Breakfast at the Hotel Hasen reflects the hotel's atmosphere well: quietly elegant and stylish. This chandelier, which is made of handwritten notes, is an example of the proprietors' interest in art.
The breakfast buffet was very good. The big treat was my first chance to try quark, in this case flavored with orange. The cookbook Classic German Baking includes a number of recipes with quark. I can now report that it is delightful: reminiscent of yogurt in texture but more like a cheese in taste. Joerg tells me that he spent years in New Jersey trying to find quark without success. Perhaps someone has an opportunity to introduce this lovely product to U. S. eaters.
I made candied ginger a few years ago. It's not something I would do every day but I had a lot of fun doing it. I recently acquired a pressure cooker and it inspired an interesting idea to me: why not make candied ginger in the pressure cooker? It should be very soft and flavorful. Here is the result. I peeled two large ginger roots, cut them into small cubes, and put them in the pressure cooker with heavily sugared water. The traditional method first boils the ginger in plain water to soften it and then again in sugar water to candy it. The resulting candy was very tender but still with the characteristic ginger texture. It was also sweet without being overpowering. The traditional method leaves a lot of sugar crystallized around the ginger. The pressure cooker gives a much more subtle result. The ginger stays moist even after it cools but you can dry it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. That inspired me to dip it in chocolate. While I was in the b...


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