Dulce de Leche vs. Dulce de Leche

I've been collecting recipes since I was in college.  Yup, that's a long time ago.  For years I kept all of those clippings in manila folders, frantically going through them when I was searching for something specific I THOUGHT was in there.  I usually didn't find what I was looking for.

Several years ago, I pasted all of those clippings in notebooks and indexed them.  ON. MY. COMPUTER.  Does any sane person do that?

That said, it's now extraordinarily easy for me to find recipes when I am looking for them.  My own personal recipe trove! 

So now I have all these recipe "books."  Of course, I'm not quite sure what to do with all of the clippings I've acquired since then.  Guess I will have to figure that one out later.

And my point?  Do I ever have one on this blog?

Yeah.  Here it is.  I am going to start cooking and posting based on these accumulated recipes.  At random. 

The first one?  Dulce de Leche Brownies from David Lebovitz.  I met him years ago in NYC.  He is the pastry and dessert chef extraordinaire  http://www.davidlebovitz.com/index.html   I fell in love with his partner, Kip and we stayed in touch.  Sadly, Kip is no longer with us, but his memory lives on. 

Before you can make these, you have to have a cup of dulce de leche on hand.  Huh?  What's that?  Well, basically it is caramelized, sweetened milk that lends itself to all sorts of incredible dessert recipes. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dulce_de_leche

Sometimes you can find it in the grocery store, but I'm never that lucky, so usually I just caramelize sweetened condensed milk.  But here's where that silly indexing of mine came in handy.  I actually found a recipe in there for a homemade version of dulce de leche from Alton Brown.  Since I am a food snob, I decided to make it in lieu of the canned stuff.  Good call, Liz!

Now that I have made it "from scratch", I will never look back.  Yeah, it takes some time, but there is little work involved and the payoff is worth it.  While the canned version was good, it still had that "canned" taste.  The homemade version was just pure milky caramel.  Oh, this makes me SO happy!

DULCE DE LECHE (1)

(2) 14-oz. cans sweetened condensed milk

Pour the condensed milk into a large glass baking dish.  Cover with foil and place in a bain-marie (that means place it in a larger pan filled with hot water to come halfway up the sides of the glass baking dish).  Preheat oven to 300-degrees and bake for about 1 1/2 hours or until mixture caramelizes and is golden brown.

Yield:  approximately 1 cup

DULCE DE LECHE (2)  (from Alton Brown)

1 quart whole milk
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla paste (available at Whole Foods)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Combine milk, sugar and vanilla paste in a 4-quart saucepan.  Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer, stirring occasionally until sugar dissolves.  Reduce heat to low and add baking soda.  Continue to cook on VERY low heat, stirring occasionally until mixture is a dark caramel color.  This will take approximately 2 1/2 - 3 hours.  Strain mixture and store in refrigerator in a sealed container for up to one month.

Yield:  approximately 1 cup

At the end of the day (that would be the end of this experiment), I was left with something that looked like the caramel sauce I usually make (see previous blogs).  But yet ... this tasted different.  The milk tempered it, made it less stringent and it lingered longer in the back of my mouth.  Sorry, don't want to sound like I am tasting wine, but it was radically different from the usual caramel.  Verdict?  Suck it up and take the three hours it takes to make this stuff....

Since it took me three hours to make it tonight, I did not get around to making the brownies.  Sorry, everyone!  That will be tomorrow's blog.  Sleep well.

Burning all my fucking bras...

I had a lovely post prepared for today. Indeed, I had a good day with Ro, having lunch together and going together to our classes... but something that bored me a lot happened.

I've got a very big ches, right? Yes, I know. I look as a fat girl due to that. It's big, it's annoying, and I can't find a proper bra for me. And the ones that are ok... are TERRIBLE. Seriously, try to put on your grandmother's bra, look nice with it, feeling comfortable and sexy... and then we can speak about it.

I mean, is for the big lingerine brands so difficult making a bra wit a lovely colour or print in a BIG SIZE? Is it? And with a good price? H&M and Etam SOMETIMES do this, but not always... Do I have to wear the same type of boring and horrible bra during all my life? For God's sake, I'm a young woman, not a old fat lady!!

