SPQR and Pasta Tuesday, Sep 6 2011

Paul and I recently ate at SPQR in SF and sat at the chef’s table, entirely by accident. The three calm chefs in the front carefully made each plate to order, cooking fresh pasta in a small boiler, sauteeing in small, glinting pans, and spending five minutes on the exact presentation of each dish. The chef near us would wipe the metal countertop in her spare moments, just to make sure that no salt grains sullied her work space. It all looks so simple. So I went home and and made something similar, yet much less “pretty” than the pasta twisted in the center, a few weeks later.

The main idea was making your own tomato sauce with thinly sliced zucchinis, onions, garlic, oregano, and freshly cracked pepper. There are both Parmesan in the sauce and big dollops of fresh mozzarella on the sides of the completed pasta. Throw some sausage in the sauce and call it a day. Delicious.

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Dinosaurs Tuesday, Sep 6 2011

If dinosaurs were still around, they would live on Bainbridge Island, at the Bloedel Reserve if they were lucky. Big leaves to eat:

weeping willows and trees for, well, more munching:

and lovely reflective ponds to drink out of. All while stomping on manicured gardens, which is just fun.

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Valencia, Spain Sunday, Aug 21 2011

I spent a week in Valencia, Spain in July doing a one week language program and living with a host family. I spent most of my time wandering around the streets of this quaint, less-touristy spot, walking for hours and interacting in Spanish. I ate Arroz Negro, or a version of paella where the rice is black with squid ink. I drank lots of horchata and sampled agua de Valencia once (fresh, sweet orange juice with a little champagne and vodka), ate arroz al horno (like a baked version of paella), and munched on Spanish tortillas, which are actually a baked egg and potato dish. And of course, I went to markets for fresh manchego, iberian ham, and fresh, perfect, peaches. This is the biggest market in Valencia, with fresh produce, fish, etc everyday until 2. It is in what looks like an old train station. And I should warn you, they don’t mess around with ham or cheese. It is serious business. Especially with some fresh bread for a euro. Mindblowingly good.

 

Click the more button to read about the other buildings:

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Amish Friendship Bread Sunday, Aug 21 2011

I have a ziplock bag filled with a bubbling, liquidy-paste that lives in my refrigerator. If that doesn’t sound appealing, I’ll tell you that it has been living there since 2006 when I took a cup of the starter from my mother’s, who had gotten it from a friend perhaps 8 years earlier. And it was alive before then at someone else’s house. Despite these nebulous beginnings, though, this starter dough is amazing. It can live without me even looking at it for 6-8 months and then within two weeks with some rising and ingredient additions, produce a sugary sweetbread that is usually gone while still warm. I just gave away my first cup of this friendship bread to Lily, continuing the chain, and if anyone else wants some, it is yours.

This website, among others, has the exact step by step, especially for giving it away to people more often. I’m going to share the modified recipe I’ve been using for maintaining it for years. Here is how to make the starter from scratch, in case you are faraway. Recipe follows below:

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Homemade Whole Wheat Bread Wednesday, Jul 6 2011

Yup, I found the Tassajara recipe. And the yeast packets that had been relegated to the back of the baking cabinet behind the fancy chocolate chips. And I did it. It had to rise four times, but I have that kind of time. I want to make fresh crostini with it, maybe this chickpea recipe, but that’s another story. Here’s to getting flour everywhere and making sandwiches with fresh whole wheat bread. If you are feeling too lazy right now, make this recipe instead. But if you are game, keep reading:

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Chocolate Chip Cookies with Oats and Golden Raisins Wednesday, Jul 6 2011

Is it spice cookie season? No. But I made these anyhow. A friend of a friend made a version of these recently and they have haunted my dreams. Specifically, this delicious dough did (picture before raisins):

I scanned through earlier posts and found an oatmeal chocolate chip recipe, but I liked the ratio better on this one. Besides, it has golden raisins, so it is like a totally different experience. There are no photos of the finished cookies because they are that delicious, especially when hot.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Oats and Golden Raisins

Adapted from two allrecipes sites (by individuals named Panthera?! and Beth Sigworth)

• 1 c salted butter
• 3/4 c packed brown sugar
• 1/2 c white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 t vanilla extract
• 1 and 3/4 c white flour
• 1 t baking soda
• 1 and 1/2 t cinnamon
• 1/2 t cloves
• 1/2 t nutmeg
• 3 c quick cooking oats
• 1 c chocolate chips
• 1 c chopped golden raisins

Directions: Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs and vanilla. Add pile of flour with soda and spices. Mix. Add oats. Add chocolate chips. Add golden raisins. Bake at 335 for 12 min (350 was too hot).

Cookie Update: Liz got ahold of the original recipe that I’d been dreaming of (thanks Liz and Bambi!). Main difference: more sugar and some mace (otherwise, almost exact proportions). From ‘The Rest of the Best: Volume 2″ from 1998.

To follow that recipe: Increase sugar amount to 1 c white sugar and 1 c brown sugar. Add 1/2 t ground mace and reduce flour by 1/4 c. Bake at 350 for 8-10 min. Can also add up to 1 c chopped nuts.

 

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So I recently turned 25… Monday, Jun 27 2011

I am just now getting comfortable with saying that: I’m 25. For those of my friends who are turning 30 soon, or for my mom who I am sure is shaking her head as I she reads this, I am sure I will garner little sympathy. But, I’d argue, this is one of the birthdays that makes you pause and reflect.

