Sweet things

A meal is not over until desert has been had. That is a mantra I live by. I need something sweet to finish dinner. Lately, I have been on a baking kick making cookies and cinnamon buns.

Back in the fall I went on my first trip to pick some apples. As a Bermudian the only opportunity I have ever had to pick apples was the one apple that grew to be 2 inches in diameter in my father's garden. Even then I was forbidden to pick it with the hopes it would get bigger. Alas, I guess Bermuda weather/soil is not the ideal for apple growing so I approached the apple picking with gusto. By the time I was done I had a bag full of more apples than I could use. I went to cooking.

One of the things I decided to make were mini apple pies. Using a recipe from SmittenKitchen.com I cut large circles of dough and filled them with sliced apple that I had coated in brown sugar and cinnamon. Then using an egg wash I brushed the tops of the dough that folded around the sides and sprinkled with white sugar, slipping a tiny cut of butter into the apples to help them cook beautifully.

One of my favorite goodies as a child were the Austrian walnut horseshoe cookies my mother would make for us. As we rolled them out I would try and sneak the raw cookie dough without my mother seeing.

I can't share the recipe as it is a family secret but the main ingredients are butter and chopped walnuts.

Leading up to Valentines day I made cinnamon buns that were so rich and delicious I had to send them into the office with Paul so I would not eat them all. Despite his office being in a weight loss competition I think they enjoyed them.

One of my favorite food blogs is Smitten Kitchen and she made some Nutmeg Maple Butter Cookies (http://smittenkitchen.com/2011/12/nutmeg-maple-butter-cookies/). I used that recipe and a heart cookie cutter to make little hearts for Valentines Day. Then, because they were delicious but a little plain looking I made a simple sugar cookie icing that I MacGyvered some pink dye using Pomegranate Juice.

Icing sugar: 1 cup confectioners' sugar, 2 tsps milk, 2 tsps light corn syrup

Mix well and add food dye until it is at the consistency you want.

Food beginnings

Following the amazing array of food blogs such as Serious Eats, Smitten Kitchen, Umamimart, and Not Without Salt one can easily get jealous and antsy to cook. That has been me lately. Thankfully, I have had plenty of reason to. So, even if nobody reads this, I need an outlet to express my passion for cooking and the results of my labors.

For Christmas Paul and I were gifted our own Beer Brewing Kit. While I am extremely excited by this opportunity, I am more intrigued with the produce than the process. So, while Paul and his lova-lova-beer-brewer-extraordinaire, Jon, boiled, steeped, mixed, etc. I took pictures and provided an endless supply of snacks.

Steeping the bag of brew

One of my must-haves in the kitchen is fresh bread. Using the no knead recipe from 'Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day' by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois, I always have a large container of bread fermenting nicely in my fridge. On the day of the beer brewing party I decided to make some focaccia.

Focaccia - Olive Oil, Cayenne Pepper, Coarse Salt,

Dried Thyme and Oregano

Take a good grapefruit size lump of bread out of your container

and press into the corners of a small cast iron pan with about 1/4-1/2 cup

of extra virgin olive oil. Make some divots in the top of the

dough and allow to rise for 40 mins to an hour.

Preheat your oven to 375 and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown on bottom.

Depending on how cold your bread is and how long you have allowed it to rise it may take longer

than 25 minutes.

Popcorn with smoky olive oil and pepper, salami,

cheese, cornichons, fresh green olives,

Paul's lamb sausage cooked in beer and caramelized onions

Beer in the Carboy - first step complete.

In two weeks that 5 gallons of beer will, fingers crossed, be 4 cases of beer. And there will be beer for days!

Baltic Balsam

Our traditional Latvian cuisine last night was served buffet style at a restaurant called Lido.  We were sadly informed by a ladle wielding tall man that taking pictures of the food was illegal in Latvia. Big bummer. Unfortunately the only picture we have is one of some sad potatoes taken seconds before being told off. Poor Paul. 

The portions were also  huge.  I asked for a little sauerkraut and was served half a plate. Hmmm lucky Paul tonight!  

Sunday we started the day with our usual freshly baked goodie from the local supermarket Rimi and had lunch at the beer garden. Here they had surprisingly good food with a range of local beers on tap. 

We shared a cup of fried seafood (squid, octopus and shrimp), some fried garlic soaked rye bread, a sandwich of spinach, pork and aged provolone with a spicy mayo and finally a fig and beet root salad with goats cheese and a balsamic vinaigrette. 

With food heavy on our bellies we decided the logical place to go next was the central market. Housed in three large zeppelin hangars we were surrounded by huge quantities of meat, fish, vegetables, pickles, breads and any other food item you should want. I had a delicious pickle from one stall and for dessert some fried donuts covered in powdered sugar. Yum indeed!

