Unfortunately I´m not exactly in Venice, not physically at least, but all the more in my mind. For two weeks now I have been writing a novel taking place in Venice. When I´m not working, I´m looking at old photos from Venice, watching all the movies I can get hold of which take place in Venice, reading fiction and non-fiction – I´m sure you can guess the setting. I missed out a bit on the food, but today I cooked a hearty ragu, Venician, of course.

It wasn´t much laborious. Yesterday I mixed the marinade, put in the beef, left it overnight to infuse and today it simmered slowly until done. The recipe is adapted from a beautiful cookbook about Venetian heritage cooking, unfortunately it is only available in German: Genießen mit Vivaldi. But over the next few weeks I am going to cook some recipes from this book and share them with you.

Venetian Ragu

Adapted from Genießen mit Vivaldi, Eva G. Baur

Serves 4

Ingredients:

1 kg beef

100 g bacon

Marinade:

3 onions

4 cloves of garlic

2 stakes of celery

4 Tbsp. olive oil

6 bay leafs

8 cloves

sage (I took 15 rather big leafs)

1 Tbsp. juniper berries

1,5  Tbsp. chopped thyme (if you are using dried thyme, take half the amount)

1,5 Tbsp chopped rosemary (if you are using dried, take half the amount)

2-3 small cinnamon sticks

1 bottle full-bodied red wine (I used South African Merlot)

1/3 cup good red wine vinegar

Salt, Pepper

1 tsp. sugar (or a bit more after your liking)

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp flour

Method

1. Mix red wine, vinegar, salt, spices and herbs in a bowl.

2. Cut the beef into cubes. I like them a little larger, I think it looks nice and the beef will be more tender this way. Chop onions and garlic roughly, put everything  into the marinade, cover and let sit for about 24 hours, at least 5-6 hours. I made the preparations for the ragu rather late in the evening, after my work was done.

3. The next day, about 3 hours before you like to eat the ragu, dice the bacon, melt the butter with the olive oil in a dutch oven or a deep big skillet and fry the bacon until golden brown.

4. Take the beef out of the marinade and put it dry. Dust it with the flour, then fry it in the butter-oil mixture. It should get really dark brown on all sides, but not scorch.

5. Add bacon, marinade and sugar. Cover and let simmer for about 2 hours. (If you like to cook the stew in the oven, preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C and let the ragu stew for 2 hours.)

6. Taste, add a bit more sugar, if you like it sweeter. Remove bay leafs, cinnamon sticks and juniper berries.

Enjoy!

The ragu is perfect with polenta. My daughter insisted on pasta today, and it was delicious, though.

Next time I will try a half cup of raisins instead of the sugar.

Actually, I wanted to wait with a new post until the new ballhead for my tripod has arrived from USA. My old one got broken some time ago, and the new one is stuck at the German customs office.

But yesterday I baked this heavenly Rueblitorte and it was so delicious that I didn´t want to withhold it from you. Believe me, you have to try it! This recipe is a stunner!

The cake is moist but not in the least soggy, it´s succulent and simultaneously airy (I hope my enthusiasm did not cause me to completely mix up the adjectives).

Besides, the photo´s lack of appeal is more due to our greed than the missing tripod. We tried, but weren´t able to resist the torte, and I cut the cake before the fudge got perfectly firm. In my defence I have to say that initially the cake wasn´t meant for the blog.

This recipe is genuinely Swiss, I brought it back with me from my visit to Zurich last year. In a small cafe I ordered Rueblitorte and expected a kind of carrot cake. To my surprise it turned out to be rather different from the usual carrot cake. I asked for the recipe and had to combine quite a lot of charm, compliments and persistence until I could get hold of it – it combines almonds, carrots, eggs and only a few grams of flour.

The original Rueblitorte came with a thick sugar icing and marzipan carrots, but yesterday I had a craving for chocolate and tried a vanilla chocolate fudge icing (which would also be delicious on its own!).

Ingredients:

Torte:

250 g (8,8 oz) tender carrots, finely shredded

250 g (8,8 oz) almonds

50 g (1,75 oz) wheat flour

zest of 1 lemon

0,5 tsp. ground cinnamon

0,5 tsp. ground ginger

pinch of nutmeg

6 cardamom pods, grounded

5 eggs

160 g (5, 65 oz) sugar

2 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp butter

Chocolate Vanilla Fudge:

80 g (2,8 oz) dark chocolate (I used 80%)

80 g (2,8 oz) unsweetened condense milk

1 package of bourbon vanilla sugar

Method:

Torte:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C (355° Fahrenheit). Dry-roast almonds in a large pan over medium heat until they are golden brown. Pour into a bowl and let cool down, then grind them finely in a food processor.

2. Grease a spring form (or any other cake molds) with 1 tsp butter.

3. Mix almonds, flour, baking powder, spices. In another bowl mix carrots and lemon zest.

4. In a large bowl beat the egg whites until very stiff, during the process add gradually the sugar, then carefully fold in the egg yolks.

5. Heap flour mixture and carrots onto the egg mixture and fold in until just incorporated.

6. Fill the batter into the prepared pan and bake in the preheated oven (middle level) for 40 minutes. The torte is done when an inserted wooden skewer comes out clean. Take out of the oven and let cool for 10 minutes before releasing it from the pan.

