Think On It

I’ve had days like this, have you?

John Paul Gaultier via the Telegraph.

11 comments February 28th, 2007

Black pepper shrimps with cabbage

Yesterday my Umbrian neighbor gave me this. It looked like a rose to me. A rose is a rose… unless it isn’t.

Here Julianna made this dish and blogged it!
Today I made this dietetic dish from one fourth of it. This is cavolo verza, more or less I think Savoy cabbage. Considering that Savoia is a part of Italy and the family from which the king came, it is odd that they don’t use that name … cavolo di Savoia. But they don’t. Having eaten this now, I think I would have preferred the plain, white cabbage, which is called cavolo capuccio, or hooded cabbage. This, however, is what I had today.

For one person you need:

• about 1/4 of a cabbage, sliced as thinly as you can slice with a knife
• about 1/4 of a red pepper or capsicum or peperone, which are all the same thing, julienned
• 1 clove of garlic, sliced thinly
• 8 ounces of small, peeled shrimp

Prepare the ingredients before cooking, because this takes mere moments. Heat about 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil, not olive oil, in a wok. Toss in the garlic, the pepper and the cabbage and add about 1/4 teaspoon of salt, a good pinch. Stir and fry briefly, until the cabbage loses the raw taste but is still quite crunchy. Add the shrimp and toss again until they are just pinked up. Generously grind coarse black pepper over it, stir in and plate the dish. It takes quite a lot of pepper to taste peppery over the sweet blend of cabbage and shrimp.

And here, my friends, it is!

As always, click on the photo to enlarge it.

3 comments February 28th, 2007

Female Architecture

Martin Margiela seems to be re-imagining the female architecture in this week’s Milan ready-to-wear shows. From top to bottom the girl here has had the lines of her body altered or obscured. I have had moments when that would have been a welcome result, but I wonder if it is powerful enough to carry a ready-to-wear line?

The rest of the collection, as reported by the UK Telegraph, can be reached by clicking on the link. Even more of the collection has been published here. All the pieces shown alter the woman in some way, some are pretty and some bizarre. What do you think? Ready for some curtains for your legs?

Today we receive yet another flash from the feminine architecture stylists.

Jeremy Scott, this time, and you can see more at this link.

2 comments February 27th, 2007

Something fun to do!

Go to this site and see what will happen if you dig a hole right through the earth.  Your mom always said you’d come out in China, didn’t she?  Chances are overwhelming that she was wrong.

6 comments February 26th, 2007

Gioia Scatenata (Unrestrained Joy)

Today I received a “Box from Home” which for expats is something in the line of winning a local lottery or an all-expenses-paid week in New York. I get them often, but I have never shared them before– not because I am not excited, but because I am selfish and private.

The reason I am sharing this one is because it hit so many gongs in a row! I went through the house looking for a really American setting for it, and found this antique wedding ring quilt on the daybed. Hunh!

First, look at all those books! That represents weeks of entertainment while Spring gets a move on and the fog and rain go away. Then, the Tee shirt– the fabric below it I have had for years and now I know what to do with it, because some of the seashells match the shirt. There is a big ole silicone pastry mat that I really could have used when I made Hot Silk, too. This one has shapes and measurements on it, so you don’t have to guess when the pastry is the right size. There is Avena lip balm and Burt’s Bees tinted lip gloss. There’s a new body cream which promises to make me glow. I could use some glowing. There is mint flavored dental tape– how terrific is that?

There is also a new brain game for my Nintendo ds. Happy day!

But then there is that big sack of cocoa nibs. Just wow. Really. I love those and in small quantities I can have them on this diet! My mind is reeling with ideas for recipes once I can cook freely again. Lamb in spicy tomatoes with cocoa nibs? Butterscotch pudding with these stirred in? Oh my, oh my.

I am a very happy dame today. Thank you, eg.

5 comments February 26th, 2007

Where would you wear this?

I like the comments made on the other fashion post from yesterday. I would love to hear your ideas on where you would wear these designs from the Autumn/winter collections. So, get clever!

All are from the Telegraph, fashion reporting of choice.

13 comments February 24th, 2007

To Inspire You

How is this for a reasonable goal? Unlike a lot of runway fashion, this could be worn by many woman in reasonable shape. The photo is from the UK Telegraph.

This, on the other hand, doesn’t look like it would go anywhere I go.

6 comments February 23rd, 2007

My Other Work

The winter article on fashion has just been published at Slow Travel. It’s quite different this time. Go have a peek.

