Deelish: Mother Wolff Soup

I’ve been on a soup making marathon the past couple weeks, where I’ve been making a new soup a week.  My soups have typically been vegetable based and based on what I could find (that looked good) in the grocery store.  However, this week I wanted something a little less like a “baby food puree” and a little more hearty.  I don’t own a slow cooker and I found a recipe that sounded like it should be made in a slow cooker as it takes almost three hours to make from start to finish but I wanted to give it a shot.  Not deterred by the time commitment, I went ahead and gave it a shot.  The recipe, Mother Wolff Soup, comes from the New York Times Jewish Cookbook and it was adapted from Sundays at Moosewood Restaurant.

Here is the recipe if you are looking for something delicious and filling to make this weekend- Note it’s a big recipe so you’ll have left overs- or invite five or six people to join you for soup:

In a large pot, put in the rice, barley, garlic, dill, bay leaf (beans if using) and water, bring to a boil and let it simmer for 1.5 hours- add more liquid if it looks like its all being absorbed. After an hour prepare the rest of the vegetables.  Saute the onions, celery together for a mintue or two.  Spinkle in the paprika, give it a stir so it coast the onions and celery.  Then add the potatoes, carrots, salt and pepper.  Let cook until the vegetables start to soften.  From there add the green beans if you are using and cook for a few more minutes until all veggies are tender.  Go back to your soup, take out the bay leaf, add the sauteed veggies to the soup and also add your chopped tomatoes to the pot.  Simmer for another 1.5 hours and adjust seasoning as you prefer.  I wanted to add tofu to the soup for some protein but got side tracked 🙂  Stir everything once or twice while the soup is cooking so it doesn’t stick to the bottom of your pot like mine did!  I also added a bit of veg boulion to the broth to give it more flavour.  It’s hearty in weight but tastes very clean and pure.  It was delicious with some fresh rye bread and a glass of white wine. Happy weekend cooking.

16 cups of water
1/2 cup of dried beans (soaked overnight with water) – I omitted this because my fiance cannot eat beans
1/2 cup of rice
1/2 cup of barley
3-4 large garlic cloves peeled and minced
1 tbsp of dried dillweed (I used fresh dillweed and a lot more then 1 tbsp)
1 bay leaf
1 cup of diced onions
1 cup of chopped celery
2 tbsp veg oil
1 tbsp of Hungarian paprika
1 cup of diced potatoes
1 cup of diced carrots
1/2 tsp salt + ground pepper
1 cup of fresh or frozen peas (I omitted this because I didn’t have any)
1 cup of chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)- I did fresh
1/4 cup chopped parsley

Eat Local Soup: Polevkarna

When I first moved to Prague, I was on the look out for cute cafes where I could grab a bit to eat, read a book, sip tea, or meet friends for lunch.  In my opinion, what makes a good city or community are loads of these types of places.  These cafes and small stores are what adds vibrancy to an area and encourages a social aspect of a district.

One of the first places I made a mental note to go and try was Polevkarna, an adorable soup cafe in my neighbourhood (yay for Prague 8).  I was first attracted to their cute storefront with its big glass windows adorned with loopy, white cursive writing.  I thought to myself, this creative looking-out-of-the-box-for-Prague-place must be good if it looks like some time, thought and effort went into the cafe’s branding, interior and food.   Likewise, I was excited to give Polevkarna a try because a) they serve one of my favourite foods , soup, (typically six flavours a day), but also offer nice sandwiches, a selection of sweets and to-go grain salads AND it was non-smoking.  My first visit to Polevkarna was with two friends who were in visiting from Toronto.  I tried a vegetarian Moroccan tomato based soup with curry, lentils and chickpeas.  Very tasty.  I returned a second time, solo, with my Bon Appetit magazine in hand and had a mushroom and walnut soup that was thick and a bit on the salty side.  The good thing about Polevkarna is that they rotate flavours and typically carry three meat and three veg options.  You can expect to find soup flavours such as carrot and ginger, beef borscht, tomato and basil, and chicken and tarragon.

