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marlena spieler

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Everything posted by marlena spieler

  1. Great, thanks! I mean, gracias! I actually have all the roasting stuff but hey: i forgot the use of masa as a thickener, and its such a good and simple technique. MUCHO gracias! Marlena
  2. Sunday night 7 pm Since we've been making up for Christmas since we've been back from greece, eatin' that pudding, getting ready for burns night with the haggis, and so forth, tonight we just had a light dinner: fruit salad. let me say that when i was growing up fruit salad was, in my mind, a wasted eating opportunity. i think that probably is because it was pedestrian. our fruit salad these days is a total garden of eden experience. we're sitting here hunched over in the freezing english countryside with the heating up full blast and big bowls of fruit salad with big spoons to eat it with. we're saying, in between bites: we can feel this doing us good! all the fruit and freshness! The fruit salad was a result of My Alan's (Swisskaese! ) shopping extravaganza yesterday. since its the middle of winter not all of the fruit were in tip top shape, so i needed to add a little sugar and lots of fresh lime juice for added zest. Here is what was in our salad: pineapple (a really brilliant, sweet juicy flavourful one), peach (bland, but still, peach), kiwi, red apple, orange, clementine, dried montmorcy cherries soaked in boiling water to soften them. while i was thinking of seconds, and typing this up, My Alan went into the kitchen and finished it off! x marlena ps: When we ate the fruit salad we both thought that it needed one thing: bananas! 'I wish i hadn't eaten all three this morning' said My Alan. still, the fruit salad was utterly refreshing. i still have half a pineapple too for tomorrow. i always have big plans for such things, such as the gratineed pineapple carpaccio (or something that sounded like that and was deeeeelicious) at san francisco's Iluna Basque. I always think to do it, then i eat all the pineapple up while i'm thinking about it.
  3. and perhaps not so 'wee' as last night, and maybe i should just start right now! x m ps: My Alan (inspired by you, so tender, my husband has requested that i refer to him as My Alan from now on )--he just sat down and read your blog start to finish and really enjoyed it, and esp the olive oil wheel press thingie (his words). he really enjoyed reading it. how is life after your blog, i'm going to miss doing this so much. how do you cope with a blog-less life and without all these wonderful (and hungry) egulleteer by your side? do you still have the urge to tell everyone what you ate for breakfast, lunch and dinner? i know i will!
  4. You're totally right, Michelle, definitely simit! but the lady who sold them to me always called them bagelahs. i remember how beautiful the word sounded, because i was in a state of total pleasurable anticipation, and all my senses were heightened as i awaited that first chew! On to lunch. Thanks to Artisan02 I roasted up a pan of diced red, yellow and green peppers, added some tomatoes (actually tinned, as its winter), evoo, coarse pieces of garlic, lots of crushed thyme, a pinch of sugar and salt to taste. When the peppers were all tender and the tomatoes had reduced down to a near essense with chunks of flesh here and there and the oil that remained ws reddish in hue, it was ready to serve. i added a dash of balsamico, and served it on top of thinly sliced baguette roasted with olive oil and garlic. i also had a bit of simmered chicken and shiitakes left from the other evening--about half a chicken breast and 4 shiitakes. I cut the chicken breast up and browned it in a nonstick pan with olive oil and garlic, then added the halved shiitakes, and when there was a crispy thing going on with bits of the chicken, i added about 8 ounces raw baby spinach leaves. Tossed it and turned it until the leaves just wilted, and served with a sprinkle of salt. cup of very english tea, pg tips, strong enough for the builders!, drunk with milk for both of us, sugar for the hubby. (pg is an abbreviation from the original pre-gest-tee; it was shortened by grocers to PG. the company adopted PG and added tips, to highlight the fact that PG takes the top two leaves plus a bud to make its tea). and we had apples for dessert. i'm still eating mine, and am heading into a nice warm bath to warm up. I've made my deadline, hoorah! my brain has now been returned to me! Marlena
  5. well, sorta, but the ones i bought on the street were bigger, about as big as a bracelet, and very fresh and chewy, rather artisanal rather than from a bag. it was a whole invigorating chewing experience, in addition to the lovely salty-sesame taste. x m
