A Lot of Xocolat

Today I decided to give into my chocoholism and visit one of Vienna's finest chocolatiers, Xocolat, located a dangerous four hundred feet from my doorstep. How I managed to stay away before now, I do not know, but yesterday as I was exploring the ninth district, I stumbled upon their manufacturing store, and couldn't help but drool.

I wasn't lucky enough to walk by as they were making the chocolates, but they wisely made the entire storefront out of glass, which makes for some easy viewing. They probably have to clean the glass a lot though, because I doubt many people are able to stop themselves from pressing up against it and salivating.

The store proper, where you can buy ten thousand different kinds of chocolate assembled with genius, has two enormous glass cases full of dozens of different truffles and confections. I went through and read every single placard, but by the time I had finished I had forgotten almost all of them, and even so, couldn't have reasonably sampled everything I wanted. Because I am cruel, here are pictures of things that I got, things that I want, and things that I think are adorable.

Try to restrain yourselves....

	The latté macchiato, which was deliriously delicious.
An Irish coffee truffle with whiskey, eggnog, and marzipan, which looks like a candle from my dreams. Dreams of what I will get next time.
	Wiener Apfestrudel - it's everywhere!
Caramel with Himalayan salt, mmm! Kicking myself for not getting this one either.
	Nothing in my life is complete without pistachios and marzipan.
Thpoooooons.

A Week's Worth of Cooking

Remember how a few weeks ago I was obsessed with mangoes, and didn't cook anything without them? I fear the same thing is going to happen with me and plantains. They are like enormous bananas, only slightly orange and a little more tropically flavored, and thus infinitely more exotic. I'd never had one before today, for which I blame every single one of the people that I know who has had one but never insisted I try one. Feel free to blame them when I post a week's worth of nothing but Musa paradisiaca pictures (see, even the Latin name is telling you it's awesome).

Anyway, new obsession aside, I've been cooking a lot with lentils, as you can see from the pictures below. I haven't posted many recipes recently, so I'm going to overload you with not one but three, all of which feature simple ingredients that are easy to prepare.

Palak Ki Daal

This is just a fancy way to say "delightful lentil and spinach dish." I like to scoop it up with naan or hearty Austrian bread - it's kind of difficult to manage with soft breads so go for the denser, whole grain kind, which is better for you anyway.

Daal:
    ½ cup onion, diced
    1 tbsp ghee (or butter)
    1 cup moong daal (split yellow lentils), rinsed and sorted
    ½ tsp turmeric powder
    1" piece ginger, grated
    ½ lb fresh spinach (more if you're Popeye) chopped roughly

Tadka (Hindi for "yummy ghee seasoning"):
    3 tbsps ghee (or butter)
    1 tsp cumin seeds
    2 dry red chilis, broken in half
    5 cloves garlic, minced
    a pinch of asafetida (optional)
    lemon wedges & fresh cilantro for garnish

1. In a medium-sized pot on medium heat, heat 1 tbsp of ghee and sauté the onions until golden brown.
2. Add the lentils and cover with water, so that it comes up an inch above the lentils. Bring to boil, then stir in the turmeric and ginger. Cook until the daal is soft but not entirely mushy, about thirty minutes, and add more water if necessary to keep it at the consistency of thick soup.
3. When the daal is cooked, add the spinach and salt to taste. Reduce the heat to minimum.
4. In a small pan, heat the remaining ghee and add the cumin seeds, and fry until they stop sizzling (about thirty seconds; be careful since they're pretty hoppity, and don't burn them!). Add chilis, garlic, and asafetida; sauté until the garlic turns golden brown, and then stir in the tadka to the cooked lentils.
5. Transfer to a serving dish, and garnish with lemon and plenty of cilantro leaves.

Lentil, Wild Rice, & Plantain Salad

A variation on my oft-made black bean, quinoa, and mango salad - feel free to use any legume, grain, and fruit that you have on hand. It's a great way to use up leftovers that have been chilling in the fridge, since the lentils and rice don't have to be freshly prepared. If you're cooking for fewer than four people or lazy, like me, you can cook the lentils and rice in the same pot. Just follow the directions for the wild rice, only instead of ½ cup wild rice, it'll be ½ cup mixed wild rice and lentils.

Lentils:
    ½ cup green lentils, rinsed and sorted
    1 ½ cups water
    1 bay leaf
    ¼ tsp salt

1. In a small pot on medium-high heat, bring all the ingredients to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to minimum and simmer until the lentils are tender but intact (35-40 minutes). Drain, remove bay leaf, let cool.

