Cook-cena

Sunday night we organized a cooking-together dinner. We were 7 people (Yanli, Dazhong, Alina, Lina, JJ, Lucas and I). Yanli hosted it very nicely at her place. We chose the recipes from a French cookbook that Alina had (Cuisine d'ete), and we brought the ingredients at her place.
Here are the recipes and the pictures of what we made!

Salade de melon vert aux crevettes (Melon salad with shrimp)
1 melon
2 avocados
1/2 pound shrimp
Lemon
green onion
6 radishes
4 teaspoons mayo
2 teaspoons mustard
Salt, pepper

Cut the melon in half, and scrape (or cut) the pulp out (supposedly in little spheres, we made some cubes instead). Cut the avocados (again, supposedly in spheres, but we went for some easier shape), and pour lemon juice on them. Slice the radish and the green onion.
Peel the shrimp and sautee it in some olive oil. Put together all the ingredients (shrimp, melon, radish, onion, avocado). Mix the mayo, the mustard, some sault and pepper and add it to the rest of the ingredients. Serve it using the halves of the melon as bowls.

Cake aux tomates confites (cake with sun-dried tomatoes)
1/2 pound flour
1 and 1/2 tsp baking powder
3 tbsp olive oil
3 tbsp milk
3 eggs
1/3 lb sun-dried (or roasted) tomatoes
1/2 cup olives, unpitted
1/4 lb colby cheese
basil
1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper

Preheat the oven at 380.
Mix flour and baking powder. Add oil, milk, salt, pepper, mix. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring. Cut the cheese, the olives and the tomatoes in small pieces and add them to the dough. Put some anti-sticking paper in a baking pan (eg one that you would use to make bread loaves), and cook for 40 minutes.

Cannelloni d'aubergines aux cepes at au chevre frais (Eggplant cannelloni with mushrooms and goat cheese)
3 eggplants
2 cups mushrooms
1 roll fresh goat cheese
olive oil
green onion
salt, pepper

Cut the onion, mix it to the goat cheese, add salt and pepper and 1 tbsp olive oil. Slice the mushrooms and saute them in some olive oil. Add to the cheese mix. Chill.
Slice the eggplants along the length, grill them, salt them. Put some cheese mix in each grilled slice, and roll them, making some 'cannelloni'. Keep refrigerated before serving.

Peches farcies aux amarettis et au cacao (Peaches stuffed with amarettis and cocoa)
6 yellow peaches
8 amaretti cookies
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar

Wash well the peaches, cut them in halves, scoop most of the pulp out. Crush the amaretti. Mix the peach pulp with the cookies, squish with a fork, add the egg, mix. Add the cocoa powder and the sugar. Fill the peach halves with this mixture, and bake at 350 F for 40 minutes. Serve warm.

In addition, Alina prepared some wonderful sushi, so I finally learnt how to make it! She cooked some sushi rice until it was very sticky, added some rice vinegar in it, then let it cool down. In the meanwhile, she cut some avocados, cucumbers, smoked salmon and eel. When the rice was cold, she spread it on both sides of the nori sheets, leaving an end of the 'shiny' side of the nori uncovered. Then, she put pieces of salmon, cream cheese, cucumbers, or eels, avocado and cucumbers across the nori/rice sheets, and rolled tightly with the help of a sushi mattress. She covered the salmon sushi with red caviar eggs. They were absolutely delicious! You can see the eel sushi here:


And at last, Dazhong (Yanli's husband) prepared some wonderful chinese catfish, that I have to ask the recipe for.. I really loved it.

In conclusion, it was a very nice evening. It was nice to cook together, everyone contributed at least a bit to the cooking.. and the food was very good!

Brighton beach

I haven't blogged in a long time, I know.. I was out of town for work! Again at the Synchrotron, in Brookhaven NY.
This time we didn't have a lot of time to do many fun things, since we were working an average of 13 hours per day. Still, on our way back, we stopped at Brighton Beach, NY. Alina suggested this stop, since she had been there already, and she wanted to show it to me and Crissy. It's a Little Russia in NY. Unfortunately I didn't have a camera, but I found some pictures on webshots.com.
As you can see, everything is in Russian:
(picture taken by kurrte86)
We stayed there for about two hours, and we had a really good lunch at 'Tatiana grill'.. The most amazing thing, for me, was a chicken leg stuffed with rice, mushrooms, crusted with bread and covered with blackberry sauce. Unforgettable! Also, it was nice to enter one of the small shops on the road, and buy some typical Russian products, and get wonderful 'Piroski' from a bakery, as our dinner on the way back!
I guess not many people know what Piroski are.. so for your curiosity I found this picture online:
(from ruski-ekspres.com)
They are stuffed buttery breads, really good. We had three types: meat, cabbage and cherry (sweet). I loved the cabbage ones :)
You can see some interesting pictures of people and places at Brighton beach (included the front of the restaurant where we had) from giophoto.

Finalmente in spiaggia!

Two weekends ago (wow, again too much work!!!!!! Not even time to write about this...), Lucas and I went together with our friends Marco, Antonella and their children Simone and Luca to the beach! On Saturday, Lucas and I woke up very early, in order to be at Oriental in the early morning. Marco and Antonella share a sailing boat that is kept in Oriental and so we met them there. It's about 3.5 hours east from Raleigh, and even if it was Memorial day weekend, we didn't find a lot of traffic.
After a nice swim and playing in the water of a swimming pool, and a nice sandwich + home made guacamole&chips lunch, we began the sailing! The boat is called 'pepper'. Here is one of the sails in the wind:
And the Italian flag waving to show that Italians were on board:
Marco was our able captain. I loved it. It was exciting and relaxing at the same time. I had a wonderful time watching them manover the boat, feeling the wind, and sleeping in the sun :)

In the afternoon, we relaxed again on the porch, enjoying the peace of the landscape and the funny things done by Simone and Luca. Then, Lucas and I went to our hotel, 'The Inn at Oriental'. It's a wonderful place. Anyone who wants to spend a night in Oriental should consider this place. The rooms are really nice, as you can see on their website, and it's held by a couple of wonderful people. They offered us wine and food that they were sharing with some friends (they live in the same place), and after we came back from dinner, that night, we had an interesting political discussion.. I enjoyed it a lot - maybe because we shared similar opinions. :)
In the afternoon, I went to Mass - I always like to go to Mass in different places, it's a way to know a little of the place where I'm visiting. In this case, I went together with the lady of the hotel, she wanted to go to the same church, by chance. It was interesting - I liked the priest's homely and it was nice to see that they sang and said parts of the Mass in Spanish, due to the high level of Spanish population.

The day after, after a wonderful American breakfast at our hotel, we left for the Outerbanks. I was so excited! For the first time, I could see this part of North Carolina coast, which is a unique environment in the whole world. The Outerbanks are stripes of sand just a few miles away from NC coast, and they move, pushed by the wind and the waves.
So, from Oriental, we arrived at Minnesott Beach and we took a ferry. I love ferries, I never used them before coming to the US, and they are just fun. So I took a lot of pictures, and here are some:
The cars on the Ferry
Our twin, going in the opposite direction.
Then, we arrived in Harkers Island, where we left the cars and rode on a skiff to get to the Outerbanks. Also the skiff was exciting!
The plan was, from there, to get a little truck and arrive to Cape Lookout, but unfortunately, there were not trucks available, so we decided we would just stay on the beach and enjoy the ocean on one side, and the bay on the other side.
So, let me show you something:
The ocean side. In front you can see one of the cutest birds in the world, it's so tiny and fast, and it eats little seafood when the waves retire, then runs away and is never caught by them!
The dunes, with seagulls in front.
The bay side. The water is much calmer. It was more fun to play with the children in it. :)

After we left the beach, Lucas and I went to have a nice romantic dinner in Beaufort. It's a beautiful little town on the bay, with a nice walk. We ate in a restaurant on the bay, wonderful seafood that inspired one of my next dinners, that I'll describe soon. :)

So, it was a wonderful break, during this stressful work period. I really want to go back now! Next time, we'll camp on the beach, and hopefully see the point of the island (Cape Lookout), where there is what Marco thinks is the best beach in NC.

If you want to see more pictures of this trip, go to my picture website.

