A rhubarb kind of day

Yesterday my man and I took the in-laws and the twins to our latest favourite Berlin spot. I REALLY don't want to tell you about it as it is like a slice of heaven on a summer's day: dappled sunlight, large leafy trees to lounge under, a quaint little laden nearby selling artisan bread, pickles and, strangely enough, home knitted hats that look like giant strawberries. As nobody apart from the odd busload full of botanical enthusiasts seems to have discovered the place yet, we are treating it as our private back garden and go there, babies in tow, oh... about twice a week.

Anyway. It became a rhubarb kind of day. When we arrived, there were babies to be fed, so to the café we went, to grab the last shady table and a slice of rhubarb streusel pie. Not many do streusel like the Germans but this one was particularly nice. Crumbly, quite hard bits of, well, crumble, and a rhubarb slush that wasn't too sweet nor too tart.

My son, with all his six months, had a little flirt with the lady from the laden. I didn't want him to miss this opportunity to practise his winning crooked gummy smile, and really, you can't have too many people drooling over you even at that age, right? So into the laden we went, to have a mosey round. We came out clutching a bit of straw from one of the decorations (son) and a wee bottle of rhubarb cordial (me). I envisioned myself having a few drops in my prosecco one evening very soon.

Then we did the dappled sunlight under the trees bit, while eating a mountain of packed sandwiches. Once back home and out and about in the kiez, we came across a woman who grows vegetables on a farm just outside of Berlin and sells her vegetables in a weekly box type scheme. To advertise her wares she gave us, of all things, two stalks of rhubarb. It wasn't much to work with, but after the streusel experience I was keen to make a crumble. This is the result — the culmination of a very rhubarby day indeed.

Rhubarb, apple and ginger crumble

2 stalks of rhubarb, trimmed and chopped

50 g demerara sugar

2 apples, peeled and chopped

2 pieces of stem ginger, chopped

100 g brown sugar (I used a mix of demerara and palm sugar)

100 g flour

100 g cold butter, diced

50 g oats

Preheat the oven to 180˚C. Place the rhubarb and demerara sugar into a saucepan and add a splash of water. Bring to the boil and simmer until softened. Put the butter, brown sugar, flour and oats into a bowl and quickly rub together until you have a crumbly topping. Put into the fridge until you need it.

Spread the apples in an even layer into an oven dish. Mix the ginger with the rhubarb and spoon it sort of evenly over the apples. Top with the crumble mixture. Bake in the oven for 40 minutes until browned and bubbling. Serve in bowls with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or some (unwhipped) cream.

Späth-Arboretum der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Späthstraße 80/81, 12437 Berlin, website

The opposite of food envy

It's not all that unusual. And it's not just me, either. You'll recognise it too. You'll have cooked a promising, grand scale new recipe. Perhaps it's for a dinner party with the in-laws or long lost friends, or a cosy dinner for your man. Whichever way, you will have poured your love into it, slaved over it and licked your lips at the prospect. But then you sit down for it, have a bite and think: oh...

It's the opposite of food envy, it's food disappointment.

Yesterday, while tidying away a stack of old magazines, I came across a booklet full of sweet treats in aid of a cancer charity. I leafed through, and got all salivatory over this cake, thought out by a London cake-maker-to-the-stars. I won't mention names, as I am sure she (normally) makes quite lovely cakes. The thing was, she boasted that this was one of her favourites and would taste divine. It had apple, rosemary and not a lot of sugar in it. I got excited. I baked the cake. I ate a slice right when it came out of the oven. I ate another slice when the cake had cooled (maybe the flavours would come out better). But all I could think was: oh...

Looks nice enough, doesn't it?

Jelly beans

The product Sour jelly beans

The ingredients Sugar, glucose syrup, water, modified cornstarch, acidifiers E296 (malic acid, found in fruit) E297 (fumaric acid, found in fruit) E330 (citric acid), flavourings, glazing agents E901 (bees wax) E903 (canauba wax , from trees) E904 (shellac, from lice), fruit an plant concentrates (algae, safflower, nettle, spinach, turmeric), colourings E100 (turmeric) E120 (cochineal - made of a crushed scale insect) E171 (titanium dioxide - a mineral).

The blurb Natural colourings and flavourings

My thoughts They are jelly beans. The actual ingredients are basically sugar and sugar, cornstarch and a whole load of E-numbers, including bits of insects), how much does it really matter that the ingredients are natural? It's candy for crying out loud. It's hardly going to be healthy now is it? But hang on, they've natural colourings and flavourings. That's all right then.

