Here’s another Italian recipe I butchered. Cioppino is a traditional Italian stew using the catch of the day and I used all the seafood I “caught” from the sea-permarket (ha!) except for fish because my mother is allergic; otherwise I would choose monkfish fillets to have something very meaty and tender. The clams and mussels are perfectly cooked here, but that also means they didn’t get enough time in the hot broth, so I think clam juice in a can is an absolute necessity. If your eaters are not fussy, using shrimp with their heads on can add more natural flavor to the soup. I also decided to skip the pasta in my version and opted to serve it with a few slices of toasted baguette.
Ingredients:
1 lb squid, cleaned, sliced in small rings
1/2 lb shrimp, heads on, sprinkled with salt and pepper
12 littleneck clams
12 mussels, bearded
1 cup white wine
1 medium can of crushed tomatoes
1 small can of clam juice
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
a few pieces basil leaves, chiffonade
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp white sugar
1 tsp red pepper flakes
salt, pepper, oil
1 small baguette, sliced, toasted
1. In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil. Cook the shrimp for 3 minutes. Remove to a large bowl.
2. In the same pot, sauté garlic with red pepper flakes until golden brown. Add white wine and 1/2 cup of water. Simmer in low fire.
3. Add clams and cover. Simmer for 3 minutes. Clams are cooked when they are open. Discard those that didn’t open. Remove to a large bowl. Add mussels to the pot and cover. Simmer for 5 minutes. Mussels are also cooked when they are open. Discard those that didn’t. Remove to the same bowl with the clams.
4. Add clam juice, tomatoes and 3 cups of water to the pot with all the seafood and wine flavor. Let simmer for about 20 minutes while occasionally stirring. Add squid and cook for 2 minutes. Add back the shrimp, clams and mussels and carefully toss together with the tomato broth. Remove from heat. The squid will finish cooking in the remaining heat. Ladle in big open bowls and serve with toasted baguette.
I haven’t been in the mood to cook even though I’ve been spending a lot of time at home. But while inside the Grand Central Terminal Market earlier, I was inspired to go back to the kitchen after I saw a small container of really fragrant dried porcini mushrooms on sale for $3.50. I turned to soup-making after assessing the contents of the cupboard, and whadayaknow, I had a porcini-flavored dried salami in stock: I chopped a few small slivers and used them as extra topping to this very earthy broth.
Ingredients:
1/4 lb dried porcini mushrooms
half a bundle of somen noodles
3 small potatoes, cubed
1 red onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 sprigs of rosemary, finely chopped
2 sprigs of thyme
a small knob of Piave cheese
salt, oil
1. Soak dried porcini mushrooms in 2 cups of lukewarm water for about 20 minutes, or until they are soft. Drain and save the water. Roughly chop soaked mushrooms and set aside.
2. In a large Dutch oven, heat some oil. Sauté garlic until brown and onions until soft. Add potatoes, rosemary and thyme and cook until potatoes are browning.
3. Add the mushrooms and the mushroom-flavored water and simmer for 10 minutes. Add 2 to 3 more cups of water, depending on how much broth you want. Season liberally with salt because the broth will be bland, but the salt will bring out the mushroom’s earthy flavor. Keep in low simmer until potatoes are cooked and all the flavors are incorporated.
4. Throw in somen and stir for 3 minutes; this will quickly cook the noodles. Turn off heat and let remaining warmth finish cooking the noodles. Ladle in bowls and shave cheese on top before serving.
211 East 43rd Street off Third Avenue
212/557.8200
about $80 for two people, with sake, with tip
♥ ♥ ♥
I don’t need any horoscope to tell me that I’ve been living a lifestyle I can’t afford, but it was right there on OK! Magazine, a copy I picked up after someone left it in the subway. I have been mooching off the Dr. the last couple of weeks, what with my unemployment insurance delayed and all, and feeling bad that he’s been spending for two. Last week, he wanted to eat soup and he invited me to come with him. How could I say no?
We sat at the bar and watched the place fill up. The kitchen in front of us went up in smokes whenever the guys grilled some yakitoris. We started with a few: bacon-wrapped asparagus, chicken knee bones (mmm, soft cartilage), some very livery riba and a plate of charred green peppers. A small bottle of a super dry sake helped us washed everything down.
But what we really came for is Soba Totto’s soba. I had the duck, kamo nanban, while the Dr. tried the mushroom. They were so different from each other: his broth had a subtle but earthy taste and mine was straight-up rich in flavor. The noodles easily gave, the duck melted in my mouth and the mushrooms provided some texture. Neither needed extra condiments–they were perfect the way they were served. Our bowls didn’t look like much, but sometimes soba is all you need even if someone else offers to pick up the tab.
