Torino e la neve

I'm in Italy! And I'm just really mostly relaxing. I guess coming during the break implies that fewer friends are around, which is unfortunate, but also allows me to just wander around aimlessly by myself, and stay more with my family. Moreover, I've been gifted with an amazing show: snow in Torino! This doesn't happen very often, and also, not as much as this year. Given that I don't have to drive much, snow for me is just a beautiful curtain that gives a magic atmosphere to the city. Two nights ago I walked around taking pictures of some beautiful landmarks, trying to record some of the residual snow on the ground. Here they are, for your enjoyment.
These are the roman 'doors' of the city. In Roman times, Torino (Augusta Taurinorum, at the time) was surrounded by walls, and this was one of the doors to enter.
I took the picture from a skewed angle because I liked the snow on the side, so you can't really see the arches where the chariots and the people used to pass. Here is a front view, without the charming snow, which shows better how impressive the door is. It's amazingly well preserved.
Now, off to another snowy landmark:
This is the 'Mole Antonelliana'. It's the symbol of the city, built by Antonelli starting from 1863. It was initially built to be a synagogue, then the building became various other things, and now it hosts a wonderful museum of the cinema. It's the tallest building in the city, and one of the tallest buildings in brick in Europe. One can take a futuristic elevator and go to almost the top of this building. If the sky is clear, the view of the city and the Alps from there is amazing.
Now, this is not snowy, but it's one of the most beautiful squares in Torino:
It's Piazza San Carlo. The two churches on the back are called 'twin churches', because they look so similar. The beautifully colored lights you see are part of the Christmas lights that are everywhere throughout Torino. They are extremely varied and pretty, and enhance the beauty of some of the most famous streets, churches and squares by night.
This is the statue that's in the middle of the square. It's Emanuele Filiberto, and it's a beautiful bronze statue that now one can admire very well, thanks to the recent creation of a pedestrian area in the whole square.
And this is the Cathedral. Again, only a little snow left in front of it. But I love how it's lit. The famous Shroud with the mysterious image of a body resembling that of Jesus Christ is held in there, and shown only in very special occasions.
At last, speaking about snow, I want to show you two pictures I took from the plane.
These are the Alps, right before landing in Torino:
And these are the much older and rounder mountains seen a little after leaving Berkeley. I think we were somewhere above Idaho, but I'm not exactly sure. If you recognize the spot, let me know. :)
Hopefully you've enjoyed this nightly walk in Torino. I'll have more posts about Torino soon.

Fresh Produce of the Month: pears

Mmmmmmmmmm..... I feel really terrible for not having written on the blog for so long. However, better late than never, I keep believing! And at last, I am on vacation, amazingly enough! I have almost finished the first part of my 'application campaign', and I am waiting to see if at least one of them will lead to some sort of job in the near future. Not a good year to be looking for jobs, but what can one do?

So, as a first post, I really have to write about the roundup of the 'Fresh Produce of the Month: Pears', that was held now months ago! I'm really sorry this is not the fresh produce of the month anymore :( However, the entries were so wonderful that I hope reading about them will still be a joy and inspiration to many!

I received the first entry from my colleague and friend Albert. He does have a blog in Catalan, 'La cova d'en Còdol', but he doesn't publish recipes on it. So he sent me a picture and a recipe for these 'Pears in wine' that you see here.. a very typical Catalan dessert. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

1kg Pears (blanquilla)
½ l red wine
1 cinnamon stick
300gr sugar
1 lemon peal

We peal the pears without cutting the tail. In a deep bowl we put first the pears, then the rest of ingredients. We put the bowl in the microwave at high power for 8-10 minutes, we turn the pears and we cook it 5 more minutes. In order to know if they are done just prick the pears with a knife.
Serve warm or cold as desired with the "sauce" of the bowl.

A quick and delicious pear centered recipe comes from Francesca, from 'francescav'. It's a 'Quick strudel with pears and grapes'. I love strudels, my mom used to make a lot of them when I was younger. Francesca is right: they are quick and wonderful! She suggests serving it with ice cream or with a home-made yogurt sauce.




