At our brunch on Saturday, my friend Joan L. brought the most delicious, flavorful, lemony cake imaginable. Come to find out it’s Ina Garten’s recipe. From her cookbook, Barefoot Contessa Parties! (which I don’t have), but the internet, being the internet, I found dozens of copies of it on multiple websites. Lots of other food bloggers have done a write-up about this, but my copy came from Oprah, when she had Ina Garten on her show some while back.

It uses the zest from 6-8 lemons plus a LOT of fresh squeezed lemon juice. Not only in the cake, but in the syrup and the frosting. No wonder it’s lemony flavored. And it has the lightest texture. Most likely from the addition of buttermilk. These are made in loaf pans, then you dribble a lemony syrup all over the cakes that sinks in, and once completely cooled you drizzle it with a white icing.

No question, this is a great cake. If you’re blessed with a lemon tree, this is a must-bake for you. Our Meyer lemon tree doesn’t have ripe lemons yet. I have juice in the freezer, but not any zest. And have you seen the price of lemons, even here in Southern California? I think I paid 89 cents apiece for them. Joan, thank you for bringing this wonderful cake!
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It isn’t very often than I have the occasion to make an alcohol-based punch. We’ve been having quite warm weather here in Southern California; warmer than usual for the season, anyway, so it sounded like a good plan to serve a refreshing drink before the brunch yesterday. I should have checked the weather forecast last week when I was planning – we’ve been having fog and quite cool temperatures the last 2 days. But oh well, I didn’t think anyone would really mind.

Going to my recipe trove, I had sorted through about 10 different punches that I thought appropriate, and this one just sounded right. But, I call it Pink Sangria, instead of the real title, White Zinfandel Sangria. It’s unfortunate that white zin has acquired this reputation for only appealing to little ladies at the book club, or sipping on the porch in the southern summer afternoon. I used to really enjoy white zin – Beringer usually – but my tastes changed about 25 years or so ago, and normally I find white zin too sweet. So, to counter that tendency (to me, anyway), I used Peach Pucker Schnapps in this punch, instead of the usual (sweeter) Peach Schnapps. It definitely has a pucker, but added a really nice depth to the drink. You might taste it before you decide whether you want added sugar, if you use the Peach Pucker Schnapps.

Maybe peaches are in season somewhere in the world, but they’re darned hard to find here. I did spy some at my local grocery store, but they looked terrible, so I decided to use just the lemons and oranges. You marinate the punch for awhile, so it imparts the cinnamon and citrus flavors. Have everything all chilled, then add the club soda at the last, along with ice and you have a really special-occasion drink. The photo above shows it in its marinating stage. I added the club soda just before serving. When I make this again, I’m not going to add as much club soda – it made the punch too thin to me. But use your own discretion on that.
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Well, I’m here to tell you that not every quiche is created equal. And despite the fact that men may not admit to eating quiche, they do. And most of them like it too.

For years I used to make a quiche recipe that was good. Very good, actually, but then one day at lunch I ordered quiche at a French restaurant. After a couple of times, I determined that my recipe had to go. So a year or so ago I decided to try a different chemistry for my own home made one. More and different cheese, and whipping cream instead of half and half. Oh my. What a difference. This recipe is just really, really good. I found it on the internet somewhere, tweaked it to my own satisfaction, but I didn’t make any notes, so I don’t know where it came from. Sorry. Thick and creamy (well, yes, with whipping cream instead of milk or half and half). And although I enjoy other varieties of quiche – like broccoli or spinach, or mushroom, my favorite remains Lorraine (bacon).

We had a brunch here at our house today. In doing the menu planning, and after spending about 2-3 hours perusing all kinds of other recipes (to try something different) and building a menu from the entree, I kept going back to the quiche. I hadn’t served it to this group before, so it was “new” to them. DH loves quiche any way, shape or form. Our gourmet gathering is a group of 4-5 couples, and we’ve been meeting for about 5 years or so, on a off and on basis, for a gourmet kind of dinner. We’d never done brunch. The hostess chooses the menu, and assignments are made with each couple bringing some part of the meal, so I only made the entree and the pink sangria (I’ll tell you about that one in a day or so) we sipped on before we sat down to our meal. The other couples brought a soup, a vegie salad and a lettuce salad, a fruit side dish and dessert.

