Vegetarian green beans over rice (Loubiyeh w Rizz)

Serves 2-4
Ingredients:
1/2 pound of fresh Green beans
1 onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 1/2 cup of canned diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon allspice
1 tablespoon of tomato paste
olive oil, salt and pepper
water

For the Rice:
1 1/2 cup of rice
1 teaspoon of butter and a dash of salt

In a pan, add onions, olive oil (I usually eyeball, just enough to coat the onions), dash of salt and pepper, cook for a couple of minutes then add the garlic, green beans, let them cook for few minutes then add the tomatoes, and keep cooking for another few minutes then add 1 tablespoon of tomato paste and water enough to cover what's cooking. Let it all simmer until the beans are cooked. Meanwhile, in another pan, add 1 teaspoon of butter, then add the rice, when the butter coats the rice, add 3 cups of water (or according to directions) and let it simmer.
Serve with any kind of salad.

PS: This recipe is good also if you add meat to it (cubes or minced), if you wish to do so, add the meat with the onions then continue the recipe.

Marian Trinidad

A former TV news correspondent based in Japan dined at my place. Marian has been married for almost a year and now works in the same industry as her husband. As a newly wed couple, they shared with me their experiences during their wedding venue research. They said that it's quite hard to choose the right venue to match your budget. Most of their research was about Tagaytay. Hmmm… I am somehow leaning towards the same direction. They came across Antonio's Hideaway, Hacienda Isabel, Sonya's Garden, Ville Sommet, Nurture Spa, Balai Inday and Tagatay Highlands. But they ended up celebrating their big day at Ponderosa Club House. Actually it's not really a wedding venue that anyone can rent. They are lucky to know someone who owns a house in Ponderosa that's why they were able to rent the clubhouse at a very cheap rate. They described the garden as majestic and picturesque. For them it's the perfect wedding venue. Would you believe that my conversation with them lasted for more than an hour and they stayed at my place for almost four hours? The conversation was all worth it.

I was surprised that both of them are very sweet and not shy about showing their feelings for each other.

Whoah! This is my peppery Sagada Fried Rice with Buttered Breakfast Beef in Kepap Manis sauce.

A sweet and intimate moment.

Sk8er boiz.

Some of us have become big fans of ice skating and ice hockey. There's a public skating rink (like just a pond that's been frozen then groomed) in one of the big hotels so we've been there a few times to skate and muck around with a puck and whatnot.


Josh and Michael trying on their skates. This place is pretty convenient 'cause it's right next to the cinema and we can just drop the skates off then go straight to walk next door.

Inside the little hut next to the pond, loving the blue socks there Golden.
Views around the pond;


Beauuuuriiifool

Josh has a pretty good control over his stick.

This photo was taken about 2 seconds before I scored the winning goal.

Golden doing the same, except his shot was blocked by Josh's intense keeper effort.

I teleported myself to behind the net and managed to take this photo just before Golden took the shot, which is clearly the more likely explanation than Josh and Golden holding the pose for about half an hour while I leisurely skated around to behind the goals to take the photo.

The guy on the left was really good at skating and hockeying. Pity he's a French-Canadian (zing!). That's right Francis, you heard me.

We were only too eager when he suggested that we play a game, so we dragged in a few more randoms and had a pretty massive game of 3 on 4.

I fell on my face when I went one-on-one with the FC guy, but it was really fun nonetheless.

Having a breather after a long day of skating.

Golden thinking about his next move against a cool backdrop of pink sunset.

Josh's special move, the rising-phoenix-puck. Click to enlarge.
I still hope to fit in a game of 3 v 3 with all of us and Jae!



Jin

It's Spelt S-O-D-A-B-R-E-A-D

I’d like to say that my bread making efforts have been something of a failure. I’d like to say that but it would be akin to calling the Peloponnesian War a minor fracas or saying that standing on a upturned plug ‘stings a little bit’. It is an ongoing fiasco that has been well documented upon these pages and I hope has caused some minor ripples of amusement in the face of my own ineptitude. I’ve tried and failed with sourdough so many times that it has become rather a millstone around my neck. Give me a bit of something that used to be alive and I can cope more than adequately. However, faced with something that didn’t used to have a face yet has managed to establish its own sentience independently of any discernable source and it throws me a bit. Flour? Check. Water? Check. I wonder what will happen if we mix these two together and leave it for a while. Good god – it has managed to take on a life of its own and is now rapidly expanding towards my shocked looking face. Suffice to say it has been a while since I bothered trying it given that I have been a little short on time over the last few months, what with having a job and all. I’d just resigned myself to the fact that I will simply never be a baker. Cook maybe yes, baker certainly not. I expect ingredients to act as they should (invariably this is rarely the case) and the addition of an unknown quantity such as yeast throws me off track a touch. Plus there is no room for manoeuvring – the rules are there for a reason and quantities matter and even the slightest, teeniest, tiniest, littlest bit of improvisation puts the stoppers on the whole project – and as a cook who positively revels in manoeuvring I had shelved ‘baking’ alongside other pursuits I didn’t think were for me (catalogued somewhere between ‘Ancient battle re-enactment’ and ‘calligraphy’).