Stuffed pear in orange spice sauce is what Soma from 'ecurry' brings to the table: it's a delicious idea, that involves stuffing a pear with all sorts of nuts and raisin, and cooking it with spices in orange juice. I'm in awe :)




Priya from 'Priya's Easy N Tasty Recipes' suggests an 'Orange pear cocktail juice', containing a healthy and refreshing combination of vitamins and fibers! And the color is really pretty. Thanks Priya!












Marta from 'Mangiare è un po' come viaggiare' contributes with a very enticing recipe: 'Risotto con pere speziate e formaggio bleu', a risotto with pears, nutmeg, pistachio nuts, and bleu cheese. This sounds like a wonderful idea, and I'm putting it on my list of recipes to try out!










Aparna from 'My diverse kitchen' bakes a 'Spiced pear galette' , containing pears and black pepper, cinnamon, star anise, and nutmeg. I can imagine how all these spices must contribute to making a really delicious galette!






Sweatha from 'Tasty curry leaf' prepared 'Roasted Pears with sweet cous cous', by stuffing pears with cous cous and apricots and other dried fruit. Another great idea for serving pears, thank you Sweatha!






My dear friend Simona at 'briciole' serves pears with her amazing homemade cheese, in the most famous combination 'Formaggio con le pere'. I have first-mouth experience of Simona's cheese, and I am just amazed at her ability and adventureousness with the art of cheesemaking!





Rachel from 'The Crispy Cook' also combines pears and wine in this 'Poached pears in rioja' , which I'm sure tastes as wonderful as it looks!






The last recipe (simply because it was really late..) is my 'Pear tarte', which I made with a recipe from my Aunt Maria Rosa, a really healthy one, with almost no flour and butter.. I can assure you that the result is mouthwatering even with these healthy ingredients :)





Very well, my dear readers, finally the roundup is up! Now, I have a question instead of an announcement: is there anybody who would like to host the Fresh Produce of the Month for the next month or two? I'm going to be still rather busy for a while and I don't want to have this event die. So if somebody would like to host it, I'd be very happy to pass the torch for a few months. Please let me know by sending an email to chemcookitATgmailDOTcom or by commenting on the blog. I can help you with the announcement and the picture for the logo. In order to continue the series, next month a 'fresh vegetable' should be chosen, and a 'fresh fruit' the month after (that's how I've been alternating the produce up to now). Any ideas, anybody?!?

Finalmente!

Obama won! For the first time I feel actually happy to be in the US also from a political point of view. Of course, the contrary would have been crazy - however, what happened is not just relieving: it's actually an event of historical proportions! And so many people felt the same way on Tuesday: for the first time I saw Americans flooding the streets! I thought it would never happen. :) Melynda and I left home after Obama's speech and went down Sproul Plaza (the most famous plaza on campus, where a lot of the parades took place in the Sixties). It was full of students, cheering and screaming! Then, at some point, a spontaneous march started going down Telegraph. I had never thought to see something like this.
I don't know how many we were, but it was a lot! The traffic was all blocked, and people who were stuck in the cars just decided to roll down their windows and unite their voices to ours. :)
We walked a few blocks and then went around and back on campus, to the Campanile, the symbol of the University, where we celebrated. Then a smaller group of people decided to go to the Chancellor's house (he lives on Campus). The students marched towards his house and asked for a speech! I'm not exactly sure why they decided to do that. I guess it was just the excitement of the moment, and the desire to declare this joy 'formally'. The Chancellor came out of his house after a few minutes (as I found out later, he was actually sleeping :) ). He said a few words of congratulations and happiness, and then everybody left.

It was a remarkable experience. Hopefully people will remain this engaged for a while. I am looking forward to see how the politics of this country will change.

