Dinner in the Yellow House

Spanish Day at Ottavio

This past Saturday was Spanish Day at Ottavio and I, blessed among women, managed to score some childcare and a hot date and went to check out the action.

There were flamenco dancers!

There were tastings! 

I tried two organic Spanish wines, jamon serrano, manchego (swoon!) and arbequina olives, which are totally new to me.  They are tiny little green beauties from Catalonia, with a very subtle flavour.  Although I typically prefer strong flavours, these arbequinas were quite addictive. 

Ottavio was selling bottles of arbequina olive oil and I wanted one, but my hot date gave me one of those looks which means "Too much" so I didn't get one.  They were 19.25, marked down to 16.25 for the day.  Later we went to the Village Butcher and found the same amount of arbequina olive oil for 12.75, so if you want to try this stuff, mosey across the street and save a few bucks.

Tastings are all well and good, but after enjoying some dancing and music and nibbles, we wanted a proper lunch, so we grabbed a table and ordered three tapas and two glasses of sangria. 

Anchovies and red peppers with olives and lemon:

Manchego with quince paste and almonds:

And octopus (apologies for the angle of this shot.  Apparently it didn't occur to the photographer (me) to turn the plate around so the photo would show the actual octopus and not just the bread!):

We are toying with the idea of taking the kids on a trip to Spain and Portugal this winter.  I am leaning towards not doing it, simply because M'hijo is too active for plane and train travel.  But Spanish Day at Ottavio weakened my resolve a little bit, I must admit.  I could definitely get used to this.

Solstice Ceviche

To celebrate the first day of summer yesterday, I made myself ceviche for lunch.  And not just any ceviche, but Clotilde's strawberry and avocado ceviche from Chocolate and Zucchini: Daily Adventures in a Parisian Kitchen.  And yeah, I ate it out of a margarita glass.  What's it to ya?

A glass of cava would have gone really, really well with this, but since I was headed off to teach music to preschoolers immediately after lunch, a nice crisp glass of water had to suffice. 

Since I ate this alone, I can only give you my impression, and keep in mind that I love anything fishy:  it was great.  M'hijo was curious about the glass, but eschewed the ceviche overall.  I think it must have been too cold for him, because he usually loves strawberries and avocados and halibut. 

I seem to have a thing about food eaten on solstices and equinoxes (equinoxen?).  I see I was still eating winter food when spring began.  Now that summer is here, we in the Great White North can start enjoying the dishes that normal (read, warmer) countries eat in the springtime.  Risi i bisi is coming soon!

(Incidentally, I also celebrated the last day of spring in a foodie way, with an antipasto plate and a glass of sangiovese at Ottavio on Wednesday.  A highly recommended midweek treat.)

Wednesday Night Small-Plate Extravaganza

Sorry about the disappearing act.  Having a sick baby has meant not much cooking and not much time for blogging for the last several days.  I did manage to sneak out and enjoy a great meal at The Little Thai Place on Monday night.  That restaurant is, I think, my current favourite take-out place in town.  Eating in is pretty good too, though the tables are a bit rickety and the atmosphere is stripmallesque.  Their green curry with eggplant, beef and coconut is amazing.  I could eat it every day. 

Time away from the kitchen got me thinking of lots of things that I've been wanting to try so last night I did a hodgepodge sort of dinner: lots of small plates, all ready at different times as I fit the preparing of them into a schedule of doing dishes, supervising homework, playing with trucks, sweeping, assisting my spouse in the backyard with a garden project he's working on, and helping my seven-year-old prepare for an upcoming Taekwon-Do rank evaluation. 

The first one is the dish I alluded to last week, the one I made with the beet cooking water.  Presenting...beet jello!

That's caviar and sour cream on top.  I was excited to try making this, and it was fun to make, but unfortunately - and this is extremely rare - I didn't actually like eating it.  The flavour was just...bleh.  It's jellied borscht, which sounds weird, but good.  It's a little better with sour cream and dill, even though I love caviar and the caviar was recommended.  My picky seven-year-old hated it, which was sad because she dug into it with such relish (thinking it was a typical sweet Jello).  My spouse liked it, making this the only food in the world that I really dislike and he likes.  It sure looks good though, no?

The next dish is just as weird, and I was just as keyed up about making it.  Presenting...crispy avocados!

These are made by dredging avocado quarters in a cornstarch/berbere mixture (and the use of berbere should tell you where I got the recipe from), then in egg whites, then frying them.  The result was...sort of okay.  Not smashing.  So far, I was zero for two in my small plates experiment. 

The next dish was not experimental in the least.  It was good old grilled peppers: predictably delicious.

I make Delia Smith's Piedmont Peppers a lot, and these were very similar in flavour, but more nibbly, because the peppers are sliced thinly then marinated.  The marinade is made of mashed up anchovies, garlic, parsley, red peppers flakes and olive oil.  The peppers should be roasted and peeled first.  And of course, they taste better the next day. 

At this point I was sick to death of small plates and needed something hearty to fill up the bellies so I whipped up some pesto chicken salad (chopped up cooked chicken, prepared mayonnaise, prepared pesto), cut open a baguette and slapped some of the salad down on it.  The photos of this do not do it justice, which just goes to show that things that look the best (see jellied borscht above) and are the fiddliest to make are not necessarily the yummiest.