Indian inspired

It has been a while since we've had indian-like food ! These are the staples: potato and green peas baked samosas adapted from Julie Sahni's excellent book but made with brick (filo dough), the coconut milk vegetarian curry from the Joy of Cooking and tandoori chicken marinated overnight in Patak's original sauce (mixed with yogurt, ginger and lemon).And rice of course, cooked in the broth from the chicken whose parts were used for the tandoori.

The whole evening was a bit of a blur, the cooking was done in time thanks to the invaluable help of L. and M. Didn't always get everything that was going on at the other end of the table, but it was apparently quite funny !  And this week just whizzed by and I am writing this only on friday and so now I don't remember any memorable quotes. Have to do more of that live blogging, and have to remember the pictures ! The somosas were all gone by the time I took out my camera.

Guests of honor: lovely couple from Chicago
Soundrack: bollywood and the new pornographers

Japanese inspired

Konnichiwa !  こんにちは
Tonight's dinner has been inspired by our special guest from Osaka who innocently brought some seaweed as a present, not knowing that she would then volunteer to help me cook and teach me how to make onigiri for everyone. I could eat rice every day and onigiri reminded me of my two, too short, trips to Japan in the last two years. An easy snack in the train station or at the wonderful supermarkets in the basement of the department stores.

So the idea was to make yakisoba and onigiri. The yakisoba recipe I had gotten from my Wagamama book, and then I did a quick shopping run on a velib to rue st anne at the Kioko supermarket. It turns out that I got the wrong kind of noodles for yakisoba, and I had the wrong kind of soy sauce and seaweed too ! as our guest pointed out. In addition, contrary to my beliefs, onigiri are not made with sushi rice, which is cooked with sugar and rice vinegar, but just with regular japanese rice cooked in water and a bit of salt. Once the rice is ready one must work quickly and make the onigiri while it is still warm (hah ! that is way they have onigiri-shaping boxes ! It takes a real kitchen hero to make them by hand !). This reminded me a lot of when I used to live in Oregon and tried to cook italian meals with the few ingredients available out there... in the end an approximation will be good enough for your local guests who have never tasted the real thing. But C was just lovely about it and she put together a wonderful meal, that it may not have been the real yakisoba but was truly appreciated by the monday night crowd.

yaki udon

Japanese rice, made in Italy !  

Onigiri !!!

Special dessert straight from Osaka

and a new tablecloth !

Dinner topics included the superbowl playoffs of course, looking forward to Greenbay Packers vs Chicago Bears next sunday, and we found out that "The Packers are the only non-profit, community-owned franchise in American professional sports major leagues." (as confirmed by wikipedia) and JC was distraught over the loss of the Boston Patriots to the NY Jets.

Somehow then we veered off to the link between dinosaurs and chickens.... I forget how we got there.

And finally some quotes:

A further counsel bear in mind: 

If that thy roof be made of glass, 

It shows small wit to pick up stones 

To pelt the people as they pass.

Don Quixote 1605

Miguel de Cervantes 1547-1616 

Source.

A's brother apparently said:

there was a man from Kass

whose balls were made out of brass

when he rubbed them together

they played stormy weather

and lightning shot out of his ass

JH response:

oh would I were where I would be

there would I be where I am not

for where I am would I not be

and where I would be I cannot

don't bogart that bottle JC !

which leads to the evening's soundtrack:

easy rider soundtrack 

steppenwolf

and traditional japanese music from deezer

conundrum:

brother and sisters I have none

see that man his father he's my father's son

I don't want to dive into the abyss I just want to catch the bus

(something about Rimbaud)

Totally off topic: 

On a beautiful Paris sunny sunday, during a long walk, I ran into El Nopal, Tacos & Burritos, near the canal St Martin.

Lasagne night

Welcome back to the second edition of Monday is Monday. Still trying to find the right format, voice, style, any suggestions are welcome. Whence comes Monday night ? We pinned it down to somewhere in the fall of 2006, when P was living here, M was back in school nearby and unfortunately it was near the time when our friend Mark Blanco was killed, as J remembered. These dinners have been, and still are, a good place to be with old and new friends and with the food also share some of our stories, adventures and misadventures.

At the beginning, on monday nights, P would buy some food and I would come back from work and improvise on the day's ingredients. That worked well when there were just the four musketeers, then more guests arrived and a bit more planning was required and then with time it became a self fulfilling tradition.

Tonight's dinner conversation spanned many topics, from f**ed up family dynamics to gun control (or the lack thereof) and related bumper stickers in the US, and Sarah Palin of course. We're taking bets on how long it will take for her to get sued and for someone on fox, or related, to announce that the recent shooting in Arizona was all part of a democrats' conspiracy to undermine the tea party.

