a star-spangled pie

It was a star-spangled weekend. Really it was a picnic-spangled weekend. We went to three picnics in a row. From the lakeside cobbler on Saturday, to a bbq engagement celebration on Sunday to a true 4th of July party last night. No more hamburgers for Talley. Well to be fair, Friday was steaks and bratwursts, but still you get the idea - I'm stuffed full of Swiss Fleisch (it bothers me a bit that the word for meat sounds so much like flesh.) So yes we ate a lot of meat, and a lot of potato chips and oh yeah, a heck of a lot of desserts. The picnics should be broken down by what I brought for dessert; Saturday cobbler, Sunday berry cake, Monday berry pie. The underlying theme/ingredient was definitely blueberries. I can't decide which was the best one, either the pie or the cobbler. I should have known the cake wasn't going to be that good when the recipe only called for 1/4 cup of butter. I mean what was I thinking? The pie crust alone has an entire cup. Butter makes things better, even the bit of homesickness we felt being in Zürich for the 4th of July.
Can you tell which one I like better? Elaine and Chris, if you are reading this then I apologize for bringing the 'eh' dessert to your party. If I had known I would have baked a heart-spangled pie for your engagement celebration. The cake was just off. I don't know what else to say, it was the wrong consistency, not moist enough and the coarse salt that the recipe called to be sprinkled on top did all the wrong things for the flavor in my mind. I like the idea of a buttermilk berry cake, but I need to find a better recipe for the cake. Since it was only 'eh' I won't leave you with the recipe, but if you have a better cake recipe that you are willing to share I'd be most appreciative.
I'm not sure how Zach feels about me snapping photos of his breakfast, but I couldn't help myself when he came to the table with a red-white-blue themed bowl of cornflakes.
chocolate.cake.so.damn.good. I'm not sure I can even call it cake, it was more like brownie dough. Incredible, edible, gone in a few seconds. The cake...well the cake lingered a bit longer. At least it's pretty, it has that going for it.
And then there was the pie. I adapted the recipe from the cherry pie that I made last month, replacing berries for cherries and adding a bit more cornstarch. It was delicious and this time we remembered the ice cream! Unfortunately they didn't have a 5-pointed star cookie-cutter at the store so I had to go with the 6-pointed, but it gets the idea across, and now I'll have Hanukkah ready cookie-cutters.

crust:

- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

- 1 tablespoon sugar

- 3/4 teaspoon salt

- 1 cup butter

- 5 tablespoons ice water

- 1 beaten egg to adhere cutouts to crust

filling

- 7 1/2 cups of mixed berries. I used blueberries, blackberries and raspberries roughly in equal parts

- 1/3 cup cornstarch

- 3/4 cup sugar (adjust according to sweetness of your berries, mine were very ripe and sweet)

- 1/4 salt

- 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice

- milk for brushing

- butter for dotting

preheat oven to 425F (218)

for crust: whisk flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl. Add butter and rub with your fingers until integrated to the point that nothing is larger than a pea sized clump. Add the 5 tablespoons of ice water and mix with a fork until the dough holds together when pressed between fingers. Gather dough together, divide into two balls and flatten to disks then place in plastic wrap and into the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

for filling: mix berries, sugar, cornstarch, salt and lemon juice in a large bowl.

Roll out one of the dough balls on a well floured surface with a well floured rolling pin. Roll until it is roughly 12" in diameter. Place the dough into your 9" pie dish and trim the edges so that the dough only overhangs by 1/2." Pour your berry mixture into the dough lined pie dish, mounding slightly in the center. Dot the berries with butter (about 1 tablespoon.)

For the second ball of dough make sure the surface is floured super well otherwise it will be impossible to get the cutout dough off (my pie is witness to that difficulty) Roll out the second ball so that it is just larger than the dish. This is where it gets tricky. You want the dough to be thicker rather than thinner since that will make it easier to lift as one piece once you have your stars cut out. So cut your stars out, saving the cutouts, and once complete lift the dough onto the berries. Fold the bottom dough over the top dough and press with fingers. Beat your egg into a small dish. With a knife spread a bit of egg on the back of your cutouts and adhere to the edge, or wherever you like. Brush milk over crust, not edges, and then place in the oven.

