I did it. It took me quite some time (like 30-some years) to overcome my personal issue of Mageiricophobia: Preparing a whole fish! I know, I know, they’re not the biggest of their kind, but hey, I dealt with a complete army. Starred at by some dozen pair of eyes, I had to gut them and couldn’t help but think about Barbara’s apposite essay: Meat Comes from Animals: Deal with It, or Eat Vegetables (it has to be one of the longest blog entries I have ever read, start to finish).
In the past I would have gracefully declined if I had been offered Anchovies, especially on pizza. Today I’m so-so friends with the overly salty tasting canned version, yet I don’t have to have them on a regular basis – in a sauce that’s a bit of a different story. However, fresh and self cured anchovies don’t have much in common with their salty friends. Preserved in olive oil, the tender and juicy filets make a delectable dish.
We stranded in Haidhausen, a district of the city of Munich (also referred to as the French quarter) by pure incident. Six years ago pretty much to the day, Oliver returned from the States, where he had studied and worked for several years. At the time I had quit my job in Regensburg and we were a little dewy-eyed about quickly finding a new place to call HOME in Munich. While the job situation in 2000 was at an all-time high, the availability of reasonably priced living space was at an all-time low. At the time realtors looked upon themselves as divine creatures at whose mercy you either got an apartment or didn’t, regardless of whether or not you accepted to pay for their exorbitant, likely unlawful charges.
One of our worst memories along those lines would be the day when we met a real estate agent to see an apartment on Rosenheimer Strasse. I was expecting a 1:1 date and found myself waiting with what I guessed must have been between 60 and 80 people forming a line from the building’s entrance all the way to the apartment on the second floor… I think I had reoccurring nightmares about this experience for weeks! After about 3 months of frustration, we couldn’t believe our luck when we finally received a call from another agent who gave us a positive answer about an apartment in a lovely old building right in the heart of Haidhausen – the one in which we still live.
It happens quite rarely, maybe once a month, maybe twice. But last week indeed was an extraordinary week, besides the German soccer team losing the semi finals – it happened twice in A WEEK! Alright, perhaps too much drama for what I have up my sleeves entering this week; on the other hand I have nothing short of a killer recipe and one to-be (soon I hope).
What comes before finding a killer recipe? Tasting one! Which usually triggers my bulldog-like persistence to not leave without the recipe in my hands, money being no object. Killer recipes don’t necessarily have to be top notch creations, quite the contrary! Sometimes it is the unspectacular, unostentatious dish, that marvels me the most.
My Sunday mornings begin quite early, usually somewhere between seven and eight o’clock. Not because of my alarm clock making me to, but my body is so used to getting up early it has become a natural habit. Besides, when sleeping in, I almost feel guilty of letting a wonderful summer day pass by.
Positive side-effect: There is plenty of time to scan our fridge and pantry and – hopefully – find enough ingredients for a decent breakfast. This morning, after I realized a yawning void on the bread end, I threw the pizza plans for the evening out the window and decided to use my last yeast block in favor of a proper breakfast including…well, I wasn’t exactly sure on what to do with it but had a vague notion of a sweet yeast roll or similar in mind.
