HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!! BON ANY NOU!!!! FELIZ AÑO NUEVO!!!

I'm off until the 2nd of January 2008!

I just want to wish you, foodie bloggers and bloggers in general a GREAT 2008! Hoping that all your wishes come true! I wish you Health, Happyness, and a full Fridge and Pantry!
Thank you for being my buddies, I have great times reading your stories, recipes, and virtually sharing my life with yours! Hope you also enjoy my recipes.

Seré fora fins el Gener del 2008!

Només volia desitjar-vos, als que feu blogs de cuina i als blogs en general in MAGNIFIC 2008! Espero que tots els vostres desitjos es compleixin. Us desitjo Salut, Felicitat y la nevera i el rebost ben plens! Gràcies per llegir el meu blog i per escollir les meves receptes, desitjo que us surti tot molt bo i que no quedi ni una molla a taula. Feliç any nou també a tots aquells que el passeu fora de casa... Una abraçada molt forta!

Estoy fuera hasta el 2 de Enero del 2008!

Solo quería desearos, a los que hacéis blogs de cocina y a los blogs en general un ESTUPENDO 2008! Espero que todos vuestros deseos se cumplan. Yo os deseo Salud, Felicidad y una nevera y despensa bien llenas!Gracias por ser mis compañeros virtuales, gracias por escoger mis recetas, deseo que todos los platos salgan deliciosos y que no quede ni una miga en la mesa. Feliz año también a todos aquellos que lo pasais fuera de vuestra casa... Un abrazo muy fuerte!

Carn d'Olla - Pilota - Christmas Meatball

I know I'm a bit late for this but I just wanted to let you know step by step how we do the Xmas Meatball. You can have a big one or just medium or small ones.

The Christmas Meat Broth contains: A good piece of veal tender meat, 4 body chicken bones, 2 chicken breasts and 2 chicken legs, 200 grs. of cleaned chicken gizzards, 2 pork feet, 1 pork belly, 2 salty pork bones, 1 ham leg bone, 1 dried pork bone, 250 grs. chickpeas, 1/2 cabbage, 5 carrots, 4 leeks, 5 celery root branches, black pork sausage and 600 grs. pork meatball.

Clean all ingredients and place in a huge pot, except the black pork sausage, the pork meatball and the cabbage. Cover all with tap water or mineral water (always better second choice). Start boiling and take the white foam away, then turn heat low and have it convered and boiling for 3 to 4 hours. It should be a gentle soft boil. Half an hour before it's finished add the cabbage, the pork sausage and the meatball. Let it cool down.

To make the meatball, follow these instructions:

The pork meat should be grinded, add some salt, some black pepper, 2 eggs, 2 garlic cloves (cut in very small pieces) and some parsley.
Mix it all.

Have some bread from 2 or 3 days ago, take only the inside white part and have it soaking in milk. When the bread has absorbed all the milk, take it with your hands and squeeze it until all the milk is gone.

Then add the bread to the meat mixture.



Have some flour ready and do the meatballs with the meat mass.


Ready to dive into the meat broth. Half an hour is enough for them to cook.

DINAR DE NADAL - CHRISTMAS LUNCH

Special dressing: Louis Armstrong (turn player on).

This wasn't our Christmas First dish... but I could have eaten him kiss by kiss!

I hope you all had a Great Holiday Day! With your family, in good harmony, with a good glass of champagne or cava or good Spanish wine, of course! And a good Meal, as we did, it was enourmous! fantastic! delicious!

I'm so proud and happy to say that we had a wonderful Xmas time... like the song! Everything went fine: The food, the drinks, the aperitivo (maybe you call it starters), the desserts... we all had a great time. The thing that gave me more pleasure was... having my family together... my husband, my daughter, my parents, my brother, my sister, my brother and sister in law and my newphews. And all of them agreed saying it was a fantastic lunch! Wow, I felt so Great!!! Thank you all for coming over and thank you foodie bloggers for being my virtual foodie family! LOVE TO ALL!