To complete our day of food food and more food we went for dinner at a local dumplings store called Pelmeni XL where they sell, you guessed it, Pelmeni! Dumplings filled with a variety of meats, veg, and cheese with sauces and soups.  A very unhealthy day over all. 

4th of July! How better to spend it but to shoot some soviet guns at a James Bond cut out!  Great experience if not a tad sketchy. The guide book says it is in a Soviet Bunker so when we showed up outside a football pitch with toddler boys and their practice session I was a tad confused. We came to find out that a few weeks prior, the police ("who are now mostly corrupt") had raided the soviet bunker and taken control of all the guns. So now the older woman who runs it had to find somewhere else to once again set up shop.  Hence we were allowed to take pictures of the shooting as long as we did not get her face in the shot. Ended the day with some cards and black balsam. Note of warning about the balsam: as Paul and I found out, it is not only hard to down, but also has the unlikely trait of providing you with the interesting next day body odor of licorice.

Next day we were off to Sigulda. The gateway town to the national park 'Goija' (pronounced 'goy-ya'). 3 lats (about $5) total for an hour and a half trip. Thinking we had landed somewhere out in the boonies we were surprised that our hotel was so nice. The Hotel Segevold was swank and clean with the most comfortable beds we have had in a few days (Paul's eye baggage was grateful) but also desolate. Other than an asian party (which we saw once) we seemed to be two of a total of three guests.

In Sigulda we did the long walk to castles and caves taking a cable car along the way. We saw the infamous Gutmana cave where the beautiful Maija Rose was murdered, and splashed the "wrinkle-remover-medicinal" spring water on our faces (you can never be too careful). We saw Krimulda castle (where Maija Rose lived) in the town of Turaida with it's red bricked tower.

Back to Riga on Thursday for our morning flight to London on Friday. Maybe another shooting lesson?

Ready to Start

After a BBQ of every available meat and a late night game of cards we spent the next better half of the morning tired (and more to the point hungover) traveling back to London and meeting up with the wonderful Lucy! A quick nap and we were raring to go. Hyde park!!!! Thousands of people, a bit of pushing and shoving and we were front crowd centre in a surprisingly peaceful crowd of eager fans of all ages. 

I am not going to even attempt to describe the concert, except to say that I do not believe I will ever experience as amazing of a line up as that. 

The low point of the day was finding out that Paul and I, dummies that we are, did not adequately prepare for the trip back with £0 left on our oyster cards we were forced to ask people on the street for change, asking people to donate 20p only to find out we needed 40. Eventually walking the 10 blocks to a tube station that was not "closed for scheduled works", witnessing an attempted robbery and finally getting back to Lucys apartment. 

Keeping with the theme of our disorganization we did a bit of scrambling to print our boarding pass finally deciding just to take the iPad and therefore being forced to pay the £80 just for Ryanair to print it for us. 

Latvia is two hours ahead of London and in the summer hardly gets dark.  As soon as we had dropped our bags off in our room we made some friends in the hostel and got a night tour of Riga and the bars.  Rock band bars, "moon safari" bar, a 30 minute wait for a sugary mojito, a punch bowl of assorted fruit and alcohol with 6 straws...made a friend with a Latvian girl who danced with me, gave me drinks, told me I was fun (man I am so naive). She left and we were to go meet her at a bar when I passed her making out with another girl on the street....hmmm did I just get hit on? Interesting experience or narrow escape? 

In the day, Riga has an old European feel. Cobblestone streets lead to huge churches, replicas of original Latvian buildings torn down during the soviet oppression, beer gardens and markets. Art Nouveau buildings (more than any city in Europe I hear) are everywhere in central Riga, gargoyles,  peacocks, and goblins, Oh My! 

Traditional Latvian cuisine for dinner with some hostelers! 

Hello England

After a very fast six hour flight we arrived at Heathrow airport at 8:00 pm. Having decided that it must be our maturity that made the flight seem so much faster than it would have as a child we got immediately grumpy since the underground ride seemed too take twice as long as the entire flight.

Clearly in desperate need of reserve replenishments we did a quick survey and had a satisfactory tasting and quickly served meal of indian. It did the job.

Despite a troubled, where-am-I and in-what-timezone sleep we took off on an "adventure" to meet up with the Dixon family. Three trains, a bus and a walk and much confusion we arrived in Woolwich Arsenal (pronounced 'wool-itch' not 'wool-witch' ahem-cough Paul) with just enough time to eat a fast but delicious dish of mussels and we were off back into London. Took the ferry back which was much more preferable to the sweltering hot bus (much hotter than bda). Short of taking a submarine I think we have established ourselves as public transport veterans.

