Kumami Köpenick, a restaurant review

Linda’s 60th Birthday Present (belated) and my early 70^th

We had decided a while ago when Janice and Martin had said that Linda’s birthday present would be a Japanese meal in Berlin. They had discovered a new small Japanese restaurant in the middle of old Köpenick just a short tram ride from their new house. We looked after Aidan on the Friday and then on Saturday Tante Mohrle done a bit of babysitting while we went Asian.

The Restaurant is situated not far from the Rathaus made famous by Wilhelm Voigt (alias Heinz Rühmann) in the Hauptmann von Köpenick.

For you that don't know Köpenick, I would just say you should get yourself out there, it is situated on the shore of the Muggelsee in the south of Berlin (it didn't become part of Berlin until the 1920s). It is here that the short river the Dahme joins the Spree. The total length is only 95km in length and it rises in the Spreewald (also worth a visit) at a small town called strangely enough Dahme. (I think it is a place to visit in the spring when I have the camper on the road again)

The restaurant is quite small with only one table, though this does seat about 12, the table is actually a pair of polished timber planks (Walnut) with a burlap middle filled with wine corks. The walls are plain brick where the plaster has been hacked off, simple but effective. There is some of the original ceiling architrave remaining, crying back to a bygone era of luxury prior to the DDR.

Daughter had booked well in advance and as we were the only ones eating this early our places were immediately evident, there were four places all neatly laid out.

We divested (it was bloody cold out so we were well clad) and took our places at the wonderful table.

The waitress (also one of the owners) came and handed out the menu card and drinks list. The menu is a take it or leave it one, there is only one set menu, and a few add ones if you wish. The menu was to all our tastes and looked wonderful.

The menu was as follows:

1)       Sea Bass poached in a Dashi broth, decorated with pea shoots and finely sliced radishes  

2

22)      Obanzi – A selection of small starters (differs each day)

33)      Salmon Tartar on a bed of rice, topped with trout caviar and of course wasabi

44)      Trout Ponzu- Tranche of trout, wrapped in vine leaves and baked in a salt crust. The chef actually presented it at the table and broke it open serving each parcel separately.

55)      Scallop baked in the shell with a white miso sauce and mushrooms

66)      Finally there (main course wise) Roe deer leg filet, served with shredded dashi, red cabbage and         kale.

        

That was it for me, though the rest had deserts, martin a roasted green tea brûlée with a vanilla ice      cream. 

Janice and Linda both had the chocolate selection of the day.

        Martin and I both had beer served in small metal tumblers (I was a little surprised that they didn’t     have a Japanese beer, but you can’t have everything) Janice and Linda shared a carafe of rose.

I     I must say I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of the food, all perfectly cooked and served with aplomb and courtesy. The waitress and cook are married and this is a wonderful innovative restaurant venture.

     

      The name of the restaurant is made up of parts of their first names Kum and Ami. I do wish this venture well and will pop in again, when the weather gets a bit warmer. One splendid addition is the toilet seats they are as is usual in Japan a warm water bidet type, a nice touch, if you get the slant of my draw.   

A short revue of Ann (an Asian restaurant in Kiel)

Linda had been to a Japanese come Korean restaurant with some of her English speaking friends who meet up for a girlie's night out every so often. They had visited this restaurant previously and had extolled its virtues, she had been been talking about it with a few of our cookery club friends, so some of us decided to give it a lunch time bash.

The restaurant is situated on Holtenauer Straße at number 158, now Holtenauer Straße though wide and full of parking spaces, is not the easiest place to find a free one, but just around the corner is Blücherplatz and here you are sure to find a free space (unless it is market day).

We visited Ann on two separate occasions, once on the pre-planned Saturday lunch time and then a week later popping in on the off chance, on the way to see Les Misérable, at the Metro Cinema just a couple of doors down.

We had reserved a table for the Saturday lunch, so had no problems, though even if we hadn't we would have still got a table, as during the lunch it was never more than half full. The restaurant is quite small and the tables quite near to each other, I do not mind but can see that it would not make for a nice clandestine rendezvous or an intimate Te-ta-Te. I do not mind being close to others, but then I think that sushi bars are by their very nature quite intimate and sitting close and watching what your neighbour picks from the conveyor belt is part of the fun.

Ann does not have a conveyor belt and the Sushi is brought to the table by the very efficient waitress, but you can if you wish sit at the bar and watch while the Sushi chefs mesmerise you with their knife skills and their decorative detail.

On the Saturday lunchtime visit, Linda and I drank Green Tea and Kalle and Carolyn drank beer.  We all decided on a soup starter, Linda and Kalle ordered the Miso vegetable soup

 and both Carolyn and I settled for a Korean beef broth.

My beef broth was full bodied with lots of thinly sliced beef fillet in it, it was full of flavour and very, very tasty. Both Kalle and Linda said that their soup was also full of flavour.