The starters were: Iberian Acorn Ham, Toasted bread with Foie micuit, Lomo adobado, Seafood, Callos, Cured sheep cheese... and more

The Christmas Broth: That's a typical Catalan Soup and it's done with a typical pasta, and after we serve what we used while cooking the broth: Butifarra negra (black sausage), chickpeas, cabbage, potatoes, chicken, pork, veal, carrots, Meatballs (done with pork meat).
Changurro: This is a typical Basque dish and it's made out of the meat inside the Big Seafood Crabs and a sofrito done with onion, leek, garlic and tomatoe... Never tasted anything sooooooooo good!!!!!
All recipes coming soon, I promise!

Marilyn Manson's Food Pyramid

I had never seen this. The goth rocker offers nutrition advice:

Three servings of yogurt, milk, and cheese, will help your bones and subsidize the cattle industries....

When you eat your sweets, make sure you try to limit your servings or you'll die (break for yelling and screaming "DIE!!!").

Tufts Nutrition Magazine on the Farm Bill

Tufts Nutrition Magazine has posted current issues and several years of archives to the internet. Aliza and I both have short pieces on farm policy in the latest issue, for Fall 2007. From Aliza's column:

Compared to some of the food and agriculture lobbies debating farm subsidies and food stamps, we were a small team working on small issues. But to many people, the local procurement victory [allowing school lunch programs to request locally grown foods from their suppliers] is a significant one. The ability of school food service directors to request local foods opens up great opportunities for local food systems. Schools can be important customers for small farmers. And schools that try to link local agriculture with their curricula have greater success when students can make a field trip to a local farm and then eat that farm’s apples (rather than ones shipped in from across the country) in the school cafeteria.

From my column:

Mind you, political theater can be entertaining. On the last day of debate, Republicans claimed to be surprised that part of the farm bill’s funding would come from a tax increase. The response from Charlie Rangel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the House’s taxwriting committee, was sarcastic. He reminded the critics that they had agreed to ask Rangel’s committee to find the additional money. “You didn’t go to the chairman of the Transportation Committee,” Rangel admonished them.

But after the chuckles die down, we have to wonder whether the right questions were asked about farm policies themselves. The 700-page farm bill authorizes nearly every aspect of federal policy administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, from food stamps to conservation to farm subsidies to rural development, at a cost of about $286 billion over five years. It seems there should be more there to discuss than whether a funding source should be called a tax.

NYC Proposes "Green Carts"

The same week that residents of the Lower East Side and Chinatown gathered to protest the closing of a Pathmark store in their neighborhood, Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn proposed legislation to issue permits for "green carts" - which would offer fresh and processed fruits and vegetables from mobile food carts in designated neighborhoods with low fruit and vegetable consumption. With the goal of increasing fruit and vegetable consumption in these neigborhoods, the legislation would issue 500 permits each to the Bronx and Brooklyn, 250 to Queens and Manhattan and 50 to Staten Island- for the neighborhoods. More information about the green carts is available on the NYC DOHMH website.

While some have praised the green cart initiative,
a resident of Fort Greene told City Limits “We need a store where it has a variety of foods like canned goods and bread – a cart won't do. It’s a nice gesture,” said McDaniel-McCadney of the carts, but “it just wouldn't be sufficient for the community."

Perhaps to promote this more systemic change in access -- a $175,000 grant from the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman Foundation-- the very Friedmans for whom the Tufts Friedman School is named-- to the Food Trust to work with the Food Bank for NYC and the grocery industry to improve access to fruits and vegetables in low-income neighborhoods with inadequate access. The Food Trust has a strong track record of strengthening development and renovation of supermarkets in Philadelphia in the past four years.