Wild Rice:
    ½ tbsp butter
    ½ cup onion, diced
    2 cloves garlic, minced
    ½ wild rice
    1 ½ cups water
    ¼ tsp salt

1. In a small pot on medium-high heat, sauté the onion and garlic in the butter for a minute or so. Add the wild rice, water, and salt. Cover and bring to a boil, then immediately reduce the heat to minimum and simmer for 40-45 minutes, until the rice is a little split. Remove from heat, drain off any extra water, and fluff with a fork. Let cool.

Salad:
    1 cup finely diced bell pepper, any color you like (I saw violet the other day)
    1 cup chopped scallions (leave out the white part if you don't want it too oniony)
    ½ cup chopped celery or lettuce
    1 cup chopped fresh cilantro
    1 jalapeño or serrano chile, deseeded and diced fine (optional)
    2 ripe, mostly black plantains, diced*
    2 tbsp grapeseed or olive oil
    2 tbsp red wine or balsamic vinegar
    1 tsp ground cumin
    ¼ tsp cinnamon or nutmeg
    1 clove garlic, minced

1. In a medium-sized bowl, combine the pepper, scallions, celery, cilantro, plantains, and chile, if using. In a cup or small bowl, whisk together the remaining ingredients, and stir into the salad. Add the wild rice and lentils and mix until everything is all colorful and well combined.
2. Yummy, slightly more unhealthy variation: fry the plantains. Prepare the salad as described, omitting the plantains. Trim the ends off the plantains and cut in half, leaving the skin on, then slice each piece lengthwise and peel. Heat 2 tbsp butter in a medium-sized skillet until sizzling. Using tongs, add the plantains, and fry about two minutes on each side, until golden brown. Let them cool on paper towels to drain off the extra oil, then cut into bite-sized pieces.
3. Serve at room temperature or chilled - if you fried the plantains, serve immediately, since they're best fresh.

Zucchini Fritters

When the people loaning me the apartment went on vacation, they bequeathed me a small fortune in zucchini. I had no idea what to do with them, so I looked up a recipe for fritters. Because I'm a fool who can't distinguish between Italian words, a week ago I bought polenta instead of semolina, so I didn't have any flour on hand to make these, and substituted. Oops. This is the version using flour, so they'll look a little different from the ones I made.

Ingredients:
    2 large or 4-5 small zucchini
    2 eggs, lightly beaten
    ½ cup flour
    ¾ cup feta cheese, crumbled
    ½ cup onion, finely diced
    1 tbsp each of fresh mint, dill, and parsley, chopped
    1 tsp freshly ground pepper
    ¼ tsp salt

1. Grate the zucchini with a medium-holed cheese grater, and let the zucchini sit in a colander to drain for at least fifteen minutes. You can't skip this step, because otherwise the fritters won't stick together.
2. Prepare everything else while you wait - chop up the onions and herbs, mash the feta, measure everything else.
3. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the flour and eggs, then add everything except the zucchini. Mix well.
4. Back the zucchini: squeeze as much of the water out of it as possible, using your hands or wrapping it up in a dishtowel and squeezing that.
5. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat until a drop of water sizzles on contact. Heat 1 tbsp of olive oil
6. Fold the drained zucchini into the batter, mixing thoroughly, then use the batter right away! Otherwise it'll get runny and you'll have zucchini pancakes.
7. Using an ice cream scoop, a tablespoon, or ¼-cup measure, form the batter into disks and place into the sizzling, oiled pan. Leave enough room so that you can flip the fritters easily - that means cooking four or five fritters at a time, depending on the size of your pan. Fry each side of the fritters for 1-2 minutes, until browned. Remove them to a paper-towel lined plate and pat off some of the extra oil.
8. Adding 1 tbsp of olive oil before each round, repeat the frying process with the rest of the batter.
9. Serve hot, at room temperature, or chilled, with a side of freshly cut tomatoes, yogurt sauce, mustard, or all three.

Even Mozart Needs a Smoke Break

(This is actually a girl.)

A War and Piece of Vienna

To compensate for the lack of posts these past two weeks, I present a novel of an update.

