baked eggs “flamenco”

BRW, Spain, p 340-341

This baked egg dish has nice flavors. I skipped the ham and chorizo–not because I didn’t want them, but because I didn’t have them. I about doubled the amount of green vegetables, because I had some green peas leftover and I wanted to use them all. I also melted some cheddar cheese on top

chocolate de Juliana

To make hot chocolate for Juliana, I use two recipes. One is Bittman’s recipe for chocolate español, or Spanish hot chocolate (Spain, BRW, p 665), and the other she doesn’t like quite as much. Both of them I make in a double boiler, because then I can just turn on the heat and ignore the whole thing, whisking every now and then, until it’s done, and I don’t have to worry about it boiling over.

Juliana’s favorite hot chocolate

• 4 oz semisweet chocolate
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 2 c milk
• cinnamon to dust on top

Juliana’s second favorite hot chocolate

• 1 oz bittersweet chocolate
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 1.5 c milk
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

potatoes, potatoes everywhere

Some recipes that we made with our Costco bag of potatoes:

• home-fried potatoes with onion an amchoor (India, BRW, p 477)
• peasant-style potatoes (Spain, BRW, p 477)
• potato dumpling (Eastern Europe, BRW, p 479
• caramelized potatoes (Scandinavia, BRW, p 482
• potato “nik” (CEV, p 349)

some recipes (techniques) that I should really get down:

• crisp panfried potatoes, i.e. home fries (CEV, p 343)
• oven-roasted cottage “fries” (CEV, p 344-345)
• oven-roasted hash browns

The Best Recipes in the World, part ii

In the past three days, we’ve referenced Bittman’s The Best Recipes in the World daily.

• Thu: tortilla (Spain, BRW, p 341)
• Fri: white sangria with peaches (Spain, BRW, p 672)
• Sat: red-braised chicken with coconut milk (India, BRW, p 282)

Now, we never follow the recipe exactly, but that’s cooking, right? In the tortilla, we put in vegetables and extra onions instead of potatoes. In the sangria, we used white zinfandel and added strawberries. In the red-braised chicken, we used a spice mix instead of the spices given, and we pureed the tomatoes and onions.

Though the tortilla took awhile to prepare (almost an hour, altogether), it came out perfectly; it was a great way to use up some of the leftover veggies from the night before. The sangria was for a bachelorette party, so I didn’t try it myself. The reviews, however, were spectacular, and I’m now expected to share the recipe with a number of 30-something Italian women. As to the red-braised chicken, how can you go wrong with chicken cooked with onions, tomatoes, and coconut milk?

sangria de Juliana

Shade Mountain winery makes a great sweet red wine, Rascal Red, that works great for sangria. We have a favorite recipe that we’ve adapted from Cook, Eat, Cha Cha Cha and Cook’s Illustrated. Any sweet red wine and white (unoaked) table wine should work. If it’s not sweet, then you probably want to add sugar to taste. This is Juliana’s favorite summer drink!