Deirdré Eats - and Cooks

when worlds collide, 2

This is a second attempt for my vlogging friends, this time in SWF. This one opens, as expected in the pop-up window, but takes a few seconds to actually start playing. Please let me know your results.

The daily cooking report will come later - I'm making two different kinds of tomato chutney.

meatloaf and roast potatoes

This was last night's menu:

First, I washed the potatoes and chopped them into (very) roughly 1 inch cubes (didn't bother to peel - the peel is good for you!). Then I parboiled them until slightly soft, not fully cooked.

For the meatloaf, I had only about half a pound (300 gm) of ground meat, and Ross invited a friend for dinner, so I had to stretch it. I mixed it with some of the left over dal from the other night, along with one egg and about 3/4 cup of breadcrumbs. Moulded it into a loaf and placed it into a large china baking dish, liberally greased with olive oil. Then I poured the potatoes in around the sides, added several cloves of garlic (chopped large), lots of salt, and more oil on top. I would normally have added rosemary sprigs for roast potatoes, but thought it might clash with the slightly Indian flavor of the meatloaf.

Put that into the oven at 350F/175C for about an hour, occasionally turning the potatoes so they got crusty on several sides. The meatloaf got a little dry on the outside, remained moist and tasty inside.

Served with a salad of fresh tomatoes and red onions, tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

when worlds collide

I've been hanging out with the video blogging folks for some weeks now, but, back here at home, I've been doing video without a blog and blog without a video (this) - until now.

They keep telling me it's easy, so here's my first attempt. This is a WMV (Windows Media) video, uploaded as a file to TypePad and then I had to fiddle with the raw HTML in the TypePad editor to get it to show. It doesn't play in the popup window the way I'd like, instead it opens Windows Media Player (I have no idea what will happen on a Mac). Oh, well. Still learning.

This is for my videoblogging friends, and of little interest to foodies, unless you were dying to see me in my kitchen (I was making the previously-mentioned dal). This video was a quick experiment, and so far I've learned that I don't like myself in front of the camera (gotta get used to that, I guess). I will have to study more cooking shows to see how it's done. In Italy, cooking shows include cute but stupid announcers jumping in and asking dumb questions. I don't have any of those handy, and my kitchen isn't that large, so I will need to find some other format. Alton Brown of Good Eats is more my style, and besides, he's one of the few people I know named Alton - my dad is another one.

Stylistic point: if I had a video editing tool that would would do it, I would have accelerated from normal speed to 10x or higher by the end, but the Windows Movie Maker only goes to 2x. The drone in the background really is a helicopter; they fly over the lake from time to time, on the way to mountain rescues or the hospital or something. Or maybe these days it's security, since Kofi Annan is vacationing in Bellagio.

wine tasting

Okay, so my day-to-day culinary life isn't always exciting. So I'm dredging my files and my memory for foodie stuff that I haven't already written up or posted on my site.

Back in February, we were invited (as Slow Food members) to attend a presentation of Valtellina wines in nearby Erba. Since we moved to Lecco, we've missed out on all the Milan Slow Food events, and there haven't been many here in our area, so we were happy to go to this one even though we already know quite a few Valtellina wines - they have been our favorites for some years.

This event was a wine tasting plus dinner, at a cost of around 45 euros each if I recall correctly. Which turned out to be cheap, considering that we got a six-course meal and all the wine we could drink.

We came in towards the end of the press conference/discussion, which had about 50 attendees, most of whom seemed to be the wine producers themselves, plus a few journalists and critics who already knew Valtellina and its wines very well - very much preaching to the choir. If they really want to get these wines noticed and appreciated elsewhere, they are going to have to work harder to get the non-believers to attend their events. Amusingly, just because we were there, people seemed to assume that we were somehow involved in the industry. Enrico tried to use this to scam some free wine glasses from the head of the Triacca winery, but we never received them.

When the conference ended, we went to the reception area, where a long table was set out with about 30 different Valtellina wines, and very attentive young waiters pouring them. We could taste any or all, and between the two of us managed to get through most of them - on empty stomachs. So you'll forgive me if I don't remember much about the dinner!

This event happened to be the last of RistorExpo, which we had not attended - from what we saw as we passed through the expo area, next year we will definitely have to go. There had been other dinners and tastings in connection with the expo that I'm now sorry we missed. Chefs had come from other parts of Italy for some of these, so I got to chatting with a guy from New York, working at one of the famous restaurants in Tuscany, along with his delightfully extroverted Tuscan boss. We'll have to check out that restaurant sometime.

