Mal Assado – Tuna Omelet (Brazil) ….page 190

Basically, you make an omelet. Not a problem really – no secrets, no tricks, you make an omelet. You just need eggs, a tomato, a green pepper, onion, salt, pepper and…….tuna.  Yes, tuna. I like tuna. I like tuna melts, tuna salad, grilled tuna…but, tuna in an omelet? I was skeptical.  And I found it off-putting that the word “mal” appeared in the title of this recipe since, based on my limited Spanish, I believed to mean “bad”. And, my handy Portuguese to English translator confirmed that yes, “mal” means bad/evil/blight/harm and “assado” means roast. Great. So, basically I am making something that does not sound delicious based on the ingredients and is actually called “evil roast”.  Awesome.

Then this happened:

When I opened the box, I notice that both the top AND the bottom of one egg is cracked. arg.

Yay for organic, free-range eggs! Even if only 5 of 6 are intact.

Not an auspicious start. However – how much do I love that it is much easier in the UK to find free-range, organic eggs? I did my grocery shopping in a little Tesco Express – about the size of a small gas station in the States and there were FOUR types of free-range, organic eggs to choose from!

But I know what you want to know – did I like the taste of tuna in an omelet?

Hmmmmm…..I didn’t NOT like it. But I don’t think I would rush to make it again. I would not call it an “evil” roast. Just an average slightly strange roast.

Another failed omelet flip.

My blog was featured by Mennonite Publishing Network! See their article here:

http://www.mpn.net/news/january10/cooks.html

Dal – India     page 156

Before I share the story of today’s cooking adventure, let me state the obvious: if you want to buy lentils, the Strand is not the street for you. Now, to be fair, I knew that my walk today from the Embankment Victoria Gardens, past the Oscar Wilde memorial, St. Martin-in-the-fields church, through several used bookstores to Tottenham Court Road would not include any of the traditional places one might look to find lentils. Still. I assumed that since lentils are sort of a staple item and very common in many types of cooking that I could pick up a packet of them SOMEWHERE along my walking route.

Oh how I wrong I was.

Places that I looked for lentils:

• South African biltong grocery store
• Spars
• Holland and Barrett
• Unnamed corner shop
• Simply Marks and Spencer
• Japanese food store  at Centre Pointe with all labels in Japanese

• Another corner shop

Things I acquired along the way in my search for lentils:

• yogurt covered raisins
• sunflower seeds
• information about how to score cheap tickets to Legally Blonde
• phone credit for Mateo in Haiti
• lovely jacket potato with beans and cheese
• used copy of Hinduism: a graphic guide
• incredibly cheap DVD of La Vie en Rose
• information about how to get cheap tickets for Enron
• delightful little pink notebooks to take notes in my boring PhD seminar

FINALLY I ended up hiking to a Sainsbury’s store where we had shopped when we used to live here and I found my magic lentils! I was absolutely delighted!

The lentil cooking itself was uneventful. I kept the faith that the dal would eventually be the wonderful consistency of the dal I had in many Indian restaurants….and eventually after an hour of simmering and stirring, my dream of dal was accomplished. I still have about 8/9 of a bag of lentils left and I have already flagged every single recipe in Extending the Table that calls for lentils so that I can make the very best use of my precious lentil purchase.

Lentil Math:

yogurt covered raisins plus sunflower seeds plus.....

Enron ticket information plus La Vie en Rose plus....

Hinduism book plus cute pink notebooks equals....what?

LENTILS, of course!

Well, my sous chef and I have moved back to London so this makes the fifth location that the Great Extending the Table Experiment has broadcast from…. Mateo is temporarily off in Haiti doing good which means that for the next ten days or so I am cooking solo! Incidentally, for all of its greatness, Extending the Table is not the most fantastic book for the single cook since most of the recipes are geared for 4-6 people.

Arroz Caldo (Chicken Rice Soup) Philippines   page 84

I am happy to say that all the problems which ensued with this were entirely my own and not the fault of the recipe. Having said that, oh. my. goodness. It was a difficult night in Emily’s kitchen.

Beginning here – with the “new” stove I will be cooking on for the next few months.

I know it looks harmless....

How would one turn such a stove on? Probably one would turn the cute little clearly marked dial all the way to the right. If you did this, you would see a light come on. You would assume that you had begun boiling your chicken. You would be WRONG. That’s right blog fans…because these dials turn counter-clockwise! But wait- you won’t realize that at first because you have spent so much of your life turning things clockwise!

