Sunday snack (2): semolina pudding with orange-banana salad

On another Sunday full of chores, I prepared this pudding or flan right after breakfast. So that at snack time it was a Quick & Easy move. For this plan The Swiss Guy chimed in (see next post: reply to Lucullian Delight's call for fave' cookbooks). The Swiss guy was talking about making pudding with whole wheat semolina.

Semolina pudding with orange-banana salad

From: Gesund und leistungsfähig durch richtige Ernährung Part I by R.Müller (see also next post, and see label The Swiss Guy)

1 liter water
100 g whole wheat semolina
2 tablespoons agar-agar
2-3 tablespoons nut paste (mixture of roasted hazelnuts and almonds)
50-75 g brown sugar*
bit of salt**
1 small pack of real vanilla powder (and not the chemical vanilline, as R.Müller warns)
fruit (oranges, banana)
liquid cream

Let the water come to a boil, add the semolina, and keep stirring.

Add the agar-agar, mix very thoroughly to avoid lumps, and let boil for 10 minutes.

Turn off the heat, remove from oven top and mix with the remaining ingredients: nut paste, sugar, salt, and vanilla powder.

Pour the pudding in small ramequins. Let cool.

Peel one orange per person, and remove everything except the flesh, cut half a banana per person, and mix both fruits with 1 tablespoon of liquid cream.

Notes:
*Sugar: drastic as I am, I used only 2 tablespoons of muscovado sugar.
**I didn't add salt as this heavenly nut paste from a brand called Monki already contains salt.

I liked this, but as a fan of The Swiss Guy I'm pretty much biased. Serving this to eaters able to voice (dis)like would be a good litmus test-I'll bet that on account of the jellification and the brown color, most wouldn't be too fond.

The Swiss Guy Does It

Name your favorite cookbook, Ilva from Lucullian Delights said, and she went antiquarian. So instead of Claudia Roden or Harry's Bar or some chef, here's R.Müller, Gesund und leistungsfähig durch richtige Ernährung - Part I & II. Bern, Verlag "Sonnseitig leben", 1975. In the 1970s in Bern they didn't do catchy titles in alternative publishing houses yet.

After lecturing ominously about our need of vitamins and minerals and the suspicious lack thereof in refined foods, R.Müller serves complete meals in his opus Healthy and fit for activity through eating the right food, that take as a standard the foods and food preparation of a black-clad farmer family on a Swiss Alp, who live off their own vegetable and fruit garden. Meaning: benign cooking methods, unrefined foods, simplicity, wholesomeness. George Ohsawa would summarize as follows: "vivere parvo. And don't forget to chew!"

It's feasible, but it also requires us to be completely re-educated. It may require us to yield our own produce, if only on a patio. It's the kind of book that teaches one to think long and hard before filling the supermarket cart with the fine and shiny products of the food industry, to read labels, to become choosy over time, and to rethink cooking methods. And in these fast times that's quite a tour de force.

The Most Simple and Fortifying Soup in the Whole Wide World

Dark Bread Soup, by R. Müller, in Gesund und leistungsfähig durch richtige Ernährung Part 2 (Bern, Sonnseitig leben, 1974) see previous posts labelled "The Swiss guy", is a secret weapon of mass fortification whenever there aren't a bunch of vegetables in the house. Without ado.

Dark Bread Soup

A few slices of dark bread
butter
salt, pepper, nutmeg
1 liter water
1 onion
a few cloves
a glass of red or white wine
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons cream

Lighly fry the bread in butter in a pan. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg.

Add the water, the onion with cloves pegged to it, and let this simmer for 30 minutes.

Pass the soup through the mill, add the wine, bring to a boil again, mix in the egg yolk and the cream while stirring, and serve as quickly as possible.

Note: I did not add wine, nor did I pass the soup through the mill, but through a sieve. At the end of the first boiling time, I added the yolk, no cream. I brought again to a brief boil, and served the soup. Excellent (one can taste the bread) and fortifying.