Stuffed and Starved, by Raj Patel

Here's an interesting book title and blog: Stuffed and Starved, by Raj Patel. HarperCollins Canada has a book trailer. To be released in the United States in 2008. From Time Magazine:

Today, soy shows up in about 75% of the food on offer at the supermarket, from chocolate to margarine, and the industry responsible for its ubiquity has left footprints everywhere — in the Amazon rainforests and in the bellies of America's corpulent masses. The soybean's ascendancy is one of many pieces of a global puzzle that author Raj Patel aims to fit together in his new book

Stuffed and Starved — a sweeping look at the development of the international food chain that delivers calories from nation to nation with an alarmingly uneven hand. As its title promises, the book tackles one of the chief dysfunctions of our unique era in alimentary history: that 800 million people are getting too little to eat and are malnourished, while over 1 billion are getting so much they've become overweight or obese.

Networks

While playing with network sites recently (Linked in, Flickr, Facebook), I recalled a book by Duncan Watts in 2003: Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age. The book was written, paradoxically, just on the eve of the rise of all the network sites. Watts was a professor at Columbia, but recently moved to Yahoo!, to lead that company's research in "human social dynamics, including social networks and collaborative problem solving." More paradoxically, for a reflection on electronic networks and degrees of separation, Duncan and I were networked by just one degree of separation long before the invention of Facebook. Just the smelly-socks dirty-dishes pre-electronic old-fashioned networking technology: we shared a crowded house in grad school.

Hershey's regular milk

Yesterday, Mark Frauenfelder at boingboing had a funny post about an incompetent fast food restaurant poster, with an incomprehensible offer of some sort of two-for-one deal at Checkers and Rally's. The related links section at the bottom referenced an earlier Frauenfelder post about Hershey's selling regular milk.

I was walking down Van Nuys boulevard with my daughter, enjoying the 103 degree weather over the weekend, when she demanded milk. We went into a Burger King and I ordered a milk. When the employee handed me this bottle,... I told her I didn't want chocolate milk. She said it wasn't chocolate milk. I had to look at the ingredients to make sure.

Three questions come to mind. 1) Why is Hershey's in the business of selling regular milk? 2) And why would it insist on making the label look chocolately? -- it would be like Lipton selling a bottle of water with pictures of tea leaves and a lemon on it. 3) And why Hershey's they make the label opaque so you can't tell at a glance if the milk is flavored or not?

I don't think the Hershey's label is an accident. Milk manufacturers are purposely blurring the distinction between flavored milks with added sugar and regular milks. They want your mental filing system to file flavored milk in the "healthy" folder instead of the "sugary drinks" folder. Voluntary industry guidelines for marketing beverages in schools are written specifically to permit sweetened flavored milk, so long as the sugar content meets a certain standard.

Congress passes funding bills

Barbara Vauthier's selective and tightly written Foodlinks America newsletter from the TEFAP Alliance now seems to be in blog format, with RSS feed and everything.

Here is Foodlinks' latest news on program funding in Congress:

Congressional Democrats and the White House ended a months-long impasse on federal spending on December 19, 2007 with passage of an omnibus appropriations bill for fiscal year 2008. The legislation combines 11 of the 12 spending bills Congress is required to approve each year to determine government outlays. “Given the President’s refusal to compromise and given the inability of the Senate to produce the 60 votes necessary to move legislation forward, this is the best we can do,” commented Representative David Obey (D-WI), chair of the House Appropriations Committee.

With this final action, Congress exited town for the holidays, ending the first session of the 110th Congress. The House will be gone until January 15, 2008 and the Senate is now scheduled to reconvene on January 22, 2008.

The huge $516 billion compromise package included an additional $11 billion over the President’s spending limit, with some of the funds designated as “emergency” needs that were not offset by cuts in other programs or new revenues. The legislation continued most nutrition assistance programs at current levels, though there were some notable exceptions.

The WIC Program, beset by potential shortages from higher food costs, growing caseloads, and declining rebates, was allocated a full $6 billion for fiscal year 2008, an increase of $815.6 million ($400 million of which was designated as emergency spending) over last year. The $6 billion will help WIC maintain a national caseload of 8.55 million participants throughout the year. The omnibus measure also increased funding for the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), which the Administration had proposed to eliminate entirely. The CSFP will receive $139.7 million in fiscal 2008, $32.5 million above the fiscal year 2007 appropriation.