While standing around, I had plenty of time to take a few photos to illustrate my mysterious stovetop

So you will stand and stand and stand, peering into pans and pots that are not obviously getting much hotter… Eventually you will decide to stop waiting for godot and take some serious action (that’s right, I am back in my West End theatre groove – expect more little off-the-cuff gems like that one!)

Finally I figure out how the stove operates and I continue. The soup was pretty straightforward after that. Unfortunately, I overcooked the garlic and put too much ginger in the recipe so the soup was pretty strong.

Why did I put too much ginger in? I will tell you why – because I am swimming in ginger at the moment! The very smallest bit of ginger that I could purchase at Tesco was this:

Waaaaaaaaaay tooooooooo much ginger for me!

Which is approximately, 38 times as much ginger as I needed. But, on the bright side, I like the descriptive wording of the packaging – zesty, indeed!

And zesty was how I would also describe my soup. Extending the Table notes that this soup is served to people who are recovering from illness or breast-feeding. If my experience tonight meant anything, I would recommend serving it to VERY patient people.

Look at it bubble now!

Soup for one!

Sometimes, a recipe just fails to hit its mark. Sometimes these humiliations are endured in private. (Like the time when I was 11 and unaware that tin foil couldn’t go in a microwave and decided to nuke a Hershey’s kiss)  Other times, the failure is on display in a more public venue. And…unfortunately the latter was the case of the Yan Rou. Not only did this turn out to be a flop, it also flopped as a meal that was served to some friends who have been wonderful mentors to us.

Yan Rou – (Stir-fry with Marinade) China      Page 183

The recipe started out ok – the marinade on the chicken was nice and I had selected an abundance of vegetables, including bamboo which was a new ingredient for me. The aforementioned volcanic stove made the cooking difficult and the rice turned out in a way that could only be described as ‘crunchy’. Meanwhile, over on the wok side of the stove, the meat did not appear to be cooking at all. So, I turn up the heat….causing the rice to burn and the wok to begin spraying hot oil in every direction. Awesome.

Our friends arrive. The food is still not done. Mateo diverts their attention in the dining room. I make Herculean efforts not to shout and swear. Guests wander in the kitchen to greet me and survey what is happening. Rice still not cooking. Wok still seems off. Polite conversation is made. Finally, after about ten more minutes of struggle, I throw in the towel.

Guests insist that this meal is not a flop. One asks, “Is this from Extending the Table?”

Nodnodnod.

“Are you going to blog about this?”

Eventually?

Actually Mateo and I shot a short video of the inventive way that I ATTEMPTED to cook on this difficult stove but I am too cheap to buy a video downloader for wordpress so, dear reader, you are just going to have to use your imagination.

But perhaps this visual aid will help you….

I look happy, right? It's just a facade for the frustration boiling under the surface...

I know, you think it looks ok. But just imagine that the chicken is overcooked, the vegetables are crispy and the rice snaps when you bite it.

I took a little break from blogging while I was in Iowa teaching my first ever university class but I didn’t take a break from cooking! Here is what you missed while I have been away:

Alu Bhartha – Curried Mashed Potatoes (India)

I have been trying not to cook complicated main dishes while teaching because I am feeling so exhausted by the end of the day. This dish was quite easy and delicious…also, it meets my aforementioned standards for cooking with turmeric.  As per Emily-usual, I cut out the chilli peppers which the recipe suggests.

Curried Mashed Potatoes

We ate this with sausages which added a nice protein. It was only after storing the remainder of the mashed potatoes for several days in Tupperware that I remembered one small thing that I DON’T like about turmeric which is that it stains things….

Gallo Pinto –( Nicaragua) page 146

For those of you who don’t know, gallo pinto (literally “painted rooster”) is a simple mix of rice with red or black beans. My only regret about this recipe is that I was not wearing my favourite Gallo Pinto t-shirt while cooking! While I was in Nicaragua, my host family ate gallo pinto at least twice and often three times per day.

Gallo Pinto on a colorful plate

My first day in the campo, someone told me this joke: “Some days we eat rice and beans, other days we eat beans and rice and the rest of the time, we eat gallo pinto!”

Mateo and I added some nice cheddar cheese to the top of our gallo pinto.