So... as you can imagine, today I tried to buy a bra. And again, I failed. I went to a special shop that sells bras for girls like me... ha ha, how innocent I was. Not only they had bras that would scared Lord Voldemort, no; the woman said that it was my size... but my bust looked HORRIBLE!! And should I have to pay more than 50 € for a ugly bra that makes me a bad bust? NO!

So yes, I didn't buy anything (Lord Voldemort would thank it to me...)  and almost cried because I can find anything beautiful on my size... and when I say "beautiful", I mean somethin so cute like this:

Please, don't try to say "try to loose some weight" or something like that. Las time I tried, I looked as girl with anorexia but with big boobs... ARGH, no! When I loose weight, I loose from all my body except from the breasts!! AND I CAN'T AFFORD AN SURGERY, RIGHT??

So, what do I want (apart of shouting everybody about this)? I WANT THE FUCKING BRANDS MAKING REAL LINGERINE FOR REAL WOMEN, like me!!!

And you know the funny thing...? I need a swimsuit. Different style, same old problem. Ha ha...  *sarcasm*

Now I feel much better... and, if you have read until this line... thank you so much, my dear. I really apreciatte you all. ♥


Ps: By the way, I'm almost on 200 followers... thank you so much to you all! I know that sometimes I'm a very bad blogger, and that my style and my post are sometimes very difficult to understand... but for all of you who's been here with me since I started this journey... I'm prepairing something special... my first giveaway!!

With the number 200 you'll know about this!!

Day 17: Damascus to London

I started the first of two days of travel with a typical Syrian breakfast, hotel buffet style: foule (beans served with fresh tomatoes, diced onions, and herbs), a milky sweet bread pudding, a sweet cream of wheat-type warm cereal, chicken with tomatoes, hummus, and bread.

A very pleasant fellow, wearing a suit, met us at 8:30am in our hotel lobby to return us to the airport in the customary black Honda. Both he and the driver rode without their seat belts. Warning beeps accompanied most of our ride. You’ll recall our experience in coming into the country which I talked about on Day 12. In leaving the country, we only had one suit and a driver rather than three men tending to us. But the seat belt experience was the same. What is this?

He dropped us off at the VIP lounge, took our passports and luggage, and disappeared. He returned quite promptly with our boarding passes, luggage slips, and passports. We never saw an airline person or a customs or security official or any one else for that matter, except the fellow in the lounge who offered us tea. The boarding process started, we could tell from the lounge’s monitor, and we sat while our fellow talked with his friends or disappeared into the fray outside the VIP lounge. Suddenly realizing that we were minutes away from departure, he bundled us quickly into the car and raced across the tarmac to the plane. We were the last to board.

Just in case you are wondering about this VIP treatment, Katherine was working on a special project as part of the Monitor team in Syria and was being escorted by “protocol.” I was simply along for the ride.

The plane ride to London took about five hours and we began the process of setting our watches back, this time two hours. We spent the night at a hotel close to Heathrow, had Chinese food for dinner in the hotel (surprisingly good), and enjoyed drinking water from the tap. I didn’t have time to draw a chair.

Day 16: Drawing Chairs/Preparing to Leave

I try to draw a hotel chair in every room I occupy during the course of a trip. It all started with a trip to Syria, Jordan and Egypt in 2003 and I’ve been doing it ever since. I can’t tell you why I thought it would be fun to do. I had been drawing chairs in Berkeley and Sonoma for a while before 2003, had drawn nearly every chair in the house and was getting bored with the process and my chairs. I knew that I would never get bored drawing on trips and thought there would be an endless variety of chairs. It is true that I have never gotten bored but it is also true that there is not an endless variety.

I believe somewhere in the world there is a ware house filled with five or six styles of chairs which are purchased and show up in various guises in most any hotel room. Anywhere. The warehouses may be divided into the high class, middle class, and cheap varieties but within each class the chairs are remarkably the same.

So today on my last day, I drew the chair in our Damascus hotel room. I have one more chair to draw in our airport hotel in London—but just in case I don’t have time, I want you to see the chairs I have drawn so far on this trip. London, Oxford, and Damascus.