So, this quiche has all the “normal” ingredients of a quiche – cream, eggs, cheese, bacon in a piecrust. What’s different about it? Maybe not much, except a bit of white onion, white pepper, paprika, some garlic, and the types of cheese. I used Gruyere (an imported cheese from Switzerland) and Gouda and real Parmigiano-Reggiano. This one is made in a tart pan, so the piecrust is not high – it’s not a deep dish kind of quiche. I used a removable bottomed tart pan, and shhhh, I cheated and used Pillsbury’s piecrust from the refrigerator case. It was quite lovely, actually. Better than the frozen shells, and very pliable, so it was easy to fit into my two different sized pans. I just trimmed some off one and pressed it into the other one. Simple really. Then you press all the grated cheese into the shells, the bacon, onion, the Italian parsley and kind of press it all down, then you whip up the custard base and pour it on. Quite simple, really. Note: if you use a different kind of pan, or regular pie crusts and traditional pie plates, you’ll probably need more custard, so just add another egg and perhaps another 1/2 cup or more of cream. And another side note: if you use salty bacon, as some brands can be, you’ll want to reduce the amount of salt.

So if a quiche is an appropriate item for a holiday breakfast or dinner, you’ll be very happy to have tried this one. To see the tart shell recipe print out the PDF recipe. I didn’t reproduce it here (below).
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Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been planning the Thanksgiving menu the last couple of days. We’re excited that we’ll have all three of our children here, with all 5 grandchildren too, who range in age from one infant up to age 13. Plus some other extended family too. That will make a table for 16, which is two more than our table can accommodate, so we’ll probably have to set up a small table for the children nearby.

Everyone is bringing something, so that makes my job easier. I’m grateful for the help. I’ve always thought that Thanksgiving dinner is one of the most labor intensive there is, of the entire year. So much of it has to be done at the last minute – the potatoes, the gravy, the salad, etc. But I heard a suggestion the other day – potatoes hold real well in a crock pot. Just make them several hours ahead, preheat the crock pot and throw the entire batch in, cover, and it will hold for many hours. Sounds like a plan to me.

So, listen up . . . that’s the phrase I seem to use when I’m about to share something important. I’m going to give you my prized (well, no, I haven’t really won a prize for it, it’s just prized by me!) recipe for cranberry relish. My mother introduced cranberry relish to our family’s Thanksgiving table back in the late 1950’s I think. It was just the chopped cranberries (and I was often the one who had to sit and hand chop the cranberries – very tedious, I might add), and minced orange, including some of the peel, with sugar. I made it that way for years. Until one year I saw a recipe in a magazine, I think, that mentioned adding apple and ground ginger. I love ginger and what it does for baked goods and other things too. I tried it, and it’s become the regular on my Thanksgiving table ever since. Over the years I’ve tweaked the recipe a bit – reduced the sugar a tad, and added more ginger. And I think the original recipe called for 2 apples, but I preferred the single one. So that’s why I call this a Carolyn original. I have no recollection where I first saw the recipe including the apple and ginger, so I can’t given any credit for it.

This keeps for about a month, and is wonderful added to a turkey sandwich, or as a chutney type side with grilled meat. But it seems to have its strongest affinity to poultry. I can eat this straight out of the container, I like it so much. Just remember to make this a day ahead, if at all possible. It takes several hours for the flavors to blend AND for the sugar to do its magic with the fruit, drawing out the juices.
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Files: MasterCook 5+ and MasterCook 14 (click link to open in MC – 14 contains photo)

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It may be a bit hard to see here, but those cookies are thin. THIN. Really THIN. But chocolately, rich, just like eating the top off of a rich brownie. Or maybe the very top of a muffin, even.

