I love cooking, and I've given away enough food that I need to post some recipes! Most recipes I find online and then add to or tailor as needed or necessary, so here goes nothing.
Granola: My Pride and Joy.
1. Granola.
I tried a few different recipes, and the one that finally worked for me was a mixture of different oils and oats and nuts. It started from the Smitten Kitchen recipe, and I went with the following to make it more my style. Also, I use grams so I can more effectively utilize my kitchen scale.
100 grams each hazelnuts, pumpkin sees, sunflower seeds (or just 300 grams any nuts you like)
150 grams cashews (because I love cashews)
300 grams oats (the normal ones, nothing cut or fancy)
Handful flax seeds, chia seeds, and bran
200 ml coconut oil
3 Tablespoons olive oil
Drip of honey
2 egg whites (whisked until frothy)
Cinnamon. I put a lot in, sometimes during, sometimes after I spread it out.
(Note: this original recipe called for maple syrup, which I wasn't keen on. I use my glass measuring cup, measure the coconut oil, add the olive oil, then add honey until I get to 220 mL of fluid, not including the eggs)
Oven is at 300 degrees. All nuts are crushed, and ingredients combined.
Spread all on parchment sheet in a tight layer.
Bake 45-55 minutes, turning over carefully half way through.
When browned and dry the way you like, remove.
Add some dried fruit (I like cranberries) and keep in airtight container.
Second recipe you may like is here. I found this one a bit like crack, and couldn't stop eating it. So, I stopped making it.
I've tried a lot of green soups (spinach, broccoli, etc) and found them wanting. My yellow and orange blends are far more satisfying. Peas didn't blend so well for me. I prefer the spinach cooked. Etc, etc.
A friend also told me she puts red curry paste into her soups sometimes. And that news made me put red curry in my pumpkin soup. I've more often made butternut squash soup with a similar method. And it is amazingly easy with a bit of coconut milk.
An average K dinner.
A few things here.
I eat this spinach daily. I saute it in some garlic (that I prepare every week or two in a hand blender) and it takes about 2 minutes. Usually, I heat up whatever I'm eating for leftovers and while it cooks, I make spinach.
Here is also some salmon, which came from this recipe. This one also does salmon well. Salmon is easy to buy here, and easy to cook in the oven. In fact, it is the only meat in my kitchen ever.
The squash is another variation on the soup that I love. Here's a recipe for squash with golden beets (which I've never been able to find) and tahini.
Prep, and Prep, and Prep, and Prep.
Another soup, the ingredients of which you see here, is Mexican Vegetable Soup. Chop up a bunch of peppers and onion (and I replace the corn and beans with zucchini and mushrooms) and you have yourselves some soup that tastes like taco night. (Not really, but there is a hint of Mexico in the cayenne and the spices). Also, it is relaxing to cook this when I need to zen out in prep for a few hours.
Cook all the things!
This shows a few things on the stove. The back pot is tomato sauce. That's coming up next. The side is pumpkin soup (I would guess). The pan with all the eggplant and zucchini is a green curry in the making.
I don't have a recipe for this, but I chop up these things I love (zucchini, eggplant, onion), and put them in the skillet with some olive oil until they are brown and I want to eat them. Then, I put the curry paste in the skillet, get it warm, and add some coconut milk until it looks good. I can elaborate more if necessary, but that's the basics.
Tomato sauce in the making.
Finally, one of my favorites. Homemade tomato sauce. Spicy tomato sauce, to be exact. I remember I tried to make spaghetti sauce once in Cambodia (for my family) and failed so miserably, so this is a nice success to have. The answer does seem to be "give it more time to simmer" and "add some spices" and that's what I figured out how to do.
This can be used for a variety of things:
- I put it with fried eggs and spinach sometimes, as one of my favorite comfort foods.
- I made this baked eggplant and mushroom dish that tasted amazing.
- I made a version of this shakshuka with it that was also quite good.
- These spicy mushrooms would have worked well with it.
