Pure vegan delight, made with coconut milk but just as rich as ice cream:

Moscow Mule

(from Williams-Sonoma Taste, Summer 2002)

It's time for spring / summer beverages, and the Moscow Mule is one of my favorites. Williams-Sonoma Taste was a short-lived magazine, possibly just one issue, but it was good. The following recipe makes 1 drink.

1 1/2 oz. vodka
juice of 1/2 a lime
6-8 oz. ginger beer or ginger ale
lime slice

Place ice cubes in a highball glass; pour vodka and lime juice over them. Fill with the ginger beer; stir, and add lime slice.

Black Peppercorns

How many of you can boast that you buy black peppercorns in 9-ounce containers? Same size as the typical grated Parmesan cheese container. Kudos to my husband for finding them in this quantity; boy do we ever go through these things.

Dinner in Woodstock: A Tribute to My Grandmother

Since my subject is the old-timey menu served up today by my 98-year-old grandmother, I’m using the word “dinner” in the old-fashioned sense of the midday meal. My grandmother, Mescal Hornbeck, who will turn 99 in June, honored my visit with a highly genteel and refined luncheon with four of her closest friends, plus the fiancé of one of the ladies. The theme of the menu was food from her childhood, and so we had Oyster Stew and Indian Pudding. Those members of the party who were over 60 – three of our guests, as well as Mescal herself – recognized right away just what she was trying to do here, saying they hadn’t had either of these dishes in ages.

Grandma Mescal was born in 1911 in West Shokan, a rural outpost in upstate New York. She has lived in New York most of her life, except for a period spent in Lexington, Kentucky, for my grandfather’s career. (That’s how I come to have a family from Kentucky and a family from New York.) Bemoaning the demise of oyster stew in popularity, she says that oyster stew used to be “the big thing” served at “all the restaurants all around the country.” When I suggested that perhaps it was a northeastern thing, she said, “You wouldn’t know, you’re too young to remember.” (This is one thing I love about my grandmother, she always reminds me how young I am!)

Indian pudding, well, maybe it has a more PC name nowadays, but I’ve never tasted it before by this or any other name. It was tasty, and reminded me of my great-grandmother’s puddings I used to have as a child.

Grandma Mescal talks a lot about how different things are from when she was growing up, which is endlessly fascinating. It’s remarkable that she has such detailed memories of so many of her past experiences. She tells me that “a woman 50 years ago wouldn’t have been caught half dead” serving string beans dry scattered around on a plate and only half cooked; veggies were cooked until they were "DONE - not mushy" and served in their juices, and you often had a sauce with them, based on milk being added to the cooking juices to bring out the flavor. “A lot of things tasted better then than they do now,” according to Grandma; there’s no denying that cooking styles and tastes have changed considerably.

After dinner I served a bowl of my candied walnuts that I had made for Mescal, and her friends honored me by saying I had inherited my grandmother's love of cooking. Thank goodness for good genes.

Grandma Mescal’s Oyster Stew

Quantities are determined by the number of people dining. Start with at least 5 oysters per person (6 or 7 per person on average), and the oysters have to be FRESH! Get them shucked specially for you. Grandma thinks the ones that come pre-shucked in the market (which are much cheaper) aren’t worth spit.

Cook the oysters and their juice in the top of a hot double boiler, cooking them just until the edges get a little crinkly – not very long.

Meanwhile heat your milk – about two ladles full per person – and add a chunk of butter and some salt and pepper. For the milk you can use whole milk, two percent, half-and-half, or whatever you like.

Then pour the oysters into the milk and get it warm, but you MUST be sure you DON’T BOIL THE OYSTERS! There’s nothing worse than overcooked oysters.

That’s all there is to it!

Indian Pudding

Mix 5 Tablespoons stone-ground corn meal to 1 quart of cold milk; scald the milk, then cook in the top of a double boiler 20 minutes. Then add 2 Tablespoons of butter, 5 oz. molasses, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 2 eggs well beaten. Turn into buttered pudding dish [she used a glass loaf pan] and pour 1 cup cold milk over mixture.

Bake 1 hour in moderate 350 degree oven. Delicious served with vanilla ice cream. Servings: 8.

(The recipe called for a cup of molasses, but Mescal thought this was way too much; she used just over half a cup and it had a very nice flavor.)