  6. thanks so much, Rachel and Piazzola. you're right, rachel that nixtamiling maize is really really important/evocative/real, but that it would be something they wouldn't be interested in (i had to fight for the simple trimming off of spikes of nopales!). And piazzola, i made a small mention of the whole hispanic cheese thing and monterey jack thing made by hispanic cooks in monterey california........i don't think they'll let me wax too much more lyrical than that. But thanks soooo much for answering! I do appreciate it and am thinking that if I don't get back to Mexico soon i'm going to die of a broken heart! Marlena
  7. i'm always amazed that something so simple as the green bean casserole can vary so wildly. i have one relative who makes it and its just awful; but sometimes a friend makes it and its as yummy as it is trashy. this year, i admit i had a bit of a looking foreward to it thing going on, cause i'd never make it myself (too many commercially prepared foods) but when i tasted it the thrill was gone. what was the difference? this year she used 'light' soup for the casserole, and it wasn't nearly salty, gloppy, or fatty enough. i was really amused to think that the salt, glop, and fat content was what gave it that compelling flavour. Marlena
  8. lovely choucroute de navets! i recently had an excellent version in......new york city! it was at artisanal restaurant, and really was wonderful. i've been dying to make it ever since. the turnips in question are rutabagas, are they not? (the colour of the photo looked more like swede than turnip, and my choucroute was definately made from rutabaga though referred to as navet).......(turnips are turnips, but swedes--aka rutabagas--are called swedes in England?). anyhow, the dish is probably deeeeelish whichever root--turnip or rutabaga/swede--you use. Marlena
  9. I'm compiling a section in a book of Mexican things, for UK publication, and part of it is techniques. Is there anything I should include in addition to: making tamales using corn husks, banana leaves, steaming tamales, roasting fresh chiles for stuffing and using in sauces etc, rehydrating dried chiles for stuffing and using in sauces, making tortillas, making lard (the yummy kind from leftover carnitas), 'frying a sauce' to intensify the flavours after pureeing the ingredients..... i don't know. they need 4 pages of stuff, and i'm about a page short. how can people work by filling up pages, i ask you, rather than including information, but with this pub house its all about the appearance/photography which is the way some publishers are. and i do suppose the visual stuff is very good for many readers, to get a picture of what things look like if they haven't seen them in person. anyhow, i want to fill up the space, and also i don't want to miss anything out. i especially want to include all the techniques that make mexican food so unique. thanks, Marlena
  10. not long ago i was given a jar of the most delectable substance from Tuscany: homemade lard studded, and studded generously, with black truffles (tuscany has its very delicious truffles too, as does umbria, piedmonte, and perigord). you didn't even have to eat the stuff, just open the jar and give a deep invigorating sniff! but eat it i did, with the help of about a hundred colleagues: i brought it to the potluck lunch at the oxford 2004 symposium of food and drink, and plopped that jar on the table. how many minutes until it was empty, and i swear, it had been licked clean, too! Marlena
  11. Bagelahs really are wonderful as biovatrix so enthusiastically agreed: doubly as chewy as bagels. and you don't eat them with cream cheese or anything, just chew chew chew (happy chewing memories) as i walked through the streets of jerusalem en route to classes, though i think sesame seeds, and probably coarse salt, were involved. i remember some spice mixture in a paper cone; perhaps it was za'atar. i was young and not specific about those things yet. Za-atar, for those of you who don't know it, is a spice and seed mixture for sprinkling on bread, especially lovely fresh pita bread, with olive oil. za-atar means wild thyme, and its a mixture of this thyme, with some sumac, sometimes cumin, sesame seeds, salt. its a traditional breakfast of middle eastern folk. olives go well with it, as does feta type cheeses. i always think of this as sandy's breakfast though, as she makes it for breakfast each and every day, and if you stay with her, this is what she'll make for you, too. (ask her niece, ally waks, who is an egulleteer!). i love this breakfast and almost hate eating it without sandy as i miss her a whole lot with every