Monthly Archives: May 2015

Food

Brazilian Cheese Bread (Pão de Queijo)

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After we went to Oslo and ate delicious pāo de queijo at the churrascaria, I thought it was high time that I check out this gluten-free recipe I had pinned awhile ago.

It did not disappoint!

Some of my breads had funny little holes from baking, but for the most part they were really light and airy. Even better than the restaurant ones! My Brazilian man was very happy with them and we happily gobbled up all the trays I made in a very short time.

Brazilian Cheese Bread (Pão de Queijo)

Adapted from: RasaMalaysia adapted from Simply Recipes
Makes 42 | Prep Time: 10 Minutes | Bake Time: 15-20 Minutes

Ingredients:
1 egg, at room temperature
1/3 cup olive oil
2/3 cup milk
170g – 1.5 cups tapioca (cassava) flour (often labeled starch)
120g – 3/4 cups grated cheese… I used Gruyère
1 tsp salt

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 205ºC (400ºF) and grease muffin pans. If your egg is coming out of the refrigerator cold, stick it in a cup of warm water while you put the other ingredients in your food processor first. I like to start with the oil to keep things from sticking to the side. If you finish with the cheese on top of the flour, it will also stop the tapioca from kicking dust up when you mix. Make sure to throw the egg in and blend well.

Pour mix into mini muffin trays around 3/4 full. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Keep an eye on them and change trays around the 10 minute mark if you are using a small European oven like I am. When they are puffed up and browning, pull them out and let them cool for a bit before you start gobbling them down warm. Yum!

Store extras in tupperware. Tip: If you stick them in the microwave for 10 seconds, they are deliciously warm the next day!

Where to buy tapioca in Switzerland:
You can buy tapioca flour from health food stores like Reformhaus Müller, but the much cheaper alternative is to get it from asian grocery stores. We also use tapioca flour that Kay brings back from Brazil, but he said that it is not always easy to find there either.

Food

Schwarzwurzel – Salsify

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Awhile back, I ordered a trial box from Bio-direct.ch, which is similar in philosophy to CSCA in America. I’ve never ordered organic fruits and veggies online before and I was a little disappointed that I received bananas and kiwis, which obviously aren’t grown in Switzerland, but at the bottom of my box were these funny sticks. I actually thought they just packed some good old sticks in with the order for, I don’t know… an extra organic touch?

My coworker saw the box delivered and exclaimed, “Oh, those are Schwarzwurzel!”

Hmm…? What the heck is that? I really didn’t know the English term, even as I went home and looked up directions how to make it. I uploaded a picture on Facebook asking my friends about it and my brother humorously advised me to rub the sticks together to make a fire and then roast marshmallows over them.

It turns out in English they are called salsify. (I think!)

Following my coworkers and Google’s advice, I peeled the brown skin off like carrots and then threw them in a bowl of water before they turned brown/orange.

Peeling them was really weird. The bark-like skin is really gritty and dirty and when you peel them, they start oozing something like sap that gets all sticky and gummy over your fingers. Even with washing my hands, I ended up getting gummy bits all over my fresh kitchen towels.

I tossed them in boiling water for twenty minutes and then gave them a bit of salt and pepper.

Overall, I think they tasted OK and we were happy to eat them as our starch paired with hummus, carrots and fennel. Kay is only familiar eating this root vegetable from a can, where it is not very fresh or tasty, and he liked them better fresh, but I can’t say I’d be excited to buy them again and deal with the weird sticky, dirty peeling process.

Have you ever had salsify?

Travel

Gluten Free Munich

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Munich was definitely not the easiest place to eat gluten free. I did research before and it seemed like there were not really specific restaurants you could go to with gluten free menus, but suggestions of places or things to eat which would be celiac-friendly… and well, I don’t necessarily need a list of places to eat if I have to wing it like that.

The first night we got there we wanted to go to something like the Hofbräuhaus, but going to this typical German-style restaurant with beer and wurst is really hard for me. We ended up at Augustiner-Keller which was all right, but nothing special.

The waiter was a little abrasive. When I asked about a gluten free menu or gluten free possibilities, he reacted like, “What? You can’t eat bread or flour? What can you eat? Can you eat anything??”… kind of like, well… you’re going to be a difficult customer, what are you doing in my section of the restaurant?

We noticed later on that he seemed to be the roughest of all the servers. He really just wanted to take our orders and serve us our food quickly and make a tip and I can’t really fault him for that, but I always appreciate when waiters and cooks are sensitive and understanding about my diet. I can’t help it and yes, it sucks, but please don’t make it worse for me!

I couldn’t order from most of the menu, but I ended up with good old potatoes (celiac classic), lamb without sauce and some fresh horse radish, which was honestly the most flavourful part of my dish. I also had some mediocre wine because gluten free beer is not to be found in any Keller in Munich.

Breakfast at our hotel was better. I picked the NH Hotel Group which we first stayed at in Madrid. I had booked this hotel before Madrid, hoping that it is a nice chain and it does not disappoint.

The German version of the hotel offers even more gluten free options, including packaged bread, gluten free muesli, fresh veggies, deli options, etc.

On the last day at the Deutsches Museum, I wanted to go to a restaurant early before our bus at 6pm, but even after we scrambled to get there on time, it was not open yet at 4:30. We ended up running back to the train station where I was almost crazy hangry. I ended up breaking down and ordering my very first döner box. I have been really afraid to eat döner since going gluten free, but I just ordered it in a box and I didn’t seem to react, so I think it was OK without the bread and watching out for the base. Kay asked if I wanted couscous or rice, and of course couscous has gluten so that’s a no!

