50,000 Evil Stinging Little Suckers in Your Garden

Times two.

Think of 50,000 stingers, times two. That’s one hundred thousand evil little stingers.

This is how our nearest neighbor perceives our new project:Two beehives.

Just to make sure that we get maximum emotional effect, we have “aimed” the beehives straight at the neighbor's house.

Actually, we don’t eat much honey, but when we decided to plant even more lavender in our garden, we also decided to use the flowers for honey as well as for their looks. I mean we already have a lot of bees in our garden, but now they are going to be OUR bees, and they are going to make OUR honey.

I guess all our neighbors (maybe not one of them), and all our friends, will get honey for free for the next few years. Apparently, one hive produces between 30 and 150 lbs. of honey per year. That’s a lot of honey.

Evidently, honey bees are really friendly. They just get grumpy when it is cold, raining, dark, and when you try to get really close to the hive. The last item being somewhat of a requirement when you want to steal their honey. Oh yeah, they get sort of grumpy when you try to steal their honey as well.

This is going to get fun: apparently you get stung so much as a bee keeper so you get immune to the stings, unless you die first.

More reports will follow.

Thanksgiving Sides

Thanksgiving is getting closer and I am starting to think about the menu. As we have not been living in the U.S. for the last ten years, Thanksgiving has been an excuse for us to give a big party, rather than the family event it is here. We have had a couple of really memorable ones. One year, when we lived in Stockholm, we borrowed a greenhouse which was part of a cafe in the summer, only a few minutes walk from our house. Peter spent hours filling the greenhouse with candles, and lit the snowy path from our house to the greenhouse with torches. It was really beautiful. The guests had drinks at our house and then walked in the dark, following the torches up the road to see a glowing greenhouse in the white snow. Meanwhile, my friend Marybeth and I furiously cooked in the cafe's kitchen...we got to use their industrial ovens and potato peeler; which was a good thing because we had about 50 guests. The next morning, we staggered back to the cafe, after having had about 4 hours of sleep to clean up the whole thing. We had a plane to catch to Brussels in the afternoon, so there was no sleeping in. After that experience, I always try to remember to hire someone to clean up after a big party...a luxury, yes, but it makes it so much nicer! Another excellent Thanksgiving was in London a few years back. My friend Nancy came and we cooked up a really fantastic spread, with about a million side dishes, two kinds of cranberry sauce, a gorgeous cheese plate, and 3 desserts, including a lemon rose cake. That feast was probably the pinnacle of food excellence for any of our Thanksgivings.

Judging by all the articles in magazines about turkey, people seem to focus on the bird. But for me, Thanksgiving is all about sides. Who cares if the bird is dry? Smother that baby in Madeira mushroom gravy and eat it with potato squash gratin and brussel sprouts with chestnuts, and who is going to notice a little dryness? I like to cook up new sides every year, while still keeping the same categories of potato, squash, and something green. Here are some side dishes that I really like, mostly from that gourmet Thanksgiving in London.

Spicy Sweet Potato (serves 4 to 6)
I do this quite often. I like to serve it with roasted pork belly. The sweet spiciness tastes great with pork. This is really easy to do, but the spices make it a bit dramatic. You could also do the same thing with squash, like pumpkin or acorn squash. It won't be as rich or sweet, but still it will be nice.

2 large sweet potatoes
1 floury potato (you can just use another sweet potato here, as I have often done, and nothing bad happens, but the spiciness is a bit less pronounced)
1/2 stick butter
some fresh rosemary
1 fresh red chili (heat of chili according to taste)
3 to 4 cloves of garlic

Peel and boil the potatoes until tender. Mash. Meanwhile, melt the butter in a saucepan. Lightly chop the rosemary. Peel the garlic and slice. Finely slice the red chili. Add spices to melted butter. Cook until butter is golden brown. Add hot butter and spices to mash. Stir it in and serve hot. The mash can be made in advance and kept in the refrigerator. To serve, heat up the mash in the microwave, remember to stir to make sure it is evenly hot, make the butter spice mixture, and mix.