bite i take. so i usually reserve it for being with her. but this morning, as i have a nice stock of flatbreads from the athens central market, in my bread-freezer right now as well as feta, i thought i would make this breakfast. (sandy uses the middle eastern flatbreads from trader joes and they are delish). place a flatbread (frozen is fine) on a baking pan, top with bits of feta cheese as desired, leaving a space inbetween the cheese for naked bread. Sprinkle the za-atar generously across the top so it blankets both the cheese and the flatbread, then drizzle extra virgin (and i used the freshly pressed oil from my friend, sotiris kitrilakis of Mt Vikos cheese. he did the pressing when we were there, and sent us home with a bottle of the most fragrant, wonderful oil. alas its not for sale.). When the flatbread kinda sizzles, the edges are a little toasty, and the cheese a bit soft, your breakfast is ready! i ate mine this morning with a nice big raw green onion. it think it was the best green onion i've ever eaten! (the za-atar enhanced its sweet flavour, i think). my husband, who is the most reluctant of breakfast eaters, didn't do the toast-cheese-za-atar thing. he ate three bananas and two apples. he says he is never sure what he wants to eat until it dawns on him. neither of us are big creatures of habit. onwards to the sauerkraut and olives! throughout my stay in greece we went on many many walks. walking in greece is probably my favourite thing to do, unless its eating and cooking. but the thing is that greece is such a garden of eden, that whatever time of year it is, wherever you walk will yield up abundance of things to eat. and no one minds if you pick a little bit of this, a little bit of that. so it was olive season and each time i went for a walk i picked a few BIG pocket-fulls of olives. I got some green tiny ones, and some big fat black ones. and some small blackish ones. i put the green and blackish small olives up about three days worth of changing plain water, then into a salt water brine (10%). The black fatter olives i put up in salt, and pressed down with a plate and a weight (the brine olives are pressed down under the brine, too). after about 2 weeks i added some mountain herbs to the salt which i'm not sure is a great thing to do but so far so good. none of the olives is ready yet, but they are on their way. the sauerkraut--i BOUGHT the cabbage for those of you who might have been worried about my scrambling in other peoples gardens, i wouldn't do that.........anyhow, the first batch i simply layered the whole leaves with salt then pressed with a plate and weight, sort of like Helen did with the Napa cabbage in her blog; after a day or so the liquid just extruded, and after about 3 days the cabbage had a silky texture though still tasted salty rather than sour. the flavour was good, though, so i soaked it in water to remove the excess saltiness and added it to our greek island........wait for it........borsht. yes, the villagers were shocked, they were confused, they didn't know what to make of this soup even those they eat beetroot, cabbage, carrots, and meat, but put together they found it quite provacative (didn't stop them from having second bowlfuls though, and that was nice!) anyhow, the silky half pickled cabbage was a great addition. so then i put up another batch of sauerkraut and since i was having trouble getting a fermentation going no doubt due to the cold weather on the island (we didn't have electricity so it was consistently quite cool, as in freezing) sotiris recommended that i add a few chickpeas to the brew. when i came home i packed my olives and sauerkraut all up, and i'm telling you, the sauerkraut is looking a bit brownish (but that is the fate of sauerkraut isn't it), i mean, it looks like sauerkraut rather than cabbage, and it smells s o u r !!!! in a good way. and the olives are progressing nicely. am i the only one out there who goes on vacation and cures olives, makes sauerkraut? (i made pickles with my friend kamala once, too. and then there was the time i went on a cactus rampage on the island of ibiza, picking masses of cactus that looked just like the stuff in mexico, and putting it up in jars of escabeche for all to enjoy once i left. i'm not sure if it was the right cactus, though, as some complained of hallucinations, but i'm not sure that was related to the cactus). last summer was my summer of torshi making, too, and i packed jars of it to bring back to the usa. alas, customs put an end to that. but they didn't get my lemoncello which i put up on a visit to lemon groves in sorrento. we enjoyed it in san francisco! as for eggplant--dear mochihead--i feel too sad if i don't have an eggplant close by, just to look at. an eggplant always holds out the promise of mediterranean flavours and feelings, even if the day is grey and frigid as this one, in the English countryside, is. x Marlena