If you haven’t checked this place out, or are passing through Prague and are looking for a lunch place, during the week (open 8am-6pm M-F) outside of the tourist centre, and appreciate a little gigham on the walls, bay window seating with cushions and lovely ceramic soup bowls, I’ve found your place.

design friendly jam

I spent most of the day preparing a Power Point deck for my lecture tomorrow and funny enough, I got an idea for my blog post as a result of my research for class.  I am big fan of the package blogs, The Dieline and Lovely Package and have featured product designs from both sites, on my blog over the past couple of years.  Today, I was hunting down examples to illustrate the concept of positioning in marketing and decided to focus on jam brands.

What I learned is that jam is a tricky item to position and requires extra creativity to carve out a niche in the mind of the consumer.  I think at one point in time, positioning jam based on a comparison such as, made with 100% fruit and no sugar added versus the alternative (less than 100% real fruit with additives) used to be a differentiating factor for a new entrant.  A company could enter the market with a new jam and have a home in the customer’s mind with its 100% fruit product.   However, after digging around for examples, I discovered a lot of  jams were 100% fruit with no sugar added, which crossed out that idea for positioning.  So I had to come up with another set of criteria.  Chunks versus no chunks? Organic versus non-organic?  I decided to use design as a position, why not? I blog about it anyway.

Here is a round of my design friendly jam that I am sure tastes good (as it is 100% fruit, no sugar added) but looks fantastic due to the talented package designers behind the label.

1. Fruita Blanch from Spain- These guys are so popular from a design perspective they have their own stationery and font.  I wonder what the price tag is on a jar of their jam?

via dtail.com

via lovely stationery

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2. SuperJam from Scotland- Simple packaging, bold font and bright colours stand out.

via inspiring young people

3. Uten- Norway – Natural and homemade looking and a reusable jar with a label attached with a string so you can make your own once you’ve finished theirs. Cool angle.

via lovely package

via packaging of the world

4. We Love Jam from California- Minimalist jam.  Love it!!

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via daily candy

Homemade Granola + Weekend Roundup

It’s Monday! Where did the weekend go?  I just returned from teaching my marketing strategy class and was famished as usual after talking for two and a half hours, so I decided to make myself a vegetarian pasta lunch from scratch.  I can’t remember if I have ever taken the time to cook myself a “meal,” beyond a salad, soup or sandwich, for lunch.  Odd, lunch seems to have evolved into this meal in passing, during the week, where cooking and sitting down to eat lunch is more of an exception than a rule.

This past weekend was quite busy with lots of socializing.  Fortunately I had time to make my weekly batch of homemade granola that is a staple in our house.  Granola is one of my go-to breakfast/brunch staples and after reading and getting turned off from too many granola labels from store bought items, I was motivated to learn how to make a healthier version for my house.  I typically make a batch every 10 days depending on who is around and what we are doing and store it in a big Ikea jar.

I can’t tell you how easy it is to make granola if you’ve never tried.  My recipe is a combination of two recipes, plus room for creativity and flavour variation.  The first (it’s been a while), I believe came from a Toronto Star recipe about making your own granola without using oil (often used in store bought products).  Next, I later modified it to include quinoa, after testing out a recipe from the Quinoa 365 cookbook.

So far my recipe is as follow- Heat oven to 35oF or 180C (Europe)- if you want bake it slower I’ve also done this recipe at 325F.  Depends on how hot your oven is.

In a metal bowl, mix:

3 cups of oats (you can scale the recipe depending on how many batches/how much you need)

1 cup of uncooked quinoa

1/2 cup of slivered almonds, 1/2 cup of pumpkin seeds, 1/2 cup of sunflower seeds (out of shell)

1/4 cup of wheat germ, 1/4 group flax seed (called Lindseed in Europe) (for protein, nutrients and fiber!)

2 tsp of cinnamon and 1 tsp of nutmeg (omit if you don’t like nutmeg)

Then add 1 cup of honey and 1/2 or 1 cup of maple syrup to the dry goods and mix everything together.  Again you can alter the quantity of liquids (honey/maple syrup) but the point is that the dry goods should be covered, not soaking wet and drowning.  This is what helps bind the dry goods together while cooking, so once you’ve given everything a good mix, if it looks too dry, add more of something (honey or maple syrup) until you are satisfied that everything has been coated.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and spoon out your granola mix on the sheet, pressing the mixture down in order to spread it out right to the edges of the pan.  If there is too much granola on the baking sheet, it may make more sense to split it into two batches.  I find a thinner layer of granola cooks more evenly and prevents burning, rather than piling the entire batch on one. (Up to you of course!)

