Last Images of Kassel

Just in case anyone is getting tired of the view of giant piles of melting snow outside, I thought I'd share some of the last of the photos from our trip to Kassel last spring break.

Remembering back to our last post about Germany in November, we had climbed up to the huge monument called the Oktagon, where a statue of Hercules overlooks all of Kassel in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe.  

The 590 acre park constructed during the reign of Wilhelm IX also included a life-size replica of a medieval castle called Löwenburg, or "Lion's Castle".

The structure is breathtakingly beautiful and romantic.

 As is this guy.

It's easy to see why Wilhelm took his lovers here.

 

Mike and I were able to catch the first half of a tour of some of the rooms.  The interior was just as amazing and held centuries old armor, shields, and weaponry. 

Then there was the real castle.

Today it is used as an art museum.  A group of us teachers skipped one of the seminars to take a look around.  It houses some great original works and has the world's second largest collection of Rembrandt paintings.

On our walks back to school we would pass some pretty cool homes in the surrounding neighborhoods.

Our outings into downtown Kassel were very limited, but we still managed to see some neat things.  Here, we found St. Martin's Church -- an impressive and old looking building in what otherwise looks like a very modern and new downtown.

We also found out that Johan Sebastian Bach visited this church and played on its organ in the 18th century.

The organs inside now are too new for Bach to have played on, but it was still very beautiful and peaceful.

Louis Spohr, a contemporary and colleague (if you could use that term) of Beethoven, is commemorated in one of the Platz for being music director for the court of Kassel; it was his longest and last post.  Today he is probably remembered best for his four clarinet concertos.  Randomly enough, he was born in Braunschweig, not too far from Wolfsburg!

Not too far away was the historic Rathaus.

On our last day in Kassel, we tried to fit in as much sight-seeing as possible in the few hours we had between saying goodbye to teachers at the conference and catching our train back up to Wolfsburg.  After having lunch at a Pizza Hut lunch buffet (all deep-dish, some strange toppings, but still very tasty), we made our way to the Orangerie of Karlsaue, a huge palace and garden complex. 

The palace is now a museum for astronomy and technology.  It also has a planetarium.    

From the palace steps, you can see the vast gardens and greens that stretch out before it.

Some of the Roman statues in the background up-close.

And still, the walking paths continued...

From here, we headed toward Friedrichplatz, one of the cultural squares of the city.  In the end, we decided we didn't have time to go into the huge museums there.  We did, however, take a peek at Germany's first permanent theater.  Called the Ottoneum, it was built in 1604.

Kassel has a number of interesting museums -- the wallpaper museum, for example.  We really wanted to go see the Brothers Grimm Museum.  The famous fairytale writers lived in Kassel for over 30 years of their lives.  As was our luck, the actual museum was closed for renovations.  They had a little miniature museum set up in the city's old train station, but besides getting lots of exercise trying to find the place, the visit wasn't so rewarding.

Even before it was time to head back to the station to catch our train, Mike and I were ready to go home.  We were exhausted from two weeks of traveling.  Unfortunately for us, our train was delayed, and because we weren't able to buy our return tickets in advance (long story), neither of us had seats for the more than two hour ride home. 

All in all, however, it was a very good trip.  We saw many amazing places, ate fantastic food, drank great wine, and met some very cool people.  Upon returning from our spring break travels, we had a few days to recuperate before taking our band, orchestra, and choir kids from school on a five-day intense rehearsal overnight trip in the mountains.  Obviously, we did not know the meaning of "taking it easy". 

Hansel and Gretel in a Lebkuchenhaus

Inspired by all of the Christmas stuff in every single store you walk into, Mike and I decided that it would be fun to try to do a gingerbread house this year.  Unlike our usual selves, we bought a kit that had the pieces and parts individually wrapped and all ready to go.

It even a base to help get the structure to stand up-right.  

Even with all of the pre-made help, our house did not end up structurally sound, but so it goes.  

This is what it was "supposed" to have looked like.

This is what it actually looks like.

You can see where Santa stashed all of his treats and surprises.

Back of the house.

Gingerbread Santa!

