viernes, enero 27, 2006

El Pan de Olivas

[Olive bread]

The beauty of living in Europe is the exposure to authentic breads made according to ancient recipes. Slowly but surely, throughout the years of my "exile" (read voluntary absence) from Asia, bread is slipping into my diet at the dinning table, replacing my natural urges for fragrant jasmine rice.

One of my preferred bakery in Barcelona is La Boulangerie (aptly named in French, meaning THE bakery) and they happens to carry one of my preferred breads too -- el pan de olivas -- a crusty bread made of succulent pitted black olives. To my knowledge there are three branches, two of which are right at Avenida Gaudi, the diagonal road that cuts through a few massive blocks linking the massive Sagrada Familia and the modernistic Hospital San Pau. The third one is near Passeig San Joan in the L´eixample Derecha.

If you happen to live in Barcelona, or vacationing for that matter, the one right outside the entrance of the Hospital San Pau on C/Santa Maria de Claret has a great breakfast or merienda deal. For 2.20 euro or so, you get a nice hot cup of cafe con leche with a homemade or in this case storebaked tart or cake. Mind you, we´re talking about real confections to the tune of wholegrain apple pie and apricot spanish-style cheesecake, which would cost at least 2.50 euro a slice if it´s to go. And of course after your little snack or breakfast, you can pick up your daily loave of bread. I suggest molde de nueces, a wholegrain molded bread with walnuts, or the one featured in the picture above.

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jueves, enero 26, 2006

La comida y yo: 10 cositas

[Jif peanut butter on whole rye swedish crispbread]

No, I'm not dying to let the entire world know who the hell this kel gal is, but I was "kindly invited" by a certain hungry rose to join a meme named "Ten Things You Never Knew About Me". Well, since this is a FOOD BLOG, here's the spill of ten food-related things you didn't know before about yours truly.

1. The one precious food commodity that I prize the most from the United States of America is--drumrolling--: JIF creamy peanut butter. My very precious pal Eve was so sweet that she agreeded to smuggle two jars to me when we had our rendez-vous in Paris.

2. The foods I crave at this moment from the place I grew up in i.e. the southern tip of peninsula Malaysia are otak-otak, lontong, and laksa.

3. I cannot live without my set of silver measuring spoons and my old fashioned set of plastic cup measures from the USA. (Yes, I'm all for recipes with American cup measurements. They make life so much easier!)

4. There's a german-designed teapot with warmer set I really want to have from Crate & Barrel.

5. Once in a while (every now and then) I need to have my fix of Thai jasmine fragrant rice.

6. My diet is mostly 80 percent vegetarian.

7. I get traumatised everytime I buy a whole chicken in Barcelona. I keep forgetting that they have their heads attached here.

8. I try to drink 8 glasses of water every day. (Yes, I'm a health nut and I gullibly follow the advice in women's health magazines)

9. The first thing chinese-malaysian I learned to make was my mum´s Mee Siam. It´s a spicy rice vermicelli dish.

10. My dear friends Becky and Pete up in Michigan turned me into a born-again meat eater. They brought new meaning to steaks and roasts with their incredible outdoor-cooking and indoor-roasting skills.

And now the meme goes to Sweetnicks, Lisa at In a Nutshell, Sao Mai at Cocinalia.

sábado, enero 21, 2006

French Stories 3: Chez Zol, Le Cordon Bleu

[Sautéed Tuna Steaks with Daikon Salad]

The neat thing about Spain, even to the envy of its French neighbors, is that Christmas holidays span an entire three-week. At the end of the first week of January, I was still savoring the last bit of my get-away in Provence. The first host that I’ll dedicate this post to is Zol, a guy known for both his musical and culinary talents.

For lunch that day, in his apartment in a town right outside of Marseille, Zol, Le Cordon Bleu, whipped up a simple lunch with incredibly healthful proportions and surprisingly matches the four criteria I look up to in a good meal: taste, texture, nutrition and presentation. The entrée was sautéed tuna matched with a light and tasty daikon salad. Next up, the plat principal was seared scallops served with a pasta made with spinach.

