butter toast

octopus rice

cookies cake

pork à la alentejana

pork steaks with ‘shrooms

chocolate salami

palmier

mom’s marmelade

mom’s tomato jam

sweet bean tartelet

pão d’ul

P.’s mom meatballs

pumpkin’s smoked sausage

galão

punched potatoes

limiano cheese

natas

broa de mel

berlin ball (the real ones!)

codfish burger with açorda

burger with potatoes

fancy french pastry

another french pastry

strawberry-profiterole pie

grelos (broccoli rabe)

butter croissant

cheese/ham toast

croissants

butter toast

jesuíta

chocolate croissant

salmon with chestnuts

another berlin ball

pastel de nata

alheiras

meia de leite

my stomach is grumbling already!

when i make these lists, i get the feeling people might think we only eat crap… well, it isn’t true. what you see here is a glimpse, a condensed version of the more interesting things me and P eat. the other stuff, the plain omelettes, soups and other very mundane dishes are not that interesting, and are therefore omitted. believe it or not, all in all, we eat quite decently. :)

so we did! about a year ago, we drove all the way to ptuj on a mission. i remember it was unbelievably cold and windy, and yet we sticked around through the folklore and performances, warming our hands on steaming mugs of glühwein (one of the best i’d tried so far!) until finally the kurenti came out. i froze my fingers off making a video of the whole thing, and with the move to berlin, never got around to publish it… so here it is now:

quite something, isn’t it? i don’t think carnival will ever be the same without these big guys and their cowbell cacophony!

and of course, we stopped at the famous trojane krofi house that everyone had told us about, and bought a bunch of them for the road!

i don’t think they were the best we’ve had in slovenia, but there were certainly up there in the top 5, and well worth the short detour on the highway! :)

we end up thinking about postcards (and postcrossing) all the time. that, and food.

so our friend c. surprised us by baking these cookies for us, a while back. she even did the icing with special sparkling dust!

we were so happy and surprised! aren’t they adorable? our friends know us so well! :D

there’s a lot of butter and sugar and heaps of peanut butter in this recipe, and the amount of salt alone might make you raise your eyebrow, but fear not! the salt will intensify the peanut butter taste, and elevate it to memorable awesomeness!

“heavenly”, “paradisiacal” and “orgasmic” were some of the words used around the table to describe these cookies. they didn’t last long, and were subsequently baked in batches and shipped to family members across the country – because something this good deserves to be shared with the people you love. try them! :)

first up (cheese will always come first), halloumi!

we quite like halloumi. traditional from cyprus, it’s a cheese made with goat and sheep’s milk. it feels like mozarella, but saltier, and since it is usually fried or grilled, it reminds us a bit of the slovenian fried cheese. all the falafel shops seem to have a variation of the halloumi salad above, usually with some mint in them. yum! :)

you need an electric table-top grill, which has small individual pans, where you make your dishes. you can use anything you want on it, but things like mushrooms, boiled potatoes, cold meats and cheese are customary. the food is put on the small pans and covered with cheese. you can also grill other things on top of it.

i think the best part about it is that it makes dinner really easy to have with friends. there’s something for everyone, and we can cook and eat dinner simultaneously, while chatting. all you have to do is set the table with everything you want – this way there isn’t one single person slaving away in the kitchen while the others are being entertained elsewhere. plus, melted cheese is like bacon… it makes everything better! :)

the sign outside states “don’t die before trying”, and so, try we did. and then it became a sort of ritual: every time we were nearby, the caffeine siren calling would divert us from our path straight into this tiny little coffee shop. well, the coffee and the cheesecake, if we’re being honest. it’s really good.

i don’t know enough about coffee to comment beyond “i like it” – so their fancy machine has little allure on a commoner like me.

but sometimes, good coffee has this quality of making time go slower while you sip. have you noticed? this is one of those coffees. you take a sip, taste the foam, close your eyes and feel all is well with the world. you take a bite of that cheesecake and let it melt in your tongue, slowly. yup, you don’t even notice the impatient baristas anymore. all is well. :)

bonanza is on oderberger straße, 35 near mauerpark.

other yummy things we’ve tried:

the minute i knew hudsons cakes was going to be in the fair, i knew i wanted a slice of their “chocolate lausitzer porter” cake. we had tried it before, and it stuck with us. it’s so good, moist but not too chocolatey… just perfect.

like they say around here, lecker! :)

i found the recipe at chez larssons, and the only tweak we did was to double the amount of cardamom (because we’re all cardamom junkies around here).

you’ll need:

for the dough:
100 grams of butter
5 decilitres of milk
50 grams of yeast
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 decilitres of Sugar
2 tsp ground cardamom
5.4 cups of wheat flour

for the filling:
100 grams of butter
1 decilitre of sugar
2 tsp cinnamon

for the top:
1 egg
pearl sugar

procedure:
melt the butter, add the milk and heat until finger warm (not too hot!). crumble the yeast into a bowl. add a little bit of the milk/butter mixture and stir until the yeast is dissolved. add the rest of the milk/butter mixture, salt, sugar and ground cardamom and 2/3 of the flour.

mix and add flour until the dough comes off the sides of the bowl. save a little bit of flour for later.

cover the dough with a tea towel and let it rise until double the size, about 35-40 minutes.

mix the dough for a few minutes in the bowl and then knead it on the flour dusted work top with the rest of the flour, until it doesn’t stick too much.

then divide the dough into two equal parts. use a rolling pin to flatten the two dough parts into 20×40 cm each. mix the filling ingredients in a small bowl and spread the butter/sugar/cinnamon filling on the dough.

fold dough in half length-wise, then cut and twist according to the photos on this post so that you make pretty little knots.

put the knots on a covered or greased baking sheet. let rise under a tea towel for 20 minutes. whisk the egg in a bowl and use a pastry brush to brush the egg onto the knots. sprinkle some pearl sugar on top.

place in the middle of a 250C oven for 8-10 minutes until gloriously brown.

you’ll be licking your hands too…