Spargelzeit - Asparagus At It's Best!

Find a nice restaurant... 

...near a vineyard

...with a certain casual elegance...

...order a dry white, or whatever the chef suggests

...a crisp salad...

Spargel with pan roasted potatoes and Weiner schnitzel

The same, but with turkey steak

In Germany, April brings Spargelzeit (Asparagus season).  You don’t have to mark your calendar.  Restaurant chalkboards everywhere brag “fresh asparagus.”

I view Spargelzeit not only in culinary terms, but also as a harbinger of spring.  Time to drop the top on the cabrio, change to cotton scarves, have a meal al fresco, find another table inside because the sun went behind a cloud and your wife spears you with an icy stare.  When you ask her what’s wrong and she answers “NOTHING!” You’re in trouble.  In this case ‘nothing’ may be translated as “Read my mind, you unfeeling bastard.”  The brave man would sit it out, the coward caves.  She liked it much better inside.

I confess to loving the changing seasons, something I missed where the weather was constantly warm.  Germany has a bunch of seasons to like.  Not just spring, summer, winter, and fall.  There’s asparagus season (April –June), pumpkin season (Sept-Nov), beer season (Ever heard of Oktoberfest?), new wine season (Sept-Oct), strawberry season (June), and kick hell outta the French season (no longer celebrated) to name a few.

In the United States, and I suspect elsewhere, vegetable and fruit seasons are a dying phenomenon.  Supermarket chains scour the globe to being you everything you want, all the time.  Pumpkins in the spring?  Grapes in January?  No problem. But, we lose something in the process of having everything.  What if you celebrated your birthday, or Christmas everyday?  I know what you’re thinking.  Damn, I don’t want to get that old, that fast!

Asparagus (Spargel) served in Germany is almost exclusively the white variety.  Thick, succulent, even a little sweet, the woody stalk must be peeled before it’s cooked, but it’s worth the effort. No wonder the Germans rightly refer to asparagus as edible ivory, or the king of vegetables.  Spargel season is something to celebrate.

Say, isn’t white asparagus the same as green asparagus?  Kinda. There’s no biological difference between white and green asparagus.  The big difference is in the way they’re grown.  In short, white asparagus isn’t allowed to see the sun.  Lots of ways to do that.  Pile dirt on it (called hilling).  Cover it with a black tarp.  Without sunshine, no photosynthesis takes place, hence the paleness.  The result is a much milder and sweeter stalk.  Because it grows longer (green asparagus must be picked young), white asparagus is larger.  Here’s the bottom line for me:  serve white asparagus with a light hollandaise sauce and suddenly everything else on your plate is a side dish.

Traditionally, asparagus is bundled and cooked standing up in salted, boiling water.  If you find it in a market, buy it now.  The season traditionally ends on 24 June, with the feast of St John the Baptist.

Want expert help in cooking and serving?  Put the top down, drive to a sensational restaurant near a vineyard and pick a table inside, with an outside view.  Just sayin’….

Gutshof Bauer's Stuben

Altdorfer Straße 3

67482 Venningen

Tele:  06323-27-34

www.gutshof-bauer.de

A Lunch to Remember

St Étienne rises from the center of Metz

St 

Inside the cathedral

A little Alsatian beer to whet the apetite

From inside Le Bouchon

Garlic butter at its best

A helpful staff member

In the confectioner's

Can't be lunch without dessert

I love Italian food, especially the cream dishes from the north.  Also fond of German, Japanese, Spanish, and … to save time, just glance at a map of the world.  But, as I’ve said before and will say again, until a court order shuts my blasphemous mouth, the French could teach anyone how to eat.

To make my point, I need only mention bread.  The baguette is so simple even a simpleton, or a vicious ex-wife could make it: flour, water, salt, yeast.  Lots of people, including the Germans, do a fair job.  But, for my taste buds, if it ain’t French, it ain’t a baguette. Nowhere else is the golden crust so wonderfully crunchy and the inside so delightfully chewy.

            After a tour of Saint ´Étienne, the Metz cathedral, it was time to put aside the political differences between the French and the rest of the world, break a couple of those baguettes, slosh some eau de grape, and spend what’s left of our shrinking American dollar. 