  12. Marlena, I have the little book you did on vegetables for Williams-Sonoma, and I have made the roasted multicolored peppers and cherry tomatoes recipe there. It is sooooooooooo good! Christine ← ooooh, thanks, christine, you know, its wonderful to be reminded of 1. something that is delicious that is an old friend recipe-wise, and 2. that you're enjoying it (and letting me know!). When i looked at these peppers this evening, they were so abundant, and a veritable treasure trove of peppers, because usually peppers are expensive and scarce here, but when i looked at them i thought: multicoloured roasted peppers and tomatoes, all caramelized and very mediterranean. i think it will be a good mediterranean antidote to the spate of puddings we've been eating the past few days. x marlena
  13. And even by Michelle's usual standards, it was totally scrumptious The taste of the herbs and garlic was more pronounced than usual, and I could have sworn that I smelled the oregano growing on the hillside and heard the kids bleating in the dark. ← yummmmm my favourite things: lemon, garlic, chicken, lemon peel, lemon quarters, garlic, oregano, rosemary, and baby goats bleating on the hillside! wish i could have been there! marlena
  14. still sipping the whisky, its time for dessert. my husband, as i may have neglected to mention, has been doing the shopping this week. he often does the shopping in the uk as he doesn't mind trotting up the hill to the waitrose and shlepping the groceries down the hill, and i'm usually working hard at the computer. this week i've been working especially hard as have had a deadline (almost have it met!). so i've been a bit of a cooking captive to his shopping habits. for instance, the haggis, and the christmas puddings. this is not my kind of food! luckily, today he found a shop selling all its fruits and vegetables for 50% off, a promotional thing, so he brought home a veritable celebration of freshness. we have eggplant, three cucumber (the big kind!), two bags of salad, three containers of cherry tomatoes, a bag of multicoloured peppers, (these ARE my kind of food), six containers of beetroot (he LOVES beetroot) and so it goes. also the worlds largest turnip (swede). i don't know how he carried it home it was so heavy! actually, it was so heavy he needed to make two journeys by foot, and when he got back to the shop for a second round of shopping, the clerk said: oh, have you eaten that all already? anyhow, tonight he wanted haggis and neeps/tatties which i have already narrated. and for dessert, he bought: wait for it: a weightwatchers christmas pudding, no actually there were four of them (he said: they will make good gifts to take to america!). and a container of brandy butter. And i'm telling you: i hate to admit it: it was good, it was really good. it might be because anything with brandy butter melting on it is good, but i think it was second only to duchy originals and my own pudding. i don't know, maybe after all these years of living here its wearing off on me. but it was really good, weightwatchers or not! i'm eating an orange now to clear my palate and keep everything digesting. i usually decide on what we're eating, and we tend to the savoury mediterranean side of things with an asian accent here and there, and a big french and greek slant. so i've been giving in to his requests while i work at my project, and he goes and shops and brings home the bacon (oh, he brought home bacon today, which i would have expected: it being his number one comfort food to eat in a sandwich: a british bacon sandwich,nothing like a BLT. bacon is soft and lean, bread is buttered not slathered in mayo. and there is no tomato or lettuce. bacon sandwiches are his passion). anyhow i feel as if he has hijacked my blog a bit with his pudding and pudding and more pudding and haggis, (with my striking out on my own with a bagel, one of the worlds heaviest substances). i think he is just so excited that i'm not testing recipes for a column or article, so its his opportunity to eat his heritage-y things. actually its been very very tasty albeit a tad heavy. tomorrow: lets do something with that.....salad stuff and that eggplant! tomorrow i'm going to check on my sauerkraut and olives; how many people go on vacation to make pickles? me me me! (i once made some fabulous kosher dills in san francisco with my friend kamala). x marlena