Antonio Carluccio's Savoy Cabbage with Pancetta (serves 4 to 6)
Bacon and cabbage always taste great together. Actually, bacon tastes good with most things, I find. Anyway, this is really easy and really nice.

1 large Savoy cabbage (this is the medium colored green one with really crinkly leaves)
4 tablespoons olive oil
100 grams unsmoked bacon or pancetta, cut into matchsticks
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 dried red chili, crumbled
300 milliliters water
salt and pepper to taste
Quarter the cabbage, core and slice thinly. Heat oil, add bacon, garlic and chili. Fry for two minutes. Do not brown the garlic. Add the cabbage and water, season to taste. Stir and cook covered for 10 to 15 minutes until the liquid is largely evaporated and cabbage is cooked tender. I like to leave a little bit of bite in the cabbage, but others like cabbage very soft. Do it as you like.

Lemon Green Beans
This is from Nigella Lawson's cookbook called Feast. Simple and tasty. I love the freshness of the lemon in contrast to all the other heavier, creamier, side dishes.

1 kg fine green beans, topped and tailed
75 grams butter
few drops olive oil
1 lemon
Sat and pepper to taste

Bring a pot of water to the boil, throw in some salt, and blanch the beans for about 6 minutes after the water comes back to the boil. The beans should have lost their raw taste but retain crunch. Strain them and put them back in the pot on stove on low heat with. Throw in the butter and olive oil. While the butter melts, prepare the lemon. Peel the lemon, making sure to take off all the white pith (the easiest way is put the lemon on the cutting board, and slice off both ends. Then set the lemon on one end, and slice off the skin downwards, turning it as you go). Slice the peeled lemon, letting it fall apart into bits. Push the sliced lemon bits and any juice into the pot of beans. Stir the pan and add salt and pepper to taste.

Truffle Potato Gratin
I made up this recipe because I had a bottle of gorgeous truffle oil, and I needed something to do with it. What could be yummier than cream, potatoes and truffles? The recipe below isn't actually how I did it. I just sliced the potatoes, layered them with salt, pepper, cream and truffle oil, then I baked the whole thing until the potatoes are tender. However, I have always felt that my potato gratins don't have the right lucious texture and it is often a hit or miss thing. I have recently read a couple of recipes that do this pre-cooking and I bet that is the trick to a really good dish. So, I am giving you the recipe that I am going to make NEXT time I do this dish, based again on one of Nigella Lawson's recipes.

500 ml mil
500 ml heavy cream
1 onion
2 to 3 bay leaves
4 peeled cloves garlic
1 1/2 tablespoon salt
2 kilo floury potatoes
truffle oil to taste
butter for greasing the dish

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C (about 450 F). Put milk and cream into a large pot that will be able to fit in all the potatoes. Cut onion in half, put in pot along with bay leaves, garlic cloves and salt. Bring the cream mixture nearly to the boiling point. Turn off the heat, cover, and let the onion and bay leaves infuse.

Meanwhile, peel potatoes and cut into slices (about 1 cm thick, or a bit more than 1/4 inch). Put the potatoes in with the cream in the pot and brink back to boil with lid on. Lower the heat to simmer, taking off the lid if necessary to avoid milk overflowing the pan. Cook the potatoes until they are tender, but not dissolving into mush. Fish out onions and bay leaves. Season with truffle oil, pepper and salt, to taste. Grease a large roasting pan with butter and pour in the potato mixture. Cook in the oven for 15 minutes or until the potato is bubbling and brown on top. Sprinkle some more truffle oil on the top. Let stand for a bit before serving.

Marathon Madness

Hey! I just ran a half Marathon last Sunday. Yup. That is 13.1 miles of pain, for those of you who aren't into running statistics. If you don't believe that I really did this, you can check out the results of the race.

Now, you might wonder what that has to do with FOOD, but of course it has everything to do with food. Do you think I would be torturing myself like that, if it were not to burn off 1300 calories that I can then use to eat pie, steak, foie gras? No, you are right, I would not. Life is food. Food is life.

Ok, Ok, I admit it. The link to food is tenuous but I just had to brag.

