The little difference sometimes makes a big difference
One thing I enjoy a lot since I moved to the US: cooking and baking. Since our neighbor has a fantastic kitchen, loves good food and gets along with the two of us quite well, it happens quite frequently that we stay more in his house than in ours. (What is lacking is the door in the wall, which would shorten the commute. Yes, I moved out of a commune - only to found a new one in DC... )
Trying to cook certain Swiss dishes is quite difficult, though, as not all ingredients can be found here easily (what a surprise...). Every once in a while there are some surprises, though. The most recent success is the discovery of a shop that sells quark ("German-style soft cheese"). A rare item in this city. The US food industry offers a lot, no doubt about that. While many of them are not necessarily on my list of most favorite culinary treats there are others which I will miss fore sure. Orange juice for example. Not even the best and most expensive OJ you can buy in any store (exluded the one freshly squeezed in front of you) in Switzerland comes even close to the stuff you can get in stores here. Simply delicious! Then there is the cheese cake prepared by David, our neighbor. What a treat!
Then there are certain things I just was not willing to give up. For example a good coffee in the morning. Of course, I could go to Starbuck's every morning to get me an overpriced coffee (which tastes nice...). But there is no Starbuck's on my way to work and I can imagine better ways to ruin myself. Being a keen reader of Dilbert comics, I was very much aware that any decent company in the US would offer coffee to its employees. However, we are talking American coffee here. The blackish brew they offer you in restaurants here and pour you continuously if you would like. Since I learnt how it is made (I pull away my nose every time I open one of those infamous coffee portions, which are used to brew this potion they call coffee), my desire to get a cup of coffee in the office dwindled considerably. Thus I decided to support the Swiss economy and got me a Nespresso machine. An ecological sin given the waste it produces, but an incredible indulgence compared to all other options. By now, a few of my co-workers joined the club.
But not everything needs to be replaced of course. Sometimes you just have to look carefully in the endless aisle of the supermarkets to find what you need. Yet, making the right choice is not always easy. Just recently, I had to learn the hard way. Very happy to find some rhubarb in the store, I got the necessary quantity to make a "Rhabarber Kuchen" (Kuchen meant in the Bernese sense of the word. Others back home would call it a Tünne, a Flade or a Wäie or something along those lines).
However, back from the store I decided to try something new and found a nice recipe on the lovely world wide web. I invested quite some time, energy and material to prepare this delicious looking cake. Still incapable of comprehending the US measurements, I was quite happy to finally have a scale with metric measurements at hand. It makes my life somewhat easier. Content with myself, I put the cake in the oven.
Half an hour later, I was pleased with the result I took out. However, it was too early to taste the product. Hence it sat on the stove until we decided to go down to the home movie theater to watch yet another movie at our neighbor's. Eventually I cut three large pieces and put them neatly on a plate followed by a fork and a paper towel for each of the connoisseurs who waited tickle their senses with a new dish. It was moist and the rhubarb flavor evaporated from the pastry we were about to enjoy.
Very curious about the most important feature of my undertaking (the taste), I cut off a healthy piece with the edge of my fork while the opening credits were flickering across the screen in front of us. The first piece of rhubarb cake entered my mouth and dropped off the fork onto my tongue. My taste buds initially sensed a nice mixture composed of the sour rhubarb and the sweet cake embedding the fruit. Yet, this most pleasant sensation was immediately followed by a rather unpleasant after taste that reminded me of ammoniac. Strange. This must be a strange reaction with the wine I just had and my senses are simply playing a trick on me. Somewhat less content with what I took out of the oven earlier, I shoveled a second piece on my fork and led it to my mouth - only to have the same nasty taste in my mouth after the initial lovely taste. ??? The rest of the audience copied my behavior, only to be equally disgusted by the taste. David, the only American among us, soon asked the right question: what did you use in the cake? I read down the ingredients from my mind and he immediately discovered the culprit: What I thought would be the equivalent to our "Backpulver" turns out to be something slightly different. For once I would have been better of with a literal translation. Baking powder is what I should have used. Instead, I decided to use baking soda convinced of doing the right thing given the cookie recipe printed on the box. Well, the result told me something different. A small difference - that made all the difference and turned a nice rhubarb cake into a fairly big pile of garbage. I guess I had just learnt something new.
