30 small carrots or enough larger ones cut lengthways to make about 30 pieces, tossed in a sauce of 3 tblsp soy sauce, 1 tblsp sambal oelek, 1 tblsp avocaco oil, 2 tblsp honey (or maple syrup if you want to make it completely vegan), and a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper. Place in one layer in a baking tray, preserving the remainder of the sauce.
Bake in one layer for a total of 45 to 50 minutes. It is OK for the carrots to turn slightly charred at the edges.
Halfway through, turn the pieces, and spoon over the remaining sauce.
Serve as a side or, as in this case, a main course with lentils and a handful of balcony greens and finely chopped garlic. Drizzled with a tahini dressing.
Catching up with Maxie, always enjoyable, meeting in “my” ground-floor Café Nea, always enjoyable :-). The café does not have a website, but I have just discovered that she already has many – very well-deserved – top google reviews.
Then a leisurely walk past Anhalter Bahnhof and across Park am Gleisdreieck. On the edges of the park we saw many examples of what used to be boring, water-guzzling, fertilizer-craving lawns and what they quickly get to look like when left alone and never mowed (also saving the fossil fuels it takes to mow them every five minutes after they have been fed inordinate amounts of water and fertilizer in order to grow …. surreal). The resulting, native, wild-flowers are so pretty – a heartwarming sight.
For once, I did not feel like schlepping my camera along, so the photos are just snaps taken with my phone.
Our goal was Das Kleine Grosz Museum. It is indeed small, but a nice place to visit with a permanent exhibition about the life of one of my favourite caricaturists, George Grosz, and upstairs changing exhibitions with a theme, currently “The Stick Men”.
From the permanent collection, one that I have seen several times, called “The Menace” from 1934. George Grosz had foresight, as well as humour:
From the upstairs temporary exhibit (The Stick Men):
The entrance and the café are in a former petrol tank from the 1950s, very tastefully renovated. The café has outdoor seating in a small but peaceful garden – a true oasis in an unlikely part of town (Bülowstraße).
I highly recommend a visit to this little gem.
On the way back, we spotted a couple of interesting murals in a side street (Bülowstraße is already famous for a large number of huge murals).
Heading back towards Park am Gleisdreieck, Maxie showed me a café which I had heard a lot about but could never figure out exactly where it was: Café Eule, a true paradise in good weather, and definitely one to visit in the not too distant future. (People were seated around the quite large garden area belonging to the café, so I did not take photos).
I was horrified to learn in a documentary on Danish TV that there are people – quite a lot of people, by the sound of it – who throw out food for the simple reason that they can afford buying new food tomorrow.
To me, any kind of food waste is immoral, reprehensible, and unethical, and there has to be a law against it. Unless something has started to rot or gone mouldy or has otherwise morphed into some kind of health hazard, I never throw out food, but I admit I could be more creative with leftovers. Starting now:
I had some potatoes, some large white beans and some quinoa that all needed to be used up. I had fairly equal amounts, approx 260 g, and all were already boiled.
I blitzed the potatoes and the beans with 1 tsp garam masala, a half tsp paprika, a knob of fresh ginger finely chopped, and 2tblsp tomato paste, to a fine mash.
I added the quinoa, a red onion, sliced, and three garlic cloves, chopped, and blitzed a bit more but trying to leave a bit of texture this time.
I formed the mixture into patties (in this case six) and fried them for a few minutes in avocado oil. They were not easy to handle, so I shaped and flattened them once they were in the pan. I quite like the rustic look anyway, and since my plating and presentation skills are non-existent and I end up visually ruining even the nicest looking dish – who cares?
(And yes, I know the WFPB police is going to come after me for the avocado oil, but I am not ready to give up avocado oil for frying, nor olive oil and co. for salad dressings and hummus, and quite frankly, I doubt I ever will be, though I have of course reduced consumption considerably now that I know how bad they are for people who had – not to mention those who have – any form of hormone receptive cancer as apparently, they drive up estrogen levels, in addition to actually being quite highly processed.)
Whizz the peppercorns, garlic, ginger and chilli in a small food processor until finely chopped.
Add the tomato purée, honey, soy sauce, avocado oil, salt and 2 tblsp cold water and whizz to a loose paste.
Halve the aubergines lengthways, then deeply score in a criss-cross pattern, taking care not to cut through the skin.
Spread the paste on them, making sure it gets into the crevices. I used a baking brush for this. I did not manage to get all the paste in/onto the aubergines the first time around, so I added the rest after removing the foil and baking the second time around.
Place in an oven-proof dish, cover with foil and roast for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the size of the aubergines.
Remove the foil, spoon over any leftover paste, and roast uncovered for a further 20 to 30 minutes, until very tender and browned.
Drizzle with the sesame oil, let rest for 5 minutes, then garnish.
PS, on this occasion, dessert was blueberries in home-made cashew-nut yoghurt, drizzled with a bit of honey :-).
Approx 350 g small broccoli florets and finely sliced broccoli stems
50 g sunflower seeds
50 g Tomato paste
10 cloves garlic
Large knob fresh ginger
Juice and grated rind of a lemon
1 tblsp cumin seeds
1 tblsp mustard seeds
1 tblsp coriander seeds
Chili flakes to taste
Salt
Approx 300 ml water
Preheat the oven to 180 C.
Simmer the potato cubes covered in water for five to eight minutes. Add the broccoli for the last couple of minutes. Drain very well and spread in a relatively flat oiled dish, in one layer but packed quite tightly. The dish in the photo is approx. 24×24 cm.
By the way, I also added a couple of tblsp cooked quinoa and ditto lentils – leftovers that needed to be used up.
Meanwhile, blend the other ingredients to a thick sauce (add water incrementally) which can easily be spread on top of the potato/broccoli.
The first assignment in Strudelmedia’s class: Stretch your creative muscles (hahaha as if I actually have any creative muscles to stretch) is: take eight to ten photos of a public bench (the same bench – not eight to ten different benches. The bench, details of the bench, what goes on around the bench, and so on.
So on Max’s weekly day off from me, off I went to Urbanhafen in search of a photogenic bench. Or just a bench. Benches are not photogenic. I very rarely see a nice-looking bench.
Anyway, I was not in photography mode, the sun was out most of the time which I don’t particularly like, I could not see what was going on on the screen, it was one of those days where I hated Berlin, and people, and life. I took about a hundred awful photos, all blurry and grainy and either over- or underexposed.
I have tried to make the best of the following short-list, and will whittle it down to ten, nine or eight photos later:
