Zucchini Monsters!

This is what happens when you neglect your zucchini/courgette plants. They turn into monsters, channeling all their energy into producing monstrous zucchini and then ceasing to produce any more. You should usually cut them when they are small to medium sized. This mutant specimen was a product of my holiday... Weight = 3.6kg. Length = 55cm. I have lots of ideas for its use (pasta, soup, frittata), but this thing could feed an army!


Also observe our tomato and cucumber!


The cherry tomatoes are especially delicious.

Pancakes make me drool

I talk about drooling a lot. I'm drooling right now at the smells wafting up from the kitchen as Piglet 2 cooks up something yummy. But pancakes - the thought and sight and smell of them - really gets me. I love them so much - the American, fluffy version. As a child I would eat enormous stacks with grade A Canadian maple syrup and butter. Mmm... My grandfather would make them on Sundays. After lots of practice I've developed quite a knack with the spatula, but don't eat much of them here across the pond in the UK. I was browsing the cool blog Dooce.com and found this:



It's absolutely brilliant. Now go out there and make pancakes!

In the UK they have Pancake Day (otherwise known more officially as Shrove Tuesday, which is the day before Lent) and we Pigs like to celebrate with savoury and sweet pancakes until we're suffering from food coma and rolling under the table.

On another note, I'm briefly back in the UK after an amazing trip to the regions of Asturias and Galicia in northwestern Spain, all along the coast, munching on seafood, meat, nectaries, plums and stunning bread. Next stop is Poland for a couple of days... Heavy food in large portions and lots of beer await. Stay tuned for news of galician delights!

This little piggie went on the road

Pig Me Up will see you all, realistically, in September. Travels to continental Europe await!

Remember to eat well and have fun - we'll be back with stories of food in far away lands to entertain and hopefully inspire.

Someone noticed

Wow, a total stranger quoted my blog in her blog! I'm so chuffed.
http://rome.blogproject.org/jessica/?p=39#more-39

Her blog is pretty cool, and I recommend the entries tagged with 'mercato di testaccio' if you want to read more about that great market in Rome that I wrote about in February.
http://rome.blogproject.org/jessica/?cat=12

Israel's Desert Farming

Always wondered how they farm that amazing produce in Israel's deserts, the most bland of which makes its way into UK supermarkets? Here's a video clip from the NY Times on the troubles facing this type of farming due to Israel's four-year drought.

The Risks of Desert Farming - NY Times

Tomatoes and Ricotta - heaven in a bowl

Pasta with Creamy Ricotta Tomato Sauce

I'm stuck at home on a rainy London Saturday with a sinus infection. What to do? Make pasta to pamper myself. This serves 1, but perhaps you should make double so that you can relive it again.

3 roma tomatoes - squeeze out the innards and chop
4 cloves of garlic - finely chopped
olive oil
2 Tbsp ricotta - the higher quality the better, it should be slightly sweet, not bland like many generic versions. I like Santa Lucia ricotta.
Several leaves of fresh basil
parmesan to garnish
salt and pepper

Fry the garlic lightly then add the tomatoes and a pinch of salt and cook on medium for not more than 10 minutes. Blend this sauce until smooth in a blender. Cook the pasta to al dente and drain. Add the sauce to the pasta and then the ricotta. Stir until evenly blended and add some basil leaves (torn to release flavour) and some pepper. Garnish with a bit of parmesan.

Oh, I wish I'd made two portions!

Cake-wreck

Just a little weekend fun courtesy of Pig Me Up thanks to a friend of mine who found this gem last week:

Ever order one of those naff cakes from the local supermarket bakery? Well, here is a blog that pays tribute to all of the cakes gone horribly wrong.

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Have a good weekend! Pig Me Up goes on summer holiday next week to eat endless amounts of seafood and fresh fruit so apologies in advance for the silence.

Pizza boy

Hey everyone! Look at my flatmate's first pizza! It was delicious. I'm so proud. :-D
Congratulations M3!

Want to be like him? Find you favorite flat-crust pizza recipe and top it with sautéed garlic, olive oil, rosemary, fresh rucola/arugula/rocket, mozzarella, green olives and cherry tomatoes.

Foraging for news

While my flatmate attempts his first pizza (may the force of the yeast be with him), I thought I’d dig up some random food news from the BBC.

Shock at Uganda dog meat arrests
Dogs' dinners prove popular in Nigeria
I realize that the dog meat articles might shock some people. I love dogs with a passion - as pets. I was eating lunch while reading these articles and nearly couldn’t handle it. However, I think that it’s always worth thinking about what different cultures consider taboo – or not. In the case of these articles, communities are split to extremes, which I find quite disturbing, especially with stories of people stealing pet dogs to eat. Anyone who has gazed into the eyes of their pooch would find the action despicable. If you’re a vegetarian, eating any animal is. Other examples of taboo foods? Horse meat is eaten in Italy, but Americans and the British wouldn’t even contemplate the thought. I can’t eat rabbit because I had pet rabbits and loved them very much, but I do know that it tastes good and lots of people love it. The French have their frog legs and snails which for many of us would be just, well, gross. Equitorial Guinea has monkeys (very sad). And what about kosher, halal and hindu dietary customs and laws?