To finish this post, I'll put a few more funny pictures: these are Melynda and I walking at the march on Telegraph (Melynda took the picture :) ).
And here it's me with Obama!
We're at 'Au Coquelet', one of the few places serving food after 11 pm in Berkeley. Melynda and I went there after the Chancellor's speech, and that's where we met him. :)

Cena piemontese

Tonight I have a little time to blog, finally. So after the pear cake, here is a post about a dinner party I threw a really really long time ago. It was a very nice one, in theme 'Piemontese cuisine', featuring homemade tajarin, rabbit 'al civet', and chocolate/amaretti-filled peaches. Many untranslatable words! So read more to find out what these things are. :)
(here you can see me cooking the sauce for the tajarin: my idea is to host more of these dinner parties in theme with a regional or national cuisine, and take pictures of each master chef. :) )
Tajarin
(this and most of the other pictures are Alice's courtesy!)
Tajarin (pronounciation 'taayareen') is a piemontese version of 'tagliatelle', which I believe everybody is more familiar with. The main difference is that tajarin have to be hand-cut. To make them, prepare a dough which is extremely similar to that of tagliatelle (except for the fact that you use more eggs/pound of flour: in particular, to make this, use 9 eggs and 2 egg yolks every two pounds of flour). Then, after you roll the dough very thin using a pasta machine, you have to flour it and cut it with a sharp knife: roll it up, and cut thin slices of it! Here you can see Matt's expert cutting hand.
We made a humongous amount of tajarin..
But they were ALL GONE very quickly! I served them with two sauces: one was mushrooms and parsley (simply sauteed with olive oil, garlic, and white wine towards the end: really easy and wonderfully delicious), and another was the simple and wonderful butter and sage (just melt some butter in a pot, and add a few leaves of sage to it. Serve with parmesan cheese grated on top). They were both really good.

NB: making tajarin for a large number of people is an effort that should be undertaken only with the help of many friends! This makes the process of pasta-making actually fun, whereas I don't think I would enjoy it as much if I had to do the whole thing by myself..

Coniglio al civet / Rabbit 'al civet'
As you know, I almost never cook meat. This was a special occasion. I really wanted to make rabbit for some of my Italian friends who were really happy about the idea. I bought the rabbit at the Berkeley Bowl, and it was delicious. In Piemonte, rabbit is a common dish. My grandma made it a lot, because she used to raise rabbits. So I still remember her really good 'coniglio al civet', which I tried to reproduce. Here is the recipe, if you want to try it:

Cut the rabbit into pieces and put it to marinate in one quart of red wine, with a stick of cinnamon, a few cloves, four garlic cloves, 2 onions, 8 juniper berries and a tad of marjoram. Marinate for at least 24h, then remove. In a pot, saute in butter one finely cut onion, two carrots cut into pieces, and some rosemary. After ~2 minutes, add the rabbit, salt, and some leaves of sage and bay. Saute the rabbit for ~5 minutes, turning the pieces, then add some red wine, enough to cover it. Cook it for ~40 minutes, making sure it's always covered in wine. Then let the wine evaporate and serve!

[Later addition: this recipe comes out quite well with chicken instead of rabbit, too. Just skin the chicken before marinating it. Also, I tried it again with my mom's trick, which is to reserve the marinate after you remove the meat from it, blend it, and add it to the meat pieces while they simmer. You'll have to add less wine to cover the meat and the result will be even more tasty!]

It's a delight. I served it together with some more carrots, cut into small pieces and sauteed in butter, served with parmesan grated on top, which is the way my grandma used to make her carrots. I strongly recommend trying this rabbit dish, if you're not vegetarian. The only problem I had with it was to cut the rabbit into pieces. It was really impressive for me, since I don't usually deal with meat.. Rather hypocritical since I eat meat from time to time.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures of the peaches before they were all gone. They were also wonderful, but I will post the recipe when I can find some good peaches again. Which unfortunately will mean next year!