Mike's beautiful Christmas tree and my wonderful Candy Cane Sleigh ®.

All in all, not bad.  Maybe even better than the picture on the box!

Three Days of Thanksgiving

I will wholeheartedly admit that Thanksgiving is one of my most favorite holidays.  How could I not love it?  Time off from school (if you live in the United States, as we do this year), time to spend with family and friends, and food, food, FOOD!  All this without the added stress of finding the right gifts for the right people by December 24th.  It was especially nice that my school district had an added day of Thanksgiving break.  

Last year we had two Thanksgiving dinners -- one with the Herth family the Saturday after the actual Turkey Day, and a second with the staff of the Waldorfschule just before the winter break started.  Having enjoyed cooking dinner last year, we thought we'd do it again this year for our friends (after watching ten seasons of the characters of Friends having Thanksgiving together, it's hard not to want to host one of our own).  It took a while to work out a date, having to schedule around both the Anderson family Thanksgiving and the Tam/Wong dinner, but eventually we worked it out so that we'd be in White Bear Lake on Thursday, Eden Prairie on Friday, and in Shorewood on Saturday. 

Thursday's Thanksgiving was lovely and quiet.  Bill and Amber drove up from Wisconsin to join us.  After an excellent spread of cheese, crackers, olives, and pickles and Thanksgiving dinner itself, we settled into playing Bananagrams and figuring out the rules of Settlers of Catan over some bubbly and wine.

Instead of doing the crazy Black Friday shopping thing the following day, Mike and I began preparing for our own Thanksgiving feast.  We had bought at 20 pound turkey in preparation for the event a week or so prior, but once it made it from the grocery store into our freezer, I forgot about it.  It didn't occur to me until the Monday before that I should start thinking about defrosting the bird.  Three and a half days of refrigerator defrosting was cutting it close, so I bought a giant pot just in case we needed to defrost it in water.

It was a good call.  

By noon the turkey was good to go.  I cleaned the bird and used the same recipe I used last year for the big school dinner.

Yes, those are chunks of butter beneath the skin of the turkey.

Soon we had all the mise en place for the side dishes ready... chopped up vegetables and day-old bread for the best stuffing in the world!

Mike, with his doctorate in potato and apple peeling, was awesome.  These apples ended up being put into an apple crisp we made for the Thanksgiving of the next night.

He also made amazing mashed potatoes using one of our favorite recipes from the Top Chef cookbook.

We also decided to bring a little off Germany into our Thanksgiving dinner, so we made the pumpkin soup we love so much. 

It was hard work at the stove, but I have to admit that I enjoyed it.

Meanwhile, Mike cleaned our entire living room and set up the tables to accommodate the food and people.  (Yes, the computers were necessary -- my recipes are on there!)

And, the turkey kept cooking...

...until it was perfect!

Everyone slowly tricked over to Eden Prairie.

There was tons of food.  

And, tons of fun!  We had a great night full of food, friends and family, and games -- all happy things.  There were also tons of leftovers, which was essential to the Thanksgiving experience.  All in all, success!

The final Thanksgiving was just a loud and crazy as the last with all of the cousins over at my uncle's home in Shorewood.  At dinner, my brother Calvin who is currently living in Virginia was put on video chat so he could eat with us for a while.  We ate, played games, and hung out until we were all exhausted.

It was a fabulous Thanksgiving weekend.  We can't wait for the Christmas version of it!

The Second Birthday Dinner

**Note from Vicki -- As you can see, every one of us forgot our cameras that night.  The food, however, is still fresh in Mike's memory :)

After taking Vicki to celebrate her birthday at Travail, my father offered to treat his daughter-in-law (and by extension, his son) at an establishment of her choice in the north-eastern suburbs, provided he and my mother get to tag along.  Vicki, as always, was aglow at the kindness and hadn’t the slightest idea of where we should go (do we go to Acqua again?  Ingredients?  Dock Café?  Look into the authenticity of the Bavarian Gasthaus?).  Thankfully, a new restaurant recently opened in Mahtomedi (okay, technically Willernie) that peaked my father’s curiosity.  My parents wanted to know if this new “Hanger Room” was all that it was cracked up to be, especially since the prices – in my father’s words – made Acqua look affordable.  Nonetheless, the reviews had been positive and we decided to have a fun evening enjoying and exploring fine dining in the northeast.

