Strawberry Milk

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Growing up we didn't make milkshakes, we made fruit-milk. Banana, strawberry, raspberry, I think we even tried cherry once. Banana tended to win because my sister and I didn't have to try and convince our mum that some sugar would really help this not-quite-sweet-enough strawberry milk. Also, overripe bananas seemed to be sitting around way more often than somewhat overripe strawberries.
Somehow my parents never told us that there was this other mythical drink - The Milkshake. I'm sure I must have seen it on menues but I didn't have a milkshake until I was just about to graduate from college.
The first time I remember drinking a milkshake was pretty much exactly 5 years ago waiting for a train at Union Station in DC. The only way I can describe that time in DC is sweltering. Nobody hat prepared me for the heat. I had expected hot but not swamp-hot. I remember writing a postcard to my aunt telling her about how I had started to really appreciate coffee-shops for their airconditioning.
So after 4 days of living off iced coffee and coffee cake (another thing I discovered on that trip), trying to cram as much US history in as possible, I was standing at the station waiting for my train to Philadelphia (for more heat and even better history) and the humidity was starting to get to me.
And then I saw this sign at the Ben & Jerry's Stall. I could have a milkshake made from milk and any kind of Ben & Jerry's ice cream I wanted :)
I'm gonna leave it at this - an addiction was born that got even worse when I had my first malt shake a few years later at Ruby's at Chrystal Cove Beach.
Anyway, yesterday I went back to basics and made strawberry milk. It's hot in Berlin at the moment. It's especially hot in my office. So, when I got home, I made a big glass of strawberry milk. It was as good as I remembered, if not better because I added vanilla essence. It also made me realise - as good as milk shakes are, strawberry milk is better when it's really hot and all you want to do is cool down.
I'm giving you the recipe below for the quantities not for the single instruction :)

Strawberry Milk
100g Strawberries, hulled
200ml Milk
1tsp Vanilla Essence
Some Ice-Cubes (optional)

Blend everything together until smooth :)

Let's see, strawberry milk goes incredibly well with hot summer days, popcorn (made the perfect dinner yesterday), vanilla ice cream, non-chocolate cookies, and lazy evenings :)

I hope you have a fantastic weekend! I will be watching lacrosse, playing lacrosse and enjoying the weather at a tournament my club is hosting. Good times!

Cranberry Shrub

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You might ask yourself - what on earth is a shrub? Well, other than the plant in your local park.
The first time I consciously came across a shrub recipe was in the the Maine section (for raspberries) of the lovely new edition of Clementine Paddleford's Great American Cookbook. While I am absolutely in love with that book - reading her stories that come with the recipes you are going on a journey across a country that is very similar to the US these days but at the same time it feels like you are exploring a completely different country. If you like going to those living history museums where you can see how people used to live 'back in the days' then I am pretty sure you will love the book as much as I do (and all the recipes I have tried so far were really nice!).
Anyway, this recipe called for exactly three ingredients, raspberries, sugar and vinegar. I had this somewhat latent plan of making some kind of shrub at some point to find out what this whole thing was about. If I am going to be perfectly honest with you I was not quite convinced by the whole fruit and vinegar thing but a few weeks ago I followed a link on the bitten word and came across guess what - cranberry shrub. From their description it sounded like it could actually be nice and they suggested serving it with vodka, so I decided I could always up the vodka if it was really horrible. Boy, was I wrong!
This stuff is amazing! As I mentioned yesterday, it pretty much tastes like Brause. In all its fizzy awesomeness. Somehow the vinegar does something on your tongue that it doesn't do when you make salad dressing. I don't have a clue how it works but it's amazing. And more importantly, unlike with the dried stuff of my youth you can add soda water and it will taste even more amazing (the dried stuff would always bubble over and spill everywhere on the table and it never seemed to taste as good as it did with flat water but then there weren't enough bubbles...childhood trauma....I'm telling you).
But let's get to the actual recipe, if you are looking for a somewhat old-fashioned aperitif for Thanksgiving (or any kind of dinner party in the near or far future) I strongly suggest you make a shrub. Any kind really. Because I can't imagine shrub made with other fruit tasting any less amazing than the cranberry one I made :)

Cranberry Shrub (adapted from Dunn & Patton, after a recipe in Fine Cooking)
3 cups Cranberries
3 cups Water
1 cup Raw Cane Sugar
3/4 cup Vinegar (I used 25% vinegar and water in a 1:4 ratio to make the 3/4 cup - go for just under 3 tbsp of the concentrated vinegar in that case - otherwise white wine or apple vinegar will be good alternatives)
Zest of 1/2 Orange

Heat all ingredients in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes or so until the cranberries have turned into mush.
Take the pan off the heat and wait until the cranberry mixture has cooled down.
Puree with an immersion blender or if you only have a normal blender blend it in batches.
Strain through some musselin to remove the remaining pieces of cranberry skin.