            What’s the difference between a bistro and a restaurant?  To my ever so humble eye, a restaurant is a self-contained, sit-down, eating establishment, while a bistro sells coffee in thimbles, and has a bar you can lean on when you see your bill.  Also a bistro’s the tables spill out onto the sidewalk like the pedals of a flower, where clusters of women in high heels and men with scarves gather to look down their Gallic noses at the rest of us.  Busy, obnoxiously well-groomed waiters flit about with martial like efficiency, delivering cream softened coffee, beer, wine, and full plates of things you can’t for the life of you find on the menu.  The beer in Alsace, by the way, is exceptional.

Bistros are quite the experience, but today we settled on Le Bouchon, a restaurant in every sense of the word, tucked into a corner of the bustling downtown.  Elegant tablecloths and napkins, glistening goblets, polished silverware, waitresses in black and white ensembles that make a man fidget and pray.  With my French pretty much limited to bonjour, au revoir and de la bière pour les chevaux, I had to be careful with the menu.  Once before, my arrogance led me to hastily call for rognon de veau, which turned out to be veal kidneys in a sauce far too mild to overcome my gag reflexes.

 This bright, sunny, hopeful day I went for the escargot, salade, entrecote avec béarnaise, pommes au gratin, and hericots vert.   For the uninitiated, or those who refuse to learn French because it makes you sound like you’ve got a serious sinus problem, I’ll offer a fighter pilot’s translation.  Snails, salad, rib steak, mayo with tarragon, toasted potatoes in a cream sauce and some green beans.  Again, it all sounds simple, but a French chef has that magic touch that channels the simple into the sublime.  Maybe it’s the creamy mixture for the potatoes combined with delicate browning, or the freshness of the eggs for the béarnaise.  Maybe it’s the rigid standards for culinary perfection in everything, from meat to the greens, to the politely wrinkled silk tablecloths?  Beats me, but it also beats most anything, anywhere outside of France.

The French do not eat, they dine, meaning unhurried conversation and unhurried consumption to the point of idle dawdling.  Dine we did, for the best part of two hours…actually the best part of any two hours you’d care to name.  I could go on about the food, the superb garlic butter on the escargot, the crisply tender green beans, potatoes that praised themselves, and the perfect doneness of that steak, but the photos do a better job.

After a meal like that, it was time for a short walk to a confectioner’s for coffee and dessert with the very young and beautiful.  Unfortunately, I stood out.

Lunch at Ikea

You know the deal: you move and all of a sudden you need bits and pieces of crap. And where else would you go to find said bits and pieces of crap besides Ikea (if you have one available to you, and I do now)? Luckily, my dad loves Ikea and whenever he's down here, he likes to go there and putter around for a few hours. He particularly likes Ikea's cafeteria. He drove me back from the Kootenays when I went to visit last month, and he stayed a few extra days to visit with my brother & SIL. I needed bits and pieces of crap for my new place, and Dad wanted to putter around. He also loves Ikea's food section & buys coffee beans from there whenever he can. We spent over 3 hours in Ikea one rainy afternoon, and started out with lunch.

There really wasn't anything on the menu that appealed to me, so I went with this Naiad Salad plate consisting of gravalax and a root vegetable salad in a citrus vinaigrette. It was accompanied by two crackers. For dessert, I had a piece of apple cake.

The salmon dish cost $7.95 or something ridiculous like that, and it came with a lot of gravalax! You wouldn't be able to buy that amount of salmon lox in the grocery store for that price. It was very good as was the root vegetable salad. The apple cake was OK. My dad had a bunch of things but I didn't get a picture. He was very happy indeed. Until we had to try to fit a flat-packed bookcase in his Subaru. But that's another story. :)

Lunch In Heidelberg

View from the Inside Out

A Wine Worth Mentioning

The Superb Ravioli

The Equally Grand Goulash

Jump a smooth, immaculately kept train for pocket change, sit back, read and watch the beautiful countryside stream by.  Get off in one of Germany’s most picturesque cities, Heidelberg, complete with a swiftly flowing river, an ancient university and an ancient downtown to match.  Have a quiet, unhurried lunch at a quaint restaurant, with superb food and wine.  Stroll the cobblestone streets.  Ho-hum, just another weekend lunch trip in Deutschland.

