Grilled Aubergine Soup with Garlic and Sage and a glimpse at "The Pedant in the Kitchen"

Julian Barnes, a talented English writer, shares in a delightful humorous style the Pedant´s successes, frightening moments, discoveries, confusion and moments of happiness in "The Pedant in the Kitchen". This lovely book of 136 pages including illustrations takes anyone who wants to peek into other people´s kitchen to perfect dinner parties, to witness the inventory audit of the Pedant´s bottom drawer of questionable utensils, to picture the French roads with warning signes declaring "Betteraves" (beetroot), to signing up for a shopping course and handling a surly butcher or a teasing fishmonger.

I sympathise with the author as I have found myself in situations when following a recipe my cooking creation did not turn out as I had hoped or being utterly puzzled reading a recipe where the main ingredient promised in the name of the dish was not not even mentioned on the ingredient list. How much is a dash of sherry or a little sugar, how big is a medium size onion or a handful of rice? The only advice I have and follow myself is to improvise. Oscard Wilde said that cooking is an art. The Pedant in Barnes´book says that cooking is about making do with what you´ve got in ingredients, equipment and skills.

Grilled aubergine soup with garlic and crispy sage

Grilled aubergine soup with garlic and sage
Ingredients for 2-3
2 medium aubergines (400-500g)
olive oil
6 cloves of garlic
a dash of sherry (ca 0.5dl)
1 l stock
0.5-1dl fresh cream or creme fraiche
salt&pepper
6-8 fresh sage leaves
grilled paprika, yellow and red (optional)

Set the oven to 220 degrees Celsius at grill regime.

Rinse the egg plants and cut into 5-7mm slices. Place them side by side on a baking tray on a baking paper. Sprinkle with some olive oil. Grill for 15 minutes until the slices have softened.

In a pan heat 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil and add cleaned garlic cloves. Cook for a few minutes on medium heat until the garlic softens but does not burn.

Take the aubergine slices from the oven, cut into smaller pieces and add to the pot. Stir in the oil and add a dash of sherry. Let it sizzle away. Then add the stock and cook for about 10 minutes until the aubergine is soft. Take off the heat and purée with the mixer or blender.

Finish the soup with cream and salt - pepper to your taste.

In a small pan heat some olive oil (enough to cover the bottom of the pan) and fry the fresh sage leaves briefly - no more than a minute - from both sides until they become crispy. Drain on a kitchen paper.

Grilled paprika adds colour and texture to the egg plant soup

To make the grilled paprika, place whole peppers on the baking tray together with the aubergines and grill until the skin turns dark brown turning from side to side. Remove the peppers from the oven into a bowl and cover the hot peppers with a plastic bag for a few minutes. This will loosen the skin. Peel and cut into suitable slices. Store the grilled paprika in a jar with olive oil.

Serve the soup with slices of grilled paprika and the crisp sage leaves.

More soup recipes:
Spicy sweet potato soup
Leek and potato soup with blue Stilton
Salcify cream soup

Simple "Aachener Printen" cookies, this time with figs and without anis

Aachener Printen, Christmas cookies, an old German tradition

The pre-Christmas hustle is taking up speed and density while the speed of moving around and the speed of service is going down. The streets are full of shoppers, shops are full of Christmas goods, products, decorations and gifts. The shoppers are carrying their coats under their arms or in the shopping carts to prolong or rather enable to balance the temper and temperature while the choosing of the things to buy and the wait at the check-out. No Christmas carols yet.

Last year I baked over a thousand Christmas cookies. This year could be more or a lot less since I am spending my weekend time on studying for an exam in December. I promised myself that I must manage at least some. Home made cookies are a part of the December celebration.

I was looking to widen my repertoir with some new cookies and happened on Lebkuchen which are normally thick soft cookies with a strong anis taste and smell. That´s how the Lebkuchen stand at the market outside the office smells. Most of the times I don´t enjoy anis. I am pretty sure everyone has some ingredient that they prefer to leave out of their diet. Anis is one of mine.

That little detail wasn´t going to stop my experiment with Lebkuchen. Aachener Printen is a type of Lebkuchen that gets an image "printed" on the cookie. My version is not that sophisticated, setting more worth to the inside than outside. :-) I took another liberty to change the standard recipe by adding butter. The original way of making the Aachener Printen is without fat. The recipe has been modified from one in the magazine of "essen und trinken" (I added figs, butter, changed the amount of flour, baking soda, left out pottasche, hirschhornsalz, kandis sugar). I am aware that my adjustments may be against the old traditions, but hey, all cooking is a big experiment.

Simple Aachener Printen, getting the name from the Aachen town in Germany

Aachener Printen with figs and without anis
Ingredients:
250g honey
50g sugar
0.5 dl water
80g butter
a pinch of salt
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground kardamom
1 tsp ground cloves
1 egg, beaten
450g flour
1.5 tsp sodium bicarbonate (baking soda)
2-3 large dried figs, finely chopped 
1 tbsp starch

In a pot bring the honey, sugar and water to boil. Remove from the heat. Add the butter and let cool. Mix in the spices, salt and the egg. Combine the baking soda with the flour separately and the chopped figs with starch. Then mix the figs with the flour and add to the rest. Combine with a spatula and leave to rest for a few hours in the fridge. The dough should be quite firm, add some flour if it feels too soft. (You should be able to form a ball of the dough without it sticking to hands.)

Set the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Spread flour on the working surface to avoid sticking. Roll the dough to a 0.5cm thickness and cut strips of ca 2cm width. Cut lengthwise into the length you like. Place on the baking tray fitted with baking paper. Bake for ca 10 minutes. Keep an eye on the oven not to burn the cookies.

Aachener Printen with figs and without anis