Castelvetrano Olives

I had these amazing olives in Italy from Florence's Mercato Centrale. They were called "Dolce" (sweet) and from Sicily. So mild and crisp and tasty and a kind of strange color of bright green, I knew I had to find out what they were! Last week or so I discovered that they are Castelvetrano olives... and it seemed like the only place to find them was to order from an Italian deli in NYC or something.

But today I decided to check out the LA Farmers Market because there's a crazy expensive, but cool, market in the back called Monsieur Marcel that has a ton of olives in tubs of brine, etc. I had filled up a little cup of various olives - picholine, gaeta, etc. and saw peeking through a label, bright green olives. Then I saw the price....... then I looked at the label and saw they were imported from a city named..... Castelvetrano...... so I bought them...... I took the plastic labeling off so you can see what they look like



They are wonderful but let's just say they'll stay in the fridge and come out for special occasions or when I really need a mood-lifter ;)

Falafel

Despite my crappy equipment, I decided to make falafel at home. I bought a bag of dried chickpeas and followed this recipe from Epicurious. I let the beans soak for the equivalent of about a day and a half and followed the rest of the recipe pretty much as written. Of course, I only have a crappy mini-chopper, so I had difficulty blending it all but I did it in batches and it seemed to have a nice sticky texture and the smell was right. You know how something just smells like it's supposed to? well the mix just *smelled* like falafel. So yay!



Per the recipe, I let the dough sit in the fridge all day and then I made my balls. I used a tablespoon measuring spoon and added a little bit more to it (so I guess one might say, an oversized tablespoon? ;)) for the balls, rolled and flattened out a bit because I prefer them to be more like little patties than full round falafel balls. The ones that weren't for dinner that night went on this pan lined with plastic wrap for freezing.




Then it was time to fry. I used my new IKEA pan because it has nice high sides but heats really well and evenly. I only fry in grapeseed oil (sometimes mixed with canola) because I prefer the crispy and non-greasiness it gives me. Instead of deep frying I did more shallow frying, it's just easier and wastes less oil (but with falafel, it doesn't dirty the oil so I cooled and stored it for future use anyway, yay for not wasting!).


I was careful not to cook at too high a temp because I've had problems before when making falafel from a mix where it cooks too fast on the outside but the inside is still raw and crumbly. didn't want that to happen! So once the balls were nice and golden brown all around I took them out and drained. As you can see I decided upon making 6 for dinner. They were small balls so I figured that was a good amount.



Add pita bread and brown rice, and voila, homemade falafel dinner!


But the important question is: was it any good? :p Answer: kinda. the inside was very creamy (I am used to crumbly falafel in restaurants) - I don't know if that's because I let the chick peas soak so long that they absorbed more water or what but next time I will try just the 24h/overnight that the recipe suggests. Or maybe it's supposed to be creamier, maybe that's an authentic Israeli falafel - but I doubt it ;) I wish the recipe gave a little more guidance as to what the texture of the beans should be so that you know when they have soaked enough. Despite how careful I was cooking them, and the fact that they were nice and brown on the outside, I wonder if I should've let them cook another minute or so anyway because I think they were still a bit underdone inside. They were nice and golden, but in restaurants and stands, a lot of the times the falafel is just short of burnt, so maybe they could've stood a bit more cooking.

Lastly, h0w was the flavor. I think the components were there but I was worried about over-seasoning them because I don't like really strong falafel, especially with the herbs that some places will put into their mix, so I cut down on the seasoning a bit and wonder if it was a little too much. Still all in all not bad for my first attempt and I only used about a third of the bag of beans so I can try a couple things differently next time (like soaking not as long, more salt and red pepper flakes in the dough, etc.) . Plus it's dirt cheap. With the prices of food going up, I made three meals' or so worth of falafel with a third of a bag of chick peas (that cost about a dollar at Fresh & Easy), herbs that cost about 50 cents from Jon's, garlic and onion and red pepper flakes that I always keep around, and you get the idea. Cheap homemade tasty healthy food. Can't really beat that.

I wasn't that hungry so I didn't eat all six, figured I could save a couple and see how they reheat in the toaster for lunch, I'll follow up and let you know what happened and if that's a good option

Nightly Veggie Bowl

This is the veggie bowl I have with dinner every night - sometimes it varies a bit but these are the staples: tomato, carrots, cucumber, bell pepper, and olives. Sometimes I have celery or sugar snap peas in place of something or another, etc. But generally it stays pretty much the same.

It's good b/c 1) I like them, 2) it's healthy stuff, and 3) it keeps me from eating the less healthy (usually) dinner components.

Spaghetti with Garlic, Olive Oil, Red Pepper Flakes, and Olives

This is one of my traditional "go to" dinners when i'm sick of other stuff or in a rush or craving pasta or just too lazy to do something else. While the spaghetti's boiling (I eat about 3oz dried for myself for a filling dinner and don't always use spaghetti but any really good Italian dried pasta), I put some really good olive oil in a nonstick pan big enough to toss the pasta in, roughly chop a couple garlic cloves (I like it garlicky), and sort of warm up the garlic for a minute or two on low heat - I don't want to burn it or kill the garlic flavor.

Toss in some red pepper flakes and the pasta and chop up a few kinds of olives (in this case a mix from the TJ's Greek Olive Medley), toss a bunch of grated cheese on, and boom, hot fresh semi-healthy dinner in about 15 min. Yum. This time I had some fresh parsley around so I added a bit.

Pizza again

Made a pepperoni pizza the other night. I used the Fresh & Easy dough instead of TJ's and I think I prefer it a bit better. Not sure why or even how to explain it but it seems to be a little more pliable or softer or something. Maybe less gluten developed? Anyway, used up half of the precious TJ's Italian Starter Sauce that I have remaining and my preferred whole milk mozzarella that I sliced as thin as I could. To try to avoid disaster, instead of trying to get the raw pizza right on the stone, I made it on the back of a cookie sheet, put the cookie sheet in the oven for a minute, which helped the crust start to cook, and then slid it onto the cookie sheet for the remaining time.

Meanwhile, I toasted the pepperoni on a separate pan and dabbed off most of the grease from it, cut the slices in half and put them on the pizza halfway through cooking. I prefer to do it this way because it seriously cuts down on the grease the pepperoni leaves on the pizza and also it prevents the pepperoni from burning. Of course, I overcooked the pizza by maybe 30 seconds, so as you see in the pic the crust around the edges is a bit charred, but it was fine and nicely brown underneath.

All in all a very tasty personal-sized pizza and that's all that matters :) I use about 3 ounces of dough stretched as thin as possible, about 4 spoons full of sauce and about 3 ounces of cheese, sliced really thin and placed evenly over the sauce. It's just right for a filling but not excessive dinner and cooks up in about 7 minutes at the oven's hottest temp. Still on the quest for a perfect pizza but I feel like I'm getting closer. Next thing I'm gonna try is making my own sauce with canned San Marzano tomatoes.

Brown Rice

I bought a bag of organic jasmine brown rice today at Fresh & Easy - 2.95 for a two-pound bag. I don't even know if that's cheap or not. I know it's much healthier than regular rice, so I figured, hell why not right?

I followed the directions on the bag (double water to rice, let cook for a long time), and it came out pretty good. It will take some getting used to because the outside of the rice grain (aka what makes it brown). It took quite some time and I had to add more water, but it worked pretty well. My pots are not great and don't seal well enough to cook rice well, so what I do is put a piece of aluminum foil under the lid and it keeps all the steam in - it works pretty well.

I didn't take a picture, because really, it was a bowl of rice :p

Skirt Steak with Homemade Chimichurri

Made some homemade chimichurri sauce a few days ago. a little red wine vinegar from TJ's, fresh flat leaf parsley, a little hot pepper flakes, several cloves of garlic, a bit of salt, lime juice (it's what I had), and lots of nice extra virgin olive oil. All the recipes I found called for oregano too, but I couldn't find any, so just parsley it is.



Seared up a nice piece of skirt steak in the cast iron pan to my desired doneness (for me, medium rare to rare), and spooned the chimichurri on top. Would've been nice with some corn, but alas I forgot to buy another bag in TJ's this weekend so I made up my last box of Near East pilaf.

The chimichurri wasn't as flavorful as I would've hoped. It may have been from the missing oregano and it definitely needs salt, but otherwise, not bad!



