Sicilian egg gratin and my trip to Versailles

It was a sunny day that started with a little drizzle my last day in Paris.
I was stationed in a little town close to the ville lumieres at arm lengths from Versailles. In the past I have told myself many times to just take the train and visit the old kings but I was never strong enough to disentangle myself from the parisian hug. This time I didn't have any excuse; I set my alarm clock, bought my train ticket and there I was, Versailles.

Mom Francesca's eggplant and onion casserole

Traveling always improves our lives; a rich baggage of memories and images can change us more than we can actually realize.
Oral stories sung by bards and grandparents have left the place to printed works and the ominous prescriptions of altarpieces and religious friezes.
Printed and visual experiences continously pull and push us around like little creatures on our shoulders whispering in our ears words of alternate realities populated by far away but somehow familiar beings. Invisible silken threads connect us nowadays in ways almost unimmaginable to our immediate ancestors.
"Practice makes us perfect" they used to say, practice is all they had to learn by, to improve, to debunk myths and legends, when they weren't meant to accompany us in the sweet kingdom of Morpheus.

Salmon-Eggplant-Cardamom cakes and a French prize

After a long week of holidays of sort, nothing better than a blog post to put the schedule back on tracks.
Almost 10 days ago I started my trip to France to present (and defend) my creations (#1 and #2) at the 2012 Science et Cuisine competition.
This being my main goal, I headed directly to Nantes where the competition final was held. The trip was uneventful, but not much so were the few days that preceded it. Stressed out for the presentation I had to hold, I spent the 3 days preceding the departure in a sleepless walking coma. I did manage to test my speech though, being it in French I couldn't just rely on my admirable qualities of orator, could I? I was rather happy to notice that despite all the "Ahem...", the "Mmmm...", the "Alors..." the speech was still within the 10 minutes I had at my disposal.

Cooking classes and my Tomato sauce

March is starting to look like a pretty busy month. Long time has passed since I had so many deadlines and possibilities to earn some money.
Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that I have started giving cooking classes in my town, Bonn. It took some time for the city (represented by the Volkshochschule) to realize the need of offering public classes in English but once they started I was right there to offer my contribution.
Nothing better than some tasty Sicilian food, right? So I decided to offer two classes delving on Sicilian cuisine (one of them for vegetarians) and so far the answer has been excellent!

Top 24 recipes of 2011

And this year is gone and it is almost my blogversary too! Many (but not too many) are the recipes I have proposed you across the past 12 months and it was very hard to choose some that have stuck in my flavors library.

After skimming my picture catalog I have reduced them to a Top 24. With one new recipe every two weeks may this list help you bringing a little more happiness into your 2012.

Top 24 of 2011

Risotto with broccoli, poached prawns, roasted sesame seeds oil and dark chocolate shavings

Chocolate, Butter, Strawberries and an unexpected guest

It/we are back!! Who? The Paperchefs naturally.
It has been quite some time since the last challenge was announced on the dedicated blog but as often happens, a temporary hiatus is a positive experience and something not to be feared. It helps clear up our minds and focus on part of our life that often we only perceive out of the corner of our eyes.

If you are new to this challenge, it is one of the nicest out there (except the Velveteers' one naturally). Out of a list of more than 100 ingredients, a random quartet is drawn and assigned for the monthly round. The creative time allotted for each challenge is rather short, from a weekend to up to a week on rare occasions. Thankfully this was one of the latter.
I have taken part to a few rounds and I can assure you that it is a lot of fun!

Crispy pork belly gyros of many traditions

I guess somebody was in a street food mood lately, yeah I think so.


