Dinner in Balestrate!...

We're starting w/ Sicily in my....way overdue postings from the Italy trip! Why? b/c I lurved Del Capo market, the sweets in Balestrate & when Angela and Scott (and Karen) made some fantasmic fish and risotto and arancini! and...then the pics from Erice/Trapani! woohoo! and Palermo pizza!

A little..."preview" if u will...(of artsier shots i might not be able to make work in the rest of the entry :P...

We'll start this all with the dinner in Balestrate complete with my silly "chocolate" tasting with the stash I bought in Pisa. That'll be saved for another post b/c this one is just massive, hehehehe. Now...from the beginning...

We had lovely fennel w/ grated orange zest plus half anorange but u just can't see it in the pics. Fennel fennel fennel...kind of have an odd relationship with fennel--didn't like them grilled in a salad @ Olive's in Soho, kinda really enjoyed them raw and shaved with the diluted fish sauce aka nuoc cham aka dipping sauce (which btw totally makes badass salad dressing)...

...but here, we sauteed with some stock (if i remember correctly?) with the lemons and orange and pomegranates totally rocked and had a new depth of flavor....which i can't rightly describe since it's been so long :) but it was great with the risotto too :P

Getting out the pomegranate seeds for the fennel! Easiest way to get it all out tho--is to cut the pomegranate in half and then pat the back of it with a spoon and all the seeds come flying out :) Okay so you can see all that orange half and other stuff here... :)

The ladies workin' hard stirring away @ the fennel & risotto...

We also had a artisanal porcini risotto from one of the vendors (?) that works with Scott's company (yummers! I took home a pack and Karen took home a pack of saffron risotto!). Here are innumerable pics of that going down too :) Simmer simmering away!

In the meanwhile...Scott preps the fishy fish with capers, then salt & pepper--olive oil, then garlic! So...I forget what kind of fish we got at the market that day, but it was large and bootiful! Angela broke down the whole thing and descaled it and all!

Beautiful fish no? Shame we couldn't figure out what kinda fish it was but it sure was ginormous when it locked eyes with us and the fish-man :P

...and we even tried to go buy tweezers to remove the little bones but all i could remember to say was "Stiamo cercando per una pincetta per a prendere l'osso nelle pesce"...but i couldn't remember how to say "take out" or "remove" and kept making pinching motions and saying "sopraciglia" for eyebrows. Needless to say, my Italian has gotten supremely rusty! Anyhoo--so tons of pics of Scott drizzling the fish in olive oil after patting in some lemon slices, capers, garlic, and sea salt.

WEEE!! All packed up and ready to go...but see we actually forgot the garlic for a minute so...back open it goes :D...NUMMY NUM NUM...So that was a final "before" look @ our pesce...and....AFTER roasting in the oven! :D So many pictures...so little space hehe.

WOOHOO! so purty...and yummy! Note this is actually ish "other" people make but i'm still super jazzed eh? :P...seriously even putting all these photos back in sequence makes me a little giddy. In the midst of all this, I did a whole chocolate tasting set-up on the table as well and went back and forth stalking everybody in the kitchen and having them re-stage taking things out of the oven etc... :P

...and this!! yes that's STEAM...lots of it! bootiful bootiful steam! (and not a dirty wall hehe) ^_^

Scott gave us each some risotto from his co. to bring home. VERY VERY excited to crack it open! Anyhoo...back to dinner. Some of these are out of sequence back to the table with just the plates set up! :) To the table! But first some vino!...

Yes i'm a little crooked with this but I thought it kinda quirky and fun. When i rotated .75 degrees counterclockwise it just kinda looked generic. At least that's the story I'm sticking to anyway :) That and angela looks like a ghost! (do you know how impossible it is for me to keep still sans gorillapod with a b-shot?!)

This is the bottle of olive oil that Scott and Angela had freshly pressed the week prior, using olives from Scott's boss's orchard and pressed in the neighboring town. Apparently...everybody around there does it. WEEEE!! Look how thick it looks and almost opaque! That's how it's *supposed* to be. Nom nom nom...

We also had some fresh mozzarella (just from the supermarket--yeh SUPERMARKET, not the market market...but OMG infinitely better than anything @ the markets here, except maybe Murray's cheeses! or Odika? whatever it is...

AAAAaaaaannnnd done. :) I usuually don't post pictures with people in them on the blog...but Scott and Angela were pretty effin' awesome hosts and fun to hang around in Balestrate and Palermo so...here they are!! Thanks so much guys!! We sure licked the plates clean ;)

YAY SICILIA!!....oh hell one last look at that fantastic fish :D...

Bbq in the 'Burg + Chocolate Zucchini cake!

BBQ in williamsburgh--felt like I was in the backwoods of...Appalachia. There was a pit in the backyard (and damn i twas a roomy backyard) and the fire raaaaged within a circle of concrete slabs and hipsters (ha!) Anyway...here's the pasta salad I made:

Here's also the chocolate & zucchini cake Claudia made--this was from the Chocolate & Zucchini foodblog (which we just looooveetthhhh sooooo). It was nummy--had bittersweet chocolate in it. Claudz & I will be presenting an encore @ my own rooftop BBQ this coming Sunday.
There was also fish. it was uneventful. There were saussages and whatnot too but my frickin' camera was acting up--they would've been quite pretty pics tho. :P

And...there's the pic of the fun-ness...except less hipsters visible here and oddly disproportionate number of males. They climbed the tree and broke off branches for kindling--and those watching threw volleyballs etc at them. There was a little bit of rowdiness at the festivities. :)

See entry below for recipe for bastardized pasta salad!...

