Dinner Adventures a la IF...
A few days ago, Ivy left a message asking for my thoughts on curried carrot soup. General reaction: mmm! I didn't really have a recipe for it, but we decided that onion, carrot, spices and water would make something acceptable. Oh, plus a blender. :-) While I experimented with the soup, Ivy made a rather amazing brown rice salad. Although it called for watercress (which was deemed unavailable to nerdy college students in Brunswick) she added cilantro, and I think think it was much better for the switch. I decided that two onions, 10 nice organic carrots, and 5 cups of water sounded like a good amount. I don't know where I came up with these proportions, hehe. Saute minced onion in a bit of olive oil until all soft and mushy... add chopped carrots, saute a bit longer. Add spices (brown mustard seeds, curry powder, etc.) and a bit later, water. Cover and cook until the carrots are really soft... put in blender and blend... add salt and pepper. Yay! This soup, like leek potato is so simple but wonderfully warming and colorful. Similarly, Ivy's rice salad was lacking very few colors. I don't have her recipe here, but it involved cooked brown rice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, chopped almonds, cilantro, peas, chopped pepper and scallion. The only thing I felt it lacked was soy sauce, but our house was entirely out of it at the time. Eek! Anyway, not much of a post, but more than I've done in a while! February is flying by. :-( Recently a friend and I decided to have a goulash competition, so maybe next time I write it will be about that. Till next time... :-)

so nearly the end of january, and i've not written once. terrible! i've been back in brunswick for a bit over a week, but the craziness of school work has gotten the better of me. i guess that's hardly an excuse compared to jobs of the real world, but its the only excuse i have. :-) gravling, it seems, has also been extremely busy, and sadly our blog has gone by the wayside. i've been meaning to write since break though, because if anything, this past month has been truly eventful in the world of food.

my favorite discovery in zurich: lily's stomach supply

http://www.lilys.ch/index.php?id=13

the name sounds terrifying, and i've never really written about a restaurant before (except for the crazy pho experience in boston), but this place really deserves a comment. my father and i took a train from budapest to zurich as a little expedition. i'd never been before, and he hadn't been in about 30 years. (funny story about this later) the point is, on our arrival we didn't really know where to go. papa chen, being very much like me in the sense that food-related adventures are always a high priority, suggested that we take a look at guidebooks to switzerland to get an idea for the area. before we left budapest, we picked up a lonely planet guide to switzerland. i'm not here to advertise, but without this little book we surely wouldn't have found our way to lily's.

so when this little restaurant is about a 20 minute walk from the train station and is located in a slightly shabby looking building. papa and i found it without much difficulty, a corner building situated next to a turkish magazine shop. so why did we go there... books like the lonely planet guide have several kinds of reviews in them. some reviews are boring and negative - "this place is dingy and the food is gross. the people are mean, too." (ok i never read something that bad). then there is the ambivalent "its ok, but you can find places like this pretty much everywhere in the world." finally there is a review that really catches your eye. the review of lily's was one such review. even now without the book near me (i left it in budapestjulianna *hopefully* gets to zurich w/ivan they can find all the crazy places too!) i remember word for word what they said about lily's. described as "an upscale noodle bar environment," i was immediately attracted to the concept. in fact, gravling can testify that even before reaching switzerland i wrote to tell him that i'd found a very interesting-sounding place.

specializing in thai cuisine, lily's is (apparently) most popular among the hip college/post-college scene. ever too conscious of how i feel in strange places, i am happy to report that even in my travel-weary state i didn't feel at all out of place. in fact, it provided an optimal people-watching spot. as a side note, the food was also amazing. papa had vegetarian pad thai, while i had indian dal and rice. i must say, papa's dish was beautifully presented. as soon as i saw the presentation i began taking crazy notes on a paper napkin with the thought of writing about it here. :-) what follows (and i apologize for this being so long) is a paper napkin account of one of my favorite father/daughter restaurant adventures i've ever had...

