Friday, October 24, 2008

Strawberry Chocolate Oatmeal

Strawberry is my all time favorite fruit. I miss having fresh one. So I decided to buy the strawberries in can in a local grocery. This diet is my way to avoid constipation. Instead of having the typical oatmeal, I made it like a champorado. My Apo Angelina used to serve the best champorado for breakfast. How I miss all the food that she cooked. I am proud to be kapampangan because of the cooking legacy I think I inherited from her. And for the strawberries I miss, it's always from La Trinidad. :-)

Xiang`s picture

Not much excitement.

Isn't he adorable?! I just love him, he's such a cutie. This picture was taken when we first got him by David's sister Aimee and I just had to share it. I'm trying to upload some more recent pictures so I will have those up sometime tonight hopefully.

I made it through another week of work. I talked to my old co-worker Missy for like 2 hours last night! I miss all of them! We are going out there this weekend to check on the house and take Cody to the nursing home to see some of my old patients so Missy and I might get together as well. That will be nice.

I had a patient throw up on me this week. Well, not directly on me. We were already in the bathroom so thankfully most of it made it into the toilet, but I still had to clean everything up. That was nasty. First time that has happened to me. So now I can say I've seen just about everything!

The Maccionis respond

October 24,

Le Cirque’s Marco Maccioni read my blog yesterday, and so he gave Elissa a call and I updated the entry accordingly Click here to see it.

Buttermilk Channel Wednesdays

October 24

I just had a nice chat with Ryan Angulo, chef of the soon-to-open Brooklyn restaurant Buttermilk Channel, named after the strait between Red Hook and Governors Island. The restaurant is supposed to open in the first week of November. “It could be the second week, I really hope it’s not,” Ryan said. It's going to have an American bistro menu, with snacks and charcuterie as well as appetizers and entrées, and also a special for each day of the week. On Wednesdays, that special will be bluefish, of all things, grilled and served with a cranberry bean and linguiça stew, reflecting Ryan’s Rhode Island roots, as it is “kind of a take on Portuguese kale soup,” he said. (when I have a moment, I’ll also tell you about what I did in Rhode Island last week, stay tuned...).
Bluefish is extremely inexpensive these days — as low as $2.95 a pound wholesale, and Ryan says if it’s very fresh it doesn’t have that intense fishy flavor for which bluefish is known.
That brought us to the topic of gamy foods, which I usually really like. Ryan reflected on his time at Picholine, where they served grouse and where one couple, regulars, would come in and order grouse extremely rare, stick their napkins in their collars and go at those birds like, well, people who really like grouse.
Ryan also cooked at davidburke&donatella. Most recently, he was chef de cuisine at Stanton Social.
Buttermilk Channel’s owner, Doug Crowell, is a BR Guest veteran, having managed Blue Fin and Blue Water Grill.

Today, another “memorable day”

mercoledì 22 ottobre 2008


Massimo and I, with our friends Igor and Maria Pia, was again at the open market Capo, but this time with a group of 23 people from Kansas City-USA ( Slow Food KC ) to help our friend Jude to show them the market.They are really nice people and we spent a very beautiful morning.
We tasted many different kind of food, like the Frittola (beef bits cooked in the lard, that a man with a particular basket take and put in a piece of paper),

or the Sfincione ( a particular pizza, with tomato-sauce, onions, anchovies, cheese and bread crumbs), olives (green and black), and bread with spleen and cheese.


They really liked all!We see many kind of fruit, and fish, tables with bread,

counter with meet,

table with aromas (oregano, saffron, raisins, cinnamon, etc).
And finally we was in the pastry-shop


where we finded the “frutta martorana” (fruit of marzipan) and the “Pupa a cera” (puppet of sugar) typical during the day of the “Celebration of the Deads” (2th of November).


We see together the beautiful church of Sant’ Anna, in Barocco style, they was really impressed!


When we was out of the open market, we went at the “Antica trattoria del Monsù”,

and had a really good lunch with a rich Menù (pasta with anchovies, “pasta alla Norma” with tomato and aubergines, “panelle e cocchè”, “caponata” with aubergines and a particular
sweetand sour sauce, tripe, etc).




This was really a beautiful and rich of emotions day!

Evelin


Friday Nibbles - Olive Oil

For almost as long as there has been civilisation, there has been olive oil. The liquid gold that runs from these small fruits has been used by countless generations for a monumental chunk of our collective history whether for food, for washing, for lighting, for trading or a host of other reasons.