I recommend placing your pie on a baking sheet in case it gurgles juice. Bake at 425 for 15 minute and then lower the heat to 325 and bake until the filling is bubbling and the crust is gold brown, about another 50 - 60 minutes. Remove and let cool. Serve with vanilla ice cream!

A juicy hamburger, topped with cheddar and smothered in ketchup - ahhh 4th of July! Burgers were a highlight of both picnics this weekend, but the mini burgers were definitely the better burger. I mean just look at them, so precious, and I should mention delicious. I'm mad at myself that I didn't get a picture of their partner in crime - the pig in a blanket. The mini burger made their appearance at our friends Jas and G's festive 4th of July party last night. They are incredible hosts, always easy breezy, and they have the best terrace in town with a fabulous view.
I never thought I would mix ketchup and mustard. I blame it on my bratwurst addiction, where the mustard is too spicy so I cool it down with ketchup. I guess the mixture has ventured beyond the stick of meat and onto the patty of meat.
A note about the American flag. Jas is American, a homegrown Texas gal, and G is French (G stands for Gregoire) and this flag was originally the French flag. But Jas, unable to find an American flag in CH and at a loss decided to slice and dice the French flag and turn it into a make-shift American flag, hence 'France' written next to the stars. That's the view. And even more impressive, the enormous spread. Jas really outdid herself and made fried chicken, spinach artichoke dip, various cheese balls, buttermilk dip and of course the mini hamburgers and pigs in a blanket. I felt like I was eating America...mmm good.
Sparklers make everything festive. And so do star-spangled pies! I hope you had a star-spangled weekend and ate your fill of corn on the cob and hot dogs.

I can't believe I'm writing this...again....but I'm heading to the states tomorrow. I'm officially a gypsy. Give me a violin and I'll play you a sad song. Okay, really it's not that sad, but I am beginning to feel a bit feed-up with this whole unsettled feeling. I have to go home to apply for my visa, which shouldn't be a big deal, but then again dealing with any paper-shuffling bureaucratic issue is bound to be head-ache inducing. Good thing I have just the cure for that headache - a weekend with some of my girl friends in Martha's Vineyard. Ocean...here I come!!

peach - blueberry cobbler

You know it's summer when there is peach juice dripping down your chin and onto your nice white jeans. But heck, those jeans have seen worse; like the dollop of ketchup that went swiftly from hamburger to pants or the grass stains from that intense game of lakeside badminton (btw badminton is waaay harder than it looks). So why not add a little blueberry stain to those pants and paint them patriotic in the spirit of July 4th. No summer evening picnic, especially a 4th of July picnic, is complete without a cobbler - an ooey gooey, blueberry bubbling, peach perfecting, buttery brown biscuit topped, cobbler. I dare you to find a more appropriate summer dessert. And did I mention the scoop of vanilla ice cream that goes on top and slowly melts into the hot fruit filling? No, I think I forgot that because I was too busy eating leftover ice cream out of the container with a spoon.

This is the perfect dessert to make this week as both the farmers markets and the super markets are laden with peaches, nectarines and blueberries. It's also very quick and easy to prepare, involving little prep time and utilizing ingredients you are likely to have on hand. I whipped it up, stuck it in the oven, put on my white jeans and by the time it was ready so was I, and off to Lake Luzern we went for a picnic by the lake. Zach's friend Andry and Andry's wife Andrea have a house in Beckenreid, right on the lake. It really couldn't have been a more idyllic spot for a Saturday afternoon picnic.

I also want to mention before diving into a sea of blueberries that this post is working double duty today. The cobbler is being featured as 'The Recipe of the Week' on 'My Girlfriend Guide to Zürich' which is very fun and exciting. If you are a first time visitor to the Haus then welcome! And if you haven't been to My Girlfriend Guide (formerly American Girl in Zürich) then you should definitely check it out. Deja and Angelica are working away to make sure everyone is caught up on exciting Zürich happenings.