The entire Monitor team working on projects in Syria (about eight of them plus me) gathered for dinner on our last night in Damascus at a new restaurant called The Pearl of the Orient. The food was the best we’ve had in Syria—and that’s saying something. I can’t begin to name what was in all the little bowls of dips and relishes which preceded the salads, main course dishes, and desserts. So I’ll just show you the pictures. A perfect meal to end our stay.

Mezze selections.

Salads. This one is tabbouleh. Others included fattoush.

Main dishes, served with nut-studded rice.

Desserts. This one is angel-hair pasta wrapped in a nest, filled with a creamy sweet cheese, and soaked with a sweet syrup. The other dessert was two kinds of rose-scented rice pudding, one with an orange custard on top, the other plain.

Following dinner Emad took us to the Old City to see the Mosque at night. It was about 10:30pm and he said it was still too early to get the full effect. But I thought it was pretty magical, especially with the full moon shining.

Day 15: Sauntering through Damascus on My Own

I started walking toward the Old City with only a couple of things in mind: to see whatever appeared in front of me, to move very slowly, and to buy a roll of Scotch tape to paste ephemera in my journal. I really wanted to move at the same pace as other folks on the sidewalks. It was surprisingly easy to slow down, to notice the goods spread out on cloths: remote controls, books, sunglasses. A young boy tended a scale, waiting for customers who might pay a small amount to be weighed—or so I suppose.

Half way to the Old City I found myself in a group of what I think were Iranian tourists—although pilgrims might be a better term. They were following their leader who held a sign up high for all to see. Dressed in black or printed chadors, most of them were older women with brown weathered faces. I suspect they were country folk. Although it was clear that they had their sights set on the Umayyad Mosque, they were moving slowly, some encumbered by the packages and bags held underneath their chadors. I stayed in their midst until we reached the market, feeling strangely safe and protected. No one noticed my presence.

My sights were set on the most famous ice cream store in Damascus, Bakdash. Through the front window of the busy shop, I could see a fellow adroitly forming an ice cream ball in his glove-covered hands and gently lobbing it into a plastic box of nuts.

Another fellow removed the balls from the nuts and placed them in glass bowls which a server carried off to the waiting tables of customers. One of the servers noticed that I was taking pictures and waved to me.

I asked these young men to line up for a group shot. They, in turn, asked to see the photo. I moved into the shop to show them. After gesturing their thanks, one popped a small glob of ice cream into my mouth with his gloved hand. The ice cream was cool and sweet and just delicious; the encounter which lasted no more than three or four minutes was sweeter still.

I stumbled across a lovely old man and his son selling nuts and dried fruits on a small street close to the mosque. As soon as I tarried, looking at the food, I knew that I would end up buying something. I chose a small plastic bag of pistachios in the shell, salty and so good.

There were a couple of fellows demonstrating kitchen tools, spread out on a cloth in the street. They used the tools with a confidence that can only come from lots and lots of practice. They cored zucchini, made cucumber flowers and baskets, and shredded carrots with the greatest of ease. I was tempted to buy a gadget or two until I realized they were probably like the kitchen gadgets advertised on television in the 50s: they looked good but lasted about two seconds before breaking. I came home gadget-free. But a little regretful.

Walking back to the hotel, I followed the path past the old train station that is becoming increasingly familiar, moving at a saunter, noticing the shwarma shop, the Syrian equivalent of a pizza place, and the shop were I had successfully purchased my tape (not Scotch). I waved to the fellow who had sold me the tape; he waved back. I was surrounded by people traveling the same route at the same pace as I. It was lovely.

Dinner was at Naranj, a beautiful restaurant in the Old City. The five of us (our numbers are growing) had, among other things, fantastic kibbeh (meatballs mixed with spices and bulgur) in a yogurt sauce which was creamy, warm, and so comforting. Apparently you can heat yogurt and prevent curdling by adding some cornstarch mixed with water and slowly heating the yogurt, stirring it constantly. Sounds like a lot of work but the effort was so worth it.