"sitting in a moat of fragrant coriander sauce - mini tofu cubes, green onion, peppers next to a fluffy little mountain of white rice. chinese broccoli, bean sprouts... (papa's pad thai) the dal was well cooked and really spicy (a good thing!)... tasty chinese jasmine tea, served in a beautifully designed little metal kettle with red sugar chunks. (side note: i've never seen sugar like this before. i saved a piece of it, intending to bring it back for further geological evaluation but i think i left it at our hotel. eek!) my one big criticism was of the slightly soggy poppadom. i was slightly paranoid of the coriander yogurt sauce next to my dal, but it turned out to be nice and refreshing, much like raita... only a slight hint of the dairy origins." the place itself was also beautiful - "long wooden tables and benches, next to the windows were bar-height tables with stools that suspiciously exuded the aura of IKEA... the customers were all cheery though." i think this was half the fun for me.

anyway, i'm not doing justice to this place. the only way to get a sense is to actually go there. i tried to explain it to julianna but i think i failed pretty miserably. the part i think she would have most enjoyed was the bicycle delivery folk. on their gigantic messenger food-bags was written "lily's home delivery... take us away. wherever." the delivery girl looked a lot like my sister, so maybe that's why i thought it was so wonderful. a sprightly pig-tailed courier with yellow knee socks and a big smile. if you can picture this image, you've got a picture of the whole restaurant... if you ever end up in zurich, find your way to lily's. especially if you are traveling with your dad, it really makes the adventure that much more fun!

well, it is a new year. and, of course, that means all of those usual proclamations to do whatever not to make one a better person. blah blah, etc. i'll just lay out some facts:

i still love to cook.
flavi still loves to cook-
so those interests will coincide.

i constantly recruit new people (usually unintentionally) who want to cook with me,
so that means more fun evenings.

i have new cooking-type stuff- supplied by mon mere, of course,
so those will help me on my way to making tasty goodings for all.

i will say i'd like to improve my baking skills over the year, but that probably won't happen- i prefer to find those "i-love-to-bake-but-cannot-cook" types who will join up with me. the truly best dishes are created in the presence of friends, and the worst ones are made passable- like the infamous mish-mash flavi and i attempted to make before the decemberists concert- undoubtedly a disastrous dinner that was made OK (capital letters, even!) by the presence of the not so near, but dear. so, with this national changing-of-the-calendar week, i say lets off and make some food! flavi is hopping about somewhere in eastern europe for a while, and i am going to take this oppurtunity to get ahead on some quality blogging action.

Seasame Chicken and Mashed Potatoes

Seasame Chicken and Mashed Potatoes
Originally uploaded by la_fleur.

To any who may have wondered, I do still exist, and I can still type. I was not horribly crippled in any sort of automobile hoonery or lost on an island- I simply neglected my duties as blog co-poster with dear flavi. Finally, though, I am back to typing! And, on what a day to choose! I recently got a wonderful new book called "Life is Meals". It actually belongs to my mother- well, as soon as I give it to her for her birthday, which was in Sept :) The book is amazing, not only for being written by the parents of my college roommate but because it really embodies a spirit anyone reading a food-blog should share. The dedication of this book reads "I intend that my last work shall be a cookbook composed of memories and desires..." ~ Alexandre Dumas. The connection of that book and this day and that quote is that it is Mr. Dumas' birthday today, and it is a Tuesday, so among all the swirling interrelations of this earth it means that Flavi and I had to mentally prepare meals together for the fifth of december, and invite Alexandre! Unfortunately, Mr Dumas did not seem hungry by the time he reached my house for dinner this evening- it appeared he had been snacking all day long and looked adequately plump. No matter- more for Ryan and me.
My dish for the evening needed to be an amalgam of things: Flavi, Dumas and me. As such- it was chicken with soy/ginger/honey/sesame sauce and mashed potatoes with scallions, shallots, garlic, thyme and black pepper. I must say, the thyme should have been left out as it didn't mesh well with the chicken, but the rest went well. And, of course, the table was amply adorned with crumbs from the traditional pre-meal baguette (for which mr dumas was quite pleased) It was a nice little dinner that afforded some well needed roommate bonding time and some tasty leftovers for lunch. Had Alexandre not been naughty and snacked all day, he could have had his chicken!
In "Life is Meals", today's entry (it is a daily journal of food stories), bread is highlighted, and the authors note "Bread is normally the only food that is kept on the table throughout the meal. The word is almost synonymous with food and, by extension, life..." Wonderful! Happy Birthday Mr Dumas, and happy tuesday to everyone!