Trying to cook certain Swiss dishes is quite difficult, though, as not all ingredients can be found here easily (what a surprise...). Every once in a while there are some surprises, though. The most recent success is the discovery of a shop that sells quark ("German-style soft cheese"). A rare item in this city. The US food industry offers a lot, no doubt about that. While many of them are not necessarily on my list of most favorite culinary treats there are others which I will miss fore sure. Orange juice for example. Not even the best and most expensive OJ you can buy in any store (exluded the one freshly squeezed in front of you) in Switzerland comes even close to the stuff you can get in stores here. Simply delicious! Then there is the cheese cake prepared by David, our neighbor. What a treat!
Then there are certain things I just was not willing to give up. For example a good coffee in the morning. Of course, I could go to Starbuck's every morning to get me an overpriced coffee (which tastes nice...). But there is no Starbuck's on my way to work and I can imagine better ways to ruin myself. Being a keen reader of Dilbert comics, I was very much aware that any decent company in the US would offer coffee to its employees. However, we are talking American coffee here. The blackish brew they offer you in restaurants here and pour you continuously if you would like. Since I learnt how it is made (I pull away my nose every time I open one of those infamous coffee portions, which are used to brew this potion they call coffee), my desire to get a cup of coffee in the office dwindled considerably. Thus I decided to support the Swiss economy and got me a Nespresso machine. An ecological sin given the waste it produces, but an incredible indulgence compared to all other options. By now, a few of my co-workers joined the club.
But not everything needs to be replaced of course. Sometimes you just have to look carefully in the endless aisle of the supermarkets to find what you need. Yet, making the right choice is not always easy. Just recently, I had to learn the hard way. Very happy to find some rhubarb in the store, I got the necessary quantity to make a "Rhabarber Kuchen" (Kuchen meant in the Bernese sense of the word. Others back home would call it a Tünne, a Flade or a Wäie or something along those lines).
However, back from the store I decided to try something new and found a nice recipe on the lovely world wide web. I invested quite some time, energy and material to prepare this delicious looking cake. Still incapable of comprehending the US measurements, I was quite happy to finally have a scale with metric measurements at hand. It makes my life somewhat easier. Content with myself, I put the cake in the oven.
Half an hour later, I was pleased with the result I took out. However, it was too early to taste the product. Hence it sat on the stove until we decided to go down to the home movie theater to watch yet another movie at our neighbor's. Eventually I cut three large pieces and put them neatly on a plate followed by a fork and a paper towel for each of the connoisseurs who waited tickle their senses with a new dish. It was moist and the rhubarb flavor evaporated from the pastry we were about to enjoy.
Very curious about the most important feature of my undertaking (the taste), I cut off a healthy piece with the edge of my fork while the opening credits were flickering across the screen in front of us. The first piece of rhubarb cake entered my mouth and dropped off the fork onto my tongue. My taste buds initially sensed a nice mixture composed of the sour rhubarb and the sweet cake embedding the fruit. Yet, this most pleasant sensation was immediately followed by a rather unpleasant after taste that reminded me of ammoniac. Strange. This must be a strange reaction with the wine I just had and my senses are simply playing a trick on me. Somewhat less content with what I took out of the oven earlier, I shoveled a second piece on my fork and led it to my mouth - only to have the same nasty taste in my mouth after the initial lovely taste. ??? The rest of the audience copied my behavior, only to be equally disgusted by the taste. David, the only American among us, soon asked the right question: what did you use in the cake? I read down the ingredients from my mind and he immediately discovered the culprit: What I thought would be the equivalent to our "Backpulver" turns out to be something slightly different. For once I would have been better of with a literal translation. Baking powder is what I should have used. Instead, I decided to use baking soda convinced of doing the right thing given the cookie recipe printed on the box. Well, the result told me something different. A small difference - that made all the difference and turned a nice rhubarb cake into a fairly big pile of garbage. I guess I had just learnt something new.
Klodynis - 2007-06-24 03:43