Not my bag: My mission? 31 days without plastic
This is a cool blog that’s in its fifth day by a correspondent on the BBC. Talk about a challenge. I am tempted to join her. When I moved to the UK, it was the first time that I was truly self-sufficient. Even my year living in an apartment at college felt pampered some how, so when I finally started becoming aware of how food was marketed to me, I was shocked. Everything outside the outdoor markets was suffocated in plastic. I try to buy all my veggies at the market, but even there you feel forced to use the flimsy little plastic bags they provide for separating your veg because it helps them weigh things. Our council, Haringey, wouldn’t even take plastic to be recycled from your curb-side bin. You have to take it to your local recycling centre. And they vacuum-seal cucumbers in plastic! What planet is the UK on? We’ve been recycling in the States for a long long time. Plus, cucumbers do not need to be vacuum-sealed. Why cucumbers? But there is too much plastic in all supermarkets, everywhere. Period. So I’m interested to watch how she does. End of mini rant.

Shunned Starbucks in Aussie exit
All I have to say is that the Australians are my new heroes.

Sicilian Chocolate from Mexico?

Now I know it’s the middle of summer in the northern hemisphere, but it’s a dismal, grey, rain-drenched day in London and I felt like indulging in a hot chocolate in August – just because I can – and because I have such a fine selection of chocolates from which to choose.

During my visit to Sicily in December 2006, I was surprised to discover that Sicilians preserve the Mexican way of making hot chocolate, a process that was brought over to Sicily by the Spanish when they controlled southern Italy in the 1700s. The town of Modica (a World Heritage site) has grasped hold of this tradition and made it theirs, effectively using it to market their town to tourists. The main street, Corso Umberto, is lined with chocolate shops and pasticcierie (pastry shops, which in this case specialize in Sicilian delicacies).

The cocoa is combined with cane sugar crystals, often mixed with spices and made into a bar. You can then either eat it as is or, better still, melt it in a cup of warm milk on the stove and have a delightful hot chocolate that is just sweet enough, but not too much. It works to use 1 tablet of a chocolate bar per cup of milk, depending on size and how rich you want it. I let the milk warm up a bit first over a gentle flame and then add the bar, which should melt quickly. Stir it with a wooden spoon to break it apart. When it’s all melted, it’s ready to drink.



Dolceria Bonajuto has been around since 1880 and is the oldest chocolate shop in Sicily. Walking into the shop is like walking back in time, or into the movie Chocolat. Its glass cabinets are filled with exotic chocolate treats and the team is in the back, in white coats and caps, busily at work making more. I’ve just been drinking their chocolate with nutmeg in it.

CioMod is a more modern affair with a classy shop on Corso Umberto. Not only do they sell traditional cioccolata modicana, but liquors and beauty products as well. I’ve held onto a chocolate bar with ginger in it. On their website they advertise pure chocolate bars with cinnamon, vanilla, hot pepper, black tea, and coffee flavors, plus pure, plain chocolate and milk chocolate. I must say I like their packaging.

I picked up several bars in a café called Bar del Viale, which is part of the Modica Chocolate Consortium. I’ve already consumed the orange-flavored one, which was delicious, but I still have the peperoncino (hot, red pepper flavor).

Finally, we also picked up some chocolate and other pastry treats in Casa Don Puglisi, which employs women who have escaped abusive relationships. It helps get them back on their feet. I’ve still got a bar of their anise-flavored chocolate, which I can’t wait to try (after all this time).

When I was home in California last December, my mom and I happened upon a Latin American grocery store in San Rafael. I came out with a container of Chocolate Ibarra, Mexico’s most famous chocolate, which comes in round tablets and is flavored with cinnamon. It’s made just like the chocolate from Modica, but they add a bit of emulsifier. I also bought a 400 gram tablet of Chocolate Guerrero, which seems like pretty much the same thing, but it has a bit of milk and it’s from Guatemala. I have yet to try it, but it smells delightful.

If you live in the States, especially in an area with lots of Latin Americans, you should be able to find this stuff with no problem at all. So how do you find it in the UK? I might try Coolchile.com, they seem to stock Mexican drinking chocolate and they’ve also got a stall at Borough Market. The street market in Brixton (Electric Avenue, next to the tube) has some Latin American shops as well and you might get lucky.

At any rate, it beats Cadbury’s and any sort of industrial hot chocolate mix hands down because it’s just chocolate, sugar and a bit of spice – no funny stuff!



P.S. I just discovered recently that Seeds of Change (a cool organization that seeks to promote biodiversity, based in New Mexico USA) sells chocolate bars in the UK. The one I bought at Tesco was with orange and fig – one of the best chocolate bars I’ve had in a long time.

Olofactory - Bringing back memories

How do you cook? By taste, by smell? By eye? By luck?

I cook pretty much only by smell, mostly trying to reconstruct the smells I grew up with, which were intense and exquisite, usually, but not exclusively, created by my father in the kitchen. I remember the smell of freshly ground coffee in the morning; rosemary all year; basil and melon pretty much defining summer; sticking my nose in a freshly cut boletus mushroom in November and smelling earth; veal frying in garlic and olive oil; tomato sauce so aromatic you can believe that tomatoes are fruits; our Thanksgiving turkey covered in a rosemary forest and stuffed with chestnuts, plums, port...; pungent prosciutto hanging in the basement; the cold wine cellar and the smell of grapes fermenting; freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

My friend who's blog is magnotmargaret, has an evocative post up, which I recommend! What food smells take you back to childhood memories - or any sort of memories?