Food

Prenzlauer Berg

April 30, 2018

#Berlinlivingthedream2018, Berlin, Food, Pretzlauer Berg

For my month in Berlin I had a lovely Airbnb 2 bedroom flat in Pretzlauer Berg. My friend Mercedeh Sanati always steers me to the best neighborhood to live in when I chose my country and destination city. Mercedeh is a world traveler of distinction and co-owner of Quench Trip Design so she knows what she is about!! (check them out at http://www.quenchtravel.com ).

This year’s recommendation was spot on!!! My flat was delightful.. a lovely 2 bedroom groundfloor flat with a personal garden in an inner courtyard

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Pretzlauer Berg was the place to be in Berlin. Tree lined streets, colorful boutiques, grand old apartment blocks, cafes and restaurants on every street corner making it an incredible neighborhood to live in. It is in former East Berlin, and became the hot new place to live after the wall came down (initially due to rent control and now after considerable gentrification, because it is a hip trendy place to hang out).

Even if you can’t live in Pretzlauer Berg for a month, do visit on your next trip to Berlin. The weekends and evenings are particularly lively. Check out this neighborhood on the Going local in Berlin app I recommended earlier https://www.visitberlin.de/en/going-local-berlin

Some of my favorite places in Pretzlauer Berg included…..

Kollwitzplatz hosts a market every Saturday. Great place to indulge your tastes, whether beer, wine, gin or great street food. Your eyes meanwhile will feast on flowers, colorful stalls of fruit and vegetables and great local products.

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In Europe, markets provide prosecco and wine at the Saturday market. Why can’t we have this attitude in Canada???

On Thursdays the same square hosts a slightly smaller version, but with especially great market food stalls.

Musicians on the street corner of the market entertain as you sit along the longest bench in Germany. Q%k+39nURXOo3ZVy5jfxxA

Needless to say, we found a local gin being sold at the market and of course we had to taste it. And of course I added it to my gin collection

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On Sundays, the old brewery, now the Kulturbrauerei, hosts a street food market.. great food, some we’d never tried before.

On Sundays further down the road at Mauerpark, you, and it seems every Berliner in the city will be out dancing, singing, picnicking, playing basketball or games…just hanging out soaking in the sun.

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The musicians and street graffiti artists are here in full force –I have come to have a significant appreciation for their art.

Don’t expect a lush green park…this is a gritty city space, jammed full with people, food market stalls and flea market offerings. Berlin on the whole doesn’t come across as ‘parklike’…it has an edge to it, gritty, graffiti filled, energetic and lively.

Pretzlauer Berg is also the home to some of the most attractive shops and boutiques. They sell lovely stuff, in particular for the home and children (Pretzlauer is home to many young families—lots of children in the park and strollers during the day). I loved the effort shop owners put into displaying their wares in the shops…incredibly attractive.

I also found some rather novel stores. Direkt von Fass was one. Bring a bottle and chose your oil, vinegar, liquor, or wine direct from the tap.

But the one that really got my attention was called the Kochhaus. Now there’s a potential business for an urban entrepreneur. The attached pictures depict what this store is all about. The store has stations of ‘ingredients’ plus ‘recipes’. You chose the meal you would like to cook that night and then pick up just the right number of ingredients for just that meal.. not a bag of potatoes but just 2 potatoes.. how cool is that.

On many evenings we would head out for a meal. Every night from Monday through Sunday we found a lively patio-based café atmosphere. There is so much choice in this neighborhood!!! And we found almost all of it incredibly tasty!!! In fact, there was not a meal we were disappointed in!

Prices were incredibly reasonable and the portions large. We soon figured out one appetizer and one main was always enough for two… Wine and beer …lots and again well priced, local and delicious.

Although as I said, it was hard to go wrong with food destinations, I am including here a couple we dined in and liked in addition to the markets mentioned above.

Ars Vini – great fondue ( cheese, meat, fish, field and meadow) www.arsvini.de

Café November –tasty typical german kitchen, nice bar www.cafe-november.de

Café Anna Blume—lovely patio, great brunch www.cafe-anna-blume.de

Sowohlalsauch – great lunch and coffee place www.tortenkuchen.de

ABC Allan’s Breakfast Club and Wine bar-–needless to say great brunch Rykestrasse 13

A great Vietnamese restaurant right on the plaza where the water tower is…

Lots of good simple Italian as well. As you can see we enjoyed!!

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ABC Allan’s Breakfast Club

My favourite restaurant in Berlin was in Mitte ( kieze/neighborhood bordering Pretzlauer.