I  felt a lot better after the döner. We picked up a few more snacks for our 4 hour ride back to Zurich and were on our way.

Travel

Munich

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We knew that the weather in Munich over Easter weekend was not supposed to be as nice as Oslo. The forecast called for rain or snow, which it did both of, but luckily we enjoyed a little bit of cloudy blue skies and sun on the first day.

Knowing that it would be colder than Oslo (that’s global warming for you…) we headed first to the BMW museum for Kay.

I was a little museum-ed out after Oslo, so mostly, I was super tired and a little bored going through here. This was all for Kay, who pretty well enjoyed himself here in car paradise.

It was a little hard to get excited about the BMW museum after visiting Geneva’s Motor Show twice already, where they have a sick display of incredible cars. In comparison, the BMW museum was a little lackluster.

Around Munich, it definitely was colder than Oslo! It actually snowed while we were at the BMW museum. After the warm weather the week before in Zurich, I was actually SO surprised about the weird white stuff coming out of the sky, which really looked like styrofoam, I kept asking Kay, “What is this stuff??” Apparently it was more of an industrial snow, hence the weird texture.

We still managed to find a little bit of sun at the English Garden.

We ventured in a little before heading to the Cathedral for Easter evening mass.

In the church, we were actually surprised that the service was only like 30 minutes and did not include communion, so it did not “count” as a church service. Oops. But thank goodness, because I almost fell asleep in church!

Some evening sun.

I was pretty happy with the weather we enjoyed. We were lucky because it could have poured and rained the whole day!

The weather wasn’t so nice on Easter Monday, but we had a long brunch at then spent the whole day in the Deutsches Museum for Kay, which I also struggled to stay awake through. 🙂 It was just a little too technical for me, but Kay was in heaven!

View from our hotel over the train station. We are making it a thing to stay by train stations. I also stay at the main station in Berlin and it is so convenient to get to and from the airport! If only Munich actually had a train to their airport and not a 45 minute bus ride. But we were leaving from the train station home via bus, so it was still convenient in the end.

Only when we finally made it to our IC bus and were sat in the front row of the upper deck did it start to drizzle and rain.

I guess it’s hard to be super impressed by German cities when it’s a little cold and rainy, or maybe I have just seen one too many German town by now. We did visit in early April, so maybe it is better during the summer? Berlin for one was a lot better in June rather than December!

Food, Travel

Oslo GF Eats

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Oslo is a really easy city to eat gluten free. They are wonderful about labeling things in menus and we even noticed gluten free products in the train stations being advertised.

We stayed in a Scandic Byporten hotel, partly because we know they offer wonderful buffet breakfasts. Kay was really looking forward to eating salmon tartare. But not only did they have fresh fruits, veggies and meat for me, they also had gluten free bread and even gluten free knekkebrød (crisp bread/crackers).

Knowing that eggs are bad, I avoided those completely and filled up instead on bread, knekkebrød, salmon, beans, veggies, cheese and fruit. They also had wonderful smoothies, fresh pressed juice, and coffee. On the last day I even had some of their gluten free muesli, which surprised me. I felt very well taken care of! The breakfast of the hotel was actually at one of the Egon restaurants in Oslo, the one next to the train station obviously. They had a partnership with the hotel to let guests eat there and since I had read about them in my gluten-free research, they were already on my list for dinner places.They didn’t offer so many gluten free options at dinner. The gluten-free menu was only in Norwegian, but it wasn’t too hard to follow along with the English menu. My pizza was fine, but maybe a little boring. I was really stuffed in the end though. We had an appetiser and it was just SO much food in the end.The next night we thought about just going back to Egon Restaurant again because it was insanely convenient to just pop down from the hotel there, but we thought maybe it is a bit lame to eat all our meals including breakfast at our hotel restaurant basically.

Sure, we eat a bit more constricted thanks to my diet, but we have never been the type to eat all the meals at one spot night after night. Kay didn’t like any of the non-Norwegian options I’d found in my gluten-free research, so he found a burger place we could try, but when we got there, we found that it was definitely closed and looked like it was still under construction.

Folks, this has happened to us a lot lately in our search for gluten free food! But… but… we had also passed a Brazilian churrascaria. We agreed to check out the burger place, but see if the churrascaria had room if the burger place was closed.

BEST. DECISION. EVER.

We didn’t realise quite when we sat down, but outside of Brazil, this is the best churrascaria that either of us have been to… and that’s saying something coming from the Brazilian himself.

We started out with delicious pão de queijo cheese breads which, score, were naturally gluten free. I kept asking about gluten free things, but the buffet even had gluten free signs on all the dishes everywhere and with options like feijoada, farofa and more, lots of things were already gluten free by natural. Brazil is just amazing!

The meat was also mouth-wateringly amazing.

They also made a mean caipirinha. Kay was really afraid about the costs of alcohol because Norway has notoriously expensive alcohol and their cost of living is on par with Zurich, but they worked out to 15CHF a piece, which is honestly pretty fair. Back home, you can easily pay 20-25CHF for one of these drinks.

The only thing I couldn’t really partake in was Kay’s dessert, which was a chocolate mousse with normal flour somewhere in there. I’m sure I could have ordered something gluten free, but to be honest, I was SO stuffed from all the meat by that point, I did not have room.

We both left, so, so full. And even with the drinks, our meals only came out to around 80CHF per person, which in Zurich is also pretty darn fair, especially considering all the high quality cuts of meat we ate, the unlimited buffet food and the drinks and dessert.

I can only recommend this place for everyone, even if it’s not “Norwegian” food, we couldn’t stop thanking ourselves that the burger place was closed and we made it here instead of going to the Egon Restaurant again.