Not much time to write these days. Work is quite hectic. My boss is about to leave for two weeks of vacation and wants everything in the lab planned and organised before she leaves. Plus there's some news coming up, also keeping me away from bogging, which I hope I'll be able to share with you soon enough.
In the meanwhile let me point you to some really weird ice creams: meet the weird and even weirder world of Japanese ice cream.
My favourite, at least for the packaging, is definitely the Dracula one.
I can hardly believe it has been almost two months since my last bread baking post, I should seriously think about changing the blog's caption. Not that I haven't been baking in the meanwhile but I've either made stuff I wrote about already or backed from books I've mentioned before, mainly Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery and Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme. I don't want to turn this blog into the Alberto/Nancy or Alberto/Pierre project, and since I lack the slightly histeric wit and catching writing style Julie Powell has, I prefer to give it a miss and not concentrate on only one source. So nothing too interesting has been going on inside my oven until I came up with something of my own last week.
Once more a new edition of Is My Blog Burning is ready to tickle our cooking creativity. For this edition, Jarrett of food porn watch and life in flow, has decided to tempt us with a dumpling feast. Just reading his description of the many possibilities these tasty morsels offer made me hungry already!
I can't deny to have some prejudices, both on people and food. Don't you? One of these is that new-world wines (i.e. everything outside Europe as we snotty European say) are pretty standardised stuff when it comes to aromas and style. I know there are exceptions to this but my experience till now was pretty much along these lines. Also, coming from Italy with it's great variety of grape types, I'm used to an array of styles, not necessarily always perfect but much more varied. So when me and some friends decided to taste some of the wines made from the South African Springfield Estate I was a bit dubious on the praises these wines had received in the press. I was wrong. These wines were a surprise, and a very positive one at that. Very well made, with a strong personality (at least the top of the range ones) and, an extra plus, at great prices. They stood up great in comparison to a French Loire white we added tom our blind tasting which came with pretty good credentials, 88 points from mister Robert Parker. Well, I might have prejudices, but at least I know when I have to admit they're wrong.
I'm proud: IMBB has a baby. A few Italian bloggers, a bit English-shy, decided some time ago to organise an IMBB.it edition. The first edition was on "salse e intingoli" (hard to translate, something like sauces and dips). I completely forgot to submit something but definitely will next time. I think it's a great idea for bloggers who like the IMBB idea but don't feel at home with writing in English. If anyone else feels like organising a local IMBB edition feel free, as long as you give a link to the original IMBB post, here crediting the idea.
It's hard to deny baking parchment is a great help for the baker. For the last few years my baking parchment consumption has been quite above average. Whenever lining a cake pan or a cookie sheet, I'd turn to my parchment roll (and a drop of oil). It certainly was an improvement from the constant buttering and flouring I used to do before. Up to a few weeks ago, at least. up to the day I bought a Silpat silicon baking mat from Demarle.
Another Is My Blog Burning? edition has just gone by, filling my browser windows of grilling and barbecuing recipes from around the world. Up to now 35 entries, and rising. And once more my "to try" recipe list has grown some more! I need to take a cooking holiday if I ever seriously plan to try out all these IMBB recipes.
A big thanks to the Too many chefs team for coming up with the theme and for hosting. It was great fun and, till next time...
The gods of rain clearly had an issue with me and my intention to grill for this 6th IMBB. All my plans to get a little grill up and running where constantly frustrated by the rain that seemed to fall every time I just mentioned grilling: it could be almost sunny all day long at work but as soon as I got home it would start to drizzle. After a week of cloud observation and careful weather forecast hearing I decided to abandon the actual grilling idea, with connected swearing and bad mood, and instead, to dig out my grilling pan as an acceptable substitute. I guess that reveals I'm not a real Thuringian. Grilling here is serious stuff: I know a few guys who grill once a week, every week, whatever the weather. It must be fun trying to eat hot bratwurst while outside there's snow and the temperature is minus 15C! So, while not following this die hard grilling philosophy I couldn't avoid taking inspiration at the Thuringian tradition for my IMBB entry.
Reading this post from Jeremy at Frost Street, I felt the urge to do some cupboard “cleaning”. As usual I threw off way less than I could have, but found a long forgotten bag of chestnut flour I had brought back from Italy last winter. Chestnuts, like acorns, are one food item that used to be associated with poverty. They were used as a source of carbohydrates from those who could not buy flour or who lived in remote valleys, especially in the winter months. In some parts of Italy the importance of chestnut woods as food source went beyond mere subsistence: it was such that it influenced the cuisine of these areas. Although a few examples exist throughout Italy, where this is most evident is certainly the northern mountainous part of Tuscany bordering Liguria. Here bread, polenta and sweets were, and in part still are, made using chestnut flour. The most famous of these dishes is certainly castagnaccio a chestnut flour cake enriched by nuts and, in its richer versions, a few other ingredients. I hadn't had castagniaccio for ages, so the recipe for my, let's call it, cupboard-archaeology treasure was decided.
I'm not going to complain, again, about the quality of fish I find in Jena. If you read this blog often you'll agree that I've done this more than required to just get my message across. Not that I wouldn't want to... sometimes I think all fishmongers here are direct descendants of Ordralfabetix, the dreaded fishmonger from the Asterix series. Instead let me be happy about my fish for once. A few days ago, walking around for some food shopping I saw some fresh (and not frozen and thawed, for once!) char. Char are fishes from the salmon and trout family which can be found either at sea or in sweet water lakes and can grow up to a respectable size, up to 8 kilo. The ones on sale looked good, glistening eye, red gills, firm flesh (after a quick and hidden poke), all the things a good fresh fish should be. I didn't do the classic smell test since the fishmonger started giving me a bad look, so I chose the two best looking fish (each around half a kilo) and took them home with the plan of cooking them straight away. What is it with shopkeepers these days? No touching, no smelling, no (god forbid!) squeezing or poking. Just buy your food based on looks, seems to be the idea. Sure: beauty is only skin deep but taste isn't. Good for me that when it comes to fish looks CAN give some hints about freshness. I've moaned and complained once more about fishmongers, I notice... I'll stop here... I promise ;-).
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