  15. Michelle, your matzo balls sound lovely; i had an old friend, ida, from vienna pre and intra WWII, and she always liked to put a pinch of ginger in her matzo balls too. i love the way you have crushed whole matza as well as matzo meal. they sound marvellous. i play around with my matzo balls a lot, having not grown up with a standard. my mother didnt make them, and i don't remember my grandmother making them. but my aunt has, in recent years, become the queen of the knaidlach. she always has them in the freezer (they do freeze well) along with chicken soup, and is ready for any illness of a relative or friend. sometimes when i make matzo balls i add chopped parsley, other times.......chopped cilantro! also, when i ran a little cafe in san francisco's jewish community centre, i used to sneak into the kitchen for a snack, and that snack was: a matzo ball dipped into the salsa of the day (i made a different salsa every day). so matzo balls and salsa remains one of my personal comfort foods. anyhow, its 8.30 and we're having dinner. husband is into his scots heritage phase. it must be the time of year: cold outside, and burns night is approaching, and i won't be here when it comes. and as we missed the whole christmas in britain thing, he is making up for it. he came home with 4 tiny weightwatchers christmas puddings (really!) and is now making noises about steaming them. i'm trying to put things off for awhile....because dinner is really good. we're eating: a dinner in advance of burns night: haggis, and neeps with tatties. its really simple, and if i had had chicken breasts i might have stuffed the chicken breasts with the haggis and made a whisky pan sauce to go with it, just cause you egulleteers are here for dinner tonight. but i didn't have a chicken breast. and besides, boiling the whole haggis is very dramatic, we even gave a little burns night recitation of Burns' (Scotland's national Bard) celebrated ode, great chieftain o' the puddin' race....... i was the one to stab the pudding. let me describe it to you: very meaty, nice and peppery, totally umami. little textural nubs of oats, or......? (in a haggis you don't ask). awch, i think i'll have a wee dram as i write this.....anyhow while we madly search for the whisky, i'll tell you about the neeps and tatties. neeps is a nickname for turnips, (turneeps, neeps, get it?) which in fact are not turnips at all but are swedes, well they are rutabagas but are called swedes in England and turnips, or neeps over the border, in scotland. anyhow, i boiled then mashed the cut up rutabaga and potatoes, then whipped them with a bit of butter, cream and thinly sliced green onions. we're sipping Duncan Taylor & co ltd whisky: The Big Smoke 40. If you like your whisky smoky, this is your friend. and sips of whisky drunk along with bites of haggis and neeps/tatties is one of life's most delicious pairings. slainte (scots gaelic for cheers!). an ancestor of my husband is in the encyclopaedia britannica for compiling the first dictionary of scots Gaelic. (when he was a wee bairn he used to tell people: 'my mum speaks garlic, you know!') he meant gaelic of course. the scottish theme of our evening has its poignant side tonight, as a relative of ours, through my husband, has been splashed across the national news as having resigned as leader of the UK Liberal Democrat politcal party. we're saddened by this turn of events.
  16. my husband was just walking past me and glanced at the computer: They had chicken and 65 types of beans?????he asked hopefully. (he is going through a bean collecting phase and on the lookout for beans he doesn't know about). we had a sort of italian sformato, made with greek ingredients: chopped cooked spinach, crumbled feta (brought back from the athens central market to our hampshire home), chopped green onions and fresh dill, a grating of nutmeg, an egg beaten with a bit of cream to hold it all together, and lots of shredded mature cheddar and finely grated parmigiana. baked till solidish, with lots of melty cheese on top. and it was delish. marlena
  17. Hormel tamales in the can, unwrapped from those paper wrappers then reheated in that modicum of red sauce they come with, this is my secret never before divulged in public, junk food delight (i consider anything in a can to be junk food with the exception of tomatoes, beans, or......not sure if there is anything else). marlena