When ordering, we had asked the lovely waitress, if the chef could make us a selection of various sushi, she said this was no problem at all. When it came it was a veritable display of colour, the slate having 2 different sorts of rolls (Maki), salmon and avocado, the rice adorned with fish (Nigiri) consisted of salmon, mackerel, sweet prawn, white fish and an egg omelet. It was of course accompanied by the pickled ginger (gari), wasabi, shredded mouli and carrot and finely sliced cucumber, it was all so nicely decorated that I thought it would be a shame to spoil it, but I soon put that thought out of my head.

It was all fantastically fresh, it showed the skill of a true artisan. We all agreed that it was excellent and said we would visit again (little did Linda and I know it would be within a week.)

A week later we had arranged to meet our friends Marianne and Carolyn to go and see Les Misérable at the Metro cinema, we had been out at our new flat to be, in Lübeck and decided to have a spot of supper before hand. We had tried  to get into Tan Tamar, a very good Thai restaurant just across the road, alas no room at the inn and no chance of squeezing us in so that we could be finished before 19:45 (film start). We therefore crossed the road and popped into see if Ann had any rooms at their inn. All tables either taken or reserved, we explained that we would be finished before 19:30 as we had booked for the cinema (well Marianne had).
On this proviso we got a table, we ordered from the menu this time and just a main course, Linda ordered the Hanoo a fiery assortment of inside out rolls and Nigiri

I plumbed for the Samuri, a selection of toasted Nigiri and inside out rolls adorned with flying fish roe and napped with a teri-yaki sauce.

It was a pity that we were in such a hurry, as I would have loved to have dallied a while longer, watching the Sushi chefs going about their business, the food was once again exquisite.
We will most certainly be visiting here again, before leaving Kiel.

Teriyaki beef with Udon noodles and a Japanese salad

I had been to our local abattoir to see what they had on special offer and saw that they has fillet steak for a paltry €20,-a kilo, now this was a bargain so I decided to get myself a thick 300g chunk, not knowing what I was going to do with it. I must tell you that at the minute I am on a diet to get my cholesterol, triglyceride, sugar and weight down (I was bordering on the obese level). This had been playing havoc with my sugar levels. I am doing the 5&2 method, this is where you fast for two days and eat normal for 5 days. The two fast days (below 600Kcals/day) can be any 2 days that you choose, it is not a fixed day so you can swap any day that doesn’t suit you. I have lost 7kg in about 6 weeks and do not find it a hardship, with a bit of fore thought you can come up with some very nice and tasty (important) food in a 300Kcal menu, and that twice a day will do the trick. I had bought the steak on Thursday on my way to the Docs for get my 6 monthly check up, with the view of cooking it on Friday, but how was the only problem.

I was reading a magazine in the waiting room and in it was an oriental section and part was taken up with healthy Japanese food culture and there it was beef Teriyaki with a Japanese salad.

I have adapted this as they used bottle sauce and I have made as near as I could an authentic sauce.

Fillet steak Teriyaki with Japanese salad.

For one person (I am just one)

You shall require:

275-300g fillet steak sliced into not too thin slices

 

Teriyaki marinade sauce

2 tbsp. wok oil

4 thin slices of ginger

100g sugar snap peas

100g green beans

½ tsp. salt

2 small chilli’s sliced thinly

1 small tomato diced

1 tsp. toasted sesame seeds

To make your own marinade

3 tbsp. of mirin

2 tbsp. dark soy sauce

2 tbsp. honey

2 tsp. dry sherry (instead of sake)

2 tsp. rice vinegar (the type used to make sushi rice)

1 tsp.  grated ginger

1 spring onion sliced fine

Mix all of the ingredients together and marinade the steak in this for at least 6 hours.

 

 

Bring a pan of water to the boil add the salt and blanch the beans, remove with a slotted spoon and cool in ice water, repeat with the sugar snap peas.

Noodles

1 sachet (200g) Udon noodles

1 sachet of miso soup

Make the miso soup to 5ooml

Add the noodles and heat through

 

The salad

½ red pepper sliced on a mandolin

1 spring onion cut into 3 cm pieces and sliced length ways very thin

3 cm piece of carrot grated

The sugar snap peas sliced very fine

2 tbsp. Gari (pickled ginger)

1 tbsp. sesame oil

Place all on a large platter leaving space for the Udon noodles and drizzle with the sesame oil.

Heat the oil in a frying pan or wok, add the ginger and fry for a few seconds, drain the steaks (don’t rub the marinade off) and add to the pan, now stir fry quickly, remove and set aside.

 

 

Now add the rest of the marinade add the green beans, the diced tomatoes and sesame seeds

 

Place the noodles in the middle, put the sliced steak on top and pour over the teriyaki sauce with the chilli bean sauce.

That’s it folks.

 

Miso broth with prawns and noodles then a trip to the Rhine

It was a very rainy Friday and as I had arranged to go down to Bonn for a couple of days, I thought I would make a quick meal for me on the afternoon and get some cassoulet out of the freezer for the evening meal. I decided on a light Miso broth with lots of finely chopped green veg and noodles

Ingredients

1 sachet of Miso soup
1 sachet of Tuna flavouring (dashi no moto)

2 stalks of celery
2 stalks of spring onions
1 cube of fresh ginger (2.5x2.5cm)
1 large garlic clove
3 small tomatoes (quartered)
1 red chilli (hot)
250g of raw prawns
3 pieces of dried anchovies

splash of fish sauce (it depends how salty you like it)
1 dessert spoon of Japanese soy sauce (light)

1 block of egg noodles

Bring plenty of water to the boil and break the noodles into it turn off the heat and allow to cook for 3-4 minutes, drain and set aside.

