New Dish

The pomegranate tree I planted a couple of years ago has born fruit. Two fruits, to be precise. One of them was split open today: you KNOW we had to eat it.

I had some squash cooking in the solar cooker — it was cloudy this afternoon which got in the way of success, here, but got it started. Add to this the farro (heirloom wheat; emmer is a good substitute) I cooked like barley and the sorrel I parboiled down, and done. A little basil found its way in there. The pomegranate’s tartness was offset by the sweet squash; the sorrel’s light lemony taste did away with the need for a dressing. I wish we’d had a little salty cheese but maybe next time.

Paella

It’s been a long time since I’ve made a paella, not since before I left Boston. But it’s a great dish for a crowd (my sister regularly makes it for 25+ people). I no longer have my mother’s paella dish that fed I think 20, but when we were in Berkeley at the Spanish Table recently we picked up a more modest one. The key is that you have to be able to apply even heat to the full base of the pan, so the limiting factor is the size of your burner, not how many friends you want to invite along.

We returned to Berkeley today to Numenius’ sister’s and cooked the paella on their barbecue, which could, in retrospect, have accommodated a 50-person dish. It was a success, despite having left the lemon wedges in the fridge and the miscommunication about the alioli (I should probably have made it myself before leaving for Berkeley but oh well).

Paella: it’s all about the stock. I’m looking forward to making it again.

Foods I've eaten

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros I will never eat fried eggs in any guise
4. Steak tartare (And she says she’s a vegetarian)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue The last time I ate this was New Year’s Eve sometime in the 70s. It was a bad idea.
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
17. Black truffle not sure what the fuss is?
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes Yuk.
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream From the great Italian ice cream place on the Castellana in Madrid in the 70s
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras On New Year’s Eve in Paris in 1982. Accompanied by the inevitable French handwringing about what a terrible thing it was to do to geese. I became vegetarian that night.
24. Rice and beans Often. I never get tired of them.
25. Brawn, or head cheese You’ve got to be bloody kidding.
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper Too sweet. Oh, and very very hot.
27. Dulce de leche Made by hand in Argentina!
28. Oysters for comment, see 25
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl Yuk apart from the bread
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar I think so. I’ve done both but not sure if together and there are good reasons for not knowing.
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail only in soup
41. Curried goat at a Jamaican wedding
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk – no, goat cheese under suffrance.
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more – whisky is lost on me, cheap or expensive
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi yum.
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle A swiss friend made them. I didn’t like them much.
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores yes. As a girl scout in Spain where all the ingredients were bought on the black market. Pathetic, isn’t it.
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian – no, often wondered about it.
66. Frogs’ legs Catalunya.
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake Beignets in New Orleans, Churros throughout many a Spanish summer evening
68. Haggis Nope.
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho making it tonight
72. Caviar and blini it’s wasted on me
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill Pheasant. Not killed by me, but killed on the same year in the same county as I first passed my driving test.
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie – not knowingly but how would you know?
78. Snail Oh, that texture.
79. Lapsang souchong Oh, that taste.
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict overrated.
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant — I don’t think so, just 2 star…
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash I first developed an antipathy to hungarian paprika here. It’s too harsh for me.
88. Flowers Sigh, yes, Napa Valley: you can’t escape them.
89. Horse See Steak Tartare, above. What can I say?
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam even battered, in boarding school. Pudding was spotted dick.
92. Soft shell crab Not keen
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish blackened only
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox under suffrance. The lox, that is.
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake snakes are holy.

Amaranth in Bloom

The mystery plant which Ron correctly identified as as an amaranth is now blooming, thanks in part to the alfalfa field recently being flood irrigated.

Meanwhile, Pica’s solar garden cooking has been highlighted on the blog Veggie Meal Plans: she has a guest post for a recipe for aduki bean and quinoa stew cooked in a solar oven here.

Anniversary

Our fifth wedding anniversary was today! We celebrated by cycling into town for pasta and salad dinner at the Fuzio bistro, followed by ice cream from Ben and Jerry’s. I had mint chocolate chunk, Pica had coffee chunk.

Ravioli

A huge thank you to Fernanda for taking these photos and for providing a delicious filling for the first batch of ravioli. We ate them all. Her account of this is here, if you can read Portuguese (worth seeing even if you can’t; her photos have gotten professional…). It’s a great party idea: someone brings eggs, everyone brings a filling. And off you go.

