Artichoke, feta and sundried tomato bruschetta

It is Friday and spirits are high.

To tell you the truth, I am dealing with my first-ever sinus infection and I feel like my whole face is a time bomb waiting to explode, but the week end is nearing, tomorrow evening F and I are going out on the town with friends and after two weeks of rain the weather should be getting better. So I am a happy gal.

This week end I am leaving you with a recipe for a delicously addictive bruschetta (pronounced brusketta, not brushetta please!) that you can easily store in your pantry for whenever the craving hits or unexpected guests ring your door bell.  Well, to be honest it is not technically bruschetta, because it does not involve garlic, fresh tomatoes and copious amounts of delicious extra virgin olive oil etc. But there certainly is a crunch and lots of flavor. You can have it with a salad for a light lunch or prepare it alongside other dishes if you are planning a brunch. You can make it bite size and serve it with drinks for an aperitivo. You can eat the leftovers with a spoon directly out of a bowl standing in front of your fridge at 3:00a.m. for all I care.  

Just make it! Have a great week end.

Moroccan lamb stew with lemon and pomegranate couscous

Today my father in law came over to our house for lunch. He originally wanted to go out to eat couscous and lamb in a restaurant he had heard of, but when he tried to make a reservation it was closed.

My father in law grew up in Libya, a country we have heard of so much lately in the news, back in the day when it was an Italian colony. I love hearing stories of his years there, before the new regime confiscated everything they owned, of how he lived as a child on acres and acres of farm land to later move to Tripoli, then a bustling, cosmopolitan city, to finish his schooling and attend University. 

His parents had tried and failed to become parents several times before he was born and he came very late for the standards of those days. I wonder what it must have been like for his mother to live so far away from her family in Sicily and how lonely it must have been there without children to rear for so many years. I like to imagine the pride and joy she must have felt when she took a ship back to her hometown (the baby must be born in Italy!) to finally give birth to a healthy little boy, sorrounded by clucking sisters, aunts, cousins.

Despite being born in Sicily and living in Italy for most of his adult life, my father in law grew up speaking Arabic and soaking up the culture of his surroundings. To this day couscous and lamb stew are his comfort food.

How could I deny him this pleasure?

The ripe and juicy pomegranate I had bought last week as a part of my centerpiece for another dinner inspired me to look up recipes that included it. This recipe turned out to be the perfect combination of a fruity, fresh couscous and a fall-off-the-bone tender, fatty lamb cooked in a tomato-based stew filled with the warm flavors of North African cuisine.

Recipe adapted from BBC Food Recipes

Homemade Kê-chiap (better known as ketchup or catsup)

The thing I love about blogging is that you discover all kinds of useless interesting facts.

Did you know that even ketchup was originally invented by the Chinese?

In the 17th century, according to Wikipedia, the Chinese invented a concoction of pickled fish/sea food and spices pronounced kôe-chiap or kê-chiap (鮭汁, simply the word for brine), reminiscent of Asian fish sauces and the various popular condiments of Roman times, among which garum, made from fermented fish, spices and vinegar. It found its way to modern day Malaysia, where it was called kĕchap, and then picked up by the British, who were already using it as a household staple by the mid-eighteenth century. Tomato only started being used about a century later and tomato ketchup was important in changing early Americans' perception of this fruit, considered poisonus by many. For a long time ketchup was the most popular way to use tomatoes, as people often still believed they could not be consumed raw. Sugar was a later addition and salt was originally used in great quantities for its preservative qualities. It was a popular condiment, made in most households despite being quite timeconsuming. The first industrially made catsups were thus very successful.

Back to me. The other day I wanted to make some burgers. After buying everything we needed for our meal, I realized we were almost out of ketchup. There was no way I was going back to the supermarket with a toddler in tow to pick up a bottle. I decided the time had finally come to try making my own. I decided to use a recipe I found in the Joy of Cooking.

Now, I was making this on the spur of the moment with what I had in the fridge. Eyeing my ripe tomatoes and my red pepper (hey, how lucky was it that I actually had one!) I thought I would be able to make just enough for our meal. I have very little experience with canning (another kitchen phobia of mine), so I was more than happy to make a small amount for immediate consumption. I also didn't have all the spices required and I had to approximately calculate the proportions according to my weight in tomatoes in grams (my math sucks!), so it was a real experiment.

The result was pretty good. The texture was perfect, if a little less liquid (note to self) when compared to the leftover store-bought ketchup we had, and the flavor and color more vibrant. The difference in taste was noticeable when sampled right after the Heinz we had in our fridge. We are so used to the oversweet, tangy flavor of industrial ketchup, that it is addictive. The spices in the homemade stuff had a more distinctive flavor, not so overshadowed by the sugar, which takes some getting used to.

All in all it was definitely a success and very satisfying, sort of like when you make your own cheese, butter or vanilla extract. It was quicker than I thought it would be and you have the added bonus of knowing what you are putting into it. The next time I will try using the same spices used in the original recipes and balancing them differently (I went a little heavy on the cinnamon because I didn't have a stick) to get a closer match but let's face it, the great thing about making your own catsup is that you can decide how sweet, sour or spicy you want to make it. The whole point is that it is similar, yet different from the industrial product.