Archaeological evidence suggests that by the Neolithic era (about 8,000BCE) our ancestors in modern day Turkey had realised that the fruit from the olive tree tasted pretty good. The transition from nomadic hunter-gatherer societies to more sedentary groups reliant on farming led to the domestication of the plant about 2,000 years later in either Asia Minor or Mesopotamia (what we know now as Iraq).

From there, the tree spread throughout the Mediterranean and quickly became essential to the Etruscan, Minoan, Greek and Roman empires. Oil extracted from the olives could be turned into soap, used as fuel for lanterns and, of course, eaten which explains its central role in cuisines stretching from The Fertile Crescent of the Middle East, across Europe and all the way into North Africa.



Now the vast majority of the world’s olive oil is produced in Spain, Italy and Greece with Spain alone responsible for just over a third and the International Olive Oil Council is based in the country’s capital, Madrid. Suffice to say that they take things quite seriously over there, seriously enough to consume 13 kilos of oil per person per year.

The first pressing of the olives results in extra virgin olive oil, this is the good stuff that hasn’t been messed about with, the sort of oil you want to dip some seriously fresh bread into and eat all on its own for lunch whilst sat under an awning and gazing at the Umbrian Hills or over the Mediterranean sea. Much like wine or whiskey, different oils possess different flavours and textures. Don’t be surprised to hear someone banging on about peppery or honey notes balanced with a gentle acidity, in much the same manner an oenophile would when eulogising over a rare Bordeaux.

In terms of absolute kitchen essentials, olive oil tops my list, much as it does that of numerous other cooks, food writers and chefs. I dare say that I use it more than any other item in the kitchen whether it is for frying a piece of meat, dribbling over a plate of fresh tomatoes, making a batch of aioli or any of a thousand other uses. And what’s more, it’s staggeringly good for you, which, in my book anyway, makes it a near perfect ingredient.

Lunch - Fried Tomatoes and Bacon

I know it’s Friday and today’s nibble is on the way but I just wanted to write up a quick post about lunch and simplicity.

We had some bacon offcuts left over (we tend to buy them to put into soups, stews and ragus. They are insanely cheap and just as tasty as the real deal) and they either needed to be frozen or eaten sharpish before they turned a disgusting shade of ming and made their way to the outside bin.



So I fried them up in their own rendered fat and then stuck in a couple of tomatoes I was given yesterday (another story for another day – I spent a couple of hours on a pig farm chatting to the delightful Simon and Amanda of Pigs in Parcels) and served it all with a hunk of home baked bread and a dollop of brown sauce.

I know this is little more than a bacon sandwich with a rustic shaped ego but it was so very tasty. Highly recommended, plus the chunks of bacon offer more bite and, ultimately, a modicum more satisfaction thanks to their thick meatiness. It's not big, fancy or clever but sometimes simplicity is all that's needed.

New Christmas Cooking Classes







Towards an Australian Christmas

From Monday November 10 all our Monday classes will be focussed on Christmas cooking with menus that hopefully give the cooks, as well as the guests time to relax, monster the relatives and generally not get too many nickers into too many twists.

The classes will cover planning the shopping and spreading the preparation time over a few days to minimise any anxiety that the cooks may have.

Cooks seem to get into such a dither about food at Christmas. In the last few years during Diane’s and my “civilian period” it’s been yabbies from the top dam or crayfish.
When I say top dam, I have to explain the top dam was where all the yabbies that survived the restaurant Sunday lunches were released over the years with a view to seeding this dam for later.
We forgot about them till the following Christmas time and of course they had bred up and grown to a rather good size.
This year there is hardly any water in the dams so any yabbies that may have dug-in for the dry will be spared.

Planning a Christmas lunch involves capturing the spirit of the occasion with dishes suited to our climate. Victoria with its Mediterranean climate and seasons reversed means that care has to be taken with some traditional English Christmas dishes. But with some clever planning a great spread can be enjoyed that both encapsulates the cultural background of your family while paying respect to the season, the market and the garden.

A worry free day can be achieved with good planning, and a few early market visits early to get acquainted with availability is essential.
Many suppliers are taking orders now especially if specialty poultry is involved. A good list of suppliers will also be available.
Each class will cover a multi course banquet that captures the sense of occasion in great style with a minimum of stress for all the participants.

Dates Christmas Cooking Classes
Mondays on November 10 November 17 November 24
December 8 and December 15
Times 9.30 for 10 am start finish about 3.30
$110 per person $100 per person for groups of 4 or more Bookings 03 52362276