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PeterPaul was several steps up from the local cafes mentioned above. Recommended by Stephen and friends we experienced a real treat here. It serves traditional german dishes in a new tapas style. The food was outstanding and the décor very classy. Try it out for a special meal. I managed to find a way to take all my guests there and none were disappointed.
www.peterpaul.berlin

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In addition there is a great gin bar a few shops east of Peterpaul where we enjoyed some great gin cocktails… a great night out. Check it out at www.botanical-affairs.com

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Hoping you enjoyed the stroll through Prenzlauer Berg!!!

Tuscan Farm House Cooking Class–Firenze

October 8, 2014

Florence, Food

3 Comments

Having toured the food stalls and markets of Florence we were off to our second half of the adventure. In very short order we were transported to the hilly outskirts of Florence and entered the beautiful property of our host. A late summer garden, outdoor pizza oven, tables for eating ‘al fresco’ and an amazing kitchen space both for group cooking awaited us. The site was amazingly designed to fit the purpose.. John you would have loved it. We donned our chef aprons and were ready our Tuscan Cooking Experience

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Soon under the careful guidance of our master chef, Carmela ( I am hoping I got the name right) a woman who has been feeding her family home cooked meals, singing and dancing her way through the kitchen.. She spoke Italian— we all caught what we could from her effective full body descriptions of what we were to do—but not to worry, Elisa was on hand to translate her instructions.

We began by preparing bruschetta….which is pronounced with a hard C not a ch sound as so many of us have come to do in North America. The fresh tomatoes, basil, garlic and bread purchased that morning were soon prepped. Bread on the outdoor pizza oven/barbecue and soon we are tasting the first results of our journey into Tuscan food.

It was quickly established that this group loved a nice ‘vino’, both to accompany the food as well as to enhance the cooking experience and so the wine began to flow…

Next was group prep for the ‘bolognese sauce’ –interesting very few herbs in this sauce, simply garlic, onion, celery and carrot finely chopped, hamburger meat, wine and tomato sauce. Trick of course is to let it simmer on the stove for several hours.

While the sauce bubbled away, we received a demo in how to make pasta … really had no idea it was so easy. Shortly the whole class was making their own pasta.. Carmella demo’ed how to take pasta and turn it into all the forms of pasta we simply buy in bags at the store.. today we made tagliattelle to go along with our ‘Bolognese’. But now we knew how to make agnolotti, cannelloni, capellini fettucini, etc. It turned out making a pasta serving for one, was fun and quick..I did wonder how long one would have to work to prep Pasta for a family of 6 however…..so it is likely I will continue by pattern of buying fresh pasta at the local grocers…which here in Italy….is really good!!!!

Pasta ready we moved outside to be joined by our second Tuscan chef. She is a pizza specialist and works in a Firenze pizzeria. She had prepped the pizza dough the previous night..apparently she preps hundreds of small pizza dough balls for her work at the pizzeria. We were paired off and set to it to create our personal pizza’s ..fresh tomato sauce, mozzarella al fiori, basil, ham, artichokes.. and of course Olive Oil to top it off. While we did not duplicate our chefs skill in pizza throwing, we successfully baked our pizzas in the 800 degree wood fired out door pizza oven..pizzas were done in a minute and 20 seconds… HOT OVEN is the trick clearly!!!! And then we ate them sitting outside taking in the stunning country side.

So, antipasti and pizza consumed, ‘Primi’ course bubbling (sauce) and drying (pasta), it was time to turn our attention to the ‘secondi’ which was to be the lovely pork tenderloin we had purchased at the Mercato Centrale and the ‘contorni’ (vegetable side dish) in our case roast potatoes. The tenderloin had been cut to specifications by the butcher. The meat had been removed from the bone and then the bone section reattached with kitchen string. The bone of course adds lovely flavour but having it removed in advance eases the carving when the meat is complete. Simple herbs ( garlic, rosemary and sage ( I think) were rubbed onto the meat. The potatoes were salted ( heavily). Both of these dishes again received a healthy dose of olive oil, drizzled of course.. it is note worthy that this is a staple for all food prep in Italy. According to Carmela very healthy and much better than butter… I decided that olive oil must be a diet food in Italy.

And as our roast was cooking we were given a final lesson in preparation of ‘dolce’ –as a group we prepped Tiramisu and then prepared our individual dish of same. We also collected whipped up some gelato..while all dishes here to had benefited from a liberal doses of Olive Oil… the ‘dolce’ had healthy doses of Liquor.. marsala wine in the tiramisu and amaretto in the gelato!!!!

So having completed our lessons, all the while enjoying the chianti and the company, we moved outside to enjoy our Tuscan dinner ‘alfresco’.