It was like my personal heaven walking in JB Prince, the service and bakeware store on 31st Street between Madison and Park Avenues. It’s been on my list to stop by but I have been unable to until this week because they’re only open on weekdays from 9 to 5. Their Web site sucks so I didn’t expect much from the store, but it was immaculate when I walked in. I touched everything I could touch, especially the Fat Duck and the El Bulli books. The sous vide machines were all lined up in a row and baking sheets and pans of all sizes hanged by clips. Just seeing the individual serving pieces made of plastic and bamboo made me want to throw a huge amuse-bouche party.
It’s amazing what I get to do while unemployed. There are so many errands, I don’t know how they got done when I had a job. The past week alone, I ran all over the city finishing all sorts of businesses while also going to job interviews, seeing people I haven’t seen in a while and watching movies in the middle of the afternoon. If I didn’t have financial responsibilities, I swear I’d be enjoying this time more so than I did eight years ago when the Web first broke my heart. Heck, I’d be in Singapore with my brother and his wife, blowing through my savings and traveling all over Asia. Fuck, I hate being an adult!
But back to reality: I wanted to check another thing off my Things-To-Do list which is to start experimenting with baked goods. (You understand that I didn’t say “baking”, right? Because I’m a little bit of a pussy and I’m afraid of commitments.) I received a nice, hefty birthday gift certificate from a few friends and, though I already know it will go towards the Kitchen Aid Pro with sausage, pasta and ice cream maker attachments, I’m saving it until I’m ready to use it like a pro.
Financiers came to mind after scouring through my many cookbooks and realizing that it’s one of those basic French recipes that don’t require the use of an equipment. But because I’m also precise, I splurged on a $15 financier silicone mold–which explains the trip to JB Prince. I tried different flavors for my first batch of batter. I divided it into three small bowls and in one, I mixed in a tsp of ground coffee. In another, I added orange zest; I added finely chopped dried cranberries to the last batch. (Add your own flavor in Step 3 below.) After baking my first-ever financiers, I let them cool completely so as not to bother them in their molds until they were set. When I revisited them, they were basically popping themselves out of the molds and I didn’t have to turn them over. I have to say that my favorite were the ones with orange zest. This recipe makes twenty two-inch financiers in one mold tray.
Ingredients:
a handful of raw almonds
1/4 cup white sugar
1/4 cup of flour, sifted
2 egg whites
1/3 cup of butter
zest from a small orange
another small knob of butter to coat the molds, melted in the microwave for a few seconds
1. Preheat oven at 360º. Meanwhile, make your almond meal. In a food processor, process almonds until powdery. It’s okay that’s it’s grainy.
2. Make your beurre noisette. In a saucepan, melt the butter over low fire. Bring to a simmer and cook for 2 minutes, or until light brown and nutty-smelling. Set aside.
3. In a medium glass bowl, combine sugar and almond meal. Fold in the egg whites and mix well with a fork. Add the melted butter and continue to mix together. Stir in the flour and the orange zest and make sure everything is well-combined.
4. Butter your financier molds using a pastry brush. Pour the batter in each mold, filling it up just to the brim. Place batter-filled mold on a baking sheet. Bake for 18 minutes. Your financiers will puff up a bit and will get slightly crusty and golden on the edges, but soft on top. Remove from the oven and cool completely before turning them over on parchment paper.
We took the bus back to El Calafate yesterday and said our good-byes to Monte Fitz Roy (Fitzie), Cerro Torre and the whole of El Chalten. Being in a bigger and busier town has its pluses, but walking along the main drag with all the amenities brought me closer to home and reminded me that we’re halfway through our two-week vacation. For the first time in almost a week though, we finally saw the sun set. Here in Patagonia, the sun sets at around 11pm and we’ve missed the last few because we would be indoors, inebriated from too much red wine and comatose from the day’s hike. (Cue in song, With a Little Help From My Friends…)
I fall in and out of sleep while on the bus to Perito Moreno Glacier, only to wake up with the same view around me: big mountain in front, water on the left, forest on the right; but no ice. It’s been more than an hour and I just can’t wait to get out of the bus and stand up. At the park’s entrance, a guide goes around with a small ticket machine charging us $60 Argentinian (about US$20) to enter. A few on the bus only had to say, Nacional, and they get a citizen’s discount at $20 Argentinian. This is the first time my group is charged for any sort of activity in Patagonia and all eyes are on me to make sure the fee is worth it.