Next up in the cooking this week:
Butternut squash: Roasted whole (saw that in a magazine), Steamed (also magazine) and roasted (perhaps for a soup).
I made this warm eggplant salad with hemp seeds and kvass because it seemed Russian-esque and was pretty good. That recipe needs tailored some though, so I'll play with the rest of the ingredients.
And very little else. School's almost out and it's time to think about travel.
Dessert!
I made this two ingredient sorbet with a pound of raspberries and strawberries, since it is the season. Please enjoy the recipe, which is a pound of fruit, frozen, and a quarter cup of honey. Beautiful.
The sunshine is coming and staying (we hope) and there is light in my windows as early as 3:30 and as late as 9:00, perhaps even more. The sun comes in long and low, and lights up my living room full of red light in the evening. That is, when it isn't so cloudy like right now. It is still spring, a bit chilly at times, wet with rain. But, I've been out most weekends this month, and it is time to share some of the more thrilling events, sights, occasions.
This post is in 4 parts:
Creatures.
Tanks.
Ballerinas.
Cosmonauts.
Event I
Creatures.
I had been hearing a screeching noise while I sat at my desk. I thought maybe I was hearing things for a bit, or that there was a mouse somewhere on my balcony, living some crazy adventurous life. Rizza had eyes and ears for it as well. It's audible when the window is closed, and even more so when the window is open. There were some bumps on the wall, some knocks that said something was somewhere and I didn't know where... or what.
Well, I was sitting at my desk the other day, gazing out the window, and saw a bird fly almost into the window. I walked outside to the balcony to try to have a glance, and sure enough, some pieces of a bird's nest are peeking out from the eve under the window. I believe (and I can't see it without extreme danger to myself) that there is a little birds' nest outside my window. And little baby birds are calling for their mama. Aw, spring.
Rizza can hear them.
Event II
TANKS.
Victory Day was May 9, the day that the soldiers returned to Moscow having defeated the enemy. This, apparently, leads to some pretty fascinating events. The buzz was about the school about Victory Day and the parades. For at least 4 times before the big day, they have rehearsals, where some streets are closed and the tanks go through the city to practice their Red Square debut. A few times from our office window (at school), we could see the planes in formation heading up for a rehearsal as well.
I was pretty excited about the tanks. And with this excitement, here comes something of the misadventure of the K.
I knew that there was no way to get into Red Square, because it was against the rules.
I knew that there was some way to see the tanks, and that there was a route of the parade.
I knew the approximate times for the events, but not necessarily the places for them.
So, I went out to Tverskaya (aka one huge road towards Red Square) when I knew they were having a rehearsal. I saw a ton of people out, seeming to walk toward a parade spot, with families in tow. And, perhaps I assumed that there was something about to happen. I waited and waited, not knowing exactly what the situation was. I watched a man put his fist through a display window and get removed by a small section of security guards/police. I bought a few waters. I enjoyed the sunshine.
I saw no tanks.
I did, however, see planes.
All the planes. I didn't get a ton of great photos because I watched the planes and not the phone, but I think this video is decent.
I was disappointed, because after the planes, the people began to disperse and I knew that my tank experience had been thwarted.
But.
There was another chance.
That was just the rehearsal, not the actual day.
So, Victory Day rolled around, and I got up earlier than usual (because I didn't have curtains and the sun was up and bright at 4). I had some coffee, relaxed a bit. And decided that this day was the day to see tanks. This would have been easier if I had, say, asked someone for help. Alas, that was not to be. I walked to this place near the zoo, and asked a policeman if the tanks had gone already. He said yes. I went to a second place, and asked the police and innocent bystanders (there are some crowds here that surprise me at times) what they were waiting to see, and if it was tanks. It was not.
Finally, I walked to the third place, the end of the parade route, and found the policeman.
"Da," he said. I asked a second policeman (because they were just 15 feet apart). "Da," he says.