2 comments February 21st, 2007

Your Red Carpet

Who knows what feels like that to you? It could be a special dinner where you will meet new people, or someone’s family or an inaugural ball. We do remember proms and our first dances, don’t we?

The Telegraph online publishes some of the most interesting and complete style and fashion pages I know. This week they have a couple of pages I really liked. The first set is about Helen Mirren. She is sixty-two, an age which many people think means if you haven’t given up you’re missing a reality check or two. I consider that utter nonsense, and so does Mirren. Helen Mirren has one red carpet night after another all over the world. Here is a page that shows the difference having a stylist has made to her. Lucky us! She pays, we get the advice for free. Click through to the photos that show how she used to dress and how she dresses now. Use the information, because unless you are Bjork, it applies also to you in red carpet circumstances. It could also translate to the everyday things you wear to the supermarket. Why even own a sweatshirt that makes you look like a fabric apple? Why not make that into a gym bag and buy a washable sweater with a shape that flatters yours?

The other page made me cringe. It’s about mirrors in changing rooms. I remember all too well shopping at stores where the space, the lighting and most of all the mirror guaranteed that if you did not fall to the floor blubbering in grief over your lost youth and shape, you’d found exactly what you should wear. Changing room mirrors are almost always cheap. They at best reflect what you look like from too close up in rotten lighting. At worst they distort you, giving you an elongated neck and wavy, shortened legs. Some places have fat mirrors and some have thin mirrors. We know that, no matter that Professor Gardner says it isn’t true. It is true. The shop where I buy lots of things has three mirrors: one fat, one thin and one pretty accurate but with nasty fluorescent lighting. I am forced to walk all over the store to get an averaged impression of “does this make me look” and use your own word at the end of that.

If, by chance, you are thinking of installing a mirror in your own house, here’s what I know from my former life as a designer. Buy the equivalent of 1/4″ clear float glass. Mount it on MDF to be sure it is stable. What else you do to it is up to you, the rest is just decoration. If, however, you want a relatively happy life as well as a really good look at yourself, use halogen flood lamps in the lighting of you, not the mirror. It will show your flaws, if you have any, but it will not drain your complexion of color and make you look like Marilyn Manson.

9 comments February 21st, 2007

Seafood Stew with Cheddar Cheese

Last night, with Lent drawing near, I invited some friends to supper to eat the fattening dish I had promised to write up for Palma. How did Palma know about it? In a Slow Travel off topic thread, a friend in Maine asked what to do when life weighs too heavy. I suggested she go hiking to the Atlantic coast and sit on a big, black rock and ponder life while eating lobster (because she is after all in Maine and does not have to sell children to buy lobster) stew with cheddar to keep off the chill. Palma then sent me mail asking if such a thing really existed, and if so, could she have the recipe?

The recipe didn’t exist. Why? Because the original recipe used a frozen soup brand that hasn’t existed for decades. Could it be revived? Of course it could. I promised her I would write a new recipe for it and post it here.

Time passed and I had made it only once, and that’s not enough to publish, in my estimation. It was a huge success though, and was the first dish I’ve made that my neighbor, Olga, had ever asked how it was done. That was encouraging, although because it has cheddar cheese in it, it did Olga no good. Cheddar nearly doesn’t exist at all in Italy, and short of going to Torino or Milano or a French grocery in a faraway town, you can’t buy it here. Olga will do none of the aforementioned.

With Lenten dieting looming I knew it had to be made again and tested again in a hurry. Luckily, some young friends had sent me some cheddar from England and it was in the freezer. Like others keep their jewels in a safety deposit box, Americans and British keep cheddar in the freezer. It makes us feel rich and rife with possibilities.

The menu last night started with an antipasto of pecorino fresco (not aged), pecorino stagionato (aged) and a very aged fontina all served with the peach mostarda with balsamic vinegar I put up in October. I can’t remember how I made that, so I will have to do it again in peach season this year. I loved it and so did everybody else. The mostarda had lost quite a lot of its piquancy since October, but it was still there. It was intensely fruity and was perhaps the best use of balsamico I’ve experienced yet. I am a very sparing balsamico user. I am not sold on the profligate use that is normal these days. We drank Prosecco with the antipasto.

After that we had bowls of the shrimp and cheddar stew over rice with a Nero D’Avola from Terra Gaia to drink and hot from the oven hard rolls. The rolls were okay, but the kitchen was cold because I had a fire in the fireplace and the thermostat cut off the heat. They rose in a warmed oven, but when I removed them to heat the oven to cooking temperature, they turned out to be slackers and shrank a lot. They rose only partway back in the oven, and overall, they may have been worth it for the perfume they lent the house, but as rolls they were just okay.