Usually when we return from a European trip, I’m craving salads and greens, and vegetables. Not so this time because we had ample on the ship. In fact, Lucy and I raved about the quality of the designer lettuces they served at the salad bar every day. Absolutely fresh from the fields that very day. And delicious dressings, all home made. But what I did crave upon our return was chocolate. We had almost none on the trip. A couple of times we had chocolate sauce on vanilla ice cream, and we had something similar at the dinner at Gundel. And one night they offered a chocolate terrine. I was sad to decline that but I knew the caffeine would keep me awake that night. But otherwise, chocolate didn’t figure much in the shipboard menus.

So, since the cookie barrel is empty around here, I decided to make something chocolate. I was leafing through the December issue of Bon Appetit (how come I’m getting the December issue in the first or 2nd week of November, I ask you?), and spotted these chocolate thins.

These are made in a bowl, so quite easy. It couldn’t have taken more than 15 minutes to complete the preparation, and another 20 minutes max to bake them all. Pretty cinchy. And, they are really delicious. But I do warn: they’re very fragile. I’ll have to figure out how to package these carefully so they don’t break – they tend to break in half very easily. But they’re very tasty.

Added note 3 days later: these cookies are so, SO thin, they’re not easy to serve. You pick them up and they break apart, I’m sad to say. So, make them a bit thicker when you pat out the dough, and make sure they are getting browned around the edges. These are soft cookies – there’s nothing crispy about them. But the chocolately taste is wonderful.

You whip these up in a bowl – no mixer needed. I used good Scharffen Berger unsweetened chocolate in these.

There they are on the Silpat before baking. It’s a bit tricky spraying the plastic wrap, laying it over the little blobs of dough, then very gently patting the cookies out thin. I wonder if I made them a tad too thin? Maybe next time I’ll try them a bit thicker just to see. Once you remove the plastic wrap, you add the nuts. I used walnuts because that’s what I had on hand.
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One day on the river cruise, the pastry chef, Klaus Ungruh, gave a lecture about apple strudel. The draw, of course, was that we’d all get a slice when it was all said and done. About 60 of us gathered around a table to watch. Frank, the tour director and the chef had a very cute repartee going. As Frank listed the ingredients, the chef pulled them out of a shelf below the table. Into the very large and deep Hobart mixing bowl he placed a plastic bag of flour (sealed up), a full bottle (not pouring, just the bottle) of oil, a round box of salt and he poured in some water and literally threw in an egg – splat… We all laughed. He pretended to mix and knead it inside the bowl, then, as if by magic he reached down into the bottom of the bowl and voila, he pulled out a round disk of dough. Even more laughs. He whisked the rolling pin over the dough about 10 times, turned it over and rolled another 10 times, and the dough was done.

Then he used another bowl and to it were added: apples, raisins, cookie crumbs, cinnamon, rum, hazelnuts, sugar and lemon peel. In about 5 seconds he mounded the filling on the dough, and rolled it up. Done. Off it went to the kitchen, and they brought in an already baked one for us to sample. Delish. Whether I’d really make this or not, I don’t know. I did make strudel once upon a time (when I was very young, with a woman who was a live-in cook for a neighbor), but I thought it an awful lot of work. This version seemed infinitely easier. It was served with a vanilla sauce, warm.

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Some people might think Budapest is so foreign they might not want to go. Whatever you might have thought, it’s not so. Budapest is a beautiful, small city, situated on both sides of the Danube. The Buda side is the hilly side, where the castle is located (lit up spectacularly at night), and most of the tourist shopping areas, the cathedral and some lovely restaurants. The Pest (pronounced pesh to you non-Hungarians. so it’s Booda- ) side is the flat side, where much of the business and industry is located. More commercial. It’s also where Gundel is located.

Years ago, probably 10, DH and I enjoyed a dinner at Gundel. We were with a small group and the dinner had been pre-arranged. It was spectacular. We even bought some of the Gundel-labeled red wine and brought it home (as we did this time too). Hungarians make some fine wine. Inexpensive. And almost none of it is exported. You’ve probably heard of the label Tokaji (pronounced toe-kai), a line of sweeter wines, from 1 to 5 in sweetness. They’re lovely wines and hard to find here in the U.S. We enjoyed #5 with our dessert the other night. It was really lovely. My DH doesn’t drink much late harvest or sweet wines, so I didn’t buy any, although I really wanted to. But, I’d be drinking it all, so decided not to.

