Real grilled cheese & white asparagus

So few food bloggers seem to write about their mistakes, the cake that fell, the sauce that was too salty, the mustard-chocolate-blueberry combination that didn't work. (Or did it?) I imagine such a post of mediocrity would seem like it calls into question their expertise and also, maybe, it would miss the point of why people read their blog. Anyone can screw up a recipe. Why I am reading you?

But then: What about the wise adage about learning from your failures? (Which wise adage? Oh, you know ... pick any one.) Julia Child made mistakes. (Though, it turns out, she didn't drop a turkey on the floor.) And you can't become a Julia Child, or anything approaching a great cook, by avoiding making mistakes, making mental notes, and making it again, better.

With these caveats, I tell you: We tried to make real grilled cheese. A bit Mediterranean, even, with cheddar and harvati cheese, tomato slices, basil sprigs, drizzles of olive oil. Fancy.

But ...

It fell apart. The grill marks failed to make a dazzling appearance. The cheese didn't melt.

(Note that I am not saying it wasn't tasty. Cheese + bread = tasty.)

Our tips, for next time:

1) The bread matters. A narrow baguette is a terrible vehicle for grilled cheese. We needed hefty, wide, thick slices. Think steak sized.

2) Find an oven-proof dish to top your sandwich, and weigh it down with something like a big can of tomatoes. Or an antique iron. (Mark told us that was important. We didn't listen. He's a NY Times writer for a reason.)

3) Preheat the grill. OK. Now longer.

4) Be patient. OK. Now more patient.

On the plus side, the white asparagus we bought at the German farmers market for 2 €, of which expectations were nil, were .... fabulous. Crisp, sweet, nutty. Delicious.

We tossed the stalks with olive oil, salt, pepper. That is all. And sometimes, that is more than enough.

Hell-o, grilled strawberries

We recently bought a grill, and like doting new parents, I suspect it will consume all food chatter for some time. It's marvelous.

We've so far grilled hamburgers (adding minced onions, garlic, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper to the ground beef), steak, shrimp (lovely with cilantro, lime, chili pepper flakes), pineapple, chicken, an entire sea bass (which was a skeleton reminiscent of a cartoon cat's dinner before I realized I hadn't taken a photo – sigh), zucchini, mushrooms, onions, and grape ("cocktail," in Germany) tomatoes.

Grilling seems to intensive all the flavors, a sort of Instagram snapshot of a food scene you thought you knew. Like strawberries. Grilled, strawberries become pockets of warm jam, bursting in your mouth. Incredible.

There's no recipe here. We either skewer them or place them in narrow grill baskets and leave them for ... a while. 5 minutes? 10 minutes? Whatever suits your fancy. Sometimes, I'll sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the warm berries. (Mark Bittman, as always, has more ideas.) Charring caramelizes the fruit further, like a burnt marshmallow. Yum.

Stuttgart Farmers Market

I imagine this is true for everyone: Certain places feel like home, wherever you are on planet Earth. Not home as in the cozy company of family and friends. But home as in deep-in-my-marrow right. The world feels familiar again. Your mental knots loosen. You think: I know this place. It knows me.

For me, that magical list includes swing dances, bookstores, baseball stadiums, and farmers markets.

Discovering Stuttgart's farmers market was like a homecoming. The bustle, the patter of the vendors, the rainbow piles of produce painted a familiar atmosphere, a place I had been so many times before.

 

The market on Saturday, downtown, is really two — no, three: a produce market in the Marketplatz, flowers and jams in the Schillerplatz (above), and a flea market in the Karlsplatz. The produce and flower market run until around 1; the flea market later, perhaps 4. And there's always the indoor Markethalle close by, an array of gourmet and international stalls, open every day but Sunday.

The flowers are incredible. You just have to be careful about the walk-home load calculation.

The man watching over the stalls' canopies in the Schillerplatz is Friedrich Schiller.

A charming sight, one I haven't seen yet in a market — sticks for sale! Some of them were quite pricey, up to $20.

Are they Europe's Easter version of Christmas trees? I wonder ...

 

While farmers markets feel familiar, the prices at any particular one are so unfamiliar, a reminder that you are an outsider. What's a good price? What's a bad price?  Really: 11 € for Spargel? (That's $14 for a bundle of asparagus.) I had heard Germans were crazy for their spargel, but the price seemed shocking.

I think it's because it was on the outskirts of the brief spargel season.

Now, in April, the prices are lowering, to around 5.50 € for 500 grams (a bundle, or about a pound). I wonder how low the prices will go. The only way to tell, of course, is to become a farmers market  insider. As the Germans would say: Genau! (Exactly!)