I could go on and on about Heidelberg, (and probably will when you least expect it and don’t have time to avoid it) but the quick answer is, it’s best just to wander the streets in the old city and find your own special favorites.

  One of ours is a small hotel and restaurant very near Heidelberg’s cathedral, The Church of the Holy Spirit (circa 1398).  The Hackteufel (Devil’s Cut) has all you’d want for an intimate luncheon for two.  Reeking with ambiance and old world charm, you walk inside and feel as if you’ve just entered the dining room of your warmest and most comfortable dream.  Low, tasteful lighting.  Full, yet subdued decorations.  A buxom waitress….wait, a sec, I mean a very demure, but efficient waitperson, who knew everything on the daily menu and had tasted enough wine to make me wish I had been there. 

In Europe, the wine is every bit as important as the meal and rightly so.  The wine list is also longer than the menu.  My wife ordered a Spätbugunder (Pinot Noir) Weißherbst rosé and I got a Portugieser red wine.  Both were wonderful.  I’ve never seen my wife quite so ebullient over a wine.  “Try this!” she said loudly enough to make the chef quiche in his pants.  Last time this happened was in church during a particularly raucous communion.  I tried the Spät and it was all she said and more.  Smooth. Beautiful floral nose.  Mixed fruits giving it a bare edge of sweetness.

For the main course, my wife ordered a minced lamb stuffed ravioli, lashed with delicate bacon, onion cream sauce and lightly oven baked with a mild, semi-hard Italian cheese, accompanied by mixed greens with vinaigrette.   This was a far cry from the Chef Boyardee ravioli of my misspent youth.  Far cry?  I don’t think the transatlantic cable would stretch that far. Light, yet flavorful, it gave a new perspective to ravioli.

I had a mixed burgundy goulash on a nest of spaghetti noodles.  Tender. Savory.  Luscious for lunch or anytime anyone lends you a fork.  This was the ‘special of the day’ and special it was!  I like my meat one of two ways, rare, or cooked until it’s falling apart.  The goulash was the latter and moreover, the sauce complimented the richness of the meat instead of simply masking a cheap cut.  Every bite delicious.

This was a lunch to remember and repeat….often, in one of the most romantic cities on earth.

Recent Lunches

My SIL and I ate at The Greek Oven in Castlegar a couple of weeks ago, and it was pretty good. I had eaten there before once, three years previously, and didn't think it was very good. I had had a calamari meal and the coating on the squid was really salty. I decided to give the calamari another try this most recent visit, though, and it was actually decent. Shan had a chicken souvlaki wrap. The lunch menu at The Greek Oven is varied and inexpensive, and I would definitely go again.

I also had yet another great lunch at the Sunshine Cafe last week, along with my brother & SIL.

I had a chicken burger with mushrooms, bacon and Swiss cheese - yum!

My brother had the special, which was a capicolli pannini.

My SIL had a custom wrap full of all kinds of goodies - she said it was delicious.

Lunch at Frisco's Seafood & Steak House

OK, here is my latest NaNoWriMo update! The end is near - and so is my 50,000 words!

My dad gets really excited when Save-on Foods in Nelson has a case-lot sale, so we recently took another trip over there, which of course, meant another lunch out! On a whim, my dad suggested we check out Nelson's Prestige Lakeside Resort, where there is a restaurant called Frisco's Steak & Seafood House. I was game, so off we went.

Frisco's is in a lovely spot, right overlooking the water and marina located at the resort. The restaurant is quite beautiful, too, with a darker but warm ambiance and a huge gas fireplace. It was pretty busy when we got there at 12:30, but the service was excellent and the place emptied out quickly as 1:00 approached. There was a hot buffet on offer, but nothing on it appealed to us, so we perused the lunch menu and found a lot to choose from.

My dad doesn't eat seafood at all, so he went with the Beef Tender Tips with Asparagus & Portabello Sizzler. He also wanted some soup (it was a chilly day) so he ordered the French Onion Prime Rib Soup. I had a tough time choosing between the Frisco's Seafood Salad and the Frisco Burger. In the end, I went with the burger with half Caesar salad and half fries.