Now, that was nice and easy :)

Soda water goes really nice with this. As does vodka or Chase gin or sparkling apple cider or tonic water. I haven't tried anything else, but  I'm sure there are a lot more lovely combinations that will work.
I hope you have a lovely weekend! I will be enjoying airline food :) fun times!

Vegan Peanut & Cocoa 'Milk'

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You were supposed to get a cupcake recipe today, but it's hot in Berlin...and I don't want to think about baking anything today so instead I thought I could write about this new obsession of mine.
Anything that involves ice or ice-cream :)
Today's recipe is mainly motivated by the fact that Alpro/Provamel finally started selling almond milk in Germany which means I have been using almond milk for everything lately and that I was craving chocolate and didn't have any in my depressingly understocked kitchen.
So, without further ado - let's make a super tasty drink that requires nothing but store cupboard staples (ok, that one is only true if you have an equally weird store cupboard as mine).

Vegan Peanut & Cocoa 'Milk'
(for 1 large glass)
2 tsp Cocoa Powder
4 tbsp Boiling Water (this is an approximation)
Almond Milk (enough to fill 2/3 of your glass)
2 tsp PB2 (or if you don't have any just use normal peanut butter or peanut flour)
1/4 small Avocado
1/2 small Banana
Agave Syrup
Lots and lots of Ice Cubes

In a blender mix the cocoa powder with the boiling water so it turns into a thin paste. Add the almond milk, then add the PB2, avocado, and banana. Blend until you have a more or less smooth mix. If you feel like it's not sweet enough, add some agave syrup or if you'd rather use some stevia, that works as well.
Fill your glass with as many ice cubes as you want (yes, those are pacman ice cubes in my glass...), then add the mix from the blender and if there's still some space at the top you could add some more almond milk...
Now, hopefully you'll have the same random collection of things in your store cupboard :)
I hope you have a fantastic evening!

Horchata

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I'm settling into a routine these days,  get up early, try to get some writing done, then I treat myself to some nice iced tea/coffee and some fruit, then I try to get some more writing done, then I pretend to be sporty while i wheeze my way through another run, followed by a quick lunch, some more writing, and then it's already time for another glass of frozen amazingness before it's already dinner-time (unless Verena makes me go swimming or something else, oh and this whole thing is obviously interspersed with waaay too much procrastination).
Anyhow, the reason I'm telling you about my decidedly boring life is because the iced coffee breaks have definitely become the highlight of my day. So when David Lebovitz posted his horchata recipe yesterday I obviously had to make some. And swapping the iced coffee for some horchata has kinda turned today into the best day of my week so far (not that I don't like the iced coffee but since horchata tastes even more like rice pudding than rice milk already does it trumps any other drink).
David suggests grinding some white rice in your blender but since I a) don't have a proper blender and am not planning on ruining my coffee grinder and b) tend to have a bag of ground rice sitting around in my cupboard I just went for the already ground rice. Oh, and I reduced the sugar because I felt it was more than sweet enough with half a cup.

Horchata
1/2 cup Ground Rice
3 cups Warm Water
1 Cinnamon Stick (ca. 5cm)
1/2 cup Sugar
2 cups Milk (I used unsweetened soy)

In a bowl combine the rice and the water. Add the cinnamon stick, then cover and leave it alone for at least 8 hours.
When you come back to the mix, fish out the cinnamon stick and strain the mixture through a sieve lined with cheesecloth.
All you need to do now is add the milk and sugar, pour some over some ice and then sit back and relax for a bit.

What keeps my brain going at the moment

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I've been hiding away from the world trying to bore myself into some writing for the last couple of days (more or less successful on that front) and have been working on my caffeine addiction. But you don't have to worry, none of the red bull excess of MUNBW times (don't ever let me work on a project that is sponsored by them like ever again) or the 2 cups of coffee before breakfast I have sometimes been seen with either.
Molly who writes Orangette tweeted about this article in the NYTimes last week which reminded me of the sheer amazingness that is cold-brew coffee.
I know, how could I forget?!? but in my defence it rarely(no, scratch that, never) gets warm enough around here that you're really craving an iced coffee. Well, at least I don't.
But I was in the mood for some procrastination and decided to make some and I think so should you.
Especially if you live somewhere warm.
Anyhow, I didn't go for the Japanese iced method because believe it or not I do actually have a life (ok, all I do at the moment is write and eat but still...) and I had everything for a steep and strain approach in the house.
So what can I tell you - my productiveness has gone up like crazy and I blame the coffee and not the fact that I am finally getting my act together :)
The recipe below is based on the one in Oliver Schwaner-Albright's article but since chicory coffee makes my throat itch (Linde's tastes really nice though) I went for plain old coffee - well, actually I went for some coffee my mum gave me (thank you!!!!) which is one of the nicest roasts I've had in ages.

