Berliner Weiße

So the start of school kind of put a delay on my food posts, though it didn't put any hold on the food consumption. However, I figured I would take a "fresh start" and go back to a post based on where it all started - Berlin! Though I enjoy beer, I cannot call myself a beer aficionado at any level - so when people ask me how the beer is in Berlin, I try to divert their attention away from my lack of beer knowledge with one of two examples.

1) Wheat Beer + Sprite (it's really quite nice - will probably post about it at some point).
2) Green Beer - aka, Berliner Weiße (pronounced Weisser)

After a day at the zoo, we went out with my cousin, his flat-mate and some of their friends for dinner. It's funny, after American steak in Berlin, dinner this night was at a Spanish tapas restaurant with sangria :)

love me some potatoes! oh, and everything else that's been fried on that plate :)

mmmm, anything drizzled in balsamic vinegar is delish - esp carbs + steak!

Food?

The group @ dinner

After dinner, we wandered around for a bit, looking for a bar to hang out at - the thing with not knowing the area, or the people you're with all that well, is that unless someone already has a pre-planned agenda of where to go, groups tend to wander for quite a bit before someone steps it up and picks somewhere to park it and have a drink. However, 'twas all in good fun, albeit a bit chilly. On the way, I also saw what legal prostitutes look like, and even some doing their thang, GASP!

Anywho, we finally decide on a bar, and looking at the beer menu is like information overload, even when most of it is English. Luckily, Steffi asks me if I've tried Berliner Weiße, which helps me make my decision. They told me the taste was indescribable, and when I actually tried it, it reminded me of the flavors of an Asian plum juice...but green...flavored with Waldmeister (pronounced Valdmeister). It was pretty delicious, and I ended up wrapping 2 bottles I bought from a store before I left and bringing them back to the States with me.

Berliner Weiße

And just because, I thought I'd throw in some fun zoo pics from earlier in the day because who doesn't love animals?!

Germans are very helpful and will direct you as far as the LA zoo

honey bear!

Creepy Orangutan

heeeeppo!

CHOMP!

 He got sleepy watching the sleepy polar bear

 Entering Africa...

Camel Face

PANDA!!!!!

Steak in Berlin

After the rainy morning cooking at home, we decided to venture outside for a bit - I mean, I was in Berlin! THERE WAS NO TIME TO BE WASTED PEOPLE!!! Luckily, the museums were open late on Thursday nights, so we decided to take a trip to the Altes Nationalgalerie (I believe that means the OLD National Gallery) on Museum Island.

On our way, we find the "Fashion Station" which seemed to be a pre-Fashion Week event where a subway train was temporarily set up as a row of boutiques and I found an awesome line with random sheep painted, which meant I HAD to to get one for my good friend Alex =)

On the way we walked by an indoor aquarium, which was unfortunately closed, but that didn't stop us from taking pictures and learning proving that Unicornfish DO exist.

There were a few other picture moments along the way to the museum, during the museum and after the museum before we reached our dinner destination.

hello?

speaks for itself

 

It's Wall-E!

Berliner Bear!

Stop n' Go

We make it to our dinner destination - American steak in Berlin at BLOCK HOUSE. Obviously from the last picture below, we cleaned off our plates! 

cheers!

delish house salad

some surprisingly good garlic bread!

 

 

Really excited to be able to drink beer legally in the street!

Fried Rice & Pie in Berlin

It was a rainy morning in Berlin...rather, I suppose by the time we woke up it was more like a rainy afternoon. Regardless of time, we were pretty spent from the touring and eating we did during the Doner Day before. So we decided to do some home cooking. Did we have rice? check. Garlic? check. Eggs? check.Tomatoes? no...Meat? no... supermarket? close enough. FIELD TRIP!!!

One of my favorite things to do when I visit another country is to go grocery shopping. Actually, that's one of my favorite things to do at home too...and let me just say, that grocery shopping on an empty stomach is a dangerous thing to do. So I get the directions for how to the local market, and I "suit up" (<3 NPH) in my hoodie, equipped with a canvas bag b/c it seems that every country charges for plastic bags except the USA, and head out.

I pick up what I need for making fried rice, and then start hunting for ingredients to make a version of Nestle's Mini Custard Fruit Tarts. I found the recipe online a few years ago, and made them for Thanksgiving when my cousin was visiting...he was such a fan, that I think I ended up making them into full pies instead of mini tarts at least 3 times that weekend. The best part is, the recipe is super simple and can be easily substituted with other ingredients. A few substitutions had to be made here because apparently they don't have graham crackers in Germany, and I had to take a stab at some of the other ingredients because, well, I can't read German.

Since I'm on dessert, I'm going to Tarantino it and work my way back from the end:

Preparing the crust...

Custard

Crust pre-bake

Crust post-bake w/ filling

Final product!

It's dessert time!

My little helpers hard at work - there's no such thing as a free meal!

The set-up and fried rice process & result:

Not the best fried rice I've ever made - which I'm going to chalk up to circumstance, BUT was at least passable. And dessert was a hit, which totally made up for it and gave us all the energy to embark on our adventures around Berlin afterwards.