Elisa had warned us in the morning that we would have a fulsome Tuscan meal…and indeed that was certainly the case!! A good thing none of us had dinner reservations that evening.. I doubt any of us could have consumed another bite.

Carmela topped off the evening by awarding us all our personal Tuscan Chef School Certificates. What an awesome experience..highly recommended should you come to Florence.

Florence Food Tour

October 5, 2014

Food

5 Comments

Florence Food Tour

As many of you know, Italy and Tuscany in particular is known for its love of food and great cuisine. This is very evident in its food markets and shops, big and small, which display local seasonal food to its plethora of eateries, whether they are called trattoria, osteria, ristorante, birreria, spaghetteria, pizzeria, tavola calda, rosticcerria, café, taverna—-seriously a bewildering series of names —not sure what the difference is.. what is consistent, is a love of good food.

So with this awareness of Tuscany, I had decided to seek out a cooking class. The website offered a lot of choices…eventually I landed on a tour offered by Walkabout Tours Florence https://www.walkaboutflorence.com/ . The tour offered a food tour through old Florence followed by a cooking lesion at a nearby Tuscan Farm House.

What a treat this turned out to be!!!! At 10 am on a Friday morning, 15 people met at the appointed meeting place. We met Elisa, our food and tour guide. My group consisted of visitors from Perth and Sydney Australia, Hong Kong, several cities across the USA (Denver, New Jersey, Virginia, South Carolina to name just a few), ranging in age from 20 to 60+. The group was friendly and eager for a great experience and Elisa was determined to give it to us.

Having collected we were off, following Elisa to discover Florence’s historical food market, visit the local baker, butchers and market stalls. Knowledgeable, Elisa shared with us a great deal of Florentine ‘food history’ , all while conversing with the local sellers as we purchased the ingredients that we would later need in our cooking class. On the journey Elisa and Frank ( one of my fellow travelers) loaded up food bags with local tomatoes, olives, mozzarella, pork loin, ground meat.

On the way, we learned that Florence was an important city in the wool trade in the middle ages given its location on the Arno River. Florentine merchants develop the first coin the Florin and the first bills of exchange –this enabled the merchants to pay debts without transporting cash and of course extend credit—hence the establishment of a robust banking system in Florence.

We learned that salt, used to preserve food in the days prior to refrigeration was also a ‘golden’ commodity and extremely expensive. The bread of Florence is not salted—yes it is quickly one of the things you notice, although I did not immediately twig onto that it tasted different because there is no salt in it. There are two stories as to why. The first is that salt was so heavily taxed, the people of Florence couldn’t afford to add it to their food and started to make unsalted bread and continue to do so to this day. The second story is that in the 12^th century, Florence and Pisa were rival cities. The Pisan army blocked shipments of salt reaching Florence to force a surrender to Pisa. Florentines simply eliminated salt from their cooking and did not surrender. According to Elisa, a rivalry still exists today between the Florentines and Pisans.

We were introduced to the methods of selling wine in early Florence. The picture here is of Elisa telling us the history of the ‘wine tabernacle’. This small opening that you see ( most today are closed off, as the one in the picture) was just the right size for a bottle of wine to fit through. Locals would come to these small wine tabernacles- holes in the wall, and purchase their wine directly from the seller. A curious wine vending approach only found in Florence—they are called ‘tabernacle’ because they have a similar appearance to religious tabernacles also found on many a street corner. Deb a fellow traveller rather wished she could still purchase a bottle today.

A final stop was to a typical Florence coffee shop for our morning coffee. We were instructed in the varying forms of Italian Coffee, espresso, caffe normale, cappuccino, machiatto, caffe correto and so on( a latte, by the way in Italy is hot milk and has no coffee). There seems sot be a coffee drink in Italy for every time of day, need and mood. A caffe correto is drunk the morning after. It has a shot of liquor to set you to rights again..although another explanation was also given— that the Italians get up at the crack of dawn, labour in the fields and by mid morning need a shot of something in their coffee. Whatever it all seems to work. We also were advised there is no sitting with your morning coffe…the north American tradition sitting at the starbucks with your coffee and paper of computer, is NOT the way to drink coffee in Florence. And indeed I have yet to find anything resembling a starbucks type establishment.

Coffee is drunk standing up at a narrow counter, you drink it ( and as you know an espresso does not take long to consume) and you go! Coffee drinking Italian style!!

Armed with our purchases, coffee to sustain us we departed via mini bus to our Tuscan farm house.

My next blog will take you through our cooking experience.

—gmarkvoort

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Prenzlauer Berg

Tuscan Farm House Cooking Class–Firenze

Florence Food Tour