And then I had a glorious, spectacular road-to-Damascus like moment. I discovered that there were breads that didn’t need the accuracy of a microbiologist or the patience of a matchstick model maker. There were breads that didn’t need yeast, didn’t need a starter dough and, wait for it, didn’t even need to be left to rise. It was like I’d been told, after years safely ensconced in the knowledge that he wasn’t real, that Santa Claus actually did exist. Even more amazing was that these little loaves of leavened loveliness were amongst my favourite types of bread in the entire whole world. Sodabread, oh spectacular sodabread. How could I have not known? I can make a mayonnaise from scratch, I can confit a duck, spatchcock a poussin, deftly shuck an oyster and even inject flavour into a packet of Super Noodles but I hadn’t known that there was a bread within my fragile grasp. There was no time to waste.

Except predictably, sighingly, frustratingly, there was the inevitable hurdle. ‘Add 125ml of buttermilk.’ Eh? Whut? Buttermilk? Wassat? Had it not been for the internet I would probably have given up at this point, however, the mighty Wikipedia told me all I needed to know (milk soured with a little yoghurt, lemon juice or vinegar) and I was once again in the fast lane on the way to Sodabread City after a brief stop on the hard shoulder to check the map. And after that it was a very easy journey indeed. For reference purposes I was using Fergus Henderson’s recipe from Beyond Nose to Tail but was even confident enough to use spelt flour in place of the suggested wholemeal. Spelt is an ancient Roman flour with a lovely full and slightly malty taste and I thought it would inject a little bit of a punch to the bread as well as making the resultant loaf slightly healthier. Flour, buttermilk, salt, sugar, water and the all-important baking powder were the only ingredients and it was with hope and trepidation that I slid it into the oven.

There are few things as tempting as a loaf of bread fresh from the oven, steam still rising in soft curls into the air and a scent rapidly filling the kitchen and thankfully this was no exception. It had risen in the oven and a crisp looking crust had set over the whole loaf. The knife crunched through and into the soft, doughy centre and I was greeted with a smell that is incomparable. The only way to eat bread this fresh is to spread on a little too much butter and get stuck in. So that is exactly what I did. Crunchy, soft, warm, a hint of salty sweetness and then the cool butter rapidly melting into the bread. Simple, joyous perfection. It’s official: I’m a baker.

Why I'm not in Las Vegas

February 6

The funny thing about having dinner in Queens this evening was that I was supposed to have been in Las Vegas.
I had been contacted a few months ago by the American Society of Interior Designers to speak on a panel at the IntersectWest conference there. Apparently someone had seen me speak on a panel the previous May about foodservice trends at HDExpo 2007 and wanted to duplicate that very panel.
Now, I don't know why one group of designers would want to put on the same panel that a design magazine put on less than a year earlier. Surely it would attract a similar crowd and look boring, repetitive and kind of stupid.
But I figured I could update my PowerPoint presentation with new and fascinating information, and clean up the layout a bit as the HDExpo 2007 attendees, while drinking with me later, had praised my information but disparaged the layout, so that even if the ASID looked silly, I would not.
Today's Wednesday, and by Monday I had finished all the work I needed to do for my regular job at Nation's Restaurant News. I'd had to back out of a Super Bowl party that I really would have liked to go to (thrown by my excellent colleague Milford Prewitt) to finish my work, but I did it. I had set up nice meals to have in Las Vegas, and was ready to leave the following day. I e-mailed my contacts at ASID and asked if they needed anything else from me, and I asked at what hotel I was staying.
I got a reply, from the person who had replaced one of my contacts, with a press release attached. The release said that IntersectWest 2008 had been canceled. The release was dated January 23. Hadn't I heard?
I wondered how I would have heard if they hadn't told me, since, being a food writer, I am not generally informed about the scheduling of design conferences any more than I'm informed about the price of tungsten or the latest innovations in printed circuit board assemblies.
Since it hadn't been rescheduled, they were releasing me from my contract.
Wasn't that nice of them, releasing me from my contract?
The contract had said basically that I would show up and that they would pay for my flight and lodging.
My new contact also told me I would be reimbursed for any out-of-pocket expenses I'd incurred.
I thought of flying to Las Vegas anyway and billing ASID for my flight and lodging. But instead I went to Jet Blue's web site and learned that I could cancel my flight for just $40.
So I billed ASID for $40. I was told it would be taken care of, and I believe it.
Today I got an e-mail from another one of my contacts, whom I'd also asked if they needed anything else from me and wondering where I was staying, saying she wasn't sure what I was asking about to.
I said that explained why she and everyone else at ASID had neglected to tell me that IntersectWest had been canceled.
Her answer was priceless and exemplifies what's wrong with America: "I didn’t neglect to tell you about Intersect/West because I wasn’t working with that and had no idea it was cancelled."
You see, that's the wrong answer.
The right answer is, "I'm sorry."