Lemon & Mint Water

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Today's recipe is in loving memory of the week of actual summer I got to experience in Berlin (I am sitting here in St Andrews contemplating whether it's ok to either dig out the cashmere or to wear two cardigans on top of each other in July). Judith made some incredibly refreshing mint water when I was staying with her and I've been hooked since. If you are like me and you get bored with drinking water halfway through the day but you're not that into the idea of drinking soda all day long this is your drink.
I hope it's warmer where you are :)

Lemon & Mint Water
Some mint leaves (if you're making about a litre, a handful should be fine)
Some lemon zest
Water

Put everything into a jug/bottle/whatever you want to use and chill overnight.
Now that was easy :)

Raspberry Brownies

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Over the last few years I have been complaining about not having anywhere to grow herbs to cook with - if I have to make the trek down to the garden I'm not gonna use them (I love fresh herbs but I guess the love is not quite THAT strong) and everything we try to grow on our kitchen table just seems to die within hours of you putting it there. So when I was staying in Berlin I got serious balcony-envy at Judith and Mimi's place. Apart from lots and lots of fresh herbs they were growing the most amazing strawberries on their balcony (I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the tomatoes!!!). One evening we were having dinner with their neighbour Daniel and the conversation moved to the raspberries he's growing and how they're all amazingly amazing. Thinking of raspberries (while having one of Judith's amazing peanut brownies) got me excited about how well raspberries would go with brownies. Here's the end product :)

Raspberry Brownies
200g Butter
200g Good dark chocolate, broken into pieces
150g Wholegrain spelt flour
100g Buckwheat flour
200 - 250g Caster sugar
A pinch of salt
1/2 Vanilla pod
4 Eggs
250g Raspberries

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees
Melt the butter and the chocolate in a small saucepan and let it cool slightly.
Put the dry ingredients into a mixing bowl, add the chocolate mixture and mix until it's well combined. At this point you could try what you've got to see whether it's sweet enough. I prefer them with 200 grams of sugar but if you've got a sweet tooth you might want to go for 250.
Mix in the eggs, make sure they're properly incorporated, and add the raspberries.
Find a brownie tin (mine has reappeared, oh the joy!), pour the batter in and bake the whole thing for about 18-20 minutes. Since the raspberries are so juicy I baked mine until they were rather well done (so while you don't get the normal gooeyness that way they're not a complete mess the next day).
Make your labmates love you by sharing them :)

Linguine Alfredo

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When I've been travelling I crave comfort food. One of the things that I normally tend to look forward to the most when I come home to see my parents (well obviously apart from seeing them) is the Maultaschensuppe my mum makes for me. Just thinking about it makes me feel at home and relaxed.
Since I didn't have any Maultaschen left last night (yes, I have taken some back to the UK with me in the past) I had two options - cry myself to sleep or think of something else :)
And the winner this time was linguine alfredo. There's something incredibly soothing about the scary amounts of butter, cream and parmesan that go in there but if you ignore the surprisingly loud voice in your head that tells you that you're completely out of your mind eating something like this...pure pleasure.
The recipe below should be enough for 3 or 4.

Linguine Alfredo
250g Linguine
80g Butter
75ml Double cream
150-175g Grana Padano (for once in my life I actually prefer the cheaper option, I wish that would happen more often)
Salt, Pepper, Nutmeg

Boil the linguine in enough water.
While they're bubbling away, heat the butter in a skillet. Once the butter has melted, add the double cream and stir until they're properly mixed.
Grate the cheese ( I prefer it finely grated here, but if you want to have more of a cheesy experience I could imagine a very coarsely grated version working really well), put it into a serving dish and add the butter-cream mixture. You can stir the mix but there's really no need for now.
Just before the pasta is done take away some of the water and keep it for later in case the pasta mix ends up being too dry.
Once the pasta is al dente, drain it and put it straight into the serving dish. Now you're allowed to mix everything together :)
Season well, keeping in mind that you won't need much salt because of the cheese.
Enjoy the sheer bliss when you get to eat the linguine!

Grilled Vegetables

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Do you know the feeling - you go to your greengrocer's and there's soo much that looks amazing that you can't decide; and then a couple of days later you're wondering what to do with all that veg in your fridge. This is the perfect recipe for just that situation. Grilled vegetables are so quick and easy to make and I could eat them every day :)

Grilled Vegetables
Whatever veg you want to use up. I realy like using some courgette, peppers, onions, fennel, beetroot, and brocoli. Try to include some potatoes (nice and then you don't have to worry about being hungry again in like half an hour).
Olive oil
Some garlic cloves (peeled)
Salt, pepper and some herbs if you're feeling adventurous

Oven-wise you have tow options - either preheat it to 220 degrees (if you don't have a grill or would rather have them baked) or wait until you've chopped all your veg and then turn on the grill in your oven.
Chop your veg into relative large bitesize chunks.
Toss them in a bowl with a small amount of olive oil, add the garlic and season well.
Stick them into the oven until they're nice and grilled (keep coming back to turn them from time to time - so don't get too engrossed in that paper you're trying to finish or the trashy novel you're reading).
Serve with a generous helping of tzatziki or a goats' cheese sauce (recipe will come when I get back to St Andrews....hopefully).