Bastardized Pasta Salad recipe...

Everyone's been asking me about my recipes for stuff like the Bastardized Pasta Salad (again I can never seem to fully separate my palate & affinity for Mediteranean meets Southeast Asia). SO...since I don't really measure and kind of gamble with portions & ingredients, here's what I used:

Bizzastardized Pasta Recipe!

• GIANT corkscrew pasta (fusilloni)
• heaps of basil, one entire bulb of garlic (~10 bulbs? hahaaah)
• sliced half a red onion
• seasoned Athenos feta cheese (garlic & herb says ze packaging)
• non pareile capers (which I guess means having no equal--but just means it's from the South of France)
  
• halved cherry tomatoes (1 basket)
  
• half a lemon (maybe a little more)
• ....and here's the good stuffs--> FISH SAUCE!!! ^_^ OH YEAAAAAH.
  

Fizzzziiiish. Sizzzzaaauce. THAT's RIGHT--you don't even KNOW ese! ;) ...btw, I really prefer using Phu Quoc fish sauce over the other brands--the crab one is good, i can't remember others. MEH. I'll ask Mama Ly.

Direzione!

Start out sauteeing the giant-ness of minced garlic bulb in a relatively thick layer of oil (just like making the garlic & oil pasta except put on low heat after the garlic gets a little color, throw in the tomatoes, squirt in the lemon juice & fish sauce (i pretty much eyeball it all since I use lemon juice, fish sauce, and garlic a lot so I just...have an intrinsic gauge for what it'll be like I can't describe =/). I also like the tomatoes a little raw still in most the crap I cook but I like to bleed it a little (per se) cuz I guess the glycopene in the tomato makes the sauce congeal a little, and thicken the "sauce" and coat better.
Mix it all around a little, and if you want, throw in the cooked pasta (straight from the pot with a little of the water from boiling too it's still yummy) and mix around. OR, u can saute the red onions before throwing in the pasta but I like it with a little kick and purity in its own flavor in being a little uncooked and whatnot.
If you need to, add in a little more olive oil to coat the pasta, salt & season as u will (i only used pepper, the fish sauce adds a diff kind of salty flavor), and more fish sauce! but not too much b/c you'll get the savory & bite from the capers and cheese too so keep it on the bland side. I also don't add the sliced/shredded basil until the end but I add a little in the beginning to let it wilt and add some flavor. Mix in the other half of the shredded basil, mix mix mix!

Plate, break the feta over the pasta, scatter some capers over, stick some sprigs of fresh basil in it and call it a day.

butter (not "the stick of")...

restaurant week.
alas, slipped most of my mind despite the numerous reminders/solicitations. anyhoodle, made it out to Butter on Lafayette b/w Astor Place & W. 4th. Really wanted to try out Anthos and Fig & Oil this wk but I dunno...the hotel rooms of my mind are totally vacant. As u can see I've got a fevah for Greek food lately--minus Butter but i mean COME ON like Paula Deen says: you know it's gotta be good if you start the recipe with a stick of buttaaaaaah. oy.
I was feeling a little self conscious lugging around my new nikon to the restaurant and with the crazy flash that comes standard, so I tried to eke in shots quickly so I only got a couple good shots in, that and I was hesitant to bust that ish out after every course :P Moi? Self conscious?? mais oui. On the rare occasion.

Appetizers: I had the Sauteed Shrimp and Salted Crispy Cod on a bed of arugula with a Mandarin orange dressing. Lots of people had the Cavatappi pasta with Lamb sausages and yellow tomato sauce which apparently was good enough to be an entree! Check the menu for more options b/c I'm too lazy to write about them.
Entree:Pork, Fish, Duck. and some vegetarian choice. I was torn b/w the braised Pork Osso Bucco with adzuki beans, charred onions and mustard and the Blackened Florida grouper with crushed Yukon potatoes, capers, and parsley. Needless to say, the capers won out (esp the bigger ones--caper berries--are awesomeness profound. not really. just wanted to be a little nonsensical. and tangential. yoinks!)

Dessert: Had the Blood Orange upside down cake--nothing else sounded too tempting (mango sorbet blahblahblah chocolate tart blahblahblah). Did not enjoy it--but the sauce was a sharp contrast cake. that, melikes. here's a blurry shot b/c I like to not keep still. and sans flash. (still trying to figure out the buttons--such a switch from the manual SLR's =/ i knew the functions intutively w/ my hands...le sigh* but yay for new camera! ^_^)
I liked Butter. I didn't love it. Just like FR.OG (France Origine) in SoHo. The subpar dessert @ butter really killed it for me. I dunno--everything up until then had been good, pleasing, not extroardinary, but that dessert just really pooped one out. Perhaps a post on FR.OG later when I feel like talking about quartered figs and a crazy soup pouring/show. :)