noodles&mushroom...avocado&spinach!
last week we (armand, taylor, becca, i) finally had our second dinner of the semester all together! time is short these days and my carnivorous friend didn't show up in brunswick till much later so veggie pasta and salad it was. (but not pasta salad. yuck.) i was looking to make something with mushrooms, that was my only criteria & after gathering all the ingredients at home i realized that pasta looked rather promising.

is it wrong that we ate tomatoes and avocado in december? it seemed a bit un-natural. i think this is more of a contemplative post than a report. i (retrospectively) also wonder why i picked spinach. i think of spinach salads as being a summer thing. maybe i'm just dreaming. who knows!

the picture of the pasta doesn't do it justice. in addition to mushrooms it had olive oil, garlic, red onion, parsley, basil, and tomatoes. spice-wise just salt, pepper, and a tiny bit of paprika. if the ratio of quantity made to quantity eaten is any measure of taste, i think it came out ok! aah yes. and we also had bread. haha. armand hadn't had the whole oil/balsamic before (i know, sacrilege!!!) and he voted favorably. i'm glad taylor was healthy enough to stay for dinner this time!

next time: i want to make the pasta too. that was my goal for the last time gravling was up (after thanksgiving) but for numerous reasons that didn't happen (key among them being the plethora of josie-bits that remained. i'm very sick of turkey.) but really, next time! i love making pasta dough, its like a science experiment! my apologies if this post is boring or grammatically problematic, it is only 3:40am. :-)

thanksgiving cranberry sauce!
aah so perhaps i am procrastinating writing a paper, but what better a way to do it than to write a bit. it's been a looong time, and i have lots of photos and food to write about, but tonight it's all about cranberries.

my sister julianna and i had a plan when we were younger. we were going to use a tiny bit of lake baikal (what an amazing lake!) in siberia to start a cranberry bog that could compete with ocean spray's cranonopoly. times have changed a bit since then (i don't think either of us is going into the cranberry industry) but we have retained our love for these odd little orbs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cranberry). this thanksgiving, my housemate ivy and i made cranberry sauce the way my mum does, and ivy so enthusiastically approved, that i thought i would post the recipe here (along with our picture of a miniature lake baikal aka the kitchen sink.)

ingredients: 2pkg. fresh cranberries, washed and sorted (we were very lucky and had local maine berries!), juice of 4 (+/-) oranges, zest of two of the oranges, 4 and a bit cups of apple cider (again we were spoiled - tasty organic maine cider!), and optional 1 tablespoon honey.

bring liquids to a boil, add cranberries, and stir constantly until they pop. (it's an amazing sound, bursting cranberries...). keep stirring until much more mushed. add orange zest and let it cool. i think it is plenty sweet with just the sugar from the apples and orange juice, but if you want it to be sweeter, add the tiny bit of honey. i imagine if you wanted you could strain out the cranberry skins and other little bits, but i like it as it is. the brilliant thing about making cranberry sauce this way is that you don't need to add sugar, and yet it is absolutely delicious and beautiful! thanks mum. :-)

our dinner was... a mess.