Mchele ya Zainab (Zainab’s pilaf) Kenya

Page 148….. Basically this is a rice pilaf (perhaps I am being redundant here since, to my knowledge, ALL pilafs are rice…) with onion, garlic, curry powder, cinnamon, salt, tomato and browned meat.  This dish was cooked on the same day that I was teaching about Sikhism, the world religion that I know the least about, and apparently about half of my brain was still in the gurdwara when I was planning this recipe…because I completely neglected to buy a tomato for this dish. So, in a pinch, I used tomato sauce which I am certain was an inferior choice. However, the dish still came out quite well all things considered. On the bright side, the Sikhism lecture also went well!

Zainab's pilaf

Salsa picante and guacamole – Mexico

Before I write a single word about my foray into Mexican appetizers, let me first say that my sister is actually a PROFESSIONAL guacamole maker at an actual dining establishment and watching her make guacamole has made me feel intimidated.  So, I decided to prepare these two recipes several states away from her for an audience that has never tasted her guacamole so that mine could seem impressive.  (Sidenote: If you do go to an On the Border restaurant, such as the one my sister works in, and you decide to order Guacamole Live! at your table, please do tip appropriately! I have it from a reliable source that this guacamole act is not actually as much fun as they make it seem and leaving them thirteen cents, a postage stamp and a bit of lint from your pocket just doesn’t suffice.)

Whipping up some guacamole!

I have an onion impairment that seems to cause cutting onions to affect me FAR more than the average person. I have tried holding my breath, holding a match in my mouth and several other home remedies to no avail. So, typically my solution is to get Mateo to chop them for me. But since this recipe was so simple, I felt that the out-sourcing of onion cutting meant that I wasn’t participating enough and decided to cut the onions myself. This was not a great idea. I tried to keep my eyes closed for part of the chopping and stirring but that also seemed perilous.

It seems that my blind stirring was caught on film....I am smiling with relief that I survived the onions!

Anyway, because both of the recipes were so easy I decided to do both for one meal. (Page 258 and 284 in EtT). Not much to report – I was underwhelmed by the salsa picante but I did not add jalapenos which would have added some kick to it. Also because I am part of a lifelong crusade against cilantro, I eliminated it from both of the recipes.

Salsa picante - looks more exciting than it tastes

Pretty fantastic if i do say so myself!

Having offered the caveat that my sister is a guacamole professional, I will now tell you that my guacamole was actually fantastic. Rave reviews! Perhaps we  Weltys share a guacamole genome?

I was wandering back into the kitchen to heat up my dish when I stumbled upon this archaic kitchen artifact and felt compelled to document it:

I thought that our microwave at grandma's was the largest oldest ever but this takes the cake. It appears to be invented before the invention of buttons! I suggest that someone contact both the Smithsonian and/or the prop department of the TV show Lost!

Chiah (spiced tea) Nepal   page 31

My mother-in-law became so enthusiastic about my Extending the Table experiment that she urged me to cook an unprecedented THIRD recipe in one night! (Yes, yes I know that all three of them were very easy but STILL!) This tea was completely wonderful and delicious. The blend of cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and sugar was comforting, sweet and interesting. Happy new year!

Mateo and his mom enjoy a cup of Nepalese tea

Punjena Paprika (Stuffed Peppers) Croatia/Serbia

New cooking venue and another new cooking apron! My sous chef and I are cooking from my in-laws home in Missouri outside Kansas City as we continue on our holiday visiting tour. Inspired by a rumor of extra peppers in the refrigerator, I decided to try this dish (page 209 of EtT).

Two things: 1) When I was taking all those women studies classes in college, this was most certainly NOT the picture I ever imagined myself appearing in. (But how cute is my new apron?) 2) This dish was not great but the crucifixion in the background keeps it all in perspective, right?

One thing that is really necessary when cooking stuffed peppers is to do a precise evaluation of their shape and size before launching into the cooking part. And by precise evaluation, I mean that I should have looked at them. In retrospect, that would have solved at least half of my problem. My peppers were not of the upright and bowl-like variety but rather a bit twisty and sideways. This presented problem one which I think I creatively addressed by cutting the peppers lengthwise and stuffing halves.

Another important pre-step in cooking is surveying your available cooking instruments and asking if any of them have any unusual eccentricities. Such as, “does your stovetop have only two settings? Volcano hot and off?” And if I had asked such a question and learned that indeed, this stove did only cook on two settings, I might have re-evaluated my decision to smoulder our rice without more careful observation.

