Asparagus but different!

What do you do when you find the taste of a vegetable great but don't succeed to properly cook it?

a) give up and pretend you didn't know about it's existence
{ booo! quitter }
b) only eat it at the restaurant
{ booo! snob }
c) ask your dear (experienced cooks) ones to prepare it for you once in a while
{ booo! leech}
d) keep on trying even if you failed several times in your 'chef wannabe' career
{way to go! you just won a free, possibly tasty, selfmade meal}

You only have the priviledge to enjoy asparagus two months a year so you'd better show it some respect. But what can one do when they come from a country where people didn't even know what asparagus is or how it looks like. Nowadays they do know what it looks like, throw intrigued glances at it in the supermarket and pass on by to the more trusted potatoes.
And what can the same above mentioned person do when she lands in what seems to be "the Kingdom of Aspargus". A country where people worship this vegetable, call it Royal and even hold annual festivals in His majestic honor.

I was about to take the road of a a+b+c, when I saw this beautiful (adoptive-land harvest) bundle of white Spargel and decided to give it one last shot.
First I mentally prepared myself for the bitter taste of failure and the very annoying ropy, firbous overcooked vegetable inbetween my teeth. Anything but royal in wood-food, I tell you.
Peeled them ( it went smoother than ever..already a good sign). Washed them well. Put them in the pan covered with about 3 big cups of water and the never missing pinch of salt. Till here I had a plan but what happened after was nothing but spontanous moves. While the water started to boil I realized I have some perfect green onions and green garlics in the fridge (home land, home garden's harvest). So I thought they cannot do any harm. Wikipedia says they are the older cousins of asparagus, so it was time for a little family reunion. Plus I didn't want them to end in the garbage one week later. This hand full of green cousins, again well peeled and washed but not cut, landed too in the pan.

After they boiled for some minutes I added some leftover cream (not more than half a glass). Poured some hot water from the pot into a cup and anded one table spoon of flour and a small cube of herb butter and stirred strongly till I got a homogenous mix, then added the composition to the asparagus and let it boil further while stirring till it got the right density. At last I added some cayenne pepper and used the blender ( the one I use for milkshakes) to get a nice dense 'Spargelcremesuppe' à la Moi. I enjoyed this great spicy soup with some smoked bacon and a lot of sunshine on my terrace.

Who followed my blog might notice a *cough* tiny resemblance with my "My Smooth Pea Soup..." last winter. In my defence I can only say : it tastes different. And I love soup no matter what time it is. There is no better proof of that than this blog being launched with a soup.

Bon Appetit! and God bless mid-week religious holidays :-) and sunny days!

Cabbage Burek...once you start, it's hard to stop

It's saturday morning, they announced unusual warm weather and sun today and there are lots of pleasant or less pleasant things to be done. But I can't do that before I have my cup of coffee and while drinking my coffee, I thought I should share a piece of my pie with you guys. And as I cannot literally share my pie, I will share my recipe.
I wanted to bake it for quite some time now, due to this vivid memory about the cabbage pie we ate on the university's halls, when we had late evening courses to attend to.

I know for many of you cabbage might rhyme well with garbage... but you may keep that thought to yourself.
For some it is fasting time, some are vegetarians or have a vegetarian friend, and this pie can be so delicious without any use of animal products.
For some it is diet time and is a known fact that cabbage is a negative calorie food.
And those who are neither fasting, nor vegetarian, nor losing weight, they might just try something else.

Ingredients:

• Burek or filo pastry. If you are as lucky as me to have a turkish store around the corner, then you might find Burek pastry. I used them for the first time yesterday. They look like some giant, raw pan cakes. And that is what they are but it turns out they are a little more sophisticated pan cakes, they are layered pan cakes. If you don't live in Cologne though, filo pastry is just as good, for sure.
• 1 small cabbage
• 1 medium onion
• olive oil - generously
  
• 1 egg (optional)
• water
• fresh dill
• spices: salt, pepper, rosmarin, caraway, marjoram etc.
• sesame seeds (optional)

How to do it:

• cut the onion and then the cabbage very small ( read: put them in the mixer, one at a time)
• put some oil in a pan, stew the onion, later add the cabbage too, add some water and keep stirring from time to time so that it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan.
• spice it up (salt, pepper, rosmarin, caraway, marjoram)
• keep adding a little water as it drops down
• when the cabbage is soft (done) add some fresh dill in the composition
• oil a big backing pan, put two layers of pastry at the bottom, spray the pastry with some oil, so that it won't get to dry later
• now, depending on how big is the backin pan and how much cabbage you got, you can either put just one layer or more cabbage-pastry layers. I only had one, because I was hungry and lazy.
• another layer of pastry on top, well sprayed with oil, some water and if you like a well blended egg for a nice golden coat.
• I only now got the brilliant idea of spreading some sesame seeds on top. That should not only look good but taste good as well. Will come back with an edit when I try that. It might be sooner than you think, cause I saved some Burek 'pan cakes' in the freezer.
• slice the pie while still raw. Later it will be difficult and it will break ( I promise that).
• put it in the oven for about 40 minutes or so, at about 180 degrees, till you have a nice golden crust on top

Bon Appétit! And watch out...you might not get enough of it!