Catfish Gumbo

It's okra season, and gumbo is a good way to use up this abundant vegetable. One of our neighbors keeps bringing us bags of okra from his garden, which is such a treat! What I learned, growing up in the South (first Texas and later Kentucky) is that any gumbo has to have okra in it; without okra, it's just not gumbo.

This recipe comes from The Little Gumbo Book by Gwen McKee (Quail Ridge Press, 1986), which has 27 different gumbo recipes. I've made this one twice, and it is a very reliable recipe -- meaning the end results are reliably good. The book raves about all its recipes with the same level of glowing endorsement -- i.e., "This is incredibly delicious – try it! Easy to make, incredibly delicious!" In this case, I agree.

2 lb. catfish fillets or nuggets
6 c. water
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 stick butter
3 Tbsp. flour
1 c. chopped onion
1 c. chopped bell pepper
2 c. chopped celery
1 lb. chopped okra
1 (28-oz.) can tomatoes, chopped
1/2 tsp. K’s Cajun Seasoning (or salt, pepper, and red pepper)
1/2 tsp. thyme
1 Tbsp. chopped parsley

Cook cleaned fish in boiling, salted water till it breaks apart with a fork (only takes a few minutes). Remove fish, debone, cut in chunks, and reserve stock.

Melt butter in skillet; add flour and stir till lightly browned. Toss chopped vegetables into roux and heat sill softened, stirring often.

Mix everything together – except fish – in a pot with stock and simmer about an hour.

Add fish and simmer 30-45 minutes. Serve over rice with a sprinkle of chopped parsley. Serve gumbo filé on the side. (Filé is a powder made from ground sassafras leaves, and has a delicate flavor; it also thickens the gumbo.)

Serves 8.

Addictive Roasted Veggie Pasta

N. made this for dinner last night, and we both realized that whenever we have this dish, we can't stop eating it -- that's why I'm calling it Addictive Roasted Veggie Pasta. It comes from one of the Sundays at Moosewood cookbooks, I can't remember which one, and since I don't have the book here in Berlin, the recipe as given below doesn't have all the precise information you'll find in the book. It doesn't have the sort of crunchy-granola-hippy aesthetic that you might associate with the original Moosewood cookbook of 1977; instead its sophisticated ingredients (roasted fennel and asparagus) and flavorful dressing seem more like an updated classic.

One of the key ingredients is asparagus, but that's not available in Germany in June so we used green beans last night and the dish was almost as good. The dressing is the "secret weapon," so to speak, which - combined with the feta and the olives - makes the whole thing irresistable.

1 large fennel bulb
1 lb. asparagus
1 large red onion
olive oil (about 1/4 cup?)
8 oz. dry pasta
pitted calamata olives
tomatoes
feta cheese
flat leaf parsley

Dressing:
1/4 c. olive oil
juice of 1 lemon
garlic, freshly pressed
1 tsp. mustard
salt and pepper to taste

Thinly slice the fennel and onion; cut asparagus into 1-inch pieces. Toss with olive oil and roast at 350 degrees for 20 minutes, tossing again twice during cooking.

Meanwhile, boil the pasta and chop the tomatoes, feta, and parsley. Cut olives in half. (Recipe calls for 1 dozen olives, but we use more.)

Mix the dressing; toss it with the roasted veggies and pasta. Toss in the olives, tomatoes, feta and parsley (or, alternatively, don’t toss in the feta but serve the dish with the feta on top).

Tadshikischen Teestube (Tajiki Tea Room), Berlin

When our friends were visiting us recently they took us to this fantastic, rather hidden tea room located very close to the Museumsinsel. It's a small place so reservations are highly recommended, but since we got there early we were able to be served without one. According to the menu, the first tea room in the world was in Tajikistan. I don't know if I believe it, but I do accept that this represents a longstanding traditional form of social interaction. Women were not allowed (in Tajikistan, that is -- they are allowed in Berlin).

They have a wide selection of teas from every cultural tradition, from English to Chinese; and a fairly big menu, but we were only there for "kaffee und kuchen."
















They do not seem to have their own website, but here are some links that can help you find this place:

Restaurant review from berlin.de .

From qype.com.

From Berliner Morgenpost.