This round of Velveteers has been brought us by the eclectic mind of Asha from Fork Spoon Knife. Amidst her blog birthday and the plethora of guest posts she managed to put together for the occasion, she came up with the idea of challenging us in making Gyros ourselves....
What is Gyros? Come on, you know that! Oh wait, you might know it as Doner Kebab perhaps. In effect they are essentially the same thing and that is a huge conical pillar of meat roasted vertically on a skewer.
If you didn't know that Germany is famous for its sausages and sauerkraut, you would call Doner (contraction from Doener Kebab) the national dish. You find a "Doener Haus" almost every second corner around here and I would bet that 1/3 of the middle-aged to young part of the population almost entirely survives on it. If well done this fast-food item can be in effect quite a balanced meal.

Friendship is sharing: a wrap that crosses the Oceans

Few weeks ago Aparna asked me if I was willing to write a guest post for her, my answer was naturally yes! Apart from being this an honour to be featured on her blog My Diverse Kitchen, how could I say no to a friend?
Once fixed the time details, I just had to think about a yummy vegetarian recipe to contribute.
You might remember that last month Velveteers’ challenge pivoted around the Sicilian caponata; Aparna loved it so much that I promised myself to show her more examples of the fine art of Sicilian veggies.
Last year in one of my visit back home, I bought some little booklets that collect various recipes from Sicilian culinary tradition from the different areas and cities of the island. I started reading the vegetables volume to find out that almost one third of its recipes feature eggplants; they are indeed one of the most beloved vegetable in Sicily. I already delved deeper into the gastronomic history of this fruit in my Caponata post but let me just remind here how it was considered at first as a poisonous "apple" and then relegated as food suited only for Jews.
Curious for more? Let's head over to Aparna's.

Sicily Sweet and Sour

When at the Velveteers tavern we planned the hosting calendar, I chose the month of September when I would have been in Sicily.
Despite the good propositions, life in my family house can get easily out of hands. Too lazy, too relaxed, with rhythms other than my owns and the possibility that at any time somebody could drop in my room startling the hell out of me; it is not an easy environment where to concentrate in front of a screen, let alone that the TV right there, beside me. TV is indeed a strange beast, if you don’t have it you don’t miss it, but if it is around it will inevitably attract you like a magnet and so you are lost zapping between channels trying to find something watchable; settling often over a re-run of decades old TV-series (god bless Angela Lansbury and her Murder, She Wrote series!).
Days pass by like sand between your fingers; a coffee and chat with mom, some TV, some more chat with sis, more TV, brainstorming with mom about dinner, more TV. You don’t even notice and it is already dinner time and for me that means that I get to cook when all the others are already sit to dine (we have got only 3 working hobs). And so here I am, rather late for my monthly Velveteers post.

When I proposed to cook Caponata as the September Velveteers’ dish, I wanted to make it a family business but actually only I ended up eating the plated dish at the end of the shooting since we had already planned a chilli con carne night. I did though brainstorm with mom about the traditional way we are used to make this dish in my household so it still involved all the needed family members.

TweetPost #5: Rice noodles in an aromatic creamy broth with turkey and eggplant

This is a surprise post even for me. Tonight I sat down to have another of mine rice-noodle soup. The past night I got into the mood for my rice-noodle carbonara but not having any bacon those will have to wait. I had instead eggplant, turkey and some orange juice.
The dish was silky creamy with a summery aroma of lime leaf and delicate tanginess from the orange juice. The eggplant gave richer bites without interfering on the textures. The stock, turkey and Parmesan gave that full mouthfeel typical of umami..
So this is what I came up with:

Rice noodles in an aromatic creamy broth with turkey and eggplant

TweetPost #4: Tortelloni with Eggplants, garam-masala turkey nuggets and a long peppercorn scented milk-olive oil emulsion sauce.

Yesterday night I came back home a bit earlier than usual and I was so hungry that I took a big chunk of bread, made some olive oil and lemon juice emulsion and married the two together over and over again. Naturally, at dinner time I wasn’t starving as usual. That is a good thing since I then have more energies to invest in something worth posting and so I came out with the recipe you will read in this post and spend most part of the night shooting pictures before realising that it was almost 3am.

Tortelloni with Eggplants, garam-masala turkey nuggets and a long peppercorn scented milk-olive oil emulsion sauce.