Cranberry Lemon Choc Chip Scones

For some reason I always thought scones were really hard to make and I was determined to some day make a batch of them. Last week I saw fresh US cranberries at the supermarket and grabbed a bag right away as I was worried I may not find them again. Turns out several stores do carry them.

Anyways, here I had this bag of cranberries and didn't know what to make. After going through recipes online I suddenly remembered that Ciocolat in Davis always has these delicious scones with white chocolate and cranberries. So I decided: scones it will be! I ended up finding a recipe by Ina Garten. Although I have looked at her cookbooks several times, I have never actually made any of her recipes.

I followed the recipe pretty closely, but used lemon instead of orange peel since I couldn't get an organic orange at my grocery store and do not like using the peel of citrus that has probably been sprayed with pesticides. I also used fresh instead of dried cranberries. For this it may be a good idea to add a little more sugar than the recipe says as fresh cranberries are pretty tart. If I remember correctly I only used half the amount of salt as I do not like my sweets to be salty! As I still had the image of cranberry and chocolate scones in my head I added some dark chocolate chips that I had left over.

Let me tell you, these scones were HEAVENLY! They were fluffy and buttery and just perfect!

Ingredients

4 c plus 1/4 c all-purpose flour

1/4 c sugar, plus more for sprinkling

2 tablesp. baking powder

2 teasp. kosher salt

1 tablesp. orange zest

3/4 pound (340 g) cold unsalted butter, diced

4 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten

1 c cold heavy cream

1 c dried cranberries

1 egg beaten with 2 tablesp. water or milk, for egg wash

1/2 c confectioner's sugar, plus 2 tablesp.

4 teasp. freshly squeezed orange juice

Preheat oven to 400°F (205°C).

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix 4 c of flour, 1/4 c sugar, the baking powder, salt and orange zest. Add the cold butter and mix at the lowest speed until the butter is the size of peas. Combine the eggs and heavy cream and, with the mixer on low speed, slowly pour into the flour and butter mixture. Mix until just blended. The dough will look lumpy. Combine the dried cranberries and 1/4 c of flour, add to the dough, and mix on low speed until blended.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead it into a ball. Flour your hands and a rolling pin and roll the dough 3/4-inch thick. You should see small bits of butter in the dough. Keep moving the dough on the floured board so it doesn't stick. Flour a 3-inch round plain or fluted cutter and cut circles of dough. Place the scones on a baking pan lined with parchment paper. Collect the scraps neatly, roll them out, and cut more circles. (I was unable to do these last couple of steps as the butter got too soft and I couldn't roll out the dough. Instead I just formed balls of dough with my hands and it worked out just fine.)

Brush the tops of the scones with egg wash, sprinkle with sugar, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are browned and the insides are fully baked. The scones will be firm to the touch. Allow the scones to cool for 15 minutes and then whisk together the confectioner's sugar and orange juice, and drizzle over the scones.

California Eats Part 2: Passionfish, Peppers, Sprouts

Wow, I can't believe how long it's taken me to start writing this post. Summer vacation was loooong ago, but I still want to share the rest of my CA food stories.

For the first time in I don't know how many years I tried a new restaurant in Pacific Grove, called Passionfish. I had read about it and wanted to try it because they serve sustainable seafood. It was quite difficult to choose from their menu as many of the dishes sounded enticing. But finally I decided on an heirloom tomato, watermelon, feta and arugula salad with mint-lime dressing as an appetizer. This is a combination of ingredients I had long been wanting to try and it was delicious!

For my main I decided on poached Monterey Bay spot prawns with linguini cauliflower-bacon custard and lemon butter although I was warned that it was going to be messy! It was indeed messy as I had to de-shell my prawns, but they were very good and the linguini custard was very comfort-food like. I didn't really care for the small orange eggs hanging off the prawns. Hope they weren't a delicacy because I couldn't get myself to finish them!

For dessert I had the raspberry peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. It was good, but not great. The dough part was a little dry and I prefer a bit juicier and sweeter.

We did also have a chance to visit my long time favorite restaurant Peppers in Pacific Grove. As always I got full on their darned tortilla chips before dinner arrived but I was still able to enjoy my portabello mushrooms with roasted red pepper sauce and the usual Mexican side dishes.

On our way from Monterey to Yosemite we stopped in Merced to finally have our share of In-n-Out burgers, my so far favorite fast food burgers. I ordered my usual animal style cheeseburger and animal style fries. Mmmhmmm! Those items aren't actually on the menu. You have to be an insider to know about them. I don't feel like an In-n-Out insider but I'm glad I know about these secret menu items. Animal style means fried versus raw onions paired with a lovely sauce.

Last but not least I have one recommendation for a place in South Lake Tahoe. It's called Sprouts. It's a charming cafe right on 50. I tried the Mexican Vulcano salad and the quesadilla. The food was nice and fresh and pretty healthy and it tasted good.

California Eats Part 1: Ella's in SF and Hot Italian in Sac

I was so excited about the prospect to be able to eat California food again after having had to go without it for a year. Many of the places we went to on our two week trip were places I had heard or read about. The first one was Ella's in San Francisco. We went there the morning after arriving at the SFO airport the night before. It was pretty packed but we were able to get a spot at the bar, which turned out to be cool because we could watch the cooks put together meals in what seemed like nanoseconds. Lucky enough it was Sunday so we got the brunch menu, which has heartier items on it than the regular breakfast menu. I decided on the huevos rancheros despite the tantalizing menu item "fresh baked sticky bun" because I was craving Mexican food. It was quite delicious, but the portion was so big I couldn't finish it all.