The next problem was that this was the most unclear Extending the Table recipe I have encountered thus far. There was a fair amount of shifting ingredients from one bowl to a frying pan while preparing rice in one place and a sauce in another place. I was cutting the recipe in half to cook for four rather than eight but nonetheless, there did not seem to be enough sauce to use in the manner called for in the recipe (total immersion of my twisty peppers). So rather than a Baptist-style baptism in sauce, I had to opt for a more Protestant sprinkling of the sauce upon the peppers.  And this caused me to worry that I was actually not going to cook the meat properly in the twisty-pepper bowls so I emptied all the stuffing into yet another pan on the fiery stove and pre-cooked the meat.

The finished product...not quite what was intended but looks ok!

All in all, not a disaster but far more innovation was required than usual and the instructions were pretty unclear.

Ahweh (Turkish Coffee) – Middle East …page 32

My sous chef is a BIG fan of this coffee. Such a fan, in fact, that he has repeatedly tried to make Turkish coffee in a variety of settings we have lived in. He first learned to make this wonderful treat while he was living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and his dear friend and colleague made Turkish coffee while standing next to his desk.

My lovely sous chef at work

After this year long observation, he was a fan – which, incidentally I find strange since he is not a big fan of coffee in general…or perhaps this is just compared to me,  who might actually be a coffee addict.  In Bosnia, this is not called “Turkish coffee” but rather domaci  kava/ kafa/kahva which literally means “local coffee” and is an interesting example of the way that ethnicity affects language but I think my reflections on that may go beyond the bounds of my food blog!

Knowing Mateo’s predilection for Turkish coffee, my brother and sister-in-law gave him a proper ibrik (pictured here) for Christmas.

Mateo and his new ibrik

The inaugural use of the ibrik resulted in a bit of a mess –  apparently the stove at my parent’s house was “too hot” and there was a slight mis-remembering of the steps involved. This caused a “minor explosion”.  (This was not the official Extending the Table version of the recipe CLEARLY!) No one was injured but I think that everyone involved was relieved that Mateo and I are already married and there was no need to try to impress potential in-laws.  Mateo, reading over my shoulder, wants to add that “it was not so much an explosion as a volcanic eruption”. Duly noted.

This morning we realized that Turkish coffee is actually in Extending the Table which seemed to be the perfect excuse to try it again. It is completely possible to make Turkish coffee without an ibrik but having one made this alot easier. Turkish coffee is incredibly strong and sweet and this was no exception!

It is traditional to turn over the cup at the end and pour out the coffee grounds in order to read one’s fortune. Mateo noted that his fortune seemed to indicate that “a mountain and squiqqle and three fingers” are in his future. I can’t wait to see how that unfolds! Mine, shown here:

I would be interested in hearing other interpretations of my fortune...

Seems to indicate that a crocodile is in my future…..

P.S. I would like to extend (pun intended) a sincere apology to the readers of the blog who seem to have ended up here as a result of a google search for “extendable tables” or “how do I extend my table?”. I realize that my musings on international cooking are probably not helping you in your quest for a bigger place for your family to sit and for that I am sorry.

Chocolate Truffles (France) page 317

This was THE MESSIEST THING I HAVE EVER COOKED. I am not a fan of getting very messy – I was the kid in preschool who was not entirely into finger paints and just preferred a brush. So, rolling chocolate around in my bare hands as it became more and more slimy was just a bit beyond me.

Back in the beginning when all was calm, all was bright

Actually the first half of this recipe is great – melting a bit of chocolate, milk and butter on the stuff. Ditto the second part – waiting four hours for the mix to cool in the refrigerator. (Time that I thought I spent very well by practicing my Guitar Hero skills).

Very important that I sample this to make sure that it is safe for everyone else to eat...

But oh the disaster to follow…..

As I started rolling the chocolate into bars, it quickly descended into the lumps of gooey unmanageability. This process was not aided by the presence of various family members weighing in on my techniques.

Getting kind of gross....

Sister: Does mom know that you are doing that in here?

Brother: WHAT are you doing with that cocoa powder? You are contaminating the WHOLE container!

Dad: Is that pot HOT?

Me: Only in the way that something sitting in the cooler for four hours can be hot…

Ah family…..

Once the family participation calmed down, I recruited my sister into the process as a fellow roller. She had as much trouble with the rolling as I did but much giggling ensued.

This is definitely getting out of control...

My sous chef believed that he might have a superior technique of rolling that involved dusting his hands with cocoa powder and washing them after each truffle was made. Clean but not too efficient.

In conclusion, the recipe called for 25-30 and my batch produced ….15….and a half.

Delicious rating was difficult to accurately decide on because I licked at least three truffles worth of batter off my hands.

Wow - definitely the most intensely messy recipe yet!