A small note before we get into the food.  I’m quite certain my parents are astounded that there son is this intrigued about food.  They probably attribute it to V, but I’m sure it still amazes them.  Seriously, I was the kid who ordered a variation of cheeseburger-with-only-ketchup-and-maybe-bacon or pizza-with-meat every time he went out.  Maybe pasta was occasionally allowed at Italian restaurants, but even meatballs were not in my repertoire at the time.  And this was when I was in high school!  No, my interest started much later and I’m sure it is nearly inconceivable that the boy-who-only-ate-meat would be expounding on the balance of ingredients in a tartare or how the cucumbers and caviar where prepared in such a way that they were the spotlight in that dish (not that his opinions are correct in any stretch of the imagination, simply that he would try). 

Anyway, without further ado, The Hanger Room.  Honestly, I do not know much about the genesis of this restaurant beyond that it is located in a former bowling alley and it is unique is its price points for this community.  However, V and I do love food, so we are always open to any suggestion of fine dining.  After settling in and looking at the menu, my dad suggested we all go for the Chef’s five course tasting menu.  No one objected.

Our experience started out with an Oyster shooter with dill and sea salt.  At first we were unsure how to eat this amuse bouche.  To we drink it like a shot?  It is in a shot glass and labeled a ‘shooter’.  But, there’s a spoon that comes with it.  What are we supposed to do with that?  Dad took a small sip and informed us that it was salty.  When the waitress came by with our wine, she let us know that our first opinion was correct – spoons be damned. 

I must say, this was a nice amuse.  When I saw the oyster floating in the glass, I expected to get a lot of that unappealing ‘ocean’ flavor.  I like oysters, but that flavor always accompanies them.  That was not the case here and the oyster shooter had a nice balance of flavors (okay, maybe a little salty for some palates) that reminded me of ocean (the good aspects), smoke, salt, and dill.  Overall, a success in my book.

The wine paired with this course was an Austrian Grüner Veltliner.  It was supposed to be a German semi-sweet Riesling, but the wines from the amuse and second course were accidentally swapped.  The Veltliner wasn’t bad, but I do think the more forward flavor of the Riesling would have stood up to the shooter better.  Oh well.

The first ‘real’ course of the evening was a Salmon Tartare.  I do think that all the flavors of this dish work, but the problem was proportion.  The main part of this dish was a rather large tartare (dad helped mom finish hers) with salty greens on top.  Now, the greens would balance the tartare out well if you could get them together.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.  Trying to get that one ‘perfect’ bite simply eluded me.  If the greens were chopped smaller and would ease onto the fork with the tartare, this could be an entirely different story.  The Greek Assyrtiko wine that came with was fine, but altogether, it seemed like a good starting point in need of a few revisions.

What I really enjoyed about this dish were the cucumbers and sauces on the side.  Normally, I am not a big fan of cucumbers.  This has been an issue in Germany at times, but I am not a big fan of pickles, gürkens, cucumbers, whatever form they take.  I am always willing to try them, but a large plate of cucumber salad with cucumber sauce for lunch is a serious challenge for me.  The cucumbers on this plate, though, were wonderful.  They were subtle, they were clean, they had a texture of squash, and they high quality product.  The caviar on the sauce droplets matched that ‘high quality’ label by having a saltiness that wasn’t overbearing.  It was just what the sauce needed. 

The second course was another winner, like the shooter.  V has often thought that she simply doesn’t like scallops.  The requisite bit of grit aside, she just doesn’t like that slimy nether texture that scallops take on (and this coming from an Asian girl!), but this scallop was another story.  It was meaty.  It was rich.  It had a texture and a flavor that we loved.  The pork belly and foie puree were okay, but didn’t seem to make the scallops any better.   Once again, I wonder what this dish would have been like with the right pairing of wine, but V really liked this Riesling.

