ANZAC biscuits. Cookies from down under.

Are you also obsessed with foreign supermarkets? When I came to New Zealand 3 years ago, I spent hours in the supermarket, inspecting every row and wondering about many products, looking desperately for others. And of course buying quite a lot to try them out. And everywhere around NZ you will find ANZAC cookies next to the well-known classics like chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies. After wondering and reading the package, I found out that these cookies were originally sent from families to members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) abroad. I guess they were made without eggs so that they would keep better when being sent halfway around the globe. But nowadays you can make vegan cookies by substituting the butter with a good margarine. 

These cookies are a bit on the hard side, so don't give them to your granny. Unless of course you don't mind dipping them into hot coffee or tea. Oh, and by the way: tomorrow (25. April) is ANZAC day!

Citrus fillets. How to get them.

Maybe you're like me and you don't like the tough white skins on citrus fruits. So when I realized that there's an easy way to cut around them and only have the orange flesh, I was in heaven.

And it's really easy to to, just follow the steps:


Cut off the top and the bottom of the orange. Just look for the navel and the stem and cut away about 5 mm / 1/4 inch thick slices from both ends. Make sure there is no white skin left - if there is, cut away another thin slice till the cut section looks all orange.

Spaghetti Bolognese. Hearty, chunky, highly aromatic.

Isn't curious that half the world eats Spaghetti with Bolognese sauce, except the Italians? They think we are all crazy eating fine, delicate noodles with a thick and chunky ragú. Or even worse: with meatballs.
I admit, getting the appropriate amount of pasta and sauce into your mouth is not really easy with this combination. Either you roll the spaghetti on your fork and all the ground beef falls off. Or you try to scoop up some sauce and the long pasta strands falls of. Feel free to cook rigatoni, ruote, conchiglie or whatever you like. But I stick with Spaghetti, because nothing beats the taste of childhood memories.

Tortellini. Simply with cream and ham.

Cream? Again?

Fruit smoothie. Throw in whatever you like.

When I was a child, my mom often made fruit smoothies for me and my brother. At that time, that kind of drink was completely unknown in Germany and my mom called it "liquado" because of her past in Argentina. She bought a US-made blender and that's the one I'm still using today!

I'm not on a diet - heavens no! - but on the Good Eats episode "Live and let diet", Alton Brown has some very interesting points on making smoothies:

• Buy overripe bananas in bulk, then peel and freeze them. 
• When turning on your blender, start on the lowest setting and move your way up slowly. 
• Make sure you always see a "vortex" - if not, start over at the lowest setting.

And if you don't have a blender, then use a tall vessel and a stick blender. It's a bit messier, but the taste is the same...

I always liked bananas in my smoothie - it's what I use as a base - and then I add everything fruity I have at home. If you're lactose intolerant, leave out the milk and use water or soy milk instead. If you're vegan, leave out the honey, too. If you think you need some extra protein, add a raw egg or just the egg yolk.
And if you have fructose malabsorption, use the fruits your stomach is comfortable with. In my case, bananas and oranges are fine. And I'm still testing the red fruits.

Zürcher Geschnetzeltes. Stroganoff the Swiss way.

Did you know that sweet sherry is a total pain to clean up? Some years ago, a bottle broke with less than half a cup of sherry left. It might not sound so much, but it was a tremendous disaster. Sweet syrupy drops rolling down in slow motion, sticking to everything in their way and running into every little groove. Photo albums, books, shelves, parquet floor, the TV set and various video game consoles got their share. Up to this day, the reset button of the Nintendo N64 still needs a bit of extra persuasion. Not to mention that some weeks ago, when I disassembled book shelves to replace them with new ones, I found various remnants of the sherry fiasco on those hard-to-reach places.

Sherry is a key ingredient in this dish, though I - ahem - stick to the medium-dry variety nowadays. You can leave the mushrooms out if you want to, even the green pepper corns if you must. And binding the sauce with cream cheese is such a clever trick: it brings a certain discreet acidity and as it is thick and often contains a little amount of starch, that saves you from stirring up a slurry. In my hands, corn starch always makes a mess. Luckily, no comparison with sherry.