At the dining tables, when we eventually reached them, each place was set with six wine glasses. We were twelve to a table, with one wine producer at each. Ours was Elena Fay, who unfortunately was sitting across the very broad round table from me, so I didn't get to hear much of what she said. Another person at our table was a wineseller in a small town further up the lake.

As the glasses imply, Valtellina wines are made from the Nebbiolo grape, which is also the basis of many Piemontese wines. I'm not a wine expert, but I do love these rich reds, especially the Sfursat that I have written of before. Our favorite, the Cinque Stelle from Negri, has become better-known in recent years, and is now priced out of our range except for very special occasions.

Dinner was the joint effort of chefs from two different Valtellina restaurants, one of which was Il Cantinone. The dinner was so good that we went to the restaurant on another occasion, when we happened to be in Madesimo, and ate extremely well. It's a member of the Ristoranti del Buon Ricordo group, BTW.

As I said, I don't remember much about the dinner, except that it was delicious - part of the reason I'm not very good at writing descriptions of the food is that I frequently don't remember it very well the next day! I did have the presence of mind to take a picture of the lovely dessert.

banana apricot bread

What to do with two black bananas? Make banana bread, obviously. But the recipe calls for three bananas, and I only have two, so I added three slightly overripe apricots, pulverized in the food processor along with the bananas. And shelled pistachios instead of walnuts, which I didn't have.

Hmm... I should have measured the sugar more carefully (I substituted half the white with brown) - it's not quite sweet enough. But tasty anyway, very moist. You can't really tell it's got apricots in it, but the banana isn't overwhelming, either.

macelleria falorni

In late July, we took a brief trip through the Chianti area, visiting our friends Rita and Lino. They live near Greve, so we visited that charming town (touristy, but tastefully so) and the famous Macelleria (butcher), Falorni.

Falorni make their own insaccati (preserved meats), such as the prosciutto (ham) and Il Ghianda (something I'd never heard of - must be native to Tuscany) that you can see here. Many of these are made from the cinghiale (wild boar) which are far from endangered in this region (or any other in Italy, for that matter).

They also sell cheeses and yummy stuff in jars, and the shop is liberally adorned with farm implements, old photographs, signs, etc.

What photographs cannot capture, alas, is the smell! The scent of spicy, salty preserved pork is wonderful and overwhelming - vegetarians are advised to stay well clear.

italo-indian dinner

My balcony garden is full of coriander (cilantro) plants which are rapidly going to flower. Using them up requires an Indian meal, since coriander is foreign to Italian cooking - indeed, several Italians I know can't stand the taste of it. So, tonight's dishes...

Dal (Lentils)

3 zucchine on their last legs found in the fridge, plus some carrots, half a red onion, and a few cloves of garlic - throw everything into the food processor and chop fairly fine. (No, zucchine are not native to Indian cooking, but I need to use these up!)

Heat 2-3 tbps of hot pepper olive oil in a deep pot, add 2 tbsp cumin seeds. When these begin to sizzle, scrape in the mix from the food processor. Stir and sauté until softened and somewhat reduced - 5 minutes?

Add two cans lentils, with their water. (Dried would have been fine, but I didn't think to soak them in advance, and I'm trying to clear out the canned stuff from the pantry.)

Add a splash of balsamic vinegar, 2 tsps garam masala, 1 tsp vegetable broth granules, half tsp cinnamon, half tsp turmeric. Stir, lower heat, cover, walk away.

Sweet & Sour Aubergines (Eggplant)

A Madhur Jaffrey recipe involving pre-fried chunks of eggplant re-sauted with pachphoran (five seeds), a bit of onion, toasted and crushed sesame seeds, aamchur (sour mango powder), and sugar.

Green Beans with Coriander and Coconut

Another Jaffrey. This one also called for mustard and sesame seeds, but I left them out so as not to be too similar to the previous dish. So it ended up being very simple: fresh green beans, slightly boiled and then rinsed in cold water to keep them bright. Throw them into the wok with some hot oil and a bit of cayenne pepper, then toss with a mix of rubbed fresh coriander leaves and grated coconut (fresh coconut would taste better, but is way too much trouble even if I had it).

Basmati Rice

The best in the world, native to Dehra Dun near where I used to go to school.