Feinschmecker magazine listed them as one of the top German artisan coffee roasters and if you ever visit Heidenheim you should definitely go and get some coffee at Schwarz Coffee Shop (just saying...and no, I don't get free coffee there...).

Cold-Brew Coffee Concentrate
90g Coffee, ground
500ml Water, cold

Put the coffee into a container that is big enough to hold all the water as well (I use a 1 litre glass milk bottle). Next pour some of the water over the coffee, stir things together, then add the remaining water but don't stir again.
Cover and leave it alone for 12 hours (no shaking or whatever else you might want to do with it when you get bored) so overnight is a really good time to do this. After 12 hours strain the coffee. You could use a fine sieve but I'm lazy so I used my french press and it worked just fine (and took like only 5 seconds).
You can make iced coffee with this concentrate (1/4 concentrate, 3/4 milk) or you could heat the milk and turn the whole thing into a latte...or...you could replace the ice cubes with vanilla ice cream :)

Chocolate Vodka

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© Sandra Reisinger

Not that I have to say much more :)

But this is what Sandra and I do when we get bored of working on that thesis thing on Saturday evenings.

Ok, what we actually do is drink wine and read cookbooks, and then we try to figure out what we can make that doesn't involve us actually having to go to the supermarket. So when we came across this recipe that asked for 1/3 of a bottle of vodka and 2 bars of chocolate we knew we were on to a winner.

And let me tell you...work went so much better after we had a shot of this and stopped caring about the fact that it was a Saturday (and after accepting that there wasn't really anything else to do in town anyway) :)
Anyhow, this chocolate vodka is amazing but slightly lethal because you can't really taste the alcohol. So if you have more than just a drizzle over some ice cream or as part of a wicked milkshake - don't blame me if you do something stupid like not finishing work that evening :)

Chocolate Vodka

A bottle of Vodka that has 1/3 of the vodka left 

2 bars of dark chocolate

A 5cm piece of vanilla pod

Break the chocolate into pieces and stick it all into the bottle, add the vanilla and put the open bottle into a pot that's half filled with water.

Heat the water and watch the chocolate melt into the vodka. Once the chocolate is happily melting away (don't allow the water to boil though!), screw the top back on and give the bottle a good shake.
You might have to stick the bottle back into the water if there's still some chocolate pieces in there.
Once there are no chocolate bits left and you are staring at a boozy chocolatey mess go and have some fun :)

© Sandra Reisinger

Chestnut Milk

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I don't know what the weather is like where you are but around here it's winter (and not the nice winter that makes you want to go outside but the kind that makes you want to stay inside wrapped up in a blanket reading a good book) so here is a recipe that will warm you up and will make you feel like you can face anything (even evil abstracts and the cold) :)
This recipe is especially useful if you're trying to use up some chestnut puree from a chestnut&pumpkin pie (I know, I know, the recipe will follow) or you could just buy some and then use the leftovers for the pie :)

Chestnut Milk
3 cups Milk
3 tbsp Chestnut Puree
1/3 Vanilla Pod
1 tbsp Sugar
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
Nutmeg
Some Rum or Brandy

Heat the milk and the vanilla over a medium heat and let the vanilla infuse the milk for 10 minutes or so (keep it just below simmering).
Add the chestnut puree, sugar, and spices. Whisk until everything is properly dissolved.
Take the milk off the heat, add a shot of rum and serve in a pretty cup with some lovely Christmas cookies like the ones that Sandra made yesterday (and that I finished already...)

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 :)

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.

Rhubarb Juice

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I don't feel like food today so you get a juice recipe :)
When I discovered that we have rhubarb in our garden a couple of weeks ago I didn't quite know what to do with it. I had just made the rhubarb tartlets and was still eating the leftovers of the raspberry and rhubarb compote. But then I remembered a rhubarb juice that I had a few years back and how refreshing it had been.
Since making this I have come across another rhubarb juice in Silvena Rowe's 'Purple Citrus & Sweet Perfume' which had some cinnamon added (which sounds absolutely glorious to me).
The recipe below should make about 500ml juice.

Rhubarb Juice
400g Rhubarb cut into 2cm pieces
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 4 oranges
Zest of 1 orange
100ml Water
1-2 tbsp Sugar

Put the rhubarb, the juice, the zest and the water into a heavy bottomed pan, bring to the boil, give it a few minutes until the rhubarb looks like it's starting to fall apart.
Remove from the heat, add the sugar, and let it cool down (or just leave it for a couple of hours and do something productive).
Strain the juice and enjoy it with some soda water or some tonic water.