And so, I hunkered down with my book, at a cafe looking out the window. Because, it was mighty cold and wet that day. Nothing like the beautiful sunny and blue day of the planes. I had a coffee, and waited. They had both said 10, but 10 rolled around without any tanks in appearance.
10:15, more people, more crowds, but still cars on the road.
10:30, more people, more crowds, no tanks yet.
10:45, no more cars, more people...
TANKS.
It was 20 solid minutes of tanks. Soldiers were waving, or just looking serious. I was waving, and looking like a super happy fool. The street was moving with the tank weight. It was fucking awesome.
Then, that evening, we went on a boat cruise on the river to see the fireworks, and that was another beautiful (cold) evening. Such an amazing place that I live in.
Moscow smoky with fireworks.
Event III:
Ballerinas
There were two ballerina themed things of this month.
One, a staff trip, took me to one of the Seven Sisters (super tall buildings you see all over Moscow) to the apartment of a famed ballerina (Galina Ulanova) which was preserved with her things, her photos, and her memorabilia.
A few of my favorite photos:
Our tour guide, a ballerina herself, with some footage of Galina on the screen.
She taught, as many ballerinas do, when her dancing career had slowed.
I would love to have seen this moment.
She had a tiny little barre installed in a practice section of her apartment.
The second ballerina-esque thing that happened was the viewing of a new movie that looked amazing. It is in Russian, but it's also about dance, so I have confidence in your ability to enjoy the trailer.
Here's the trailer:
So, after dance on a Saturday, Katya the dance teacher and I (and another gal, Olga), went out to the movies to see this show. I was happy to go with a Russian speaker, because I knew that there were things that I would miss otherwise. I can get the gist of these things, but not quite all the details.
You have to choose your seat, like in other places I've been. Here's the cash desk.
Concession Stand and movie poster.
Katya got a big popcorn to split with Olga, and I got an Americano, because coffee is served and it is such a beautiful thing. We could also have bought beer, which I find so interesting. We went into the theatre, found our seats in the corner of a pretty small cinema room.
The film is about this young girl from the country who, through a series of events, finds herself in the big Academy under the wing of that terrifying looking teacher. Said teacher has some form of dementia and is struggling to remember the girls that she teaches from day to day, and the things that she does. There's a plot around the earrings that the trailer shows; the teacher gifts them to the student, then forgets that she has done so, and she almost gets expelled from the school for this.
There's a parallel plot of competition between the two girls. The film follows them from youth into a more mature age, and they are always fighting for roles. The main girl seems to have more talent, but the other one has more money. At one point, her wealthy mother begs to the dance teacher to give her a role, and then pays off the other girl for the same role: the lead in Swan Lake.
There's a handful of other themes covered: alcoholism and drug abuse, the problem of going home to the country when you've been in the city as a ballerina, some intimacy and boy issues, and some struggles with food. All in all, a fantastic film.
Event IV:
Tulips and Cosmonauts
The weather has been warming up some (although those who have lived here for some time do say that this is a chilly sort of spring). And, so I've been going on walks to see some of my gorgeous city. I've been recently to the botanical gardens, a place that was somewhat small but full of all kinds of tulips. It was also easy to get to and is perfect for warm weather as it is outside.
I do feel a certain affinity for tulips given their relationship to home for me. Pella must be getting tulips at this time of year as well, and I can imagine that they are blooming so gloriously at home. I've heard words that indicate that these bulbs are a gift from the Dutch for some long-standing rescue of the old days, but I cannot confirm or deny this claim.
Recently, I've also been to see the Cosmonaut's Museum.
That tall tower is massive. And it towers over the rest. It is the monument to the Cosmonauts and the Space Race.
(It's always the food with me)
The museum was incredible, full of glorious nods to the Russian space program. I've just finished a book about space, Seveneves, which had a huge contingent of the Russian space race. I found a few things in the museum that the book mentioned or nodded to, and it was quite thrilling to see it all. It's underneath this huge tower that you see, in something of a basement, but it is full of models and artifacts and photos of space.