So this is it for the Piemontese dinner. Here is a picture of almost everybody who was at the dinner:
As you can see, we were all in the kitchen, making food altogether, chatting and drinking before sitting down. This is what I love about throwing a dinner party with friends: being together and enjoying each other's company. I love to see everybody having a good time. There will be more 'regional/national' dinner parties to come!

Torta di pere

Hrm - I'm late on my own event, as usual. :(
Well, sorry everybody, and this also means that whoever still wants to publish a recipe focused on pears, they can still submit their entry for this month 'Fresh Produce of the Month' event! I think I'll have time to put together the roundup this coming weekend.
So, here is my own entry: it's a pear cake that I made for the first time a few years ago, with a recipe given by my aunt Mariarosa. It's a very healthy cake, that contains no butter at all. I love it, and it's perfect for this season! The recipe was sent electronically to me by my mom, whom I thank very much. I'll copy down here her version, which accounts for an Italian translation. However, if you can read Italian, you'll realize what really this recipe is: just a theme over which one can improvise.. the oven temperature is not told, nor is the baking time.. and considering I don't have a scale, the weight of the pears I used was not controlled either. The English version that I'm writing down is more precise - however, don't be too worried. It works most likely with many other combinations. :) For example, I actually used nutmeg instead of cinnamon powder. I liked the substitution, although my mom thought it was a crazy idea, when I told her. :)

As a final note: I served this cake with a scoop of ice cream. The first night it was vanilla ice cream. The second night there were two slices left. My friend Anders and I made a rum and raisin ice cream which was just amazingly good with this cake. :) - I'll give the ice cream recipe in another post.

Torta di pere di zia Mariarosa / Aunt Mariarosa's pear cake

Ingredients
1+1/4 cup of flour
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
2 pounds pears (long and hard)
1 egg + 1 yolk
2 tsp baking powder
grated zest of half a lemon
2 tsp cinnamon powder
1/2 tsp salt

Procedure:
Beat 1/2 cup sugar with the eggs. Add lemon zest, milk, and slowly, the flour previously mixed with baking powder and salt. Pour the dough in a baking pan.
On top, add the pears, cut in thin long slices. Don't worry: it will look like you have a humongous amount of pears on top. That's how it's supposed to be. On top, add the rest of the sugar mixed with cinnamon powder. Bake at 350C for ~45 min.



Versione Italiana:
---------------------
150 gr farina
200g zucchero
mezzo bicchiere di latte
1 kg pere (lunghe e dure, tipo Kaiser)
1 uovo intero + 1 tuorlo
1 bustina lievito
buccia grattugiata di mezzo limone
2 cucchiaini di cannella in polvere
1 pizzico di sale

Sbattere 100 gr di zucchero con uova e buccia di limone, aggingere il latte e poi unire poco per volta la farina mescolata con il lievito e il sale .
Stendere la pasta in una teglia (meglio se rettangolare), disporre sopra le pere (meglio se non sbucciate e tagliate a fettine verticali): cospargere il tutto con 100 gr di zucchero mescolato con la cannella.
Infornare a fuoco moderato (non so per quanto, vedi tu). **Direi circa 180C, per circa 45 min** (commento dell'editrice :) )
-------------------------------

Musica

Don't worry: I will get back to posting about food. The decrease in number of food-related posts is due to both too much work and job applications to do, and to the fact that cooking for myself is not as much fun as cooking for somebody else too. However, last night I did make something nice, which I will post about soon. And I did throw some nice dinner parties in the past few weeks, so they will be the subject of a few more posts.

But for now, I wanted to post something about.. music! In the past weekend, I went out almost every night to participate to some art-related event. Most of them were related to music, and I really enjoyed them. Here I would like to share what represented a completely new discovery for me: Eldar!
Eldar is a 21 year old pianist, who plays jazz in a way that is just breathtakingly beautiful, amazing, moving, touching, energizing.. I don't have enough words to praise him. He played mostly pieces that he composed himself. The sounds coming from him and his trio just completely filled me with joy and awe. I really didn't want him to leave the stage. I bought his last CD, and it's great, even though some of his energy is missing compared to being in the same room with him.
If you like jazz (and even if you think you don't), please visit his website. You can listen to some of his songs online.