I love how he served the tuna by dividing the steak into four elongated pieces elegantly presented in a rectangular Japanese-inspired plate. It went really well with the Daikon salad that was simply grated and seasoned with a dash of Chinese dark vinegar (made from fermented glutinous rice) and some light soy sauce. Zol added that this Chinese dark vinegar has a very similar taste to balsamic vinegar, which lends a zesty touch that plays well with the lightly sweetened flavor of the grated daikon.

We finished the meal with a plateau de fromage and dessert. A neighbor upstairs had presented him with a decorated cellophane bag filled with home-baked goodies. HE made them all from scratch! We happily walloped them down as we chatted over a cup of green tea.

Here are the imagined and improvised recipes of the dishes described above:

Sautéed Tuna Steaks with Daikon Salad
2 tuna steaks
1 teaspoon grated ginger, minced
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce
a dash of white or black pepper
1 small daikon radish, peeled and grated
Chinese dark vinegar

Combine ginger, pepper, and soy sauce in a small bowl. Marinate fish with mixture for 5 minutes.

In a heavy-bottomed nonstick skillet, heat olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the fish and cook for 1.5 minutes on each side. Fish should not be completely opaque.

Serve with a Daikon Salad. Simply grate Daikon radish and place in individual mounds. Season each mound with a dash of Chinese dark vinegar (or balsamic vinegar) and some light soy sauce.

Seared Scallops with Pasta




Recipe for 2:
12 scallops
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon curry powder
Juice of half a lemon
1 tablepoon Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Salt and pepper
Italian Pasta (Spaghetti or Penne Rigate)

Bring a pot of water to boil. Meanwhile, season scallops with soy sauce, curry powder and 1 tablespoon lemon juice, and a dash of salt and pepper. Set aside.

When water is boiling, add a pinch of salt. Once water gets to boiling point again, add pasta. Follow instructions on the package. Real Italian semolina pasta usually takes about 12 minutes to cook.

Heat pan over medium heat for about 2 minutes. Add a little olive oil and wait till it heats up a little. Gently place scallops on pan and space them out a little. Do not move them as it might ruin the searing process. Cook each side for 2 to 3 minutes, until scallops are browned. Turn them over, and repeat the process.

When scallops are cooked and opaque, deglaze the pan by adding the rest of the lemon juice over the scallops. Toss scallops and accumulated pan juices with freshly cooked pasta. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Serve immediately.

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martes, enero 17, 2006

French Stories 2: Les treize desserts provençale

[Nuts in Shells]

Backtracking to my Christmas in Provence, one entire week of homecooked food made me felt completely pampered. (Merçi mille fois, Jacqueline!) A traditional Christmas meal in Provence is a whole different type of fanfare especially with its 13 desserts to sweeten your palatte after dinner. Before the festivities begin, the morning markets in Southern France are flooded with people loading up their baskets with fresh and dried produce alike, as well as fresh-cut flowers. I tagged along with my hostess Jacqueline to the market to catch in all the sights and at times inquired politely to the stall-owners if I could take a picture or two. (An attempt to practice my French too!)


Les treize desserts consist of a list of complementing pastry and fruits that are native to the region. The number 13 symbolizes Yeshua and his 12 disciples.

First up, there are the dried fruits called les quatre mendiants (the four beggars) referring to the four catholic orders:
- Les raisins secs or raisins (Dominicans)
- Les figues sèches or dried figs (Franciscans)
- Les noisettes or hazelnuts (Augustines)
- Les amandes or almonds (Carmelites).

Then there's la pompe à huile, a pastry made with olive oil,
which according to tradition has to be broken by hand like Yeshua did when he broke the bread at the last supper. No knife is used to cut the pastry to ensure a good year ahead.

Next up is my favorite of the 13 desserts: la nougat. There are two versions, blanc et noir. The light or white nougat is made with hazelnuts, pinenuts or pistachios, while the dark one is made of melted honey and almonds. I tasted la nougat noir this time. It is sticky and sweet confection and the almonds are really fresh and tasty. I imagine the white ones are similar to its spanish cousin, el turron.

The final step to complete the dessert platter are fresh and dried fruits according to each family or community's preference. I think tangerines and grapes are tops as they are local and in season and I find loads of them in the market. In France and Spain, tangerines are known as clementines or mandarines. They are a symbol for prosperity too, apparently, in this part of the world. (It always reminds me of Chinese New Year.) Dates are very common too, as well as those that comes stuffed in a pastel-colored sweet almond paste. Other sweets added include winter melon confits and prunes.