  18. Here you go, Ruthcooks: Sephardic Roasted Chicken With Two Kinds Of Ginger And As Many Kinds Of Grapes As You Can Find Serves about 4 (Adapted from a recipe in The Jewish Heritage Cookbook) * 1 3lb. (1.5kg) chicken, whole * About 4oz. (110g.) fresh ginger, grated * 6–8 cloves garlic, roughly chopped * 1 cup dry white wine * 2 Tbsp. extra virgin olive oil * 3 large pinches cinnamon (very large pinches) * Salt and black pepper * 3/4 lb. (350g.) green seedless grapes * 3/4 lb. red seedless grapes * 3/4 lb. any other grape you like (if its seeded, cut in half and remove seeds — italia or muscat grapes are delicious, as are champagne grapes or flame grapes, purple grapes...) * 5–7 shallots, chopped * 1 cup chicken broth * 1 to 2 cups orange juice * Small amount of sugar, to taste * Squeeze of lemon juice if needed Mix the ginger, garlic, 1/4 cup of the wine, the olive oil, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Rub half of this into the chicken. Leave to marinate as long as you can: 30 minutes is okay, so is overnight. Both will be good, but the longer you leave it, the more the flesh of the chicken will be perfumed. When ready to cook, stuff as much of the grapes as can fit into the cavity of the bird, along with some of the shallots and place in a roasting pan. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C), put the chicken in the oven, and leave it to roast for about an hour. A meat thermometer will help you gauge the temp (it's really the best way to go about it). On the other hand, I never use one. Just don't overcook the chicken to the point that the breast is dry. I prick the fleshy thick part of the thigh with a skewer to see what color the juices are. Pink juices mean not quite cooked; as soon as they are clearish, remove from oven. Place the chicken on a plate and tent it with a piece of foil to keep warm. Pour off any fat from the pan (reserving juices and sediment) and add the shallots. Cook over medium low heat about five minutes, or until softened, then pour in the remaining wine and cook over high heat until reduced to a few tablespoons, then add the chicken broth and do the same. When the chicken stock is simmering, add the remaining ginger garlic spicy paste, then the orange juice, and cook over a high heat until it all reduces to a strongly flavored sauce. Add about half of the remaining grapes, simmer together ten minutes or so, until it all forms a thick and juicy sauce, then add the rest of the grapes, warm through and remove from stove. Taste for seasoning, sugar and lemon to taste. Carve the chicken, pouring the juices from the platter into the grape and sauce pan, then serve the chicken with the grape sauce. © Marlena Spieler 2003 Recipe of the Month Archive (www.marlenaspieler.com website)
  19. Hathor, have you ever gone to visit the place your husband's family came from? is anyone left? when did they leave? what other specialities do they prepare? And i like the idea of half moon matzo balls. i have a soft spot in my heart for eccentric matzo balls and wacky matzo ball stories. in fact, i have a matzo ball dream, but don't know if i'm going to put it up in this blog. one, it might sound a little crazy and two, someone else might do it before me. anyhow, the spinach mixture was really good. we didn't eat it with the toasts in the end, cause it was better on its own; i had baked the mixture in an individual chinese sandpot, and it came out like an italian sformato: but denser, with tangier greek feta flavours. wonderful on a cold afternoon.
  20. Its really cold today. and very grey. I've been chained to my computer, and thought i was finished with my work, and then i noted that for the final tranche instead of 1 spread (2 pages ) i needed to produced 2 spread (4 pages) and am trying to figure out how to do that. i thought making 1 spread was going to be enough of a challenge to be honest. anyhow, as haven't eaten since morning bagel decided to whip up a little dish of something spinachy. You can take the girl out of Greece but you can't take the Greece out of the girl! So i cooked about a pound of spinach, squeezed and chopped it up, mixed it with chopped green onions, fresh dill, a beaten egg, a bit of feta, a bit of sharp Cheddar, and some grated Parmesan. nutmeg too. and a little cream to hold it together. i'm serving it with toasted thin slices of french bread brushed with oil. will report on it after we eat it. it smells delish, very melty cheesey and spinachy. Marlena
  21. did you say how these folks made their money? enquiring minds would like to know. Marlena
  22. aw, this is totally charming! thanks for having us over into your kitchen! i think i shall post the photo of your husband doing the dishes over our sink just for the good influence on my husband (but he's been much better about doing the dishes lately, and no one sweeps a floor as good as he does, especially not me as i'm totally rubbish at it and hate doing it too). i wish i could find the little thingie that puts up smiles on our postings, but did a fast reply and can't find the smile enablers. but i have one on my face! Marlena
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