Plus, here you can actually see him play!!!

If I wasn't thirty years old, I would say I'm in love with a music star. :)

Eldar's concert was part of the SF Jazz festival. I love jazz, and I enjoyed the concert so much, that I'm going to try to listen to at least a few more before the festival is over.

Premio 'Arte y pico'

Today I received a blog-award! I'm very happy. :) The award is related to creativity, which is one of the things I care for the most. So, this makes me even happier. :)
I was given this wonderful award by Food Hunter. Thank you so much!
The award originates from Uruguay, and the dolls are made by the Eseya, who writes the 'Arte y pico' blog. Now, I'm going to choose five more bloggers who will receive this award. If you're one of them, please follow the following rules:

1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, for creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

2) Advertise name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.

3) Each award-winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of "Arte y pico" blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

5) Share these rules.

The bloggers who will receive the award are..

Simona at briciole

Elena at comidademama

Rosa at Rosa's Yummy Yums

Ruth at Once Upon a Feast

Mansi at Fun and Food

Congratulations :)

Ode a San Francisco

My application season is slowing down a little this week, so I'm taking the occasion to look at my old pictures and see how many wonderful things I have to write about. This year has been full of really unexpected things, and I will for sure remember it for the rest of my life. Here I want to record some of the impressions of the really good things that happened.. and since a lot of them has happened in San Francisco, I want to dedicate this post to this wonderful city. If I were a director, I would set a movie here. The landscapes are just unbeatable. So here are a few snapshots for you, my dear readers, from the non super-touristic places of the city. Imagine some nice music in the background while you start this tour.

We begin with the symbol of the city: the Golden Gate bridge, in all its beauty, from Baker beach. Brave people actually go for swims here. I just had a walk and enjoyed the beautiful landscape. If you look around, you can also find reasons to giggle a little... Baker's beach, close to the bridge in particular, is populated by people who don't like too many clothes on. :)
Here instead is the Palace of Fine Arts. It's a really nice area of the city, and the Exploratorium is there: amazing science museum full of hands-on activities that captivated me. I've actually learned a lot of things by playing around in the museum for a few hours, and managed to visit only about 1/4 of it. Definitely recommended to visit if you have time.

This is the Conservatory of Flowers, in the Golden Gate Park. Beautiful building. I still have to visit inside, I think it's going to be as wonderful as the outside.

And this is another beach, the French beach, close to Lincoln Park: looking west..
.. and East, another view of the bridge:
The fog is coming! This part of the city is almost always foggy.
This is the Thinker, a statue outside the Legion of Honor, another beautiful museum in this part of the city:
If you go on Sunday (at least in Summer time), you'll listen to a free organ lesson-concert. Well, this is my post for today. I will leave you with this last picture of SF by night. This shot is taken from the top of Twin Peaks. Notice the Bay Bridge, on the right side of the picture. It's so beautiful, both during the day and at night. The view at night from this hill is just amazing, my picture is just a very reduced part of it. Going up Twin Peaks is unbelievable: it's like suddenly going in the country side, and it's in the middle of San Francisco!
Obviously, there is a lot more to see of this wonderful city. I hope I captured your attention - I will try to write more about it soon.

Una specie di riassunto

Hello everybody! I'm happy the blog hasn't completely died in these past few months. My intense activity of job applications and finishing up with my projects is still going on at its peak. However, I have at this point a strong desire of writing about something other than chemistry for once.
The title of this post is rather ambitious: 'an attempt of a summary', which obviously won't include all the *** no adjective here *** events of my recent life, but at least will give a few snapshots of the good parts of it.. because in the end, that's what's worth trying to remember, right?

So here we are. The first thing really worth writing about is my trip to Mexico. Mexico is an amazing place and I'm thinking to write a post specifically about it. However, this is a summary-post, so I'll just pinpoint a few things.
Mexico city: crowded, full of life.
(this dance was performed in the main square - El Zocalo -. The square and all the huge surrounding area was filled with people).