Both of us made great choices, except Dad wasn't keen on the soup. He said it was kind of bland, not nice & rich as a French Onion should be. But he was very impressed with his Sizzler! It came out sizzling on a cast iron platter and Dad said it was really delicious.The Frisco Burger contained beer battered halibut on a sourdough bun, topped with pickle, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and tartar sauce. It was really good, but for a signature burger it was a little bit uninspired. It wasn't particularly interesting even though it was well-prepared and tasted great. The Caesar salad, on the other hand, was fabulous! This was not your typical Caesar dressing; it definitely seemed homemade and was far better than any Caesar dressing I've had in a restaurant in ages. The fries were also good. I loved the garnishes they used on our plates; you don't get that everywhere, let me tell you!Both of us were way too full to have dessert. The prices were very reasonable given the quality of the food and the portion sizes. I had a quick peek at the dinner menu and it's very fancy and has things on it like lobster dinners, Dungeness crab dinners, and very expensive steaks. I won't be having dinner there any time soon, I can tell you that, but I'd definitely go back for lunch!

Lunch at the Sunshine Cafe

It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of having lunch at Rossland's best lunch place, the Sunshine Cafe, but I got to go last week, and as usual, I was not disappointed!

I dined with my brother & SIL. Shan had the wrap special, which was Greek chicken, and the soup of the day, which was tomato & rice. The soup was so hearty she couldn't finish it all.My brother had a chicken burger with Swiss cheese and grilled onions, accompanied by the salad of the day, which was a Sweet Thai chicken pasta salad. He said it was awesome.I also opted for a chicken burger, wanting a change from my usual, which is the clubhouse sandwich. I had Swiss cheese and grilled mushrooms on my burger, and I had a side of fries because I was in a foul mood (it's amazing what a load of decent fries will do for grouchiness!). It was a great lunch!Again, the Sunshine didn't disappoint! I love this place!

Lunch at The Hume Hotel

Another week, another trip to Nelson to take advantage of Save-On Foods' weekly specials. Which also means a lunch out with my most constant dining partner nowadays, my dad.

This week, I suggested the Hume Hotel, which has a salad bar I was interested in. My appetite being what it is these days, I needed the flexibility the salad bar had to offer. That, and I really wanted some soup. The salad bar comes with soup of the day, which that day happened to be white bean & chorizo. Not my bag, so I subbed in the French Onion Soup.

Now, if you read this post, you'll see that the Hume has a history, and part of that history for me, involves a spectacular French Onion Soup I had there when I was a kid that had beer in it. To this day, it is the yard stick against which I measure all other French Onion Soups! In fact, my dad is the same - he still rhapsodizes about that soup. I knew, however, from our last lunch there that the recipe had changed and the beery soup was no longer on offer, but the current soup is supposedly made with sherry, as specified in the menu's description.

After having a sampler from the salad bar, my soup finally came. And...
...Well, it was good, but not that good. A bit weak, and not tasting too much of the sherry. It also didn't have very many onions in it. Also - they hadn't taken the bay leaves out and had used small bay leaves, so twice I took a spoonful and chomped down on bay leaves. I was a little annoyed.

My dad had ordered the lasagne, which came with garlic toast and a surprise Caesar salad. The salad was a surprise because the night shift had just come on and they put salad with their dinner entrees, so Dad got lucky.He said the lasagne was really good and enjoyed it very much.

The shift change might explain the slowness of the service. Because it was S-L-O-W.

Dad was full, but I wanted dessert, and I knew that the Hume has a great dessert list. I opted for the lemon meringue pie and was not disappointed at all - except, once again, it took forever to come out. But it was delicious and I realized I hadn't had lemon meringue pie in ages. Yum!
So, while the food was good, the service was iffy. Perhaps they were having an off day. It happens.

The Heat is Still On...

The heat is still on and I haven't been doing any cooking or baking, though I have put some chicken stock on in my crock pot for a meal tomorrow. The heat wave is supposed to break tomorrow, though it is about 7C cooler today than it has been for over a week. These oven-like temperatures have seriously impinged upon my favourite creative outlets, and this blog!