Project Chicken

Here is our new chicken house! Is it not just the sweetest thing you ever saw? We are going to have very happy chickens...how could they not be happy, living in a house like that? We have spent the last few days painting...the kids and us have paint in our hair to mark our hard work. While we bought the house online, we had to put it together and Peter has had to make several adjustments and improvements because the nestboxes were too big, it needed a new perch, and we added latches to keep the racoons out, and a chicken wire foundation.

So next is to order some chicks....we are going to have some old-fashioned dual purpose hens (which means that they lay eggs but they also taste good when you have to get out the old axe). We are going to have to order a few more than we need--25 to be exact (it is the minimum order for chicks through the mail). So about 8 will get to live and lay, and the rest will have a shorter life ending up in our oven. Young roasted chicken anyone? We are probably going to have some sort of party, because we are going to have a lot of chickens to eat. Sign up if you want to be invited.....I can't wait to be able to go out in the morning (and evening) and collect some eggs for breakfast! Not so eager to clean out their coop, though.

Apple Frangipane Tart

Since I am on a woozy woo kick, I thought I would share this recipe that I would never have created if I didn't have my favorite gadget. Thus far, I have resisted putting up recipes that don't have a story attached because I think that a simple recipe should have a picture with it, which means I have to make it and take a picture....but that isn't really happening much, given I am constantly on a diet and I am horrible at taking pictures. So, what the hell. A recipe without picture. Just use your imagination.

We were living in London and having some guests over for lunch. I happened to a lot of whole blanched almonds lying around which I wanted to use up. So, I invented this dessert, which I am particularly proud of. It is easy to make, looks fantastic and tastes even better. Don't leave out the lemon zest in the filling...it adds a bit of umph and also uses my other favorite gadget, which is my lemon zester. For you Americans, I am sorry about the metric measurements, but I was living in England at the time...it is easy enough to convert. Most cookbooks have conversion tables at the back or you can simple type it into Google (i.e 500 grams to ounces).

500 grams puff pastry
3 to 4 Granny Smith apples
85 grams whole blanched almonds
42 grams (3 tblsp) butter at room temperature
18 grams (2 tblsp) flour
1 large egg
about 85 grams powdered sugar to taste
zest of one lemon
cinnamon to taste

For the Frangipane Filling: Grind almonds in woozy woo or food processor until fine. Add powdered sugar to taste until sweet, but not overly so. Add flour, egg, and lemon zest. Whiz it up. Should be a spreadable consistency, slightly runny.

For the Tart: Roll out the pastry to a rectangle. Cut strips off each side (or fold over sides), about 1/2 inches wide, and stick back onto rectangle to form an edging. You can use a beaten egg as glue. Spread tart base with frangipane filling. Peel and core apples, and slice thinly (each apple should yield about 16 slices, i.e cut apple into quarters and then cut again into 4 slices). Arrange apple slices over filling. Try to make the slices look pretty. I usually arrange them in long columns. Sprinkle the apples with a bit of cinnamon and sugar. Bake at between 180 to 200 Celcius (350 to 400 F) for about 40 minutes until pastry is golden brown and apples are tender. Serve hot, warm, or at room temperature with icecream or whipped cream.

I can imagine that this tart would also be wonderful with many other kinds of fruit: pears, blueberries, and peaches come to mind. You could also do a tart with just the frangipane, in which case I would double up on the amount of filling and then sprinkle the top with sliced almonds and cinnamon.

The Woozy Woo Transformation

I don't know what other people call it, but I call it my woozy woo and it has changed how I cook. Basically, what you have is a mini food processor, a mobile blender, and a quick whipper. Now, you probably have all these capabilities in other machines if you have a food processor and/or a blender/ and/or mixer. BUT do you ever pull any of these things out, just to make a tiny quantity of sauce? No, you don't. So that is what is so great about this thing. It is small and portable and it just works great. Suddenly, blending herbs, onions, and olive oil is not a big job but a quick little easy job. Chop some nuts to sprinkle on a salad? No problem and no fuss. Last night we had some friends over for dinner; the woozy woo was working overtime. I used it to to make breadcrumbs from fresh bread; I pureed pumpkin; I whipped up two sauces for steak (recipes below); and finally I chopped up nuts and mixed up a crumble to top my apple pie. OK, I realize I sound like an infomercial here but I really do love this gadget. Really.