For the third course we got to the flagship piece and namesake of the restaurant: the 28-day aged steak.  Now, I have no idea how long or short steak is normally aged, how long you want it to be aged, or how it become better when it is aged, but The Hanger Room touts its horn on their hanger room where they dry-age they steaks in house.  This was the litmus test that my father was looking for, what most patrons from the northeastern suburbs are looking at.  We from the northeast are steak people.  We like are steaks and know what a good steak is.  Unfortunately, this one didn’t measure up.

I suppose it depended on what your first bite was, because mine was delicious.  The dry age had a real depth and sophistication to it, and the steaks were nicely cooked.  But, as I worked my way through my steak (and V had in her first bite), I ran into quite a few tendons.  Talking to my parents afterwards, we all had the same experience.  I guess we didn’t say anything at the table out of Minnesota Nice-ness.  I really am sad to say this, but the inferior cuts of meat really impeded our enjoyment of the supposedly higher quality dry-aged meat.  Too bad, because I’m sure this is fatal blow for many that even the meaty scallops can’t save.

After the steaks we had a cheese course of manchego and house made garnishes paired with some sherry.  Cheese is one of those things that almost always pleases V and me (thank you Germany!) and the garnishes were tasty.

Finally, for dessert we had a cardamon and vanilla Crème Brulee with a Sauternes.  You definitely tasted the cardamon in this dish, which I thought was nice at first.  After a while it got to be a bit much, though I enjoyed this dish.   The Crème Brulee connoisseur was not much of a fan and I know not to disagree with her opinion.

Overall, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves at The Hanger Room.  It really is a lot of fun to try nice food, talk about its different elements, and enjoy each other’s company, all while celebrating V’s birthday.  At the end of the day, though, we probably will go back to Acqua next time we’re in town.

Happy Birthday to Me

Mike and I had been looking into various restaurants to visit for my birthday dinner for a couple of weeks. We had a found a few that were intriguing, but nothing that immediately shouted, "LET'S GO HERE!"

Then Mike was perusing through articles online a few days before when he came across this article on a restaurant called Travail Kitchen and Amusements.  Molecular gastronomy in a casual bar setting?  How could we pass up such an interesting idea?  So on the third of November, after a long and "special" day, we made our way up Highway 100 to Robbinsdale to see the hubbub Travail's was creating.

We had a vague idea of what we were getting into -- the place didn't take reservations and we were going to a restaurant that had just received rave reviews in the local magazines and papers, but we were still a bit stunned by how crowded it was for a Wednesday evening.  And, when I say crowded, I mean that the wait time was estimated at one and a half hours.

Even so, we decided to stick it out.  There wasn't much sitting room, so we stood near the bar and contemplated some glasses of wine as we watched cooking shows on the televisions over the bar and looked over the dinner menu.

The menu from above is from someone else's camera from a different (more recent) date, but many, though not all, of the dishes are the same.  If anything, it gives you an idea of the place -- certainly casual (the water glasses are mason jars), but some up-scale menu items indeed.  We decided to go all out for the ten course tasting menu. 

Nearing the hour-and-a-half mark, two seats opened up at the bar.  We quickly took possession of them intending to stay until a table was ready for us.  There, we started talking with the couple next to us who were regulars at Travail's and friends of the restaurant owners.  They gave us their recommendations on dishes and suggested we have our dinner at the bar.  There was space enough there and good company.  Plus, we didn't know how much longer the wait would be, so we thought, why not?

And, that kick-started dinner!

A note before we get into the food -- having taken place over a month ago, I have to admit that my memories over the details of the dinner are fuzzy.  I know what the main components are, as well as some of the garnishes, but many of my descriptions are not very detailed nor necessarily 100% accurate.  Sorry!  At least we remembered to bring a camera...

So...

First course:  a simple, but very prettily presented beet salad with blue cheese and some jalapeño peppers for a bit of a kick.  Sweet, refreshing, and delicious.

The second course surprised us both -- and not because of the ingredient themselves, but how they were prepared!  Both of us have had octopus before -- that was no big deal.  However, soft, tender octopus?  Never!  The surprising (and delicious) texture was the result of sous-vide (pronounced "sou-vie") cooking that we had heard about and seen (on Top Chef) again and again. 

