Friday, December 12, 2008

Christmas Market in Cologne

Last weekend we took the train with some friends to Cologne, Germany to visit the city's Christmas Market. We love the Christmas Markets because they bring so much of what we love together to one place: eating, drinking, shopping, eating, drinking, and eating.  


The Cologne Christmas Market is split into five separate markets throughout the city, each with its own theme. There was the main market, the angel-themed market, the medieval market, a market devoted to selling food (for cooking- every market had food for eating), another market on large barge docked on the river. We took our time and didn't make to each one, but saw most of them. The medieval market is like a renaissance fair, so it's kind of A Very Hippie Christmas, but the food looked great- giant kabobs of meat and "mead." Unfortunately, it was evening by the time we got there and, this being the medieval market, they weren't too big on electricity, which made it kind of hard to see everything. Still, the markets offered many temptations (that's our friend, Paul, ordering some cookies):




While the Christmas decorations are always beautiful, we mostly bought things we can use (i.e. eat) like some delicious German mustard and a handful of things from a booth where every thing for sale had vanilla in it. But, really, shopping is only a small part of why you go to the market. Here, Erika waits in line for (another) gluhwein (with amaretto, of course):



Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Japanese Pancakes

We don't know about you, but we'd never heard of Japanese Pancakes before, and when our friends invited us to dinner, we figured it was a weird Dutch take on Japanese food (the Dutch do love their pancakes). Instead, it's an actual real thing and even more, it was delicious.  The Japanese word for this kind of pancake is Okonomiyaki, which literally means 'cook as you like.' At the restaurant in town, they serve three different styles: Osaka, Hiroshima, and Negi-yaki. Naturally, we tried all three.

The Osaka style has most of the ingredients mixed in with the batter and then various toppings are added depending on what you order.


The Hirosima style starts with a thin, crepe-like pancake of only batter, and then several layers of ingredients are piled on top, including fried noodles and a fried egg. That's the monster on the left side of the picture:


The Negi-yaki style also starts with a thin pancake, but differs from the others in that it has no cabbage, but plenty of scallions.  The Negi-yaki pancake is also topped with another pancake and compressed as it cooks (also note the toppings added to the Osaka pancake in the foreground):



Most are served with a Japanese mayonnaise or a sweet sauce and they are very filling (but, allegedly, full of enough cabbage to keep the calorie content down, which of course means, sure, have another beer).  The finished product:


They were amazingly good and we can't wait to go back.