Chapter One: The Yard

I've been really bad and haven't taken many pictures, my excuse being that I can't look at a map and wield a camera at the same time. Or at least, I look like less of a tourist when I only carry one. I did fortuitously bring my camera to work on Friday, the day my boss gave me a tour of the Hofburg Palace roof, favored for smoking breaks and lunch (called a "Mittagspause" here and usually lasting an hour - one thing you can always count on in Austria is an extravagant lunch, not to mention coffee and cake at every gathering involving more than one person). The collage above is the view down into Heldenplatz, where the main entrance to the Hofburg Palace features an incredible array of Grecian columns and not one but two rearing horse monuments. According to legend, the sculptor behind the horse pictured below killed himself shortly after completing the statue - because he couldn't get it to balance without attaching the tail to the base. Oops.

On the other hand, the sculptor across the way can pat himself on the back for an A in physics.

My walk to work involves not only crossing through that regal plaza, but also strolling along lovely cobblestone streets, elbowing tourists aside with my umbrella, and dodging the aromatic souvenirs the horse-drawn carriages leave in the streets. This is the backdoor to my office, which I like for the statues.

One day I will do a post entirely about statues. These guys, for instance, are perched on top of the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I have no idea who they are - very famous, very, ah, serious intellectuals, no doubt - but they make me giggle.

Beauty, they say, is only skin-deep, but when it comes to the museum.... momma lied to you.

Chapter Two: The Museum für Völkerkunde

Völkerkunde is the German word for ethnology, and the museum in Vienna boasts the distinction of being the fifth-largest in the world and the fifth hit for a Google search on "ethnology." As for what the Austrians mean by museum, well, allow me to elaborate with a picture, courtesy of Wikipedia:

That's the foyer, even more drop-dead gorgeous in person, and filled with so much marble that you could flatten an elephant with it. I have been in that magnificent room exactly twice, because the rest of my time is either spent upstairs in the attic or down in the basement, which I do not mind at all, because the museum is currently broke (maybe they should look into selling some of that marble) and thus has 98% of the fifth-largest collection in the world underground. It is such a shame that the incredible baroque beauty of the building itself is its biggest draw, because the museum only has enough money for two exhibitions - one of which is actually related to my work at the museum. Which brings us to -

Chapter Three: Bilder, Bibliotheken, Botaniker

I was originally slated to work with the woman in charge of the photo archive, but she suddenly had to leave before my internship began, so I was temporarily shuffled over into the library for a few days. The head librarian, a sharply dressed man with a thoroughly Austrian name - whom I have never seen in anything but head to toe black - takes smoke breaks on the marble terrace, overlooking what he calls "my garden" - that is to say, the vast stretches of manicured lawns and landscaped trees that comprise the Volksgarten. ("You're American," he said, lighting up, "so naturally you don't smoke." Ha! Evidently he has never been to a liberal arts campus.) My first job working for him was to catalogue dozens of anthropological periodicals on absolutely ancient filecards, using an absolutely ancient typewriter. It was a ridiculous amount of fun, and once I was finished with the massive stacks - you would not believe how many different kinds of anthropological magazines there are - I typed up my grocery list.

It turns out that using the typewriter was my high point in the library, because the next day I set to work on a laptop writing up bibliographical information for the 115 books that were donated by some wealthy benefactor with a hearty interest in the Dark Continent. I picture this mysterious individual much as I picture the Sir and Lord Authors who wrote these books: sunburnt nose sticking out from below his khaki safari hat, elephant rifle in one hand and a pipe in the other. Whoever he was (and yes, I'm making the grandiose assumption that a collector of British imperialist literature is male), he was pretty devoted, since there were multiple Housa and Swahili dictionaries thrown in there, along with a book whose only English words were "Printed in 1939 by Jones Publishing Co." (I determined the author and title by font size.)

Thankfully I was rescued from the depths of the library stacks - which are hugely impressive and feature thousands upon thousands of musty gilted tomes - by the South Asian and Himalayan curator, and am now happily employed doing research for an upcoming exhibition on woods and the wilderness in Hindu and Buddhist art. Currently this research consists of leafing through dozens upon dozens of art books for pictures of trees, then looking up the meanings of those trees, and then seeing if there are any comparable pictures in the museum's collection. I'm learning an absurd amount about Indian art, and by the end of the week I will be ready to apply for a position as a botanist. Not to mention it has inspired a lot of Indian cooking.