We continued with a plate of thinly sliced Swiss chard ( bietola) stir fried with garlic and a few whole bird chilies.

For dessert we had a new recipe that no matter how hard I try to jump onto the salt caramel wagon that was shoved off by David Lebowitz, keeps coming to my mind named “Not Pie.” So that’s what it is, not pie.

This stew is from many years ago when I used to climb autumnal cliffs with my husband and my little eg. It has been many years since I could carry eg on my back, let alone swing from grapevines while carrying her on my back. Ergo, it is many years since I have felt like I could indulge in this dish, but in the interest of science and the warm calm it brings my tummy, it is here recreated. I think you could use any of the sweet shellfish in it, but I have only used lobster and shrimps. Scallops, really big ones, keep popping into my helpless mind.

I do not know why it was named Thermidor. It resembles neither the real recipe for anything Thermidor, nor the battle of Thermidor, although it might have been a comfort after the battle.

Shrimp Thermidor Stew

3 medium potatoes, peeled
1 medium/large onion, peeled and rough chopped
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon butter
water just to cover

about 1 cup of milk–or cream, if you need to gain weight
a couple of shakes of Tabasco, or a pinch of ground chili pepper (peperoncino)

600 g or 1-1/2 pounds of shelled shrimps—frozen work just fine (or a similar amount of lobster meat or crab meat)

about 5 ounces or 150 g of cheddar cheese, shredded

salt to taste
freshly ground pepper

very finely minced parsley leaves—i.e., parsley dust

2 cups uncooked plain long grain rice, cooked according to directions on the package.

To dice the potatoes, slice a bit less than ¼”thick, and then cut into approximate ½” square.

Heat the tablespoon of butter in a large, heavy cooking pot, and toss in the onion and the salt. Sauté the onion until transparent, and then add the potatoes. Add water just to cover. Cover and simmer until they are done. Drain almost all of the water. You can choose to stop here and finish closer to mealtime.

Using a potato masher or a stick blender, partially mash the potatoes in the pan. Leave about ¼ of the pieces whole. Add the milk and put over a low flame. Shake in the Tabasco or the chili. Heat to a simmer, stirring. Add the shrimps and bring to a simmer, stirring. Grind pepper generously over the pot, and then taste for salt. Be careful not to over salt, because the cheese will also add salt. You may also stop here and finish later.

With the stew at a simmer, stir in the shredded cheddar. Serve immediately in soup plates (piatti fondi) over a generous serving of cooked rice. Sprinkle with parsley dust. Serve immediately.

With two vacuum bottles, at least one of them wide mouthed, this makes excellent hiking food, being hot, substantial and full of both instant and enduring energy sources. In other words, if you are hiking or climbing or skiing, etc., it’s not fattening. Don’t put the rice and stew together, because the rice will settle and the first eater will get all stew and the last will get all rice.

My Italian friends thought of this as a soup. Stew, soup, it doesn’t really matter. I explained that in American cooking there isn’t a primo piatto, but usually a piatto unico and they seemed satisfied to leave it at that.

Not Pie

This is like the middle of an apple pie, no pastry. Does that make it dietetic? In your dreams. It can be made for one or 20. All you need to worry about is the size frying pan it would take to hold 20 apples.

You use one apple per person. Here the recipe is for four.

4 crisp, somewhat tart apples. I used 3 kinds, mostly Annurka, my favorite here, 1 Rome and one huge one I don’t know. Do not peel them, just core them and cut into slim wedges

3 tablespoons butter
½ cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (canella)
¼ teaspoon nutmeg (noce moscato in polvere)
2 decent pinches of sel gris or another natural sea salt (you may decide to use more when you taste partway through the cooking, but don’t use less.)

Heat the butter in a wide and capacious frying pan that has a good lid. Throw in the prepared apple wedges and then sprinkle over them the sugar and seasonings.

Reduce the heat to low and put on the lid. Leave them alone to cook until they are tender.

Turn off the heat and leave them alone until you need dessert. When ready to serve dessert, remove the lid and heat again on medium heat, stirring a bit to coat the apples, until warm. Spoon the apples onto dessert plates and spoon the caramel over them.

Add a small pool of plain heavy cream next to the caramel. Eat with a spoon.

As always, clocking on a photo will enlarge it. Most of the photos I shoot and use here can be seen at FlickR and if you think I have selected the wrong photo for something, let me know and I will rethink it based on your opinion.

8 comments February 19th, 2007