So earlier last week I asked one of the ship’s crew to make a reservation for us at Gundel for Saturday night, our last night there. No problem. We took a taxi – and had the nicest driver – he even came to pick us up at 9:30 at the conclusion of our dinner, AND he picked us up the next morning and drove us to the airport. A very nice man – an Hungarian. With a son in dental school.

Gundel requires men to wear coats (ties not required). It’s a very formal place, but not stuffy, really. I was charmed, even more so this time. Last time we were served in a private room upstairs. I liked eating in the main dining room. The ambiance was not to be missed. Lucy and I just ate it up. From the bottled water to the multiple forks and knives lined up on each side of the plates.

We’d been warned the dinner would be expensive. One guide told us to expect to pay about 80,000 Hungarian florins (approx. $300) apiece. Fortunately, it was nowhere close to that. The 6 course meal, including wine for 5 of the courses, was 82,000 florins. So, about $75 per person. To our minds, it was a bargain, considering the fabulous food we had, and the lovely wines they served along with. Hungary, although in the EU, won’t convert to the euro until 2012. But most places we went accepted euros with no difficulty. They even took American dollars too.

So, here’s what we had:

The Traditional and new

Gundel Creation Dinner:

Torte of foie Gras with Cranberry Kir Royale

Smoked Ham of Z selic Roe-Deer

with Porcini Mushroom Mousse

Belatonbolglari Chardonnay 2006, Legli Otto

Tarragon scented Venison Ragout Soup

with Sour Apple and Chestnut

Slice of River Catfish served with

Pumpkin Seed Strudel and Red Pepper Sauce

Egri Pinot Noir 2002, Gundel Winery

Rack of Mangalic Pork served with

Spinach-Serviettenknodel and colorful onions

Egri Bikaver Gold Selection Barrique 2000, Gundel Winery

The Classic Crepe a la Gundel

Tokaji Aszu 5 butts 2000, Gundel Winery

The foie gras torte. Amazing.

Sinfully delicious soup, with venison, apple and chestnut. Slurp.

The charming table, chock-a-block full of dishes, wine glasses, utensils, little bowls, butter dishes, salt and paprika (no pepper, just paprika), dinner plates and bread plates

The fried catfish in the foreground, with the very different and delicious pumpkin seed strudel at the back.

The amazingly tender pork chops with onions and a spinach strudel.

And, last but not least, this scrumptious crepe filled with a ground and chunky walnut, raisin, rum filling, topped with a dreamy chocolate sauce and powdered sugar. A stunner to look at and to devour.

Here we are, l-r: me, my DH, Lucy and Wayne.

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Doors in Rothenburg, Germany.

It’s wonderful taking vacations. Even the mound of laundry is okay. It’s the flights here to there and back that is so hard. Flying is no fun anymore. Now it’s just something dreadful you have to “get through” in order to enjoy the vacation. We even paid for some upgraded seats on British Airways for this trip, about twice what coach seats would cost. Meals were disgusting. I guess I shouldn’t complain. At least we HAD meals on the plane.

Nevertheless, no matter how long I’m gone, it’s always wonderful arriving home. Tired, dragging, jet lagged, wanting a shower, etc. But it’s wonderful walking into your safe haven. To look at the view out the window. To sit quietly with a fresh cup of espresso.

We had a great time on our trip. Sorry I wasn’t able to upload more comments and photos, but I was limited by the very slow wireless network on the ship, having to share the connection with others using it too. Today I’ll upload a few more photos from the trip. Tomorrow I’m going to upload the photos I took at our last night in Budapest, at the fabulous restaurant, Gundel. So, here are a few more photo reflections from the river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. Highly recommended, as long as you like a slow pace.

Outside the Gutenberg Museum (Germany).