By far the coolest thing about my job, though, is that my boss - let us call him Chef, for that is the German for "boss" - takes me along to look at the original objects in storage, which is how I became so embittered about the museum's poverty. There are hundreds of thousands of objects sitting around in the cellar, from every farflung corner of the world and every imaginable culture. Undeciphered rongorongo tablets from Easter Island, imperial Aztec headdresses, skulls from the Naga headhunters (who, hilariously, are now all devout Christians), hundreds of gold and stone Hindu idols, all just sitting there. Today I went down into the lowest cellar, twenty-five cold meters underground, which now houses the museum's stone holdings. It's an enormous brick labyrinth running below the entire palace, and I had the eerie feeling that there was a minotaur waiting for me around some unfortunate corner (and odds are there probably was a carved bestial idol of some kind down there). It was formerly used as a kind of Victorian air conditioning system: fresh breezes would trickle down from openings in the gardens, and the change in pressure kept the air moving through the brick-lined passageways and ultimately up through the vents in the Palace. The brick would naturally regulate the humidity, either soaking up excess moisture on damp days or releasing it into the dry air - it was really ingenious. Less ingenious is that it took a few years after air conditioning was installed for the city to close up the above-ground openings, thus putting an end to the late night wine tasting parties people would throw in the cellar. I'm pretty sure that when Chef was referring to "people," it included the curatorial staff - apparently when the storage rooms had wood floors and old-fashioned wood cases, they'd crack open a bottle of wine between the Polynesian clubs and fertility masks. Now that it's gone all stainless steel and high tech, it's lost its romantic appeal. Oh, Europe.

Epilogue

There you have it, my long-winded yet entirely unexhaustive introduction to the city. Tomorrow I will write about everything I have skipped so far - namely, the entire week I spent in the countryside with the fam, the apartment, and of course, all of the delicious Viennese cuisine. Also, and most importantly, more funny statues.

So Today I Had Lunch On the Hofburg Palace Roof

See, Upasana, I am reading it!

A Lesson in Artistic Appreciation, or How Hum 110 Taught Me to Mock the Greeks

Culturally and historically significant, what? I see only Greece's Next Top Model.

This is what you got for reading in Sparta.

But it's okay, because even the Greeks dig Diana Ross. Young man, stop, I daresay, in the name of love!

The Louvre, also known as the best hair salon in Paris. [Seriously, I have no idea what this sculpture was supposed to be. A frying pan? An unwieldy butterfly net? I guess this is what art history is all about.]








You put your left foot in, you put your right foot in... you do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself about.

Hey there, Facebook profile picture.

And now, the greatest love story ever told... by text message.

wtf your sisters ruin everything. i'm gonna go shoot some mortals through a haze of tears gtg k bai

A thousand grains of rice later:

ilu, even though my mom hates your guts

And then Cupid made it up to Psyche with some gelato, and they lived happily ever after.

(Mom and I had some, too. That flavor you see there, it is called "l'inimitable!" and it is Nutella-flavored gelato. What you are thinking, it is correct. Also, this was the best gelato place ever, because no matter whether you got the teensiest size ever, you could have as many flavors as you wanted. And they were put together to look like a rose. Yum.)

Airports & Monumental Paris (Part 1)

After spending fifteen hours on trains and aeroplanes, what I really craved was spending fifteen hours on my feet, so last Saturday I got my wish. My mother last visited Paris when there were still first and second class designations on the metro, so forty years later we had to make sure that all the monuments were in the same place. The first ones we saw were the 2CVs parked outside the Concorde - the only things they apparently gained in the past thirty years were some seat cushions and straps that pass as seatbelts. They would have come in handy right around the Champs Elysées, which my mother insisted we walk so that we could see the "Arc de Triomphe." I think she wanted to see something else at the end of that long line of trees....

Arc de Triomphe, mon cul!

After that leisurely hour-long gambol, we wandered our way into le Jardin des Tuileries, which was home to many trees, many naked statues, and many pigeons.

We then made our way across the bridge to our first official destination, la Musée d'Orsay, but we had to pause for the requisite Parisian glamour shot on the Seine.

In the background you can see the building of the Musée d'Orsay, which is in itself a work of art, all sweeping arches and panes of painted glass. It houses the original 1900 train station and its impressive gilded clock, along with hundreds of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. Unfortunately they were remodeling part of the museum when we visited, so I missed, among other things, Starry Night and Whistler's Mother, but at least now I have an excuse to visit again. Also, next time I am going to somehow dismantle one of the massive Art Nouveau bedframes and take it with me. I will make headlines, because I don't think that any art thief has thought to take furniture before.

After far too short a stay in the museum, we returned to the banks of the Seine, where my mother nearly got Aja a plaque that read "Chien en psychoanalyse" at one of the fold-up used bookstores that line the river's edge. Probably if they sold a "Fille en psychoanalyse" plaque she would have bought that, too.