And now on to the food. I know what you're thinking. No, I'm not going to divulge our family secret ragù sauce recipe. And by the way, in Italy there are as many secret ragù recipes as there are families, like gaspacho in Spain, chili con carne in the US or ratatouille in France. I can give you a few suggestions if you'd like to come up with your own family secret traditional recipe. First of all, take your time, it will cook at least three hours, if possible the day before you eat it. Use more than one kind of meat if possible, and not lean meat, some dishes are not supposed to be lean, and this is one of them. If you like a gamey taste you could add some chicken livers, sausage or dried porcini mushrooms. Some people put white or red wine, others milk, before adding the tomatoes. Do not use tomato paste. It is possible to not use tomatoes at all ... we made it that way once with my father, I remember it took a long time, but in the end you get a sauce which is basically the essence of the meat. It can only go on home made pappardelle.


Roasted vegetable lasagne. This one is not a secret, I think I originally got it from The Joy of Cooking. The trick is to roast all the vegetables together in a very hot oven with olive oil, rock salt and oregano. This makes a very nice sauce at the bottom of the roasting pan where all the vegetable flavors mix oh so smoothly. After that you can use beshamel sauce, and ricotta and mozzarella to make your layers. I didn't use beshamel this time, and I used some arrabbiata tomato sauce and ricotta. Sprinkle parmesan and mozzarella on top before baking. Be careful not to burn your tongue ! It's very hot !


Dessert, as usual, was S's creation, and appropriately for the season it was galette des rois. I got the feve ! (and thus the crown) It was one of the characters from Harry Potter 7 ! (see photo above) What has this world come to !


Special guest: airman from Bangalore
Cooking soundtrack: FIP radio station
Dinner soundtrack: Regina Spector, Marylin Monroe and Bob Dylan (freewheelin)

First monday of the year

No photos. It wasn't pretty. Honey mustard pork chops, brussels sprouts and pommes sarladaises and to finish it off a delicious broken up strawberry pie. Good stuff.
Just the boys and me tonight. Guest appearance by the man with the hat. Spent a lot of time talking about a goat behind a door.
All done cleaning up, good night and good luck !

Fish Ravioli

Let's see if I remember how I made these ... these are fish-filled ravioli. The filling is made by sauteing some shallots then adding some cod in small chunks passed through flower, salt pepper, brandy and white wine. Had some sourdough bread that I put in, in small pieces, to soak up any of the excess liquid. That's it I think. One of the recipes I had look at for inspiration said to put all this in a blender, I didn't, I prefer a chunkier texture, and in any case once you start mixing it breaks up into almost a paste. I think you can put any fish you like, shrimp, swordfish, tuna ...

The pasta, my eternal conundrum about ravioli, if I use the #5 setting in the pasta machine it's too thick, if I use the #6 it's too thin ... and when it is thin you need to have a very strong pasta, which I didn't have the other day, so I had to go with the thick option... will try again next time, but they taste very good anyway.

The sauce, the story behind this is that, low and behold, incredibly, after a recent dinner I realized that there was half a bottle of champagne left over ! Had to run to the airport the next morning, no time for mimosas, corked it and put it in the fridge. All the meanwhile during my travels across Italy visiting relatives I wondered about that precious champagne in my fridge and how I could use it for cooking up something fancy. The first thing that came up to mind was a spuma di gamberi allo champagne, which is like a shrimp-flavoured mousse... found a possible recipe for a sweet champagne mousse for dessert, but in the end I went for the scallop champagne cream sauce for the ravioli. There are various versions on the internet. I tried the one where you sauté the shallots and some mushrooms, take them out of the pan, add in the (frozen) scallops, once they are thawed and lost most of their water put back the mushrooms and then add the champagne. Low heat 10 mins, (be careful with the scallops, it's better if they don't overcook if possible) take out scallops and mushrooms and let the sauce reduce to half. Add cream and one or two egg yolks. Now, this last step, with the egg yolks, I don't think it came out exactly right, maybe it would have been better to mix the cream and yolks before adding them to the sauce. In any case, the friends said it tasted very good ! (I have very nice friends :-)  )

Happy 2011 !

Happy New Year everyone ! This is a dried fruit cake I made for New Year's dinner. It's called a Zelten and it comes from the Trentino region of Italy. It is rich and wintery, but not too sweet and still very fluffy. The story is that a couple of friends had brought dried fruits as gifts to monday night dinners and so I went looking for a way to turn them into a cake. This recipe I found on the Giallo Zafferano web site, an often very useful italian cooking site. I modified/simplified a bit maybe since I did not put nuts inside or raisins, I just used dried figs and apricots, didn't have rum to soak them in so used a bit of leftover brandy from the fish filling of the ravioli (see below) and some very nice moscato wine. I have the feeling that this is a pretty flexible recipe that will tolerate many vairations.