European-looking architecture mixed with skyscrapers.

Wonderful food at every corner.
(here are some typical stands: tortas=mexican sandwiches, and aguas frescas are the best fruit juices ever. I tried to resist the temptation at the beginning, then started to try them after a while - I didn't die, so I guess there weren't too many bacteria in the ice that they used. :) )

Best archeological museum in the world.
(Melynda and I spent an afternoon in this museum, and were overwhelmed with awe at each room)

Filled with spirituality
(this was in the Cathedral)

Close to Teotihuacan, the most amazing place ever. This is a view of the pyramid of the Moon from the top of the pyramid of the Sun.
And these are the people climbing on top of the pyramid of the Sun.
It was rather tiring, but getting on the top was an unbelievable experience, which made me feel strangely powerful and close to the Sun. :)

Tulum: AAAHHHH.. I so much want to go back and be there now! The place is the most amazing place I've been in my whole life. We had a 'cabana' on the beach, which meant that I could enjoy this any time of the day and of the night:
In fact, I could fulfill my dream of swimming in the ocean at midnight, and of seeing the sunrise on the ocean.
Both experiences - the stars in the sky and the white foam as the only thing visible around you, at night, and the sun slowly lighting the whole sky on fire, in the morning - were the most unforgettable experiences of the trip, for me.

The other amazing thing of Tulum are the ruins, which we saw at night. Another unbelievable experience: everything was dark and silent, except for the waves hitting against the rocks, and we were immersed in this city of the past, lit with changing colors.
It was truly another experience for the soul.

Two more things were amazing of Tulum: snorkeling at the reef, where we were able to swim with a sea turtle, an amazingly elegant creature, and see wonderfully colored fish, which I had seen only in aquariums before; and swimming in the 'cenotes', natural caves formed by the rain in the carsic terrain of the Yucatan. The water is rather cold, and the landscape is surreal: a castle of stalactites and stalagmites under the water.
(this was part of the complex 'Dos Ojos', highly recommended)

More in the Yucatan: Chichen-Itza. Impressive. Although, a little too touristic. I couldn't feel the same atmosphere as in Teotihuacan, for the huge amount of tourists and vendors that were all around.
However, the big pyramid was amazing. Clapping against the center of each wall create a really strange echo, which I never heard anywhere else, sort of like a bird.

The last memories from the trip are the wonderful people I was with:
My dearest friends Jorge and Luisa, who hosted us in the Yucatan (in Merida)
And of course, my wonderful friend Melynda (here in the 'blue house' in Mexico City).

There are a lot more places I visited in these past few months, for a shorter time (day trips, or weekends), which I would have liked to post about. So again, just one picture per trip:

Point Reyes
Point Reyes is a _huge_ park very close to Berkeley. I really recommend anybody in the area to go there. I've been there only once and really want to go back. This was the ocean view path, in the south side of the park. You can walk miles, close to the ocean. The view is breath taking. And there are small lakes, where one can go swim or canoe, and small waterfalls on the beach, too.

Visit at my friends Simona and Robert, in Trinidad.
Trinidad is in North California, very close to National Redwood Park. Simona and Robert have an amazing house, with a view on the ocean that's just unimaginable. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it. It's even more beautiful than this, which is the view that you have from the light house at Trinidad:
And this is a picture of the redwoods, on my first hike with Simona:
It's hard to capture the atmosphere of this amazing park in a picture.
Last picture for this summary:
I had never seen these beautiful animals before, in 'real life'!

Ok, this is it for now. I still have to show a picture of myself with my newest and shortest haircut. I'll do it as soon as I have a good occasion to take a picture. :)
Also, I'll try to upload all the pictures of the trips on my web album, so there will be a lot more to see. Last but not least, I will try to publish at least some of my recent culinary creations and explorations.. looking forward to finding some time to blog again. :)