Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumbcake

It is Michael's birthday today, and this is the cake he always request for a birthday cake. Not this particular recipe, but this type of cake. A rather flat sheet cake, topped with fresh fruit and a crunchy crumb topping. They always do not look like much, a little unassuming for a birthday cake. And if he did not have an opinion himself, I would make him a fancier cake, like the Chocolate Hazelnut Crepe Cake in Deb's cookbook. Or her recent cake, this Bienenstich cake. But who am I to argue with the birthday boy?

Truth is, I like those cakes, too. They are a lot easier to eat. All you need is a napkin. You could actually eat a slice of this cake standing in front of the fridge, in the middle of the night.
The recipe I used here is great. It makes a wonderful coconut pineapple crumbcake, or a great orange crumbcake with this orange marmalade between the cake layer and the crumb topping. Here I doubled the cake recipe, layered some rhubarb and strawberries on top and finished it off with a simple crumb topping. But you can take this anywhere you want.
And I am off, pizza and beer await me.

Rhubarb and Strawberry Crumbcake
Note: If you use darker sugar in the topping than I did, the cake will look less pale. Also working some agave into the topping would result in a crumb that turns more golden. If you don't care for the cake to be vegan, you can subsitute regular milk for the soy milk.
cake layer:
1 1/3 cup soy milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 cup agave syrup
1 cup canola oil (or another mild tasting oil)
2 1/2 cup all purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp cinnamon

~2 stalks rhubarb
~1/3 pound strawberries

crumb topping:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup oil
1/4 tsp cinnamon

Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C.
Slice the rhubarb and strawberries into 1/2 cm thick slices (~1/4 of an inch). Add a tablespoon of sugar to draw out some of the water before baking.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the dry ingredients for the cake layer. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir until smooth.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and pour the cake batter on top. Spread out a bit until it is between 1 and 2 cm thick. Top with rhubarb and strawberries.
In a medium mixing bowl, stir together the ingredients for the topping, until crumbs form. Sprinkle over the fruit layer and pat down a bit using your hands.
Bake for 25-30 minutes.

Mung Bean Salad with Celery, Apple and Cashews

As news from Boston reach Switzerland I could not help but think of Oslo, July 2011. 2011 I went on holidays with my parents and two of my siblings, and for 2 weeks we toured Norway and Sweden in a camper. This was the first time in years that I went away with them, and all in all we had a really lovely time. Great weather, the two countries are beautiful and I enjoyed spending time with the family.

We started in Oslo, and returned on July 22, in the afternoon, for a night there before we were going to travel back home. Around 3 p.m. my little brother, my mother and I were dropped off in front of our hotel and my father and my sister went out to return our camper to a place outside of the city. Half an hour later there was an explosion, close enough and strong enough to make our building shake. There was smoke, a little fire, too, that we could see from our hotel room window.
For 30 minutes we tried to search for information about what had happened. We wished that it was just an accident, a gas tank that exploded, anything other than a planned attack. We turned on the TV, switching between different Norwegian channels until after what felt like an eternity different newspapers and channels started talking about a probable attack. 
At this point we tried to reach my father and sister, who we knew would be okay but who still had to get back into the city, and Michael, who knew we were supposed to be in Oslo that night.
Being there in Oslo, so close to the attack, even though we knew we were safe was really scary. When I hear of these attacks in the news, they do touch me, but only the experience in Oslo brought to my awareness that this could happen anywhere, anytime, and to me, too.
That night, we left the hotel to have something to eat, at the nearest place possible. It was there, over pizza, that we saw what heard of a shooting outside of Oslo. It took a while longer to news reaching us properly.

We left Oslo the next day. It rained like crazy, and I remember very clearly my father wanting to buy tickets for the tramway and the driver just letting us in, without a ticket. It felt so significant that day, as if he wanted to say that these things did not matter right at that moment. My sister and I then continued to travel to Stockholm and Kopenhagen on our way back home, we had planned our trip like that, but the only thing I could think of was that I wanted to be back home, and hug Michael.
In moments like this one, when you feel your mortality, and you realize that actually you are never truly safe, you just want to be with the people that matter the most to you.
But then life continues, and the shock of being close to such an attack wears off. We are not eternally grateful to have been save this time. Only when I hear of similar events do those feelings come back a little, and I try and hug the people I love a little thighter. I hope you and your families and friends are all safe. Not just this week.

And because we can't worry forever, I have a salad recipe I want to share with you. This is the kind of dinner I make for myself when I am alone at home. A single salad, if you will. Ideally, it feeds me twice. I used mung beans here, because I had those on hand and usually don't know what to do with them. They somehow taste a little fresher than lentils, a little grassy maybe. But if you don't have mung beans on hand, I'd suggest substituting equal parts Puy lentils for the beans. The apple and celery provide crunch and a little sweetness, and the roasted chashews make this salad taste almost as if there was cheese in it. Or maybe that is just me. But the cashews are really important in this salad, I would not leave them out. Add lemon juice, olive oil, salt and papper and a little lemon zest, and you got yourself a lovely dinner or lunch.

Americano + And A Little Love From Italy

Michael and I spent Easter in Italy, in Imperia to be precise, a small town on the Ligurian coast, close to the French border. I realize that Imperia sounds a lot less intriguing than Rome, Florence or Paris, another big city that we could travel to rather easily from Switzerland. But Imperia was all we needed, a not-so-touristy, small and rather quiet coastal town. There was little to do, but lots of sun, cheap and strong espressos, walks along the sea front, and the occasional aperitivo.