"well, were you in good spirits about it?" maya asked.
"umm... yes?" i responded. :-P
"well, you guys are rather elitist about your cooking... so it was a good reality check!"

thank you maya. there is a bit of honesty left in this world!

saturday i trekked down to boston (a non-trek actually, i get on a bus and get off a bus. whoo. basically, nap time.) to visit gravling and see the decemberists in concert. the concert, was amazing. john was in reasonable spirits. the days wanderings were pleasant. dinner, on the other hand, was probably the closest thing i've experienced to a nightmare in recent memory. i say this and laugh, because it was alright in the end, but as i like to remind myself, humans are... human. (the self-critic in me is forcing me to also write that while i laugh etc. the mistakes made in this dinner were entirely avoidable and as such, i should go punch myself and not laugh. silly flavia.)

moosewood cookbook has an interesting recipe for a winter curry-ish stew with squash and potatoes, garbonzo beans, black mustard seed, and tomato. the weather was called for a hearty stew-ish dinner, so we agreed to give the recipe a try (this was early in the afternoon... probably 2ish.) aand here begins the story of the end. haha. drama. gravling wrote down on the ingredients we needed on a little piece of colored post-it note and on our way out the door he put it in the canvas grocery bag we were bringing along to save the environment. i generally like organization and mentioned that if we left the sticky in the bag, it would be the best way to insure that we lost it. haha, we laugh... i put the sticky note in my wallet, and we're off. fast forward to 5:30ish as we stand in the grocery store happily contemplating dinner, when i realize i've lost the shopping list.. i don't think john thought i was serious at first. awkward chuckle, "no seriously flav... what do we need?"

we gathered what we could remember best from memory - potatoes, squash, spices (not necessarily the right ones), yogurt, cucumber, onion... oh minimalism. at the time, i thought that it could just be an adventure. after all, we should be thankful that we generally have access to everything our hearts could imagine... what is one dinner without everything, right? back at gravling's apartment, we realize that a few key elements are missing - notably black mustard seeds (shaws didn't have them) and tomatoes. still, things are ok. we get chopping, peeling, boiling, sauteeing, and time comes to add the garbonzo beans. john looks at the can and says, "flavia, didn't you ever learn not to buy dented cans?" GAH! awkward chuckle. we open the can, and it smells funny. i look at the lid: expires 09.2002. WHAT?!?!?! i swallowed my heart just a little. 4 year old chickpeas!?! the good thing about chopping onions is that you can mix in a few "oh god this sucks" tears with the "wow onions hurt my eyes" ones. (i'm only joking, no tears involved. thank goodness) :-)

in the meantime, the rice cooked beautifully, the wine was tasty (gravling has good wine taste - even though he allegedly bought this one because of the bottle. or perhaps i thought it was so good because it was something i couldn't spoil. anywho, it was good) and our "curry" came together. sadly, out dinner was really monochromatic. save for the little chunks of squash, everything was WHITE. in a tiny bit of desperation, we tried to defrost john's experiment in frozen basil. unsuccessful green slime water resulted. (good mental picture?). the dinner didn't taste bad, in fact the ginger/garlic/curry aspect was ok. it was more the energy behind it that was lacking. once one thing goes wrong, you aren't really inspired to continue. haha the image that comes to mind as i type this is dick button and scott hamilton commenting on figure skating. the poor kid keeps falling on his or her behind and by the end of the performance, the curtsy/bow is half-hearted. :-) that's how i felt eating dinner.


(the "beautiful" wine bottle.)

i agree with maya that it was a reality check (but not that we're elitist. for heaven's sake! where would "hungarian peasant" fit in there!?!). most of all, i like the fact that this dinner may shatter gravling's perception that i don't screw up food. hallelujah! i just hope it doesn't mean we don't cook well together again in the near future, because that might just break my heart.

this wonderful comedy of a dinner behind us, i have to reflect on how absolutely wonderful the concert was. i have been looking forward to it since august, and it was everything i'd imagined. i'm sure if john were writing this entry, he'd have a much more nuanced critique of the sound system, costumes, venue choice, etc. but i was just happy to be in boston, with one of my best friends, listening to an absolutely delightful band!