The View. Capitalized because I'm not sure there is any other view. Insane right? Especially considering that the lawn runs right down to the turquoise water. You could run out your door and straight into the lake every morning if you lived there. If you lived there...that's the goal. Upon seeing the house and the view I promptly told Zach that, please, thank you, I would like a lake house. Ooo and a boat. And yes a car would be good to, so that we can zip to the house whenever we please. Sigh, once again, Talley dreams...snap back to reality and back to that peach cobbler...

I went to the Bürkliplatz market on Friday morning, bright and early, or at least early enough to beat the 9am rush. I often forget about the market, too distracted by my morning cup of coffee to remember that only a few blocks away vendors are selling all sorts of fresh produce. It's definitely more expensive than the supermarket and I often suspect you are buying the same thing, but it's always fun to shop there, practice my non-existant German and do a bit of people watching.
I was dead set on a nectarine-blueberry cobbler. But then I bought peaches. The nectarines were rock hard and since I wanted to make the cobbler the same day I had to find some riper fruit and that's where the peaches came in. I didn't realize when I bought them that they would have a bright red outer layer of flesh, but really it just made for a pretty picture as the taste is pretty much the same. What's really surprising is that although there are roughly 2lbs of peaches in the cobbler, the resulting taste is overwhelmingly blueberry. The peaches get left in the dust. They do help to add a bit of bulk to the dessert and every once and a while you get a great juicy peach bite and you remember that there are indeed peaches lost somewhere midst the oozing purply bluish bluberries.
Recipe adapted from alexandracooks.com

Filling ingredients

- 2 pounds peaches or nectarines

- 3 cups blueberries

- 1/4 cup sugar

- 1 tablespoon cornstarch

- zest from 1 lime or lemon

- 1 tablespoon lime/lemon juice

- 1/4 teaspoon salt

Biscuit topping

- 2 cups flour

- 1/3 cup sugar

- 2 teaspoons baking powder

- 1/2 teaspoon salt

- 1 stick cold butter (1/2 cup or 113g)

- 1 cup buttermilk

- 1/4 tsp vanilla bean

- 2 teaspoons coarse sugar

Preheat the oven to 375F (190C). While the oven is warming up slice your peaches into generous sections, roughly eight slices per peach. Mix the peaches in a bowl with the blueberries. In that same bowl add the sugar, cornstarch, lemon/lime zest, lemon/lime juice and salt. Stir until the fruit is evenly coated. Place that bowl aside.

In a large mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Once thoroughly whisked, add the butter. I use my hand to integrate the butter into the flour mixture, squeezing the butter between my fingers until there are no chunks of butter larger than a pea. In a measuring cup add the buttermilk and vanilla and whisk until incorporated. Slowly stir in the liquid into the flour mixture. The dough will be fairly sticky, but don't worry; the biscuits will end up fluffy, browned and absolutely delicious.

Place the fruit filling in your baking dish. I used an 8.5" x 10.5" dish. Dollop about eight balls of dough over the fruit. Sprinkle with coarse sugar and place in the oven for roughly 50 minutes. Begin to check on it after 40 minutes. When the filling is bubbling and the biscuits are lightly browned and toasted your dessert is done. Enjoy with vanilla ice cream!

The German word of the weekend was schön. Schön means beautiful, and let me tell you everything was freaking schön this weekend; the steaks with seared grill marks, the prosecco, our new friends, the kräuter butter (herb butter) on bread, the kids running around with water-balloons and the view, oh that view! After eating and then waiting the mandatory twenty minutes Zach and I went swimming. Brrrrrrr, but refreshing. Sehr schön (very beautiful!).

The cobbler was definitely a huge hit. Phew! You never know, especially since I couldn't really try it beforehand and offer it to our new friends with a big hunk taken out. I knew it smelled good and it certainly looked damn good so I'm glad it actually was good. I think someone actually referred to it as schön!! It was a bit precarious to transport on the tram then the train and then the car, but it held up well and thankfully Zach was keenly aware of making sure it was level at all times.

