Mistress of Spices. Not

I made the rash promise to cook an Indian dinner tonight for the Mermaid and her better half, Coco and another friend. See, when I got the Bollywood cookbook for Christmas I said I'd let the generous donator (= the Mermaid) and the person whose Amazon account she used to order it (= Coco) plus their entourage be guinea pigs.

Little did I know upon a first perusal of said book which had me focus on the old-fashioned film posters and photos of stars than the endless list of ingredients.

What can I say, even though I picked what looked like the easiest options those dishes contain ingredients I'd never heard of before and the preparation turned out to be somewhat time-consuming to say the least. Ever dry-roasted things like cinnamon bark and bay leaves and then "finely ground" them in a pestle and mortar? Ever, like me, filled the kitchen with a whiff of baby puke in the (futile!twice!) attempt to produce more than a matchbox-sized piece of paneer cheese out of gallons of milk and cream?

Everything's been prepared now and apart from the sad bonsai version of the paneer I daresay nothing can go wrong any more and I can let the three course meal and mango lassi loose on my hapless invitees.

Whether they survived the experience or not I'll tell you on Monday. Stay tuned.

***
FCN just asked me how many guests were coming tonight. Four, I replied, then wrinkling my brow. Ooops- can anybody tell me why I laid the table for 6 people then and prepared 6 bowls of dessert? It's been a while since I last entertained and back then "me" still was "we", i.e. two hosts. Ah, well.

Hi, it's me, your seasonal baking bore

Did I say on Friday I had problems motivating myself to tackle the gingerbread-dough. Ahem. Above you can see the products of the weekend's baking and chocolate-making frenzy. Not pictured are 3 more (!) types of cookies I made, including the good old Christmas cookies for dummies where I substituted dried apricots and mangoes for the cranberries and used half walnuts, half Brazil nuts. Not bad. I also soaked the fruits for the toddy cake (=variation of traditional British Christmas cake) I am going to bake tonight. Hopefully my lunch-break excursion to the British supermarket with FCN will produce ready-to-roll icing.

cinammon snail

At the last bookclub meeting, K.'s boyfriend surprised us with decorated gingerbread hearts from the Oktoberfest in Munich. I chose one saying "Zimtschnecke" which literally means "cinammon snail" and is the name for a popular kind of pastry, but is also a term of endearment for females which I personally like a lot, not least because I passionately love cinnamon. Zimtschnecke, c'est so moi!

I regularly visit Müller's just because they sell Wrigley's Big Red chewing gum.

Apart from their Kürbiskernweckerln (pumpkinseed rolls), Zimtkrusterln are the only thing I ever buy at Anker, an otherwise rather boring bakery-chain which can be found at every street corner in Vienna. Their Zimtkrusterln (see photo) are absolutely divine. They consist of a yeasty dough interspersed with cinammon "spots" (think straciatella ice-cream) and a crunchy sugar crust. They're only moderately sweet and my idea of the perfect office breakfast. What makes them all the more precious is that a) not all Anker branches sell them and b) that they're seasonal, i.e. you can only buy them in autumn and winter. I spied the first Zimtkrusterl of the season in an Anker near Coma HQ about 2 weeks ago and immediately bought one. Bliss! And all the sweeter after long months of cold turkey.