I just jumped in on my way to other things (read: to enjoy the sunshine), but I will go back again and immerse myself in the paraphrenalia that it had to offer.
On my walk, I also enjoyed the large "theme park" known as VDNKh.
Even Wikipedia gives me unclear reasons why it was built, but it seemed to be a nod to some of the Soviet states, with pavillions of all kinds that house different things. There are a few museums, and one of the pavillions I visited had a small market. Some of the buildings look quite run down, though there was also a horse park where I saw riders in a corral.
Does this do the scale of this place justice? I'm not convinced.
Shiny fountain.
Rockets! Airplanes! Why?
I'll be walking a lot in future weekends, I believe. And there will be more photos all along the way. This walk ended with some gardens (including a Japanese Garden) and a ride in the new train that goes around the ring. It was truly a beautiful spring day (if a bit brisk).
Have I said before how much I love Moscow? Because truly, I do.
With the madness of the first year at this school, I didn't make time to blog about some of the awesome cities in Europe I went this year. Therefore, I thought I would put them all together in one blog, with photos and strong memories that have stuck with me. This goal of mine to see some of Europe is going to keep me busy for quite some time.
September 2016: Prague
Librarians Conference with Kris
There's a book tower in one of the libraries in Prague.
As we were all librarians enjoying the sights, this was a thing that we saw.
A "famous" dessert in Prague is the Trdelnik, with a cone made from some dough rolled in cinnamon sugar,
with insides of ice cream. I had one with apples and cinnamon, and it was a beautiful treat.
Kris and I were thrilled that we got "carded" on the bus. The public transport works like an honor system - you buy and validate your tickets, and when you least expect it, someone will come on and check your ticket. We were on our last ride in Prague, some of our last tickets, and we were thrilled to get caught following the rules.
An overlook of the city, from a museum of science in conjunction with the famed Prague library
(which we weren't allowed to photograph). It's old, and bricked, and beautiful.
Prague was a great time, and the conference was fantastic!
October 2016: Geneva and the French Alps
Birthday Celebration with Peter
Birthday Cake! A lovely cheesecake. Someone tried to wake me up for cake at 3:32 (my birth day in this time zone)
but we ate it at a more reasonable hour instead.
The view in our little mountain chalet. This is one of my favorite photos.
At one point, our water was being finicky, so I drew a bath the old fashioned way.
We did some geocaching and exploring of both the French and Swiss borders.
The view.... the glorious view.
November 2016: Paris
More time with Peter
The first... 50 of my photos in Paris were pastry related. I'll spare you the trouble of looking through them all.
Just know... they exist.
There's this church in Paris that was turned into an academy of science, and then a museum: Arts et Metiers. It was fantastic, and there was everything from an iPod (first edition, how old I feel), to models of architecture.
We saw a pianist in an old church, all echoey and cold.
The Jardin du Luxembourg was so gorgeous! Also chilly.
Okay, just one more food. Crepes. They put chocolate sticks in there!
November 2016: Sofia, Bulgaria
MS Robotics Trip
The school in Sofia has creatures and nature. Our kids were quite amused.
Our robotics team hard at work.
They told us that it was difficult to build the metro because they had all these ruins underneath the city.
Here is a handful.
There was even an old spring that popped up in the middle of the city.
We, of course, all drank from it. (Maybe I'll live forever now).
December 2016: Lyon, France
Christmas with Peter
We looked around the old city of Lyon, into this old church and beautiful decorations.
I lit a candle for one of the saints.
This was a chocolate maker, and I loved his shop so intensely. He was a bit of the strong silent type, but the lady running the shop front (shockingly to us, his wife) was chatty and delightful. I tasted some dark chocolates of all kinds and enjoyed the feel of the shop.
We bought this colorful plethora of veggies at the local grocery store, and I made a ton of food.
This beautiful bouquet, though, I barely knew what to do with myself. Plus this garlic was absolutely perfect.