Even though I was ready to tuck into bed after a five-course dinner that started with champagne and ended with les treize desserts provencale, I held to my own suggestion to attend midnight mass. The best part was the christmas caroles we sang (yes, in french) in the church. That led us to sing all the way in the car ride home (I sang in English and Jacqueline in French concurrently) and right up to the building's entrance, at which a neighbor did a sign with his fist making a motion as if he's turning a knob right in front of his nose. I recognized it as the french sign meaning drunk. He was attributing our carole-singing to too much a glass to drink. Guess how Jacqueline responded? A most appropriate prayer-hands sign (hey it's international) alluding to the christmas mass that kept our spirits high!

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domingo, enero 15, 2006

Le Pissenlit

[Dandelion Greens]

During the Christmas season, I spent an entire week in Southern France, the land known for its rich local produce. One of the things I tasted was a simple salad made with Pissenlit. This leafy vegetable literally means "piss in bed" in French, aluding to the duretic effects of this herb.

Known as dandelion greens in the States, the young tender shoots are cultivated in winter to make simple salads. While later in early spring, the mature leaves are cooked. Dandelion derives from another name of the plant in Old French which means lion's tooth: Dent-de-lion. In France it is common for people who live in the country to gather them in the wild.

Pissenlit has long been prized for its medicinal benefits that includes eliminating excess body fluids, reducing blood pressure, and dissolving gall stones. Due to its many wondrous benefits, people have used the herb in wine-making and beer-brewing. I was told while plunging into a bedful of the slightly bitter herbs tossed with a mustard dressing that the leaves are high in vitamin A, vitamin C and a good doseful of iron, more than found in spinach. If you come across these leafy goodness in your local markets, eat them up to your health!

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Easy Mustard Dressing
2 parts extra virgin olive oil
1 part (whole grain) Dijon mustard
1 part balsamic vinegar
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste



This is my first participation in Weekend Herb Blogging hosted by Kalyn's Kitchen.

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lunes, enero 09, 2006

French Stories 1: La Raclette de Savoie

It was my second New Year's Eve in Europe but I wasn't partaking 12 grapes at each chime towards midnight on new year's day in good old spanish fashion like I did the year before in Barcelona. As I was in Paris this year, the new year's eve feast was celebrated with good company and a traditional French festive meal, La Raclette de Savoie.

Our magnanimous hosts Marie and Siva (and baby Shanti) woke up early in the morning on new year's eve to go marketing for authentic Savoie cheeses from the Alps region. The Raclette de Savoie cheese, with a seductive yellow color and a pale rind, is made with raw cow's milk (au lait cru) in the French Alpine mountains.




As you can see from the picture, you place the sliced cheeses onto the tiny pans that comes with the special heating apparartus i.e. the raclette grill. Once melted, it becomes a creamy bubbly delight that you carefully pour (and scrape) onto small roasted potatoes and jambon (ham). For this special dinner, Marie and Siva served it with an assortment of different jambons, and a simple leafy salad with a dressing made with mustard. The raclette cheeses we had also come in different varieties e.g. peppered, herbed, or smoked.


If you are in France between the months of November and January, try this dish, as it is the best time to taste La Raclette de Savoie, after an aging process of between four to five months. The meal is traditionally accompanied by a Savoie wine like Riesling or Pinot Gris.

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My 2.5-week trip to France has been immensely fruitful in the sense that I've accumulated a good amount of food photography and writing ideas for Green Olive Tree. Meanwhile, please be patient with me while I juggle my french and international studies classes with writing reader-worthy entries for this blog. Muak!

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domingo, enero 01, 2006

Bonne Année from Paris

[Les Amoureux de la Bastille, 1957, Willy Ronis]

Darn, I left my faithful card-reader at home so there's no way to share the pictures I've taken here in Paris. But here's sharing with you a very special photograph taken by Willy Ronis, a celebrated Parisien photographer. Wishing you a stupendous 2006 and when I get back to Barcelona on the 8th, there'll be something nice here awaiting you.