For example, over the past year, there have been a lot of changes: I’ve moved from the Addison Ranch in Los Altos Hills to the Castro in San Francisco. I’ve finished my second year of teaching. I’ve done another full year of physical therapy which has made me stronger, and slowly, ever so slowly, able to add in a few more cardio activities. I’ve seen old friends and made new ones. And since my birthday last year, my little brother graduated from high school and did his first year at Harvard and my little sister graduated from Colorado College.

While those are the big level changes, there are also the smaller, more minute ones that show you how time is passing. For example, I have 10 or so white hairs currently existing on my head. I pulled out maybe 10 others in the past few months–some small, but all entirely silver and in one suspicious patch, but Paul convinced me that I can’t continue to pull out my own hair, so I am letting them live. I’m aging and it is real. I am slowly getting to know San Francisco, branching out from 18th street to explore and finally connect the dots on how the disconnected places I have been to actually connect on a grid. And now that it is summer, I am reading a lot. Specifically with this young adult fantasy genre that I haven’t explored (Ender’s Game, The Lightening Thief, The Hunger Games) that I am hoping will build into Stranger in a Strange Land and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I am remembering that I am a person with hobbies and who can let her guard down, especially after another year of teaching when I don’t always have those luxuries on a day to day basis.

But speaking about luxuries, here’s a cake from my actual birthday:

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Back At It: Where I’ve Been and Graduation Wednesday, Jun 8 2011

You may be asking yourself–why hasn’t Sarah posted in like, five weeks?

The answer is that the end of school is total chaos. Especially teaching seniors, it means that I serve as an emotional counselor for this big transition of exiting high school/going to college. And I do that as I am myself in the midst of figuring out how to let them go. Over two years of knowing the kids, through the individual ups and downs, you get really attached to them, and it is both a merciful sense of closure and a nagging emptiness when you realize that they don’t need you anymore. Graduation, then is a bittersweet moment, the climactic end. The below photo is the only one when I don’t look like a confused, sad, or entirely exhausted person.

During this end of year time, I’ve been eating a lot of frozen pizza, breakfast quesadillas for dinner, Kasa roti wraps, etc. Every now and then, I cooked at like 10pm, making enough food for the next lunch and dinner or so, but was so tired that we ended up doing half brained ideas like this: trying to get all our t0-go containers to cool in the window so that we could refrigerate them and get to sleep (I think this is bulgar and chicken).

Now that it is summer and I’ve finally got a copy of Super Natural Every Day, I am ready to get back into cooking and figure out, as in every summer, how I do actually use free time. It has been a week since I finished grading, I am finally getting off the couch. Here’s to more cooking ahead!

 

In case you are interested, here are some recent links about the high school where I work:

Here’s a news article about one of my students who is going to Stanford: “Working on Building Engineering Dreams“

Here’s a video about Eastside by New American Media: “School Churns Out College-Bound Grads in East Palo Alto”

Videos about the graduation ceremony itself: “Kron-4 News Spot” and “Eastside College Prep 2011 Graduation”

Thank you video the students made for the faculty: “Salute to Our Teachers”

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“Genuine” Cuban Food Wednesday, Jun 8 2011

When Paul and I went to Miami during my spring break (yes, I am finally catching up to that), we spent most of the time lying on a beach, getting exceedingly sunburned on one swatch of back or patch of chest (how do you always miss one place?), and paying for far too expensive drinks while we people-watched. One memorable experience from this was going to Versaille on Calle Ocho.

First of all, let’s take a moment to reflect on the persona of Calle Ocho, the Cuban neighborhood catapulted to public notice by Miami based rapper Pitbull. Yeah, although many of his rhymes are downright embarrassing, I have  a weakness for Pitbull’s beats (“Give Me Everything,” for example)

Versaille, the famous Cuban restaurant right on Calle Ocho, Paul and I were some of the few gringos in the large, loud room. The actual Cubans around us were using excessive hand gestures, entirely wrapped up in their emphatic discussions in Spanish. And the food. My mojito (yes, it was 11am, don’t judge) had a sugar cane stick to gnaw on for sweetness. Paul’s cafe con leche was almost pure warm milk, with a little bit of spice and coffee poured in. And the paella and tortas were amazing. We ate until we were far too full.

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This makes me want to try to craft paella at home. Like soon.

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Mushroom, Polenta, Goat Cheese, Steak Monday, Apr 4 2011

On Friday, we went to a lovely dinner party at our friend Katie’s house in Atherton. She made some of the best flank steak I’ve had, which she said she got from a butcher in downtown Menlo Park. The marinate was out of this world. As Paul and I drove back, we somehow ended up with all the to-go containers of steak. Our win.

My initial craving was to eat the steak for breakfast–or at least steak and eggs, but Paul convinced me that was a bit too aggressive that early (to which I replied: steak and waffles?). I then thought of steak sandwiches with caramelized onions and a hard cheese. But then, later on in the afternoon, I got an intense craving for polenta. I recalled the following recipe from memory (and intentionally forgot some of the butter on the way) from an Italian cooking book I used in high school. There was one questionable incident back then in which I messed up sifting buckwheat flour and actual polenta and made a mush of inedible, brown, dense mush. My family cackled as I threw stick after stick of butter in the pot, but it still tasted like eating dirt. I’ve been a big proponent of the tube kind since then. And recipes as easy as this.

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