In Sacramento we met up with a good friend of mine and went to try out a fairly new restaurant by the name of Hot Italian. We sat outside in their nice patio (see pic above). The Hot Italian specializes in pizza. Funny, now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing any "hot Italians" or any Italians whatsoever. Maybe they were in the kitchen. We tried the Trulli (figs, caramelized onions, gorgonzola dolce, arugula, and balsamic vinegar plus added prosciutto) and the Stella (prosciutto parma, mozzarella, crescenza cheese, mushroom medley plus added egg). Out of the two, the Trulli was my favorite, although both were good. I was surprised that I liked the egg on the pizza as I always shy away from meals that have an egg on top as it seems quite unnecessary to just plop an egg on a perfectly good dish. My only complaint about the pizza were that the toppings were quite sparse and my teeth were craving more to bite into.

We also tried two salads, the Canalis (mixed spring salad, genoa albacore tuna, cannellini beans, taggiasche olives, red onion, pecorino romano) and the Campioni (heirloom tomatoes and fior di latte cheese with butter lettuce, radicchio and arugula), the Canalis was clearly the winner as it had much more flavor.

La Fonda Cocina Mexicana in Basel

Mexican food in Europe -- it doesn't really work. I've tried it a few times, but it never got close to the Mexican food I'm used to from California, which, obviously, isn't the real Mexican food, but it's what I know and love.

My prayers for finding good Mexican food here in Switzerland were finally heard when my coworker and I went to lunch at La Fonda about two weeks ago. I ordered a vegetable enchilada and my coworker ordered a tuna fish wrap with salad. I was pleasantly surprised. It was quite delicious and all the ingredients were very fresh. The flavors were pretty authentic as well. I will definitely go back. But first I will get to enjoy Californian Mexican food on my upcoming trip!!

Eating Our Way Through Vienna

I had been wanting to visit Vienna ever since I read a newspaper article about it 2 or 3 years ago. I had already been to Vienna when I was a little kid, but who honestly remembers anything from those trips your parents took you on when you were little?

So last month we finally headed off to Vienna for a couple of days. In preparation for the trip I read up on restaurants and, most importantly, coffee houses. Below are my favorite.

First stop on the trip: Demel. In 2006 I first visited Demel in Salzburg and loved it. The hot chocolate was so rich and the whipped cream that topped it so dense and delicious. Due to the summer weather the hot chocolate would not be an option this time, so I had to try something else. I started off with the house-made sausages served with mustard and horseradish (called "Kren" in Austria--the Austrians love their horseradish). Then I moved on to the Annatorte, which is a layer cake filled with truffle cream with a hint of orange liquor and enrobed in chocolate nougat. This cake was very good, but the nougat perhaps a little too much. Along with the Annatorte I tried the Einspänner, which is a double espresso topped with loads of whipped cream. It was very good and we never found an Einspänner at any other coffee house that tasted as good as Demel's. Because of this and the many good sweets Demel has to offer we ended up going to Demel several times. On one occassion I got the Fächertorte (Fächer is German for fan). It's a cake that consists of four layers: poppyseed, walnut, apple and plum. I got the cake to go and it weighed a ton (after eating it I also felt like a ton!). It's worth trying but I don't think it would ever be my favorite as there are too many different flavors in it.

On our first evening we checked out the restaurant Glacis Beisl. I had read about it in my guidebook and since it was near our hotel we decided to give it a try. I had chanterelle goulash with dumplings (in German: Eierschwammerlgulasch mit Serviettenknödel). The goulash wasn't exactly what I expected. It was more goulash-like than I thought it would be, meaning it had the same spices and seasonings (lots of paprika) as regular (meat-containing) goulash and for some reason I expected a milder, creamier version, but it was very good nontheless. We ended up going there again on our last night. That night I had fried chicken salad (in German: Backhendlsalat), which was salad with pieces of fried chicken on top. At first I thought, what a strange combination, but it turned out to be quite good. The salad consisted of lettuce, potatoes, tomatoes and yummy purple broad beans, and was topped with dressing that had pumpkin seed oil in it, a traditional Austrian staple.

Of course we had to make a trip to Hotel Sacher to try the original Sachertorte. As with many foods labelled "original" there is some controversy as to who actually makes the original Sachertorte, but I won't go into that. Fact is, the Sachertorte at Hotel Sacher tastes very, very good!

In that one article on Vienna that I read a couple of years ago there was mention of the restaurantÖsterreicher im MAK. The review was quite good so we went there for dinner one of the nights. Although there were many delicious things on the menu we both decided that we should try the Wiener Schnitzel (Wiener means Viennese in German; Schnitzel is breaded meat--in this case breaded veal) as we hadn't yet had one. It was accompanied by a salad made of lamb's lettuce and potatoes. Both Schnitzel and salad were very tasty. Often Schnitzel is made with meat that eventually turns into chewing gum and meat-flavored chewing gum is not exactly my favorite... But this meat was tender and juicy and the breading had a perfect crispiness and was not too greasy. Fortunately the plate was big enough to cover most of the placemat which was a picture of a nipple, not the most appetizing thing to be looking at when waiting for food (the MAK is the Museum of Applied Arts, so the placemat can be traced back to some art project).

On our last day I just had to go to Fruth, a patisserie near the Naschmarkt, Vienna's most famous outdoor market. We had passed Fruth on our way to Schloss Belvedere on a previous day and judging by the display of sweets in the window I knew the place had to be good. The shop is very cute inside with additional goodies in the cabinets. Unfortunately, there is no place to sit down so you either have to get something to go or stand at the little counter on the side of the shop, which is what we ended up doing. It was so hard to decide what to get but I finally decided on the coconut raspberry muffin as it was something I had never had before. It tasted quite good and you could tell that the ingredients were of high quality, but maybe the muffin should have sat out at room temp for a little bit first as it was on the cool side. Next time I will definitely get something with chocolate!