Udaipur, the busy city
Udaipur builds, Udaipur cuts marble, Udaipur welds. Udaipur roasts chickpeas and fries sweets, Udaipur sells vegetables and weaves baskets. Udaipur serves dinner and massages feet. Udaipur hosts weddings and directs traffic. Udaipur drives minibuses and motorcycles. Udaipur gathers firewood and fetches water. Udaipur studies. Udaipur works. Continue reading
Just a picture of tomatoes
This one is about simple pleasures. The pleasant and civilized feeling of grabbing a bite to eat after work on your way to a meeting, and that bite being a slice of fresh pizza made with good ingredients, served hot on a board, with a glass of red wine – for 4 Euros. Served in 5 Minutes. Good food IS possible, even in a hurry and on a Neukölln street corner. They have a few choices – one of them, to my absolute delight, is ‘nduja, the chilli-spiced soft pork sausage from Calabria. It sits on top of the rocket-covered pizza slices, like an orange-red devil’s egg. In the oven, the pork fat melts and the ‘nduja becomes a little chunky puddle of heat on top of your crispy steaming slice of dinner. Fantastic. Though I recommend beer with that.
There is ample place to sit at wooden tables, and in warm weather they open all the windows wide and serve you and your friends hot delicious pizza with your umpteenth beer of a summer evening.
What do you call walnut-sized amorphous pieces of soft yet solid something? Not chunks, as in bread. Not balls, because they aren’t. Clump sounds to heavy, so does clod (plus would you want to eat a clod? I certainly wouldn’t). Nearly a glob, though that would be too soft, like mashed potatoes, and you don’t spoon ‘nduja, you dig it out with your fingers…but I digress. Must be the wine.
Pizza a Pezzi, Weserstraße 208, 12047 Berlin-Neukölln.
Mr. Mody Steel kept me company though I felt he was mocking me with his “good luck”.
Her taxis are black with yellow roofs, and everybody honks their horn constantly. That’s pretty much all I could tell you after the first three days in India. One day of that I indeed spent listening to car horns, and watching the ceiling fan spin slowly in a grey-blue room, dozing on and off and trying to ignore my aching stomach…
I had plans for my trip to India. I’d find myself a nice spot every morning to sit with my cup of coffee and muse about the things I’d experienced the day before. Garnish it with a few (well-shot and interesting) pictures. Post online. I packed my 
cables for the camera and everything.
But of course, it came different. Most days I couldn’t really handle sorting out blotchy wifi connections before breakfast. So I did it the old-fashioned way with pen and pink clothbound notebook (so fitting)
Alright – it’s really happening. In three hours I’ll be on a train and on Sunday I will be in India! I reckon I’ll have some opportunities in the next while (sitting under palm trees or something) to muse about this and that but now I’ll have to finish packing. And decide which books to take. Does it make sense to bring one I’ve half read?
I don’t usually eat cooked breakfast. But a rainy Sunday afternoon breakfast after a night of dancing to bass-heavy music at Subland, getting soaked to the skin cycling home at 8am, is not a usual breakfast and calls for something extra-tasty. Like pancakes.
I tried this recipe today: Joy the Baker‘s The Single Lady’s Pancake. ONE pancake, not a dozen, so need for pre-breakfast measurement calculations. Thank you, Joy. I feel understood.
Rainy Day Pancake adapted from this recipe
Just one for yourself
You need:
Flour – 4 Tablespoons or 45g
Oats – 1 Tablespoon, if you like them, or another spoonful of flour
Baking powder – 1/2 teaspoon
Baking soda – 1/4 teaspoon
Salt – a pinch
Sugar or honey – 2 teaspoons
Oil or melted butter – 1 Tablespoon and a little more for the pan
Milk or buttermilk – 4 Tablespoons (if you use regular milk it’s a good idea to replace about a teaspoon of it with some yoghurt, the acidity of the yoghurt will help to set off the leavening process with the baking soda)
Toppings to taste. I used fresh berries, smoked ham and maple syrup.
What to do:
Mix the dry ingredients together. In a separate bowl, whisk the moist ingredients together (remember honey is moist but sugar is dry). By hand is fine.
Put a frying pan on medium heat with a little oil or butter (note: if you like bacon or ham with your pancakes, it’s nice to fry them in the same pan first, leaving the tasty bacon fat in for cooking your pancake).
While the pan is warming up, stir the dry ingredients into the moist ingredients. The batter will not be very liquid. Pour the batter into the frying pan, spread out and cook over medium heat until golden brown on both sides, flipping over once. I did that with the help of a spatula. No free-flying pancake gymnastics for me before breakfast. Put it on a plate with your favorite toppings.
That’s it! Tasty breakfast in about 15 minutes. A revelation.
Hello and welcome to my blog!
I want to share some things with you that I enjoy and care about: food. Stories about food. And about people. In books or elsewhere. Have fun!
Spoons and Books 