[update: unfortunately, Fresh & Easy's product line might be as fickle as TJ's, they don't have skirt steak anymore :( ]

Homemade Tortilla Chips

This past weekend, I bought some mini corn tortillas at Fresh & Easy for half off (as you can see, a whopping 66 cents!). I was excited to marinate and grill up some chicken breast for homemade mini-tacos. But much to my dismay, the tortillas were kinda nasty in texture.



I wasn't sure if it was because they were near their expiration date or what, but I decided to toast them - so I cut each tortilla into 4 'chips' and then mixed up a little olive and canola oil, chipotle pepper powder, garlic powder, and paprika, with a sprinkle of sea salt, and drizzled a few drops on each side of each 'chip' and baked for about 8 minutes.



Not much else to say but HELLO DELICIOUSNESS!

[update: I later found that heating the tortillas helps a lot in terms of texture - I successfully made my mini-tacos! Good to know.]

Passover

Passover was about a month ago. I made myself some chocolate-covered matzah. All I did was melt some odds and ends of really good chocolate (all above 50%) really slowly, dipped fresh pieces of matzah in it and scraped it down using tongs and a spatula and let cool on a plastic-lined cookie sheet. They're similar to chocolate-covered pretzels, but without the extra salt and with muuuuuuuch better chocolate ;)



I made a traditional Passover dinner - my family's recipe for "Jewish Roast Chicken" (which consists of bone-in chicken of your choice - for me, breast - marinated in a paste of canola oil, onion, garlic, parsley, salt, and pepper pureed up and slathered on), roasted potatoes til nice and crispy, and homemade matzah ball soup. Not much else to say except yummy, and for me, quintessential comfort food.

Welcome!

I've been talking a lot about food lately. I've also been getting more into photography. So I thought, why not chronicle my quest for food perfection with a little blog? When I make something interesting or find something interesting in the markets, I can photograph it here using the techniques I'm studying and share it (it will improve when I get a new camera, so til then bear with me!).

I know, you're probably wondering, who the heck is she and why should I care, there are a million food blogs out there? I think what makes me different is that I'm a picky foodie. No, REALLY picky. I hate cooked vegetables, I hate most sauces, I hate things mixed together, I hate all seafood - yes all seafood, I hate fruit and chocolate/dessert mixed and the list just goes on and on and on. I don't even like wine.

So you are asking, what DOES she like? I like meat, yeah I do, especially beef (prime rib would be my ultimate dinner of choice). I also like random things like olives (I'm obsessed, I admit it), chocolate (only dark!), I love most fruits and vegetables (but only raw!), I like spicy things, pasta, I loooooove pizza, and pickles, and cheese and most kinds of salty chip-like foods, and the list goes on!

So to get it started, here are a few things i've made recently. the way I'll do it is if I use a recipe, I'll link to or post the recipe in case people are interested in trying it :) Have fun and please comment!

Margherita Pizza (Ingredients: Trader Joe's pizza dough, Trader Joe's Italian Tomato Starter Sauce (which they seem to be out of now, so substitute the marinara sauce in the green can), and WHOLE MILK mozzarella - sliced THIN. And that's it. the secret is a super thin crust, super hot oven, not too much sauce and cheese, and a pizza stone.


Tried these Nutella Cookies from a Giada De Laurentiis recipe I had seen a while back. I changed it up a bit by making them bigger than her recipe called for (I did 1.5 ounces each) and I didn't use any of the sugar. Also instead of a Kiss in the middle I used a Dove Dark Chocolate square. I also cooked them a bit less (about 10 min, and then just 1 min after I put the candy in). This combined with the larger cookie size resulted in a really lovely soft cookie that stayed soft for days. yyyyyuuuuuum.


Bucatini all'amatriciana (ingredients: Bucatini (available at TJ's now as 'bucati'), good tomato sauce, some bacon with fat removed, a little onion, garlic, and lots of grated cheese).

Had this dish in Rome in the Jewish Ghetto overlooking the Teatro Marcellus, what a memory. A traditional Roman dish, my recreation comes close. I don't like onion much, so I leave it out for the most part. Next time I make it I'm going to try some Pancetta cubes I bought in TJ's. Mine's not perfect, of course, but it's also not bad :P



So anyway, this is the kind of thing I'll keep posting. I hope you enjoy! And if not, it's at least a way for me to chronicle my discoveries and creations for myself ;)