The next day (only our second but feels like a week has passed) was spent wandering through Harrods looking at things we could not afford. So to feel better we went for an affordable lunch...at Bar Boloud. Ok...maybe not affordable but worth every penny. See Paul's blog for food details (greedygastronomer.tumblr.com).

Then we were off to see the sheriff...of Nottingham that is. Lots of laughs, some beer and wine, a castle and the oldest pub in England!

Next up: some arsenic sons (Mumford and sons and arcade fire...but you got that right?)

Hasta Luego, Baby!!

Valpairaso was a beautiful city on the coast of Chile which reminded me a bit of Rio de Janeiro with is vibrancy and beauty. An hour and a half out of Santiago, Gibby, Shandy, Matt, James and I headed there from Mendoza for a few days of relaxing before Santiago and flights out. The city has a bohemian feel, with spray paint murals everywhere. It seemed as though everyone made an effort to get into the spirit of the city with elaborate doors, glass and mirror murals, spray paint art on walls and every other surface possible. Every building had some type of art. On a hill with some workouts to get up(reminding me much of Rio in that aspect) with narrow roads and tiny alleys. On our way to food from our hostel one day, which was located in one such tiny alley, we passed some local artists with walkie talkies communicating and keeping watch so they could complete their art in peace. Not that anyone should stop them. Its beautiful. Many photos to come of that.

While there we visited Vina del Mar, the beach (cold even for them, with iron sand....completely new for me), had a candy apple (or a toffee apple as it was argued over and over again by the english), and took a scenic and typical elevator ride up the hill (Valpairaso is known for them). On our last day we had a beautiful fish stew called "Paila Marina" with a massive amount of fresh shrimp, clams, mussels and fish for approximately $6 US. Beautiful.

One easy and painless bus ride to Santiago the five of us set out for our hostel La Chimba which will be my last hostel before I head home in two days. I cant believe its coming to an end but will be happy to get home (yes Mummy I missed the family...as well as your cooking). Will probably have some difficulties adjusting back to our keyboards as here I have lost all sense of where symbols are....for example, the @ sign is produced by pressing Alt+6+4. The ? moves form the top right to the bottom left...I have NO idea of where its usual position is. May not be my usual speedy typer when I return.

On our last few days of South America we will be exploring Santiago, we climbed (and by climb I mean we took the trolley) to San Cristobal hill, saw the Virgin Mary statue on top and a beautiful layout of Santiago. Still havent parted with the English crew (Gibby, Shandy and Matt) and will definitely be sad to see them go....however after many many delays they need to head up to Bolivia.

Probably the last post as I fly out day after tomorrow. So...until the next trip....bye and thanks for reading!

Catena Zapata

On our next day in Mendoza we took an afternoon bus to Maipu pronounced...ahem ¨my-poo¨(pause for jokes...there were three days worth of jokes made here so I have pretty much heard them all). Once in Maipu (stop laughing) we tried to find a taxi but to no avail. Standing in the middle of an emptry street, with 15 minutes left before we were supposed to be at Catena Zapata winery, we were five extremely lost and sorry looking tourists. Finally a police officer took pity on us, stopped, and called us a taxi. One sketchy taxi ride later with us having to stop (meter running) so he could fill up on gas(!), and stops along a dirt road with our driver insisting we were going the wrong way (the map does not lie!!), we arrived to a beautiful winery with the signature Catena Zapata Mayan temple style building before us. It was like arriving to a palace.

Every inch of the walls, floor and ceiling were made of a magnificent cream coloured marble/limestone. 12 foot long tables made out of one piece of wood from a tree from the Iguacu Falls. Premium french oak barrels (used for no longer than 3 years...a year shorter than the other wineries we visited) were lined up in rows in a large pristine and perfectly cared for ampitheatre shaped room...actually shown on their website. We got an extensive tour from top to bottom of the winery, including rooms with every inch of space taken by wines aging in the bottle.

The wine itself was indescribable. We were provided with two wines to taste, a 2008 Chardonnay and a premium bottle of their 2005 Malbec. Heaven.

The next day in a group of 9 we headed to MR. HUGO! A bicycle rent shop where we got bikes for the day and went from winery to winery, tasting and generally having fun. After the amazing day before, however, and because I was feeling slightly feverish I did not sample much wine and mainly concentrated on staying awake.

Did not think it was possible but am definitely sick of wine for now so Matt, Shandy, Gibby, James and I (the last remaining from the Navimag boat trip) headed to Valparaiso, Chile.

Santiago in a day or two and then flying back home.