I felt very grown up for drinking the typical Italian aperitivos instead of the beer I usually order. The Italians drank several different aperitivos that were all based on Campari, Vermouth, Aperol and other liquors that are similarly bitter and herby. We ordered Americanos, Negronis and a Campari Soda, but I have seen people order Aperol with Soda, too, and other similar drinks that I was not able to identify. Of the three drinks I had, I liked the Americano best. An Americano is a lot classier than most cocktails, it does not scream bachelorette party like the Sex on the Beach or the Piña Colada (can you see I am not much a fan of these kind of drinks?). In fact, wikipedia tells me that this is the first drink James Bond orders in the short story "From a View to a Kill". And I have to say, if it is good enough for James Bond, it is good enough for me, and far enough from the mental image of bachelorette parties, too.

The Americano is perfect for an aperitivo, even before lunch when you feel it might normally be too early to have a drink but since you are on vacation it might be okay!? The Negroni is similar, with added gin, and I feel more appropriate for an after dinner drink than an aperitivo. Both are really good, though.

P.S. Do you see that rice "pie" in the first picture? It is a tortaverde, a pie with an olive oil dough and a filling of rice, spinach and zucchini, and I think I need to make this one soon and share here. I really loved it.

Sourdough English Muffins

Currently I am sitting in my office/bedroom, and really don't want to look out of the window on my right because it is snowing, again. I feel like an old lady for talking about the weather, but when it just starts snowing again and again after I thought we were finally over it, I can't really think about anything else. But while this still goes on, I spend my free days inside, painting, reading, cooking and baking. A week or so ago I started a sourdough starter, following the instruction in Peter Reinhart's book, Crust and Crumb.

Experimenting with sourdough is fascinating, within 4 or 5 days you go from water and flour, plus a little honey and raisins, to a dough that can actually leaven a bread. I was sceptical at first, still unsure whether the sourdough would actually work, but then I made the firm starter for the San Francisco Sourdough bread in Crust and Crumb, and it rose beautifully. The recipe does make a lot of dough, though, and while I looked at all that dough, rising on the counter, I decided to use half of it and make English Muffins out of it. I had made English Muffins before, and I really liked them and thought it was great to be able to make bread without having to turn on the oven and heating up the kitchen that much (and to actually save some cash, apparently the gas bill for our apartment has doubled or tripled since I moved in [oops]). The resulting English Muffins are not that different from the standart English Muffins that I made before, they are not really sour, but they are so delicious and a great way to experiment with sourdough or use some of it up if you happen to have way too much starter after feeding it daily those first days.

Peter Reinhart's Yeasted Bagels

Bagels are not really big in Switzerland. Neither are doughnuts, but those are a project for another weekend. We have a little café in Berne that serves different sorts of bagels with different fillings and I actually love having lunch there, but other than that, I don't know of any place that serves bagels.
Which is actually just a way of saying that I loved these bagels but don't know if they actually are good compared to other bagels. If you do try these please let me know how they compare to your favorite bagels.

Working with the bagel dough was really different from other doughs I have made in the past. It was really stiff and hard to knead, and then really soft when I formed it. It is always so astonishing to see all the different things that can be made from flour and water and a few other things.

Yeasted Bagels
slightly adapted from Peter Reinhart's recipe in Crust and Crumb.
poolish
note: This will make more poolish than you need for the bagels, but it is really difficult to make less than required here since measuring out 1/16 of yeast is kind of difficult. If you are looking for another recipe to use the rest of the poolish in, this post describes the Sweet Rustic Bread from Reinhart's book that uses two cups of poolish.
poolish:
2 cups all purpose flour
2 cups water
1/8 teaspoon instant yeast

Combine the ingredients for the poolish in a mixing bowl, stir everything together and whisk for 1 minute or so. Cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for 3-5 hours, then refrigerate the poolish overnight.

yeasted dough
1 cup poolish
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
3 1/2 cup bread
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon honey

The next day, measure out the poolish and let it come to room temperature for an hour or so.
Stir the yeast into the water and let it sit for 3 minutes.
Combine the poolish, flour, salt and honey in a bowl, add the yeast-water. Stir the dough together with a spoon, then knead the dough for 15 minutes until fairly smooth. The dough will be dense and rather dry. Cut the dough into 10 equal pieces, and roll those pieces into balls. Cover them with plastic wrap and let them rest on the counter for 5 minutes.
Poke a hole in the center of each piece of dough with your thumb. Depending on the size of hole in the bagel you want, continue to expand the hole using your thumbs. I only poked a hole in the bagel and left it at that because I intended to use the bagels for burgers.
Place the shaped bagels about 2 inches apart on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and dusted with cornmeal. Cover the sheet in plastic wrap or enclose it in a plastic bag and let the dough rise for 1 1/2 hours until the bagels have increaded in size (about 25%, says Reinhart).
Refrigerate the dough for at least 6 hours or overnight.
Remove the pan of shaped bagels from the fridge. Let them warm up for 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 475°F. Bring a pot of water to a boil.
Reduce the heat of the burner until the water simmers and does not boil vigorously. Gently drop three or four bagels into the simmering water, and poach them 1 minute on each side. There should be enough room for them in the pan so they don't touch each other. Remove the bagels using a slotted spoon, place them back on the baking sheet and sprinkle with a mixture of seeds, if you like. Repeat until all bagels are poached.
Bake the bagels for 10-12 minutes, rotating the baking sheet after 5 minutes if the bagels don't seem to brown evenly. Let the bagels cool down for at least 30 minutes fore eating.

Makes about 10 bagels.