Cena - lezione sui calzoni (con dessert di tiramisu estivo)

I haven't blogged in a while.. I miss it! I was way too busy at work. But at least, I managed to have some nice dinners, and even a weekend trip, during these past ten days.
Let's start with one of the dinners: with Jorge and Luisa, a dinner-lesson about how to make calzoni.

I make calzoni using the same dough that I make for pizza:
About 5-6 cups of flour
3 teaspoons of yiest, dissolved in warm (body temperature) water (about 1 and 1/2 cups), activated by adding a little bit of sugar in it and checking if it makes bubbles
1-2 tablespoons of oil
three pinches of salt
I work all these ingredients together until I have an elastic nice dough, then I leave it covered for about one hour, until it doubles its volume. At this point, I spread the dough.
If I make pizza (or focaccia, like we made that night), I put a ball of dough on the pan that I want to use, then I spread it with my hands, 'walking' with my fingers on it until it's spread all over. Over this dough, you can add whatever you want. If you make pizza, add a tomato sauce (made by cooking finely cut garlic in olive oil and adding diced canned tomatoes, and salt to it) as a base, and then whatever type of cheese, ham, olives, meat, fish, veggies you like. If you make a focaccia (ie white pizza), spread some oil with your fingers on top of it, and then add either pieces of onions, or olives, or tuna, or just some plain grains of salt.
Cook it in the oven at ~400C for ~15 minutes or until it's golden-brown.
(here you see half a white focaccia and an onion focaccia).
The focaccie were served with some beet salad and cheese under oil:
I found out that I love beet salads, and I made up a few of them already. This was prepared by baking some beets and some red potatoes, then after skinning them, I cut them, and I added some capers, olive oil, vinegar and finely cut garlic. It was really good. The cheese under oil is similar to what I already described, although I couldn't find the usual cheese from the farmers market, so I bought a similar goat cheese that tasted good with oil, garlic and parsley too.

To make calzoni, take the same dough and spread it with a rolling pin until quite thin. Make it in oval shapes, about 20 cm long. On a half of it, add the ingredients you want. We made some with pecorino and ham, some with mozzarella and tuna, some with tuna, onions and olives, some with gorgonzola and mozzarella, some with chilorio (a mexican spicy pork meat that Mexicans use on their pizza) and cheddar cheese... Then, fold the dough, so that the empty half covers the half with all the ingredients, and seal by refolding the borders. Cook in the oven at 400F for about 15-20 minutes.
Here you see an example of a whole calzone, some that we cut to share, and a small pizza with gorgonzola and pears that I made because Lucas loves it (and yeah, it is good) :)
The calzoni should be served with a bowl of sauce (finely cut garlic or onions sauteed in some olive oil, plus diced tomatoes and salt, cooked until the tomatoes are nearly dissolved) and I also add a bowl of pesto on a side. Everyone can put on top of their calzoni the sauce that they prefer.

For dessert, I made my completely modified version of tiramisu.
To make it, you need to have
About 15 Ladyfingers (or savoiardi) cookies
One pound ricotta
2 Eggs
half a cup of sugar
About two cups of strawberries
To make the sauce: beat the egg yolks with the sugar until you get a nice whitish cream. Add ricotta to it. Beat the whites until they get a very firm 'snowy' consistency. Add them to the rest of the cream.
Blend about half of the strawberries, add some water (about three tablespoons), and use this liquid to dip the cookies in. Cut into pieces the rest of the strawberries.
Make a first layer of cookies that you have soaked in the strawberry sauce (flip them at least twice in the sauce). Spread a layer of egg/ricotta cream on top. Then add half of the cut strawberries. Pour a little bit of strawberry sauce on top of everything. Then make a second layer of soaked cookies, add the cheese/egg cream, add the rest of the strawberries on top. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight.

The original recipe for tiramisu has mascarpone instead of ricotta, and doesn't have strawberries at all. Instead of soaking the cookies in strawberry sauce, soak them in a mixture of strong coffee and a little water. Add cookies, cheese sauce, cookies, cheese sauce and at the end sprinkle some cocoa powder on top before serving.

For the strawberry season, though, I prefer my strawberry version :)