Bring 700ml of water to the boil, add the Miso soup powder and the dashi no moto. Using a madoline on the finest setting grate the celery, spring onion and ginger into the broth, crush the garlic and add this also.

Next chop the dried fish and add this to the broth.

Add the prawns and allow to cook (not too long or they go like rubber), taste the broth and add the fish and soy sauce, if too salty add more water.

Now add the noodles, the tomatoes and the chilli finely sliced in rings.

Serve at once eat with chop sticks drinking the soup from the bowls as one would do out in Japan.

I had made more than enough so this was also our starter for that evening when Linda got in from Kiel.

The main course was a cassoulet that I had made at the weekend and frozen, I made a new topping of chopped garlic and fresh herbs from my balcony, mixed with sauerteig bread crumbs. I must say that as with all one pot meals (Eintopf) it tastes better the second time around.

We set off for the Rhine and Bad Honeff , we are looking at mobile homes and Bad Honeff has a large outlet for second hand ones, so using this as an excuse (not that we need a one) I had phoned to our dear friends Marga and Ewald that live near Bonn that they would be having visitors on Saturday so get the wine uncorked.

We spent a good hour or so viewing the mobile homes and then drove through the area called the Siebengebirge, a once volcanic area on the East inclines of the Rhine in the area of Bad Honeff and Königswinter, with it's imposing Petersberg above, this sits high above the Rhein looking down on Königswinter, the Petersberg was the government hotel that housed state guests and held many conferences when the German Government was in its temporary home of Bonn. Königswinter does not take its name from anything wintery, but in that it was a wineberg (wine growing area) presented to Konig Karl der Große (Charlemagne) and thereafter called Königs Wintzerort (vineyard), this is of course just one of the speculations as to where the name came from, there are many more, but I like this one, so it must be true.
We caught the ferry to cross the mighty Rhine which was in full spate to Bad Godersberg on the West bank, pity it was raining as from here on a clear day you can see into the Eifel on one bank and the Siebengebirge including Petersberg and the ruins of Burg Drakenfels on the other.
We made our way to Marga's and she had a home made chicken and vegetable soup with eierstich (a beaten egg that has been set and then cut into small dice).

We chatted about mobile homes, they are also thinking of buying one, and as I had promised Marga many years ago that I would take her to the land of Rosemunder Pilchard and Dauphney de Maurier, we said that we would do it in 2013 when we would be retired.

Evening was lamb leg chops, rump steaks, salads and breads, washed down with a few bottles of a very nice red from the Altenahr ( Ewald is a bit of a wine connoisseur and specialises in wines from the Ahr region) he also makes his own liqueurs and schnapps, Linda had to try his Kirsch and try it again and again.

Sunday morning after breakfast I wandered the grounds of Ewalds garden (one of them, as he still has a large vegetable and fruit garden up in the hills).

Ewald's vines, that will produce his house wine later in the year

It was here under the walnut tree that we would have had our Grill-Abend alas the rains came

Haus Ewald and Marga

and got myself a few lemons (3 of each sort)

 I am going to make some preserved lemons to a recipe that our friend Carolyn used for Oranges at Christmas.

Carolyn's spiced Orange Rings

6 firm, medium-sized (bio) oranges

400 ml white wine vinegar

350 g soft brown sugar

Cinnamon stick

1/2 tsp whole cloves

2 blades mace

Wipe oranges well but do not peel. Cut them into thin, even slices. Put them into a saucepan and barely cover with water. Boil and simmer for 30 min. or until soft.

Drain liquid into a clean pan, add vinegar, sugar and spices. Heat gradually until sugar has dissolved.

Put drained slices in a few at a time when it is boiling hard and simmer until rind becomes clear.

Transfer rings to warmed jars until almost full.

Boil syrup again until it begins to thicken (ca. 15 min). Then leave to cool a little and pour over orange rings. Cover at once.

Store a week before using.

I will of course use Ewald's Bio Lemons!!!

The six lemons and Marga gave me her heart!

About mid morning we headed off on a round about way, stopping off for lunch in a nice Gasthof South of Munster for lunch. It was a  buffet a veritable spread, I had a matjes salad, followed by Rinderbraten mit zwiebeln soße  (pot roast beef with an onion sauce) and steamed and gratin potatoes (I did manage to squeeze a small beef roulade onto the plate as well), we could have had desserts but gave it a miss.

As we hit the Emsland out came the sun, the weather changed was warm and I thought once Linda was on the train back up to Kiel, I could get my cycle out and go for an hours pedal, I had reckoned without the weather gods, it came across pitch black and poured, I will never get fit at this rate and no I am not going out in the pouring rain.