charm was the amazing packaging. It is so fantastically time-warp-retro, it really delighted my sensibility for 1960's graphic design and illustration. Now don't get the impression that this is some company's engineered attempt to sell in a retro style to a young generation pining for some mark of authenticity. No, it's purely because these confectionary companies haven't changed the look of their packaging for 30 years, and I love them for it.

There was just one of these chocolate bars (unknown) that I found so utterly obscene, I couldn't help but make fun of it. It basically looked like a ribbed, veiny, chocolately mutant cock - at least that's exactly what I looked like when I put it in the zipper of my jeans...

Birta returned mid-shot, horrified that I'd managed to stage this photo in the 2 minutes she had left me alone in the car. I say she was horrified, but probably not as much as the 8 year old kid in the car next to me, who might have seen this. If he did, good luck to his parents figuring out why their child now screams uncontrollably when granddad asks if he'd like a chocolate bar.

We spent the last days in Iceland in a very special part of the country, in an even more special house. "Bakki" in Snæfellsnes is one of the studios & holiday homes of the artist Dieter Roth & his family. It was a privilege to stay in the space of such an influential artist, you could really feel the energy & vision still resonating in the space. There was a pared back simplicity & pure functionalism to everything in this house. The austerity of decoration & orderliness that is typically Swiss, combined with the obsessive collection & documentation of this avid artist. Birta's Auntie Vera is Dieter's daughter, which is why we were lucky enough to borrow this little haven out of the city. It was absolute bliss to get away from Reykjavik for a few days, with no internet, surrounded by books, the ocean & enough drawing materials to sink a ship.  Snæfellsnes is right beside a glacier, unfortunately the weather had turned a little sour so the glacier was constantly hiding behind low grey cloud, but that didn't matter, we were away from civilisation with a fully stocked studio, a fridge full of food & ocean views - it was as close to heaven as I could be.

Studio table at Bakki.

 

Cucumber, mint, red onion, feta & blueberry salad. Drizzled with red balsamic.

 

Haddock baked with pepper, lemon & lime.

Haddock & mixed vegetables stir fried in chilli, coconut cream & lemon juice, with a side of brown rice & bananas covered in unsweetened yoghurt with fresh mint. 

Egg, tomato, onion & parsley quiche on a spelt flour base with a radish, olive, paprika & leafy green salad

Mossy lava fields.

After these peaceful days away, it was time to head back to the city, & then Berlin was calling. I never thought I'd be sad to return to Berlin, it's such a fantastic city (I say as I sit in my Berlin apartment, having not been outside yet, writing this article all day, wearing yesterday's underwear, unshowered & barely nourished) yes it's a wonderful city, but I had grown so attached to Iceland. I wanted to stay in Bakki, so I could live a life of creative introversion as the hermit I am destined to become. I don't need the world's best techno clubs, I don't need currywurst (I really don't, that's a story for later). I need YOU Iceland, with your geothermal gasps & volcanic temper, your fiery/icy bi-polar elemental condition. I think it's time to get a job & start saving, I don't think I can go long without seeing you Icy baby. I miss you.

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