There was also a chutney I made a few weeks ago from fresh apricots. Chutney is very easy to make and is a wonderful accompaniment to strong, aged cheeses as well as Indian meals. Before summer ends I'll make a big batch of chutney from fresh tomatoes. Scalding, peeling, and seeding them takes a lot of time, but the chutney-fied tomatoes come out almost glassé. I've also tried making chutney from canned tomatoes, which ends up more like ketchup, but is okay in its way.

pasta with red bell pepper

I love to cook, but I hate having to decide what to cook, so I usually make meals based on whatever I happen to have around that needs to be used, or whatever looks good at the fruttivendolo (greengrocer), butcher, supermarket, etc. that day.

Last night I hadn't done much shopping, but had on hand:

one sweet red bell pepper, getting a little wrinkly

some vine-ripened plum tomatoes, a gift from my mother-in-law's neighbor in Abruzzo, brought up when she came to visit last week

lots of red onions (almost always to be found in my fridge - I rarely use any other kind, except green ones in Asian cooking and salads)

So... let's make a meal.

I diced up the pepper and some onion and garlic, put all that to sauté in some peppered olive oil (home-made - just add red pepper flakes and/or whole red hot peppers to a jar of good oil). I scalded the tomatoes, cooled them, slipped off the skins, diced them (removing some of the seeds, though there aren't many in this type), and added those to the pot. A few grinds of mixed peppercorns, half a teaspoon of vegetable broth granules, and a cup or so of red wine (what was left in one of the open bottles).

I let this cook over a low flame for half an hour or so, going in to stir occasionally while I was doing other things at the computer. On impulse, I added a handful of raisins to the sauce, and later about two tablespoons of butter, to reduce the acidity and give the sauce more body.

When Ross got back from riding, I put on the water for pasta. Since this was a fairly wet sauce, I used spaghetti alla chitarra all'uovo from deCecco - egg pasta soaks up a lot of juice.

Cook, drain, and shake out the pasta, throw it it in a bowl and mix it with the sauce. I grated some aged ricotta into my dish (Ross doesn't like most cheese, and was happy without it), which went well and added protein to the meal. Ross had the remains of a small salame. We mopped our plates with bread.

Today I bought eggplant and green beans. Hmm. What shall I do with those?

birthday lunch

Last Saturday we went to La Lanterna Verde, one of our favorite restaurants in the world, for the now-traditional celebration of Ross' and Alice's birthdays. Last year there were 11 of us, this year 10. The owners have become fond of us, though they'd like to see us more often!

Most of us had set menus, there were six or so to choose from.

Graziella had the trout meal, so her antipasto was a salmon trout mousse, ricotta (I think) wrapped in salmon trout carpaccio, and smoked trout.

I ordered a la' carte, and for antipasto had paté, which had figs inside and came with a sweet red pepper coulis. I actually preferred the red onion coulis they used to make - I think it's a better complement to the paté.

Here are a couple of primi (first course dishes): in the foreground, mushroom-filled ravioli with a chanterelle sauce and, behind, trout-stuffed ravioli with tomato and basil.

This was part of the summer menu, spaghetti with a sauce of raw tomatoes, black olives, and very good olive oil.

Ross and Alice in awe of Ross' main course, I think it was lamb ribs crusted in pepper.

I got distracted with eating and forgot to photograph the other main courses (we had had quite a bit of wine by then, too!).

For dessert, the chef decorated the plates of our three birthday people (David and Ross share a birthday) with "Buon Compleanno" or "Auguri" in chocolate sauce.

Julian had the palette of sherbets, here it doesn't look quite as elegant as when they brought it to the table, as he had already started on it before I got this photo.

With coffee, they served these little trays of nibbles. The candy-coated cherries were amazing - a light, smooth coating of caramel on the outside, perfect sweet dark cherries on the inside.

We like to go to Lanterna Verde during the day, because the drive up there is so pretty (it's on the road from Chiavenna to St. Moritz, high in the Alps), and in good weather you can sit out under the pergola and enjoy a view of waterfalls on the other side of the valley.

it's a start

So I'm trying to learn about blogging - how is it different from what I already do (email newsletter and website), what would I use it for.

I'm happy with my current publishing style for most of what I do, but there is one thing that might be fun to talk about in a blog: food. I love to cook as well as eat, and it's the only thing I do every day (eating, not cooking necessarily) that might possibly be of interest to others. So let's make this Deirdré's food blog.