I have had two. This particular product shown in the picture is more like the first one I got. Works great. The one I have now is a bit more involved because it has two separate little mini food processors...a bigger one and smaller one. Also, the blender thing is metal. Amazon doesn't appear to be selling the one I have now. But, I think probably the first one I had was a tad bit better, because the small food processor is sometimes, well, a bit too small, while the big one is too big.

Tom's Anchovy and Garlic Paste
This is very garlicy, salty, and strong. It tastes fantastic with steak, which is how it was first served to me at a wonderful dinner with Tom and Elisha. I haven't yet got their recipe but I liked it so much that I tried to recreate it. I think Tom handgrates the garlic, which gives a prettier texture but they don't (yet) have a woozy woo or I am sure they would use it! I think this would taste nice on toast or on buttered pasta.
1 small can anchovies in olive oil
about 1 head garlic
some olive oil
Peel the garlic and open the can of anchovies. Take about 5 cloves of garlic, the can of anchovies and dump into the woozy woo. Pour in a bit of oil to lubricate. Whiz it up and taste. It should be salty and garlicy. If you like more garlic, then go ahead and put in a few more cloves. I used about 3/4 of a head. Whiz until it is a smooth puree, adding a bit of olive oil if necessary. You may need to get out a spoon and push the bits down. Put into a little bowl and serve alongside steak. Since the puree is not such an appealing color, I drizzled a bit of olive oil on top.

Amendment: Tom has since come back to me on this sauce and he advises not adding the olive oil that the anchovies are packed in but just using fresh olive oil. He also suggests chopping half of the anchovies and adding it into the sauce at the end for texture. Finally, some chopped fresh parsley would work well as a garnish so that "it doesn't look so much like regurgitated cat food." He also notes that the original recipe was from Chez Panisse Cafe cookbook, so there is some pedigree here. Still, it will always be Tom's sauce to me!

Argentinean Chimichurri Salsa
We love this sauce which we first had on a pigeon hunt in Argentina. For lunch they would stoke up a fire outside where ever we were shooting and grill huge slabs of meat and sausages, which they would serve with this sauce. No vegetables or starch. Just meat and sauce. I think it would taste great with fish or chicken also. After these huge lunches, they would string up hammocks so we could have a nap. Bliss.
4 fl oz olive oil
2 fl oz red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon dried oregano (can use fresh)
one big bunch flat leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon crushed red chili flakes
1 large clove garlic
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon salt
Combine all ingredients in woozy woo. The heat of the chili does not come out immediately, so don't put more in until you let it sit for a while. This can be made in advance and kept in the frig for a couple of days.

Pie by Ken Haedrich

Now is the season for....pie, of course! With the holidays and colder weather approaching, what we all need is a delicious piece of pie. And if you want to make great pie, then you need this cookbook. It will have you salivating over every page and recipe. There is a pie for every person here. The book also contains what I love in a cookbook, which is a lot of chitchat regarding each recipe and helpful tips.

Now, of course, the crust is what makes pies challenging. This book goes in-depth into how to make a good crust and has many different recipes. But the author is not a pie snob; he even includes recipes for store bought crusts. So, you have no excuse.

For Thanksgiving, I love his selection of different pumpkin and nut pies. I have recently fallen in love with Maple Pumpkin Pie, which I then top with Golden Marshmallow Topping from a different recipe. Another favorite is Pumpkin-Praline Pie, which is a pumpkin pie topped with a pecan topping; sort of two pies in one. Another fantastic pie is Angel Pie, which is a meringue crust topped with whipped cream and fruit, served with a custard sauce. I made this for a dinner party and it was spectacular. I also made individual portions of Angel Pie with strawberries for a mid-summer party. There are so many pies in this book, in fact over 300, that you will want to make pie every day. Tonight, we are having friends over and I will be making The Mother of All Apple Pies. Wish me luck and get this book!