Feeding the Googleplex

I visited the mother spider of the Web today. I spent the day down at Google in Mountain View for a meeting about a project I may end up being involved with. I can report that they keep the Google engineers well-fed. The following were free for the taking:

In the visitors’ area in the building we were in (one of the smaller buildings on their campus): at left a refrigerator filled with Naked Juice fruit juices. (Upstairs was the massage lounge).

The snack room had organic milk, soy milk, and rice milk in the fridge, gourmet chocolates in bins, any number of breakfast cereals, and a half-dozen sorts of fresh fruit available. A sign reminded people to wash the fruit.

Among the options at the lunchtime cafeteria were the following:

• curried vegetables with brown rice
• white bean and chorizo soup
• assorted sandwich ingredients, including sliced heirloom tomatoes
• a salad with mixed baby greens, tarragon dressing, and goat cheese
• a barley salad
• sauteed summer squash and zucchini for veggies
• main entree choices of chicken cacciatore, pasta pomodoro, and steamed mussels
• pizza with caramelized onion and talaggio cheese
• pistachio ice cream

Needless to say, we had a good pre-meeting lunch.

Korean Mexican Italian

I’ve begun the long journey into learning how to preserve food. Our freezer is humble, so methods that don’t require refrigeration are prized. The garden is starting to produce things in such quantity that if they don’t get eaten or preserved, they’ll end up in the compost.

First, I’ve made my first batch of kimchi. If you don’t know it, it’s a Korean pickled cabbage delight, where the pickling is done entirely with salt and fermentation, not vinegar. It’s not a long process and the kimchi is almost finished, having started the process on Wednesday evening. I couldn’t resist tonight, though, and had a few mouthfuls. (Garlic ginger chilis onions radish cabbage and of course salt: how can you go wrong?) I’m very pleased with it and am hoping it will become a staple in our house, or more precisely in my office, where I’ll go to it at 3:00 pm when I have the munchies.

Second, we roasted a good 25 jalapeño peppers today in the solar cooker. They took on some good charring and will be used in all kinds of things. They’re coming in like gangbusters.

Third, with the oceans of chard and Kathy’s eggs, we made ravioli. From scratch. It’s a long, meditative process. The chard, onions, walnuts, and garlic were from the garden; we opted for tofu over ricotta, mostly because of its texture. Ravioli, we can freeze. I’d forgotten how delicious homemade pasta was… And I’m so grateful I didn’t ditch the hand-cranked pasta roller or devote its energies to Fimo millefiore.

New item for the drawer devoted to the goddess Anoia: a crinkle-cut pasta cutter.

Anthocyanins Abundant

I think I’m turning into a pomegranate.

This all started when our landlady’s daughter tried to interest us in MonaVie. This is a multi-level marketed health juice based heavily around acai berries and other concentrated purplish juices. Being a subscriber to the what color is your diet theory of nutrition (build your diet around a full color palette of fruits and vegetables), I don’t doubt that this juice is very good for you, but the catch is that they want $30-$40 a bottle, depending upon the marketing scheme.

I like the concept, think I, but I can get my anthocyanin fix for a lot cheaper than that. A raid on the food coop nets us blueberry-pomegranate juice, black cherry juice, bilberry nectar (which according to amateur astronomy folklore helps night vision), mango-acai herbal tea, not to mention the Chilean cab. Mix it together, dilute it 1 to 2, there you go. Add to that all the plums from the tree heavy with fruit just outside, and I’m not doing badly for my reds, purples, and blues.

I’m starting to crave orange, though. The beta-carotenes may be next.

Land Of Olives

There are fledgling efforts in this state to promote agri-tourism. Yolo County, which leads the country in direct sales of agricultural products to customers, seems a good place to start. Perhaps surprisingly, Yolo County has become a center for artisanal olive oil production. This directory lists 13 olive oil producers in Yolo County, including Yolo Press, home of the only working olive mill in Yolo and Solano counties, UC Davis, who got into the olive oil production business a couple years ago when their grounds crew came up with a creative way to deal with the hazard fallen olives would create on bike paths, and others such as Frate Sole Olive Company, Hillstone Olive Oil, and the Story Olive Oil Company.