Back in New York, I’ve signed everybody up to do a mini-trek on Perito Moreno instead of just a bus ride to view the giant glacier from the balcony. It cost each of us US$100, which we all consider steep since we’re not the kind of travelers who pay for organized tour groups. But there is no such thing as shopping for a tour guide to do the mini-trek. Hielo Adventura has the monopoly to ferry tourists across the lake, suit them up with crampons and lead them on the glacier for an hour and a half before sending them back to their hotels. I later appreciate this because I couldn’t imagine hoards of people on the glacier trekking everywhere if one outfit didn’t control the number of visits to the top.
So what is a glacier? It’s technically a big mass of ice with two zones: accumulation and percolation. It’s constantly snowing in the accumulation zone while the ice is melting in the percolation zone. The ice moves down the slope from where they are situated and ends in lakes or cliffs and forms terminal moraines, or stones and dirt pushed by the glacier.
Named after the Argentinian explorer Francisco Pascacio Moreno, the glacier is popular because it’s one of the few that can be accessed as simply and easily as this. While most glaciers are in very high altitudes and extreme temperatures, Perito Moreno is only 50 miles from El Calafate and only 279 feet above sea level. Since 1917, the glacier has been stable: its surface, width and length have remained the same because the snow increase in the accumulation zone is enough to compensate for whatever’s melting in the percolation zone. Moreno acted as the expert–that’s why he was called perito–when the Patagonian border was being disputed between Argentina and Chile and donated the land for the first Argentinian National Park, but he never saw the glacier that was named after him.
We spend about twenty minutes ooh- and aah-ing at the glacier. It really is amazing how massive and far out it goes. The wind is steady and it’s warm enough to stay at the balcony with cameras in hand, waiting for a small piece to crack and fall into the river. (It’s probably one of the few places where you can hear people beg for the glacier to start cracking.) Whenever there is a crack–and it happens every few minutes–there is a thunderous noise, followed by a loud snap, like a gunshot, when the ice falls into the river. No matter how small, the fallen ice creates a ripple and another loud whoosh occurs. Everyone is on high alert when this happens because they want to capture the action on film, but most of the time, the crack happens somewhere we can’t see. There is always a cheer from people who catch the exact moment and it’s funny how automatic the reaction from the crowd gets after a few minutes.
Two hours later, we board the bus to the pier and then the ferry across Rico Arm. From the boat, we can see the glacier’s front walls and some iceberg channels. Everything is of that blue-ice color. (Oh, why? Snow and ice is white, but when sunlight goes through a glacier’s solid ice crystals, it gets broken down into different colors. Blue light has enough extra energy to get away from the crystals without getting absorbed by the thick ice, so we see that blue that “escapes”.)
On the other side, we hike through a forest and see the contrast of the earth against the blue ice. It’s like walking into some kind of video game: dry land here, water in the middle, ice over there. All you have to do is hop over and you’re in a completely different landscape. One of the guides, after hearing that I’m from New York City, tells me that one of the most important movies shot in the city is also his favorite movie of all-time: Madagascar. I laugh, join in the joke and tell him that the penguins are probably still up to no good. The Dr. remains stoic because he never saw the movie. We put our crampons on.
We see several groups of twenty ahead of us. The guides smartly separate all of us in a timely manner so that we all enjoy the glacier at our own group time. It’s never crowded while we trek and we never come across the other folks. We trek in one line and follow our guide, hunching forward when walking and leaning back when descending. I love the sound of crushing ice and I over-react and march with my knees up to get more of it. I take photos after photos of cracks and crevices and of small pools and trickles. I can’t get enough of the view. Ahead of me, the ripples of ice look like a meringue. It’s like some giant hand came down and whipped the ice to make soft peaks, you know? I know that sounds really gay, but it’s just that everything looked saaawft.
We stop where we drank from the small pond that has formed on the ice. The water is naturally cold and refreshing, but we still manage to convince ourselves that it is the best-tasting water we’ve ever had. For only US$100!
I jump when the guide isn’t looking and we do ridiculous poses when we get a chance to stop. They take us to small caves and let us peek down dangerous crevices. We walk across thin ice, jump over safe indentations and hike up and down small hills to get a feel of the massiveness of Perito Moreno. We end at a table where our guide chips off glacial ice to drink with the Famous Grouse whisky they’ve set up beforehand. Everyone toasts and munches on the dulce de leche candies they distribute. It’s the perfect end to our day.
Later, the group tells me that the money they paid was all worth it.
