En Guete! Return of the return of the beetroot

Here is another En Guete! post by Dave. He also took the photo, which I think is rather good.

Having made two beetroot-based meals, we found ourselves with yet more beetroot to use up the following day. So we looked into the cupboard and determined that the other thing we had far too much of was risotto rice.

Consulting Google for a recipe yielded this one. We made it vegan by the simple method of leaving out all the cream and cheese and using margarine instead of butter. We also substituted brandy for the vermouth, since we had no vermouth in.

Despite the recipe's dubious origins, the result was delicious, and probably a lot less taxing on the stomach than the cheese-laden original.

En Guete! Return of the beetroot

After the great success of our borscht, Dave and I were a little surprised to see quite how many beetroots we had left. We decided to make purple mashed potatoes with them. This was made easier by the rice cooker/steamer we got for Christmas (expect many of these posts to mention it. It is a marvel). We steamed potatoes, carrots and beetroot together, then I mashed them with some salt, pepper, and margarine. The different types of vegetables hadn't softened to the same degree, which gave a nice mix of creaminess and chunkiness. Dave made onion gravy and we had the mash with Linda McCartney vegetarian sausages.

The next day we had both fresh beetroot and beetroot mash left over and I started to despair a little. Neither of us had actually made bubble and squeak before (although I love my stepdad's version) but we steamed some cabbage and improvised. From subsequent looking at websites, it seems that my choice to make the mash into patties before frying it was quite a fancy one. Despite looking worryingly meatlike in the pan, they were good and had just enough of the crunchy outside.

Dave will be happy, because now I've written about these rather traditional meals he can write about what we did with the last of the beets...

Oh yes, and that white thing the plates are arranged on is our washing machine, which stood around for a while because the kitchen fittings were brand-new and strange. We eventually plumbed it in ourselves, with help from Ask MetaFilter, and felt mighty.

En Guete! Borscht(sch)

As promised, here is episode one of En Guete!, written by Dave.

The day after we moved into our new flat, Rachel went to investigate the market in town and returned with a profusion of vegetables, amongst them a large bundle of beetroots.

"We schould make borscht!", she said. Neither of us had had this infamously red stew before, so we went onto Google and used pretty much the first recipe we came across.

In German, borscht is spelled "Borschtsch" and pronounced a bit like the sound a parent makes when their meal of borscht is interrupted by their beloved daughter's declaration that she is unexpectedly pregnant with the stable-boy's child, causing a near-eruption of stew. This pronunciation made us refer to our dinner in an increasingly elaborate way, ending up at "Would you like some more borschtschtschtschchshchshhhhh, darling?"

Anyway, the recipe we were using included optional pork sausages, which we left out, and cream, for which we substituted vegan cream. We can't know if the result was authentic, but it was certainly delicious.

En Guete! Food blogging from PodBasket

Dave and I have just moved in together. Together! Although everyone who reads this blog probably already knows about it -- the moving took long enough, groan -- I still want to grin for a minute here about how great it is. I get to come home to my boyfriend every evening (not that that's much of a change). We don't have to label our food in the fridge! We have, er, two copies of nearly everything Neil Gaiman's ever written, a double bed with no fixed date for assembly, zero cash, five vegetable peelers and four bread knives: the spoils of being the last of the Cambridge-based Pod to move out of PodHouse and PodTower. At some point there will be a "Please take stuff away from here" party.

Among our other adventures, we've been cooking some nice meals lately and one of us proposed semi-seriously that we start food blogging. Since we already have too many blogs and don't update them enough, we're doing it here for the time being.

Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce En Guete! -- an irregular series about the meals of your hosts, one vegan-ish and Swiss, the other vegan and Swiss-by-association.

The first post in the series will be by Dave: expect it tomorrow.