And finally...a picture of us! Much requested, but often hard to pull off. The camera seems to become an appendage and I often forget I can easily hand it to someone else so they can snap a picture of us. It's nice to have pictures of things besides food in my iphoto library!
mmmm...buttermilk biscuit floating on a sea of blueberries. Unfortunately this time around we didn't get to add the ice cream because, well it wouldn't have faired very well on the hour long trip to Beckenreid. But it's a perfect reason to make it again soon, very very soon.
Pretty nice place to spend a day huh? We certainly thought so. Eventually the lakeside chill forced us inside with our Appenzeller. I'm guessing you're not familiar with Appenzeller, the drink not the cheese. I wasn't either until Saturday. It's made of 42 herbs (kräuter), you serve it over ice, and only two people know the secret recipe. Oh, and it's delicious and I definitely need to buy a bottle. Unfortunately I took a photo of the backside of the bottle, but the front side has a cool image of the mountains and even makes you think this stuff, and its herbs, might actually be good for you. Don't be fooled, it's potent.

Overall we had an absolutely amazing weekend and I hope you did too! If you're in the states it's still the weekend because today is the 4th!! Happy celebrating and would you please light a sparkler and eat a hamburger on the beach for me! oh the beach...I really miss the beach and the waves and even the seaweed that washes up on shore. Zach and I played a little game this weekend called 'What would we be doing if we were in Little Compton right now?' I think maple syrup was mentioned at least five times with jumping off the bluff a close second.

If you ventured over from MyGirlfriendGuide then I hope you enjoyed the recipe and accompanying pictures and that you'll be back again soon. If you ever need a friend to share a cobbler with just let me know. I'll bring the ice cream, and I just might even splurge on a 14franc pint of Haagen Dazs for you.

a necessary tomato

There is something in the oven. It isn't this tomato. This tomato is way to amazing to let heat distort it's bulbous forms. So this is the tomato I ate while something else was baking away, losing form and oozing juices (to be revealed on Monday). I had a conversation with this tomato at the market. Really it was more of a debate, with the tomato arguing for it's beauty and worthiness of a blog post and me arguing that it cost 4francs and that I don't even like tomatoes that much. Who doesn't like raw tomatoes? I know it is weird, but then again I'm from New England and the thought of eating lobster makes me want to relocate to a foreign country. Oh wait, I already did that - free from lobster, but not from tomatoes. As you already know, the tomato won. It's luscious lumpiness was just too seductive to pass up and I couldn't bare the thought of someone else buying it and chopping it into itty bitty pieces for a salad or sticking it in the oven. This tomato needed a debut, to be shared with the world, or at least the world of house-to-haus.

It was as if twenty mini tomatoes were at a concert and got stuck in a mosh pit. A bigger tomato is about to jump from stage and these little tomatoes will carry it through the crowd.
Since I don't like raw tomato I had to accompany it with things I do like, like bread and butter and salt and pepper. There really isn't much butter can't fix. Even a raw tomato. A thin layer on a thick piece of toast is pretty heavenly.
You can actually see teeth marks - is that TMI of the food-blogging world? Perhaps. I will say that it was quite delicious, even for a non raw tomato eating girl. The butter helped and so did the drizzle of olive oil I put on top. Butter and olive oil make a great combo, not just by themselves of course, but on bread. I can't imagine eating a tomato without a hefty sprinkle of salt and pepper and I'd say those were the essential ingredients, even over the butter and bread.
After I ate my snack and pulled the oozy goozey delicious concoction out of the oven I went for a much needed walk down the lake. At first I thought this was a woman swimming topless, but nope, just an older man with long hair swimming in a speedo. Oh the joys of beach life in Europe!

It's a long weekend in the states, filled with fireworks, hamburgers fresh off the grill and long days at the beach where men wear shorts and not speedos. We are sad to miss it, but we will do our best in speedo-land, I mean switzerland.

Happy picnicking and pie eating.