That dish was also our first experience with foie gras and having a foam in our dish.  It's been so long that I don't remember what kind of foam it was.  It was very light and dissipated with the touch of our forks.  Nevertheless, the dish was certainly one of our favorites.

Course number three was one of the recommended dishes of the night:  beef tartare.

We've had tartare before -- but that was a tuna tartare.  Raw fish is a rather normal thing if you like sushi.  Raw beef, however...  less normal.   It was, of course, delicious.

On the opposite end of the dish was a home made cracker crisp and capers.  In the center is a bit of pickled onions and carrots, and three gelées:  an olive gelée, a caper gelée, and an anchovy gelée.

The next dish ranks as one of my favorites:  agnolotti pasta with a parmesan foam. 

The filled pasta was so good and the froth made for a very light and airy sauce that really did taste of parmesan!  

A close up of the parmesan bubbles.

Up next for course number five was chicken two ways -- sous-vide chicken and chicken "doughnuts".  The latter was chicken that had been lightly coated with a sweet batter and fried.  They served the two preparings with a tasty sweet potato puree, caramelized onions. 

While interesting to try, the chicken was not a big hit with either of us.  Granted, neither were dry and over done (like a lot of chicken you get when you go out), but the doughnuts didn't leave much of an impression and the texture that we loved with the octopus was not as pleasing with the chicken.

Course number six was another big hit:  the fish and chips.

Everything in the dish was very straightforward and simple -- a scoop of herbed mashed potatoes, hand-cut chips, house-made tartar sauce, and a perfect piece of fried cod.  Ask Mike about the fish -- he could go on for days.  Maybe it was the great quality of the fish, or the fact that it was soaked in beer before battering and then washed again with beer, or both -- but the texture and flavor of the fish was incredible.  Luscious, buttery, melt-in-your mouth...  Mmmm...

The seventh course featured steak.  This was also done sous-vide with some home made pasta and garnished with grapefruit wedges, radishes, and lemon zesty bread crumbs.  Good, but not super memorable.  We were also rather tired of sous-vide proteins at this point.

Yet another first for both us -- rabbit terrine served with fried green tomatoes, onion, celery, and a bit of pesto made up the eighth course. 

Soup constituted our last course of the evening, not including dessert.  The last step of putting the soup together was done in front of us.  We started with a bowl with peanut butter powder, dried cherries, some celery leaf for garnish, and a sweet and nutty paste made up of something that I can't remember. 

Then they poured the celeriac soup on top.

Ants on a log in soup form!  We enjoyed the creative presentation.  It was also very tasty, though in general, I am a huge fan of soup. 

Our final bite of the night was dessert.  We chose to take the tasting version of the dessert plates (why not?), which included some form of chocolate, ice cream, and a deconstructed s'more.  The more memorable part of the dessert platter was its name: "Fire and Ice".

They began by lighting the platter on fire (obviously to toast the marshmallow in the s'more).  Unfortunately I don't have a photograph of that.

Then they poured liquid nitrogen over it.

A bit cheesy, sure, but the spectacle was kind of fun.   

The friendly couple had left just before we had our dessert, but they had surprised us by buying us a can of Sofia champagne in honor of my birthday.  It is surprisingly good for coming from a can.

Overall, we greatly enjoyed our experience at Travail's.  Each dish was a new adventure and we left  pleased and very satisfied with our meal.  If we go again, however, we'll be sure to get there either right when it opens, or after 9 pm, lest we have another crowded wait.

Salutations from Mike...

Well, we’re married, we’re working, and we’re in the US.   And, we’re finally settling into a routine – or so we hope.  As we’ve said before, we do want to continue this weblog that chronicles our thoughts, feelings, and adventures as we share our life (and as we share our life together).  Due to the nature of our profession, we probably won’t be sharing much of our professional life (aside from occasional 500 person concerts), but we do want to share and write about our passions.  As you will see soon enough, much of that is about food.  Cooking, eating, sharing, whatever.  Our hope is that we will be able to share these experiences both in person and vicariously with as many of you as possible.  Salut!