I took a French cooking class, and basically learned that if you add enough cream or butter, it will be delicious.
I also learned to make Foie Gras, which I made for Peter. It was all in French, but luckily, a few nice ladies took me under their wing and helped me figure out some of the finer points.
My favorite thing to visit when I travel is botanical gardens.
The gardens in Lyon had this little tropical greenhouse, which was nice because it was so chilly that day!
There will be more and more throughout the next years. I am loving Europe, and will enjoy Portugal and Amsterdam in the coming months.
It's early in the morning here in Moscow. The sun is already peeking through the sky with some golds and reds and it is just 4:30. I woke up thinking about food, a common occurrence.
Within the last few months, I saw a television show on Netflix called Chef's Table. This show looks at some famous chefs around the world, their restaurants, and what it is they are doing in them. This became my favorite show in record time. I love the music, the backdrop, the variety... and it is about people making good food for humans to enjoy.
One of those people was Gaggan Anand, a chef working in Bangkok at a restaurant called Gaggan. The theme of his restaurant is progressive Indian, and he takes the flavors of India and the produce of Bangkok to make amazing dishes.
In February, Peter and I went to Gaggan, and it was absolutely stunning. The menu was all emojis, one after the other, and the courses came out so quickly. And, we have photos of every single dish, but I'll spare you the 28 different pictures, knowing that some highlights will suffice. I'll admit that it is a trial to restrain myself, but this would be a mighty long post otherwise.
This is the emoji menu, with the different pieces. The entertaining part of the menu was trying to guess which things would be coming based on the menu.
This is Yogurt Explosion, one dish that Gaggan is famous for. He took the yogurt of Indian cuisine and found a way to keep it in this egg shape, so when you eat it, it breaks into your mouth and the texture is incredible.
This black dot was a highlight of mine. I can't be certain what all is in it, but it tasted like charcoal bread, deep and rich and full, and it was almost crunchy in the texture. At Gaggan, the textures were nearly superior to the tastes.
This was the ice cream emoji.
It is uni, in a crepe cone, and the presentation is enough to make you smile.
It was difficult to photograph this, but this would have been my favorite moment and close to my favorite dish. It was the tomato emoji, and it was a tomato matcha that the chef had to prepare at our table. He scooped in the powder for the tea, poured some water from the teapot. Whipped it up with a special bamboo tool, shook it around to release the aromas. The whole moment had this ceremony and this ritual to it that was simply wonderful, and when you put the bowl to your lips, the smell enveloped you in this incredible smell.
And then, the chef himself. We had such a great time at Gaggan, and I realized that I enjoy the lingering over dinner, the food that keeps coming and never makes you full. We were seated around 6:30 and left around 9:30, so our meal was long and glorious. A dish would come out, you could enjoy it, and then it would vanish and another one would take its place. Plus, having the bite-sized food gives the opportunity to taste all these different meals and enjoy them all, taste them all, with a stomach that can manage.
In fact, I liked this Prix Fixe idea so much that I found another restaurant for it in Bangkok, for the next trip.
Sidebar: The food in Bangkok might be my favorite food. There are so many restaurants there, of all kinds and calibers, and it might be my favorite place to eat. I display as evidence this photo of me at a steakhouse called El Guacho. Even coming from steak country, I've never tasted anything so delicious.
But that's neither here nor there.
In April, we went to a restaurant called Sra Bua, at the Kempinski Hotel. There was a menu there, called The Journey, which was heralded in some of the local news as a fantastic modern Thai cuisine, and we wanted to give it a try. I'm sad to say that we didn't get photos, because of Songkran.
The service at Sra Bua was some of the best I have ever encountered. In fact, when I think back to dinner, the service was the tipping point to make it one of the fanciest meals I've ever had. Every person on staff knew what was happening, knew service in this fancy restaurant, and made the effort, and it was just incredible.
Online photo. This was soup you drank from the straw.
