Recipes

Shiitake Pasta Sauce

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Shiitake Pasta Sauce

Since so many health experts have credited shiitake mushrooms with immune strengthening abilities, I wanted to include them in an easy to prepare dish. I also selected fresh thyme and oregano for their purported anti-viral properties; they also add a fresh and unique flavor to this recipe.

Before sharing this recipe, I should probably digress a little and share that I have not always been fond of mushrooms.  Raised in Germany, our family was not particularly familiar with mushrooms and certainly never collected any ourselves. To my knowledge, no one that I knew was very familiar with the types of mushrooms that would be safe to eat. During those days, mushrooms were not easily found in grocery stores. Mushrooms always seemed to have an air of danger attached to them. Probably too many images of toadstools in fairy tales.  A distant aunt apparently knew quite a bit about how to forage safely, but sadly, I never had an opportunity to go along on one of her forest walks. If I went out foraging today, I would  seek out someone who is far more familiar with the varying types of fungi growing in the forests than I am. Continue reading →

Pizza with Onion Confit

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Pizza with Onion Confit

Here we are, with our first recipe for 2013 with Baking with Julia/Tuesdays with Dorie: Pizza with Onion Confit. Delving into making pizza probably wouldn’t have been a personal choice to make, especially so close after the holidays. But upon closer examination of the recipe, it turned out to be a much lighter version as far as calories  are concerned and minus the excessive cheese. The type of pizza crust in this recipe reminded me of my travels through Northern Italy. Just out of college,  and traveling with several American students, we stopped by some local restaurants in the Northern Italian Alps, and all of them served pizza with a rather crispy crust, topped with delicious herbs, fresh tomatoes and very small amounts of locally made cheese – mostly goat cheese, or some type of mozzarella. Continue reading →

Gluten Free Gingerbread

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Gluten Free Gingerbread

Gingerbread, for so many of us, is synonymous with the Christmas holidays. There are certainly many different types of recipes available, but this particular one is one of our family’s favorites, and has been converted into gluten free, using Oma’s special recipe. Gingerbread was Oma’s specialty around Christmas and I have many fond memories of her in her tiny kitchen, lovingly preparing this delicacy, made just once a year. If she invited one of us to help her, that was truly special. It is not a ginger cake, but a true traditional German-style gingerbread. While baking, it will fill your house with the beautiful scent of its combination of spices – ginger, anise, cloves and cinnamon.  In the olden days, this type of gingerbread was made using peculiar ingredients, such as “Hirschhornsalz,” “potash” and “natron.”  Some of these ingredients supposedly provided softness to the dough, and, no doubt, insured  greater longevity of the end product. After researching these ingredients, that  makes sense, especially considering the Ancient Egyptians used some of them  for embalming purposes. Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?!? Naturally, we would never use any of these more questionable ingredients in our recipes. If you insist on their inclusion, you may do so at your own risk. However, they are simply unnecessary, and we don’t know why anyone would even want to. Continue reading →