7. When the cake is completely cool prepare the the chocolate fudge and cover the cake.

Chocolate Vanilla Fudge:

1. Break the chocolate into smaller pieces, put it in a saucepan or a melting pot with the condensed milk.

2. Stir over low heat just until chocolate is melted and mixture is smooth. Stir in the vanilla sugar. Remove from heat.

3. Spread onto the cake, cover the sides with a pastry brush.

4. Put the torte in the fridge for at least 5 hours. The Rueblitorte is best on the second day.

Here it is, from overseas. My first kitchen machine ever.

I own a food processor, a blender, even a rice cooker, but until this day I´ve never had an electric mixer. I didn´t mind whipping cream, beating eggs and mixing batter by hand. But since I have discovered the joy of baking bread I was longing for a kitchen machine every time I was kneading yeast dough.

I knew which one I wanted: A KitchenAid. Everybody seems to be enthusiastic about them, praises their performance and they are pretty. I wouldn´t exactly go as far as to say function had to follow form but I really love it when both comes together in one item.

It should be rather easy to get one, I thought, and googled them just to choose a color before placing an order on amazon.de. But it was the start of an epic search for the right machine. I had already come to terms with the fact that KitchenAids cost about more than twice the amount in Europe than in USA, but I didn´t know that a completely different league exists on the other side of the ocean! Not only the motors can be as twice as strong, there are also completely different methods of kneading! Suddenly our European 300-Watt machines appeared to be kind of a plaything.

After watching a video on youtube (Yes, I know, it´s a bit strange to watch a video about dough kneading, but even if it´s not really an action movie, it is rather meditative) I wanted one of those bowl lift models with a strong motor and a spiral dough hook. Unfortunately there is the voltage/Hertz problem between Europe and America. I talked to a trusted electrician who works with US-expats since 30 years. He told me it was no problem to use the 110 Volts US-KitchenAid motor with our 220 Volts system. I “just” needed a strong (and quite expensive) transformator which could handle the Hertz-thing, too.

I brooded for a while over that. Adding up costs for shipping, customs duty and the transformator for the KitchenAid would definitely cost -at least- as much as the Artisan one can buy here in Germany. Furthermore, the warranty for US-KitchenAids becomes void when the machines are used outside the 50 states of America. But I had got this crush on the spiral dough hook and its way of simulating hand kneading. Finally, I opted for a stronger US-version.

Finding the perfect model and a trustworthy seller who would accept my credit card, ship to Germany, etc., took me a while. Nobody seemed to answer my Emails; when I phoned everybody was extremely nice and lovely but couldn´t tell me anything without talking to a supervisor before. I don´t know how often I heared: “I´ll be back with you soon.” – which rarely happened.

To cut a long story short: After the sudorific ordering process to my big surprise it worked out, eventually. Today my KitchenAid has arrived. A 450 Watt model, 5 quart bowl – and a spiral dough hook. It´s a beauty, isn´t it? Let´s hope it´ll settle in and last for a long time!

I love Falafel but I do not deep fry. My kitchen is too small for a deep fryer and I don´t like the smell of hot fat lingering in the house. So I just fry my Falafel in a non stick skillet with some olive oil for the taste and usually they look more like patties. On the hunt for the perfect Falafel recipe I tried a lot but until now I was never completely satisfied. This one is the best by far I´ve ever made, crispy on the outside, a slightly moist, almost meaty texture on the inside. (I suppose you could as well deep fry them if you prefer.)

They are not only delicious but the sprouted chickpeas make them also exceptionally healthy. During the germination process vitamin content and accessibility jump up. You don´t taste that the chickpeas have been sprouted because in this recipe they are used in a very early state of the germination.

I served them with the Creamy Feta-Red wine Vinegar Dressing by David Lebovitz and it was so good!

Ingredients:

sprouted chickpeas made from 2.5 cups of dried ones. * (See how to do the sprouting at the bottom of the post.)

0.5 cup bread crumbs

2 cloves of garlic

1/2 tsp. coriander seeds

1 small onion

1 tsp. baking soda

0.5 tsp. baking powder

1 large egg

1 tsp.cumin

1 tsp.paprika

1 tsp. thyme

Salt, pepper

olive oil for frying

Preparation:

1. Put the chickpeas in a food processor with the garlic, onion and spices. Grind until you get a rough moist texture. Add a little water if needed.

2. Move the mixture into a large bowl, add the rest of the ingredients, combine, and put aside, covered, for 30-60 minutes.

3. Wet your hands, shape little balls (about the size of apricots), pat gently to flatten them. Heat olive oil in a non stick skillet and fry until crispy, for about 5 minutes each side.

3. Serve hot!

Sprouting chickpeas:

Rinse the chickpeas well and soak them in water for 12 – 24 hours. Drain, rinse and leave the chickpeas just in the colander on a warm and bright place. I don´t bother covering them. After about 6 hours they have built a kind of tiny tale and are ready to use. If you prefer to sprout them a little longer rinse them 2 -3 times a day until they form a longer tail, but for the Falafel I would recommend using them at the latest on the second day.