things we eat and drink, at home and out and about
Who says you can only use “Indian” spices for Indian food? Definitely not me!
I unleashed my full creativity on the kitchen and I ended up with an omelette, mushrooms and salad.
Continue reading “An improvised Indo-Spanish dinner”
While the Fallas festival in Valencia is quite well-known, the Sant Antoni (Saint Anthony)’s celebrations are less flamboyant, more inward looking. A domestic affair, say, for the locals and by the locals.
Happening around the 17th of January, it is a very unassuming celebration: there is a parade where people bring their animals to church to get a blessing, there will be a small market called “porrat” with stalls selling, amongst other yummy things, delicious nuts, figs and confectionery based on those (which are also called “porrat”), and finally one or more bonfires will burn and light up the dark January night, spreading the aroma of pine wood all around the neighbourhood.
All good things!
Continue reading “Pa de Sant Antoni (Saint Anthony’s bread)”
Update: I thought this was sage. It is actually rock rose (jara in Spanish). The leaves are very similar but when they’re in flower or have fruits they look different! The good news is this isn’t toxic as I’m still writing this myself!
One of my favourite things to do when I visit my home town is to have a walk in the countryside.
It’s a great chance to observe the extremely rich flora, as there are hundreds of aromatic and medicinal herbs, and that’s not even counting the trees.
Continue reading “Foraging, II: rock rose omelette”
When I was about eight years old, one of my cousins started helping at home, which meant she’d pick us from school and cook lunch etc. One side of her family came from Castile where the winters are very cold and you have to eat substantial food, so she started introducing us to stout meat and potato stews and other new ingredients that I wasn’t familiar with, which was quite a change from the food I was used to eating.
At the beginning, I was fine with this situationâthe food was generally OK and the novelty didn’t bother me excessively. Plus, having her around meant I got to stop being the oldest of the younger people in the household (and thus didn’t have to be The Role Model all the time). And I most definitely loved teasing her teenage vanity; I took a special interest in hiding her cigarettes so she couldn’t smoke đ
Continue reading “How I came to love lentils again”
A kick in the pants is a coffee-based drink, consisting in one shot of espresso added to a cup of drip coffee.
You get the aroma and almost all the purity and cleanliness of the drip coffee, and the espresso adds some extra body (and caffeine). It’s something in between the two; worth trying out!
Since the only thing that can fight indulgent stupors is a cup of strong espresso coffee, and there’s been a bunch of said stupors during these festive days, I’ve been making good use of our Bialetti coffee maker.
If we don’t drink all the espresso in a batch, I store it in a jar and use it the next day to make a couple of “kick in the pants”.
Continue reading “Kick in the pants”