VALENTINES DAY

I'd like to talk about several things this morning.

The other day I was at Whole Foods (it's closer than the Buford Farmers Market) and I was picking up ciabata bread, which they bake very well at a reasonable price.  I was also checking to see if I could afford any of the fish they sell, when I saw a tray piled with pieces of different kinds of fish.  Among the pile were several beautiful pieces of Ahi tuna.  These pieces were selling for $3.95 whereas the bigger portions of the same fish were $19.95...5 times as much, for essentially the same thing.  I could make skewers for the grill but it was raining and not supposed to stop in the foreseeable future.  I could make poisson cru or some sort of ceviche.  I decided upon tuna burgers.  I had not tried out my meat grinder for the Kitchenaid yet, so why not.

I put my chunks of tuna through the grinder, threw in some chopped scallions, a little tamari, a bit of rice vinegar, a dab of sesame oil, a twist of black pepper and the juice of a lime.
While the burgers were cooking (I stopped at rare), I made some wasabi and mixed it into a combo of mayo and yogurt for smearing on top of the tuna burgers.

As a side, I made sauteed kale.  Since I learned that kale is maybe THE most nutritious food one can eat, I've been doing my best  figuring ways to get more of it into our diets.  A recipe which I learned in 1976 while visiting Barcelona is sauteed spinach in extra virgin olive oil with sliced garlic, raisins and pinola nuts.  I've been making this dish over the years as often as Charlotte could stand it (fortunately, it's one of her favorite dishes) so just replace spinach for kale and voila.  Kale is not as delicate and refined, if you will, as spinach but there is the satisfaction of knowing how good it is for you.

I must close now and head out into the world, (off to the Buford Farmers Market).  When I return I want to talk about how I used kale last night.  Cheerio

PASTA AND SORBET

I haven't been posting lately do to the trouble my laptop has been experiencing.  My genius engineer, Brandon put a new operating system, hard drive and RAM into the old comp and it's now humming again!

Yesterday I made pasta again with my Kitchenaid mixer but was distracted by a visitor and mixed the wrong amounts of ingredients.  I was supposed to mix one and a half cups of AP unbleached flour with a quarter cup of semolina.  I instead measured a half cup of semolina.  I made my volcano shape with the flour mixture and placed two eggs and a tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil into the middle.  I then gently broke and mixed the eggs with a fork and slowly incorporated the flour into the egg and oil until I had formed a ball of dough.  Next the dough was kneaded for a good ten minutes.  It was after this was done that I realized my mistake with the proportions.  I went ahead and cut the dough into spaghetti and dried it anyway.

I prepared my old standby tomato sauce and added mushrooms and fresh basil instead of meat.
 While the sauce was simmering away I took about 2.5 cups of strawberries and threw them into my food processor.  I added a little less than a cup of water and 3 tablespoons of vodka to the berries.  I chopped a handful of fresh mint very fine and chucked that in.  Now all the recipes for sorbet that I've read up till yesterday call for superfine sugar or simple syrup (liquid sugar).  I don't really want to used refined sugar so I substituted raw honey and not really knowing how much honey it takes to produce the sweetness of X amount of sugar, I started with two tablespoons and blended and tasted.  Two was a little dull so I added another.  It tasted good so when the mixture was blended well I poured it through a sieve to remove some of the the little seeds (I don't think it's really necessary for strawberries but I did it anyway).
Just so you know, the vodka is added not for taste but to keep the sorbet from getting rock hard.  The scooping is so much easier!
Charlotte loved the finished sorbet and she really knows her sweets...being from Sweeeeden.

Now, back to the pasta.  I learned that again, recipes don't have to always be precise.  You can look at what you're making and figure out what needs to be added many times and it's all good.   This was the case with the extra semolina.  It did make the mixture a bit drier and when I saw that, I added another egg and voila!  It was perfect.

So don't be afraid to experiment and don't worry about "mistakes"...just do it!   However, if you are baking, disregard all that which I've just written and stick to the recipe. :>)