Today I had a special treat: one of my bestest friends ever and her sister came through town and we were able to have a really nice visit and lunch together. I haven't seen this friend in two years, though we are in touch over the phone & email. It was great to see her! I recommended the Sunshine Cafe for lunch, since they are so reliable and decently priced.

As usual, I had the clubhouse with fries - excellent as always!

My friend had a chicken burger, but dug in before I could get a photo; she ordered it with the salad of the day, which was spinach with bacon & sauteed mushrooms with blue cheese dressing. She was really happy with it. My friend's sister opted for an all-day breakfast item: omlette with chorizo and some other stuff, served with toast & homemade hashbrowns. She was also happy. So, more Sunshine Cafe converts...if only they lived closer!
Hopefully, regular posting will resume shortly.

Lunch at Leo's Taverna

It's so hot here I can barely breath and function, so posting might be a little light until I can get back into the kitchen. Meanwhile, my dad and I went to lunch the other day at a great spot in Nelson called Leo's Taverna. They make Greek & Italian food, the portions are generous, and the price is very reasonable.

We had the Corfu Platter for two. This includes, Greek salad, rice, chicken souvlaki & beef souvlaki, hummus, pita, tzadziki, and dolmades. I don't like Greek salad, so my dad ate that while I had the rice. The souvlakis were amazing & cooked perfectly. I don't care for dolmades, either, but my dad hates olives, so it all worked out. The hummus is chunkier than most hummuses, but very well-balanced in flavour. For dessert there wasn't much on offer. My dad was really looking forward to some baklava and I would have had some tiramisu if they had it, but alas, they were out of both. So, Dad ordered a slice of Black Forest Cake, and I had a couple of bites. There are way better Black Forest Cakes our there, but this did in a pinch.

It was a great lunch and I came away really full!

Weird Orange & Sunshine Cafe Lunch

Last week, as I was preparing to make Morning Glory Muffins at work, I came across a really strange-looking orange:
No, your eyes are not deceiving you: that is a pale, bulging section of orange peel, the same size & shape of a regular orange section. I have never ever seen anything like it before. Have any of you? The inside of the orange looked quite normal - no weird section underneath that peel. It's kind of cool, though, isn't it?

I went for lunch to the Sunshine Cafe with my brother the other day. The special was a tuna melt, and that's what I had, with fries. My brother had a veggie burger with Swiss cheese and grilled onions, with a Caesar salad. As usual, lunch at the Sunshine was great. I don't think I've ever had a bad meal there. Go Randi!

Lunch In Creston

I've had a busy couple of days!

Today, my dad and I went on a drive to Creston, BC, which is about an hour and a half or so from here. Creston is in a deep valley and is well-known for it's produce, similar to the Okanagan. Dad wanted strawberries and a sandwich from Creston Valley Bakery & Deli (no site, unfortunately). I wanted some Creston asparagus and to visit a place that sells chocolate-covered fruit (more in a later post).

Creston Valley Bakery & Deli makes a large selection of gourmet sandwiches and serves other light lunch items, including homemade soup and borscht. The bakery is excellent, too.

My dad had a reuben sandwich with extra hot mustard.I had the shrimp croissant. We got carrot sticks & dip with our sandwiches. The croissant was fairly average, but as a whole, the sandwich was pretty good.

I bought dessert, in addition to a selection of other items from the bakery (again, fodder for a future post). Dad had the Saskatoon Slice, which was like Black Forest Cake only made with Saskatoon berries instead of cherries. He really liked it.
I opted for the Mocha Missile, which was like a rectangular doughnut sliced in half and filled with mocha buttercream, topped with fondant, chocolate drizzle, and more mocha buttercream - YUMMY!

And just to give you a taste of some of the views we enjoyed on our drive over the Kootenay Pass to Creston, here are some shots of the lovely mountains we saw. The first two were taken at Kootenay Summit, which is 1774m/5826ft above sea level, and the last one was near the summit, on the western side of the pass coming up from Salmo.


Full Flickr set here.