Set the timer for 15 minutes to start.  At the 15 min mark, it is worth taking the granola out of the oven, mixing it around (especially the edges which will burn first if you don’t watch it), re-patting everything down and then putting it back in for another 10 minutes or so.  When the granola is golden brown it is time to take it out.  Let it cool either on the pan, or by pouring it back into the metal bowl. Once completely cooled, you can add any chopped dried fruit or other items such as cacao nibs or dark chocolate to the mix.  Store in an air-tight container and enjoy on top of yogurt, with milk or sprinkled on gelato.

Outside of my granola making efforts, I wanted to share a couple more tabs that I’ve left open all weekend in hopes of sharing with you these ideas that made me smile:

1. For our Sunday morning breakfast, my fiance made us Joy the Baker’s Smashed Raspberry, Chocolate Chunk Pancakes– quick thoughts- interesting recipe, uses very small amounts of brown sugar instead of white sugar.  We both thought the pancakes had a bit more of an elastic texture but still delicious and worth trying.

2.  I decided, this year I want to learn more about the science of cooking and just ordered myself a cookbook that I read about on Heidi’s recommended book list (101 Cookbooks) titled Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking.

3. Three new Berlin sites that will provide me with endless hours of reading on where to eat and shop when I visit the end of this month: Exberliner (not sure how I missed this one!), Uberlin’s food and drink section, and Cafe Kultur Berlin that sadly looks to be done updating its content but still has some terrific recommendations.

4. Design Seeds, for all you colour palette, inspiration board fanatics- this will be your new bf.

5. Raspberri Cupcake’s Salted Caramel Apple with Popcorn recipe (I’m dreaming of this for my wedding)

6. Finally, Call Me Cupcake‘s amazing, self-produced s’mores cupcake video.

Cuisine de Bar by Poilane

For those of you who drool over the aroma and thought of freshly baked bread, which would be most of us, unless you are gluten free, you’ll be excited to read that Poilane, a family run bakery in Paris recently opened a new cafe/bakery/restaurant called Cuisine de Bar by Poilane in Sloane Square in London.

The history of this bakery dates back to 1932 when a young baker from Normandy came to Paris to open a shop. The baker, Lionel Poilane, known for his sourdough bread, achieved success with his breads and even received request for bread from artist, Salvador Dali, who created a house out of bread for him to test if he had mice.  Today, Poilane is still family run and has three locations in Paris and two in London (Cuisine de Bar as the newest edition).

If you’ve been following this blog for a while, you’ll recall this is not the first time I’ve mentioned Poilane.  A couple years ago, I wrote about the bakery’s other famous product, their punition cookies , the cookie beloved by home bakers, foodies and Francophiles all over the blogsphere (here, here, and here), that gained a lot of traction after Dorie Greenspan published a recipe for punitions in her book titled, Paris Sweets.

While I am not in London to taste treats from Poilane’s new outpost, lucky me, my fiance will be heading to London in a couple weeks and I am going to send him to test and report back. That’s what I call team work at its finest.

via hautecompass

Adriano Zumbo

There is nothing I like more is a renegade pastry chef with a strong aesthetic and fearless attitude toward pushing the boundaries of flavour combinations and tastes. Enter Adriano Zumbo, the Australian native who studied locally and in France honing his sugar obsession into beautiful things.  He is probably best known for his macaron and offers sensational flavours such as coconut, green chili and lavender, lychee, passion fruit and tonka bean and salted butter caramel.   On the more daring side, he did a pig’s blood and chocolate macaron.

After participating on Master Chef in Austrialia, Zumbo has become a household name beyond his start in Balmain (a suburb of Sydney).  Now the owner of four locations, The Star, Patisserie Balmain, Patisserie Manly, and Cafe Rozelle, Adriano is patissiere-entrepreneur to the max.  He has even branded his macarons calling them Zumbarons, a smart tactic to get customers to keep him top of mind.  If you can’t make it to Sydney to check him out, Adriano recently published a book, dedicated to his world of sugar, titled, Zumbo; I would highly recommend it- however the recipes don’t look easy.

via perth now

via time out sydney

via crunchy tiger

via chocolate suze

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