Cobblestone streets along the Rhine River.
Paprika peppers and garlic in Budapest.

Building corner in Regensburg, Germany.

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(picture along the Danube yesterday, in Austria)

Location: Vienna
Weather: 46 and overcast
Most people are off on a shore excursion today. We’ve been to Vienna twice, and we’re a hobbling-around couple (there are others also), so decided to stay on board. The ship departs later today for Bratislava, our next port stop.

This ship, the Viking River Cruises “Spirit” has been a good activity level for us. What with my foot that still swells, and Dave’s new artificial leg that hurts him like heck nearly every step he takes, we’ve spent more time relaxing on the ship. Most of the passengers are older folks, like us. One gentleman flew to Amsterdam and when he stood up on arrival, he couldn’t walk. He was in a wheelchair for a week. After seeing a doctor at one of the ports (and with x-rays) he found out he has a broken hip. The ship staff arranged for him to fly home a few days ago, with his wife. We all wanted to know, how could you have a broken hip and not know it? Our companions, Wayne and Lucy, speculated about that. Wayne’s a retired OB/GYN, and he suspects the gentleman has some other health issues, maybe bone cancer, so his bones are very soft. Guess we’ll never know.

We have a contingent of complainers on the ship too. They are the kind of people who give Americans a bad name, like the Ugly American. Nothing is ever right. Or good enough. They complain mostly about the meals. This is a German ship. The captain and chef are German. Although it’s an American based company, everything about what they do is German. The chef does an amazing job with the meals. They’re not as elegant, perhaps, as on a huge mega-sized cruise ship, but having been on their kitchen tour here, I find it amazing that they can produce the quality and quantity of meals in their compact kitchens.

These ugly people want American food. Well, they don’t SERVE American food on this ship. It’s more continental, and a modicum of German food mostly. They complained that a lunch served a day or two ago, that was billed as “Bavarian,” included lasagna. At a question and answer period last night, the Chef humbly apologized, said he’d made a mistake with that one, he was one day early for that dish, as the next day was an Italian day menu. These people have complained so much that they’re eating their own, private menu. No extra charge. Yesterday, however, they all wanted tuna sandwiches on Pita bread. The Chef had to phone several other ships to FIND Pita bread. Finally did, had staff retrieve it, or make an exchange, using a ship launch. Tuna sandwiches were made, and this group of 8 people ate half of one sandwich. The first woman who tried it didn’t like it, so nobody else even tried it. The Chef appears at their table nearly every meal because they’ve complained about something.

The darling waitress, Zuzana (she’s from Slovakia), was nearly in tears yesterday because of their insane requests. All special menus are prepared in a separate kitchen below the main kitchen, and to serve a table for 8, she has to go up and down the kitchen flight of stairs so many, many times to serve a meal, what with each dinner having 4 or 5 courses.

They like this particular waitress. So do we, and try to sit on her station for most meals, if we can. This ship does not have assigned seating. So somebody from the Ugly American group stands outside the dining room door for a looooong time to make sure they get the table they want – only two tables in the dining room seat 8 people – one only with Zuzana. Now, there’s also another contingent of people, mostly from Texas, who have also made some significant waves. They’re also a party of 8, and THEY like this same table, because they like Zuzana too. Last night one from their group pulled a chair from his stateroom and sat for 40 minutes outside the dining room door, in order to get this table. They were excited to have one-upped the Ugly Americans. Although, this other group is quite loud and boisterous. They drink a lot, too. They’re a friendly bunch, though.

When you’re confined to somewhat close quarters, the gossip flies the air. We watch with some amusement, but also some embarrassment too. We feel sorry for the staff. They work very, very hard, about 12 hours a day.

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Were these ever GOOD! In Rothenburg our day trip included a lunch at a local hotel where they served us the Rothenburg sausages, sauerkraut (underneath the sausages) and a heap of mashed potatoes, along with their tasty mustard. We also went through Nurnberg (Nuremburg) where that area specializes in some different kinds of sausages – they look more like our breakfast sausages, but with lots of herbs and spices in them. Why, oh why, can’t we get these at home?

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