(Did I eat them? Yes. Were they nice? Yes. Do I care about the natural stuff? Nah. If I wanted something all natural I wouldn't be eating jelly beans. End of.)

The perfect egg

My first lie in in months, breakfast at one pm and the perfect egg. Happy Sunday!

Fourth time lucky

It took not three but four times before I found my name there: the contributors' page of Allerhande magazine. Only the second most read magazine in the Netherlands! I have been telling people, quite proudly, that I'm working for them for several years now (not a word of a lie either) but the proof was never in the pudding: my name has, until now, been missing from that final page. Making me look like a total git. And a bit of a fibber. When, really, REALLY, I'd been working for them all along.

One of the recipe cards for which I edited the recipes

But now, this Easter issue, the time has finally come: my name, though misspelt, is there in black and white. Fourth time lucky. Happy Easter!

Result

You'll find some of my favourite recipes from this issue here.

Work a lot: Roast Niyom Coffee, Chiang Mai

The area, on the studenty side of Chiang Mai, is renowned for its good coffee. And with Chiang Mai being the coffee capital of Thailand, that's saying something. But still... Driving there at noon on a sunny October day, through a labyrinth of dusty roads and smelly exhaust fumes breathed out by a thousand fellow mopeds, I couldn't quite find what I was hoping for: coffee heaven. 

(My quest reminded me of driving around Los Angeles, looking for the city centre. I couldn't quite find it then either.) I found a bakery selling the most divine, buttery milk buns. I found a little restaurant with an outdoor kitchen serving blue noodles. But a cute coffee place to linger away a few hours? Not in sight.

The milk bun factory

There were coffee places all right. Big, McDonald's style set-ups, with overhead menu's, meal deals and stark interiors. Places too empty to contemplate actually sitting down in. Who wants to drink their coffee alone, in a vast space, without a buzz or any people watching to be done?

When I was about ready to drive off again, mission unsuccessful apart from the cardboard box full of milky buns I scored, I passed it: the coffee place I was hoping to find. Along a busy road, in the parking lot of a rather awful residential building that also housed the café's toilet (a bit of a trek, admittedly) - it was hardly the ideal location. But inside I found an oasis of air con coolness, Thai quiet busy-ness and free wifi. In the middle of the café, a tree was protruding through the ceiling. 

It's bird! It's a plane! No, it's a massive tree trunk

The coffees were made to perfection, with an eye for detail that only the Asians seem to possess.

The place was filled with young people working on laptops or having informal meetings. I felt a pang of regret at not having my laptop with me nor having any work to do. This would be a wonderful office away from home. (Here I was, on holiday, wishing I was working... What was going on?) It turned out to be my favourite Chiang Mai hangout. I did the only thing I could and wiled away a few consecutive mornings there, slowly sipping my coffee to make it last. With a milky bun on the side.

Roast Niyom Coffee, Siri Mangkalajam Road, Chiang Mai, Thailand, facebook

Eat a lot: Sala da Mangiare, Neukölln

These last few weeks, glued as I have been to my daily trio of hospital ward, sofa and breast pump, I have taken to reading the papers on my ipad. And so, one morning at around 4 am, I read restaurant critic Jay Rayner's recent review in the Observer, in which he waxed lyrical about a friendly neighbourhood place. "You know the sort of thing. Just enough tables to make it work. The kind of food “real” people want to eat; dishes that are classy and intense without being up themselves. Lots of regulars. More like eating at a friend’s kitchen table than at some stuffy joint."

Sounds lovely doesn't it? In an eighties Cheers kind of way. Where everybody knows your nay-hay-hame... (If you're not singing the Cheers theme tune by now, feel very lucky. You're one of the young ones!)

Through my sleepy haze, I realised: I know one of those places. In fact, it's right around my corner and I visited it quite recently. Yet it's a lifetime ago, when I was not yet used to the daily soundtrack of saturation monitors beeping.

I had to dig quite deeply into my memory - had I really been there less than three months ago or was it all a dream? This was in no way a reflection on the memorability of the food served at Sala da Mangiare, as it was absolutely lovely. So was the minimalist setting of whitewashed walls, dark wooden furniture and exposed brickwork. And the company of Francesco; Italian taste-bud-on-legs and a brilliant guide to the city's true Italian eateries. Francesco is from the same Italian region as the owners of the restaurant, Emilia Romagna, and so eating the regional food is a trip down memory lane for him too.