They started us with a special dish, for Songkran, a tasting of traditional Thai snacks. In fact, I think we tasted at least 5 different dishes that were gifts from the chef, starters not on the menu, and Songkran specials, because we kept wondering if this was the first dish, or this, or this. There was a little pouch of cashew nuts in basil, a typical Thai street food, and a small skewer that was flash grilled at the table.
Online photo. DIY Noodles.
The food was very Thai, and it honored the Thai traditions while still being new and fun and unusual. There was a traditional soup in a bowl of sand with a straw, and diy noodles in a syringe, which you put into miso soup.
Online photo. Seabass with Apple and Celery.
My favorite was the apple and celery salad, a nod to papaya salad, with the seabass and spicy sauce. The textures and the tastes just converged into this delicious moment. It was fresh, spicy, textured. This place gave a menu that was more than a few bites. Unlike Gaggan, where it was usually one mouthful, Sra Bua was a full, dish that you could get into, over and over again. If a dish was enjoyed (and so many of them were), you could enjoy a few bites of it as opposed to just one.
But, back to Chef's Table.
One of the restaurants featured was White Rabbit, here in Moscow. I have been to White Rabbit, and went back in the fall when I first arrived with some of the other new people. But, this time, I went back to enjoy the full tasting menu.
This restaurant has a story of going down the rabbit hole into a whole new cuisine. From the television program, the Russian style of food was taken back a few eras during the communism reign. From a diverse set of foods into something more streamlined, Russian food has been undergoing a change back into the old style, and the chef (Vladimir Murkhin) has been facilitating that change.
I went to the tasting menu just a few weeks back, and I really enjoyed myself. It was a bit absurd, and I've never had a meal like it. I couldn't decide if I liked the food or if I didn't. The tastes were so unusual, so different, so strong.
Here are a few of the dishes with a few descriptions for you.
Caviar, pear, and mead. And it was strong mead too. Caviar is an unusual texture, with this burst in your mouth of flavor and intense taste.
I loved this little drink, the raspberry/carrot with some vodka. The bite tasted like farmland, with a strong cheese and dried salmon.
This bread with the fresh butter made me want to cry, it was so good. The knife was strange, but that presentation and the smell and tenderness of the bread... Oh man.
A common Russian dish, schi, which was so bright and delicious. The little sandwich is similar to a crabcake, but it was light, and airy, and beautiful like spring.
There's a whole section in the television program about this dish... Moose Lip dumplings. I wasn't sure how I would feel about those, because they look so unusual on the screen. However, this dish was quite nice. I thought the dumplings overpowered the taste of the meat inside, but the sauces were out of this world.
A palate cleanser... Medlar. This is a new favorite fruit, because we ate the ones that they brought us in addition to the sorbet.
As a non-sugar eater, this was my absolute favorite dish. This is technically a dessert, a cake, a mousse, and an ice cream. And, in the last restaurants that I enjoyed, the ends were too sweet. At both of the other restaurants, I left the restaurant thirsty from excess sugar. This dessert, though, was perfect in its savoriness. The base was a black bread of some sort, slightly sweet, then a chocolate mousse, and the top was sour cream ice cream. The black bits on top were some sort of garlic, leading you into a dessert mindset without killing you with sugar.
During lovely dessert, they also brought us these noses. Why? It was unclear at the time, but each of them had a smell on the inside and a name on the outside. I chose one that smelled like gingerbread, one of the more common sweets for fall and Christmas here. Another one smelled like church incense. We made our choices, and as we finished our meal, they gave us little bottles of perfume. Why? It is still somewhat unclear to me.
This ending had to be the finest ending of any menu I've seen so far. This is a very light willow tea, and whipped honey. The waiter was stirring this honey in the bowl, and eventually gave us each a spoonful of it. And it was the best dessert. It was light, and fresh, and so incredibly delicious. I can still taste it, and still think about it.
I leave you with an excited K at a table. I believe that I will be searching for tasting menus wherever I go now.
