Recent adventures
Hello everyone. Since it has been so long since I’ve posted anything, I thought I would share some pictures of your recent adventures in our kitchen, around Knoxville, and from our big road trip with Valters and Anda. So, here you go (and remember, you can enlarge the photos by simply clicking on them):
This is my wonton soup with homemade dumplings, carrots, mushrooms, and some mini bok choy from our garden. Brittney and I sort of have a tradition of eating soup on Sundays, so I’ve really expanded my soup recipes to accommodate this habit. As of late Brittney’s favorite has been a cream of cauliflower with roasted red peppers and corn, while I have enjoyed the cream of mushroom and a delicious carrot ginger soup.
Here are some Tennessee spring wildflowers. We picked them while on a walk one day, despite some curious glances from passersby. I guess locals must not go around cutting flowers from road ditches.
This is my German-style farmer’s bread. My recipe is still a work in progress, but it’s getting closer to the real thing. The flavor is very close, but the texture and color is still off. It should be chewier and much darker. I think I need to turn down the heat and prolong the baking time to allow for more of the so-called Maillard reaction which is so key for the development of the flavor and color of rye breads.
Local Tennessee blackberries! Just look at the size of those — some of them were bigger than my thumb. I’ve never had better blackberries than those from here in East Tennessee.
This is an Italian almond cookie called Ricciarelli. They are made from almond paste and toasted and ground almonds. I made these for a parfait of homemade lemon pudding and local blackberries and, wow, was that a great dessert. Too bad I forgot to take a picture. And by the way, these cookies are extremely tasty!
Here I’m in the process of making homemade pasta. Wow, our kitchen looks really dirty in this picture! Sorry.
The final product that day: a homemade spinach and cheese cannelloni topped with my homemade San Marzano tomato sauce.
I don’t make this deli-style rye bread quite as often as the farmer’s bread, but this bread is extremely good toasted, especially when you put a little bit of pure, spun honey on it. A local shop here sells a rape flower spun honey from Germany (yes, in Europe they always specify on the label what the bees were feasting on) that is crazy good. When Gram and Pop were here last spring he loved that honey, so I need to remember to bring him a jar the next time we come home.
Here is an image from the farmer’s market in downtown Knoxville. In this photo you are seeing the food trucks and carts that are becoming very popular. In particular, the one on the right, the Cruze dairy truck, is always swamped with hungry patrons. Since we moved here in 2008, it is impressive how much Knoxville has changed. I think that Asheville, NC has been a great influence, and it’s good to see Knoxville embrace a model that works.
Here is a picture of the milk maids that run the truck and milk bar (yes, a milk bar! It’s like being back in Latvia.). In my opinion, this has been one of the coolest recent developments in Knoxville, that one can now get tasty milk and ice cream from a local dairy whose owners are embracing the recent explosion of foodie culture in America. I need to remember to take a picture of their peanut butter ice cream the next time they are selling it. It is our favorite.
Here we have a spring pasta dish with carrots and broccoli from our garden, topped with a sundried tomato and garlic oil and some pecorino romano cheese. I paired it with a honey-balsamic vinegar glazed chicken breast.
I’m quite proud of this dish. It is Flammkuchen, which is extremely popular in Southwestern Germany and Southeastern France. It is like pizza, but the crust is completely different than a “regular” pizza crust. We topped this one with roasted salmon, roasted red peppers, artichokes, and herb-flavored, German-style quark cheese, which I learned how to make since I’ve never seen it in a store. As it turned out, it’s really not hard to make cheese at home, so I’ve been making Latvian and German-style fresh cheeses over the last few months. And the leftover whey has also come in handy when I feel like a smoothie.
This is one of Brittney’s favorite meals. It’s a New York strip served over wilted spinach and topped with gorgonzola cheese, sauteed mushrooms, and roasted red peppers. On the side — some “Moroccan syle” whipped potatoes. This was something I came up with one day. It’s a 60/40 mixture of sweet potatoes and regular red potatoes which I whip and then season with a bouquet of common North African spices like paprika, cinnamon, cumin, etc.
I just made this dish the other day. It’s a roasted chicken topped with a chanterelle mushroom sauce, which is perhaps the most loved sauce in Latvia. And the cool thing about this dish was that we got the mushrooms at the farmer’s market from a retired teacher who now spends his days picking mushrooms in the forests around East Tennessee. I paired the chicken with some local green beans, which I tossed in a German-style stone ground mustard-Sherry vinegar sauce (I think this is hands down the best way to eat green beans), in addition to some local cabbage, which I braised in a mixture of chicken stock, white balsamic vinegar, and caraway seeds. Yum! Brittney especially loves the braised cabbage. So, now to some pictures from our trip.
We stopped for a picture somewhere in the middle of the Sandhills north and west of North Platte. Honestly, I had forgotten how amazing and beautiful the Sandhills are. I’m so happy that ostensibly the XL pipeline won’t be going through there. From what I’ve read about the tar sand oil and what happens when there is a spill, Nebraskans did a noble thing by fighting against it. If you want to learn more about this new type of oil, read this great piece: http://www.npr.org/2012/08/16/158025375/when-this-oil-spills-its-a-whole-new-monster?sc=tw
A nice picture of Brittney standing amid the prairie grasses just outside of Chadron.
Here we are on a bluff overlooking the Missouri River valley in Hermann, MO.
As many of you know, I never pass up a chance to visit a cathedral. Here, then, is the St. Paul Cathedral in St. Paul, MN.
When we stopped to visit our friends in St. Louis, we ventured over to the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Louis. This place was really unique, as I had never been inside of a Neo-Byzantine style church. The mosaics were breathtaking.
This place was also really cool. It is the City Museum of St. Louis. They took an abandoned industrial building and turned it into this crazy, jungle gym-like place. For instance, they converted the circular towers on the right into these gigantic slides.
Finally, here is a photo of my favorite spot on the trip. We were driving on some random gravel road in the Badlands when we discovered this awe-inspiring view.
crookedtimberofhumanity 