Gazpacho

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I know this is gonna lead to a few more annoyed emails amongst those of you in St Andrews, but I'm still complaining about the heat :)
Berlin is boiling, so most of the time I don't even feel like thinking about food (how often will you hear me say that?!) so today's recipe is a chilled soup. I must admit the picture is one I took this weekend when I ate some gazpacho in a lovely little restaurant serving only soup (and before you ask - I was lost at that point and don't have a clue where I was, I had an  awesome time being lost and looking at buildings though!) but the recipe is one (based on a BBC Good Food recipe) that I made last week with my amazingly amazing friend Bettina while admiring her flat (oh the floor-jealousy!!!).
Give this recipe a try if you're somewhere warm, If you're somewhere cold I promise to write about something more warming :) once I get back to St Andrews and start complaining about being freezing again.

Gazpacho
6 Really ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 Spring onions, chopped
1 Garlic clove
1/2 Cucumber, peeled
Olive oil
Aceto balsamico
Salt & pepper
1/2 Green pepper

Put the tomatoes, spring onions, garlic, and cucumber in a blender and whizz until smooth (the original suggested straining the mix through a sieve but our mix was already ultra smooth so we couldn't be bothered, if you don't like pulp then that would be an option).
Turn down the speed of your blender and add some olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper (I didn't add any quantities because that really depends on how you prefer your gazpacho - keep trying!).
Put everything into a container you can cover and put it into the fridge (this is a step that makes it nice but if you're as rushed as I was last week it'll still taste nice at room temperature - sorry I had to rush off, Bettina!).
Once you're ready to serve the gazpacho, chop the green pepper into 1cm cubes and use them as a garnish.
Serve with some bread and hopefully more time than I had :)

Yoghurt and Chèvre Rolls

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As I mentioned we made mezze last week (lots of fun and lots of strong language when we attempted to make beetroot falafel...I think my beautiful friend Juliane had a lot of fun laughing at me, am I right?).
Anyhow, one of the things we made were yoghurt and chèvre rolls that we covered with chopped pistachios and chopped zereshk (dried berberis berries, you can get them in lots of Iranian food markets).
I must admit I'm slightly in love with them. Yoghurt and chèvre are already two of my favourite foods by themselves but when you combine them they bring out the best in each other.
If you don't add any salt or herbs you can have them either savoury or with some honey, dates, or some berries. Oh the possibilities!

Yoghurt and Chèvre Rolls
500g Strained yoghurt
200g Chèvre
1 handful Zereshk
100g Pistachios

Line a sieve with a muslin cloth and strain the yoghurt further for a couple of hours (don't be tempted to argue that since it's already strained it'll be fine).
Mix the chèvre with the now rather dry yoghurt (we're still talking yoghurt so dry is relative here) and whisk until you have a smooth paste.
Chop the zereshk and the pistachios and put them onto large plates.
Now you get to pretend that you're still in kindergarten and you're playing with playdoh (we're noticing a pattern in what I like to do with food, don't we?) and roll about 2 tsp of the chèvre and yoghurt mix in either the pistachios or the zereshk.
Put it on a pretty plate and repeat until you've used up all the chèvre and yoghurt mix.
Now lean back and enjoy the pretty colours!

Gooseberry Juice

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It's still on the slightly hot side of things so here's another juice recipe.
I have a slightly ambivalent relationship with gooseberries. My mum always used to get loads from my grandma and because 'they're soo nice' we had to freeze the majority of them....and then they always ended up in deserts for the rest of the year forcing me to develop gooseberry-related-OCD when picking them out of my food.
I have realized, however that they're rather nice in a juice, so the plan (before I move on to the plan that includes me taking over the world) is to make juice every time I get home so there are no gooseberries left that even have a chance of appearing in my food over Christmas.
I used frozen gooseberries because we're emptying the freezer for all the fruit that is to come but the fresh gooseberries I've seen  this year are already looking very promising.
I love how the gooseberry flavour mixes with a hint of cinnamon and the slight minty-ness without being too sweet. If you like your juice quite sweet you'll definitely want to add more sugar to this recipe.
This is quite a concentrated juice so mix it with plenty of water when you serve it.
Anyhow, I hope it's not quite as hot wherever you are!

Gooseberry Juice
6 cups Gooseberries
1 cup Blackberries
1 cup Blackcurrants
2 cups Redcurrants
1/2 Cinnamon stick
about 3cm of a vanilla pod
3 leaves Moroccan mint
15-20 leaves Vervaine
11/2 tbsp Sugar
Zest of 1/2 lemon
100ml Water
50ml Orange juice

Put everything into a heavy bottomed pot and cover with a lid.
Cook until the fruit has gone all mushy and the gooseberries look like they're not happy anymore.
Turn of the heat and let the mix cool down a bit.
Strain, put it into a pretty jug and wait until it's properly cooled down.
Enjoy on a balmy summer evening.