We walked down to l'Île de la Cité, where the long line at the entrance to Notre Dame snaked its way across half the island. Instead of getting caught in that tourist trap, we walked to neighboring Île St. Louis and got ice cream, possibly the best I've ever had (not that I've ever had white chocolate ice cream before). Along the way we passed a flower market, hidden here behind one of the old Art Nouveau metro signs, and a wayward band of musicians who transported themselves out of the 1940s and into the middle of the street, piano, cello, and all.

I don't actually remember where we ate that night, nor did I take any pictures, probably because I was too busy thinking about amputating my aching feet. But I do remember that on Friday night we went to what my guidebook touted as "the best vegetarian restaurant in all of Paris," in the Marais quarter, and unlike with the metro map, this time our guide was entirely correct. The food was delicious and highly inauthentic, but the prices were definitely Parisian.

Le pâté en champignons.

Le burger du tofu et quinoa.

Tomorrow: how I didn't think I would need my camera in the prettiest neighborhood, and playing make-believe in the Louvre.

Mango Week Recipe #2.1: Cheesecake at Dawn

After serving this dessert on over two dozen plates that were then scraped clean, I can safely say that I am pleased with the result. My third and final experiment was conducted at dawn, after my mother had left out the eggs and cream cheese for ten hours, in a sleepless haze. (Such measures are probably unnecessary.) I am amazed that anyone let me near a food processor at that hour, but maybe some special six a.m. mojo slipped into the cake.

As it was recently brought to my attention that agave nectar plays Beelzebub to refined white sugar's Lucifer, I've left the sweetener section open for whatever you've got on hand - either liquid (unrefined honey, brown rice syrup, maple syrup, etc) or granular (rapadura, turbinado, etc) will work with this recipe with no major differences, since the amount added is so small. At some point I'll figure out which sweetener will kill you slowest and will suggest it, but substitutions will work unless specified. Also, I used arrowroot powder in my first experiment and the cheesecake didn't explode, so now I'm too superstitious to do forgo it. It's probably fine without it, but I will not be held responsible for the workings of cheesecake poltergeists, so it's on you.

Extraordinary Mango Cheesecake

Crust:
    2 ½ cups walnut halves
    2 tbsp butter, cold and straight out of the fridge
    1 tbsp sweetener
    pinch of salt

Filling:
    3 eight-ounce packages cream cheese
    2 cups mango purée (3-4 ripe mangoes, food processed)
    3 eggs
    2-3 tbsp sweetener, to taste
    1 tsp arrowroot powder
    juice of ½ lemon (about 1 tbsp)

***All the filling ingredients must be at room temperature. I know, I don't like to wait either, but suck it up or get your mother to put them out for you while you go gallivanting around at midnight.***

First, make the crust. Preheat the oven to 350°. Grind the walnuts in the bowl of the food processor until they resemble bread crumbs, then add the butter (cut up into small chunks) and the sweetener. Let it whirl around the food processor for a few seconds, until it all starts to come together. Pat the mixture into the bottom of a 9" round springform pan with a spatula, making sure that it's spread evenly. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes, at which point it should be a little puffy and very light brown, then remove and let cool while you make the filling.

a) looking like bread crumbs

b) adding the butter and sweetener

c) coming together right now, yeah






The filling: cream the cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer until fluffy. Add the mango purée and continue to beat until well mixed - if there are little white bits of cream cheese visible in there, either you haven't been at it long enough or you cheated about room temperature ingredients (cheesecake never lies). Once smooth, incorporate the eggs one at a time, followed by arrowroot powder. Add lemon juice and sweetener to taste (how much you use depends on the ripeness of the mangoes).

Cream cheese a-creamin'

About to go in the pan













Now, we take anti-gravity measures. Lightly grease the sides of the springform pan with the crust in it (after it has cooled down a bit), and pour the filling in. Fill a shallow baking pan with water and place on the bottom oven rack. Put the springform pan on the middle rack and bake for 1 hour 15 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned. Then turn off the oven and let the cheesecake take a breather in there for another 30 minutes, leaving the oven door open. Remove the cheesecake and let cool (usually about 30 minutes), then refrigerate for as long as possible before serving (overnight works best). No matter what you do, absolutely do not open the oven door in the first 30 minutes of baking, preferably not until the end, and don't cover the cheesecake in the refrigerator because condensation will form and drip down and ruin everything.

Once you're ready to serve the cheesecake, cut up some strawberries for garnish, or purée another mango and spread it on top.