I am posting the original recipe and my changes so you can play around with the ingredients and decide what you like best. Have fun!

Pasta with ricotta and sundried tomatoes

Remember we spent last week end in the Alps?

Well, after trekking through the forest and sitting among the flowers in the meadows to have a picnic we also stopped to admire cows (my son, who is currently obsessed with bovines as only a toddler can be, calls them cow, mucca - Italian for cow - moo or even all three in a row depending on his level of excitement) and then walked up to a little farm to buy cheese, butter and salami.

Since we couldn't make up our minds, we ended up buying most of the cheeses on display.

One of the cheeses we bought was ricotta, although it technically isn't cheese as most of you probably already know, because it is made from a byproduct of cheesemaking, whey.

We ate it that same evening so that we could taste it at its freshest. This ricotta was not the white, sweet, smooth cream you can just gobble down by the spoonful that you buy at the supermarket.

 

This was the real deal, it was a little grainy in texture and tasted slightly like the stable and the cow it came from. It almost mooed.

 So I decided to make it with some pasta and to offset the creamy texture and slightly milky sweetness I chopped up some sundried tomatoes preserved in oil.

Those little ruby nuggets added a punch of fabulous flavor to each and every forkful. Add a sprinkle of Parmesan cheese, a dusting of freshly ground pepper and this pasta is the thing of gods. I think I will try adding some toasted pine nuts the next time I make it.

 Have a great week end!

How to make your own, healthy tortilla chips and the holy trinity: guacamole, salsa & pico de gallo

It is cold and grey and somewhat rainy today, nothing like the beautiful hot summer weather we enjoyed on the island of Elba. We walked to sandy beaches in our flip flops, smothered ourselves in sunblock and ran squealing into cold water. My daughter spent so much time in it her lips were blue and her teeth were chattering. She struck up conversations in knee-deep water with anybody who would listen and even with those who didn't, while my son suspiciously eyed the cold waves the first day only to fall head over heel in love with the turquoise, crystal clear sea on the following one. The sand and water were such endless sources of entertainment for our children that we were momentarily forgotten. Dare I say that for the first time in five years, my husband and I actually lay on the beach chatting, watching them and almost relaxing? Is this the shape of things to come? Will the word vacation actually regain its original meaning?

Yes, that is lemon. I was out of lime

Anyhow it was so nice to just hang out and bask in the sun and be spoiled by the company of my inlaws and their great food and wine that the 18+ hours of bumper to bumper traffic and missed ferry boats to get there and back easily melted away. Thankfully we have never experienced the horror stories of children screaming and crying the whole trip or getting sick in the car, we are extremely lucky that way so the two full days of travelling were totally worth the other two days spent in a summer idyll.

I will post some pictures as soon as I get my act together but in the meantime here is the most classic of summer snacks. Most of you have your special recipe for guacamole or salsa, I am sure, so what I am really aiming to post about are these tortilla chips. I got so excited when I red Andrea's tip on how to make your own at home, greatly reducing your fat and salt intake. And you can't post about tortilla chips and not mention the Mexican triumvirate, or holy trinity if I may, can you?

Mediterranean stuffed green peppers & amazing women

I have to admit I am a little uninspired these days when it comes to cooking and writing. I am sort of missing the umph, I am distracted. There are things on my mind.

It is hard to write about the superficial, the mundane when my very close friend was readmitted to the hospital on Monday for his second bone marrow transplant. His wife, also a dear friend, is a blogger. She has the gift of expressing the ups and downs of battling leukemia as the mother of two young children with such simplicity, honesty and irony that she leaves me at a loss for words.

My thoughts the past weeks have also constantly been fleeting across the ocean to Monet, a fellow food blogger that I do not know personally. We are not really friends, we have only ever exchanged a few words, but I cannot stop thinking of her, her family and their loss. She writes beautifully and her words have deeply touched my heart and soul.

My words ring empty  when I read what these amazing women have to say. What may be therapeutic to them, their writing, is a lesson to all of us. They teach us strength, compassion and an intense love for life, a true eye opener to those of us caught up in the minutiae of our daily routine. As Moomser puts it, life is simply what is is, so we have to live every moment fully and create memories that will help us through hardship. And while doing this, Monet reminds us to bestow kindness on the strangers we will encounter today, because they could be walking down a dark road. If you see someone falter, don't honk at them, don't be aggressive. Try to be a little more patient, because you don't know what they are experiencing inside.

So today, I will step aside, and let them do the talking.

Below, the simplest of vegetables with an unexpected, complex filling.

This is not a typically Mediterranean recipe, or at least not that I know of. I called it Mediterranean because each and every ingredient used is so typically representative of this area. In every bite you will taste the saltiness from the anchovies, the creaminess of the feta perfectly balancing out the acidity and fruitiness of the sundried tomatoes and capers.

 
I admit I used a short cut when I made these. A while back I had bought this Sicilian paste that I didn't want to use on crostini or with pasta as suggested. It is 100% natural and thus easy to make at home in a food processor or blender. I am not giving amounts as they depend on your personal taste and on how many peppers you will be using.