Other provisions of the bill: expand, effective immediately, the Simplified Summer Food Service Program to all states, easing paperwork and increasing reimbursements for sponsors; provide an additional $23 million for elderly nutrition programs this year; support a $10 million expansion in the 2008-2009 school year of the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, making it available to all states; provide secure funding of $2.475 million annually to the Congressional Hunger Center’s Bill Emerson and Mickey Leland Hunger Fellowship Programs; and fund a Supper Pilot Program in West Virginia under the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP).

Though Democrats felt the bill could have been better, they expressed satisfaction with the final outcome. “While the President’s stubborn opposition will deny Americans the full investment they deserve in these priorities, the Democratic budget begins to reverse seven years of neglect and charts a new direction,” concluded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

My Old School and my Pantry Skeleton

This would have been my school if, during the civil Spanish war, a bomb wouldn't have fallen on top of it and burned it all. Luckily, the school was empty. The air attack took place during a night of January 1938. The situation of the school was fatal for its existance... too near the port!

Nowadays it would be such a thrill to have the school by the beach! I would have loved it!!! Well, me and everybody, I guess. Imagine boys and girls back then in such a marvellous environment! When the rest of schools were kind of grey, boring and unimaginative. It was Paradise!

The school had only 5 classes, 2 for girls, 2 for boys and 1 for kindergarden. The building was on top of reinforced concrete columns so that the sea storms wouldn't afect it. And the wooden staircases could come up in case of big swell and could come down to help the children go down to the beach.

There were lots of outside activities: sport competitions, sand games, a small tour with the school boat... It was just perfect! The school belonged to the city of Barcelona and its appearance and teaching methods were different from the rest of the schools. They based education on Social Life and Intelectual Life, therefore, the main subjects to learn were: Musical education, Games, Weather Report diary, Free Work, Drawing, Reading, Plastic Arts.... I could talk for hours about the School because it was finally my school too! Not by the beach, this time was up on a hill and with a perfect view of Barcelona and the sea. The education methods were still similar to those at its beggining. The third emplacement was this one you see hereunder... and it's still there.

Isn't it beautiful too? Well, this post has a meaning, really, maybe it's just taking me too long to say why I'm explaining all these old memories. Some days ago I visited Thyme for cooking hosted by charming Katie and she has an event going on called Skeletons in the Pantry, which made me think of something that happened to me at school. That's the first reason and the second also has to do with Katie's blog: she was talking about good manners at the table, and this also made me think of my old school.

Okay, here comes the story and it has to do with food: see here above, this was my school dinning room... huge, uh? Take a look at the fireplace ( on the left), during Xmas celebrations one of the oldest boys in the school wore a devil's costume and hide inside the chimney. When nobody expected it he would show up shouting and grumbling and we would all step backwards in fear! But it was great!!!

Here is where I learned good table manners, of course my parents also taught me, but at school rules were more rigid. For example, we couldn't place our elbows on the table, we could not drink while having soup, we had to place our napkin on our lap, bla, bla, bla. And we did so... but, some days when the table head (the one controlling the rest of the table people) wasn't looking we would do some funny things! One of us (kids about 8 to 12) invented a competition: Once or twice a week we had chickpeas for lunch, the thing was to throw down to the floor one chickpea, each participant one at a time. See all the waitresses serving lunch? Well, if a waitress stepped on the chickpea and it stayed stuck to her shoe that were 10 points. If the chickpea layed smashed on the floor that were 5 points. It was soooo thrilling and exciting! And I don't remember being caught ever!!!

Another thing we did too, and I'm not very proud of, was to share our lunch between the table companions, but not in the usual way. You were supposed to finish all the food in your plate. No exceptions! If you didn't like something, then you had a problem! I was lucky I just adored the school food. When the table head wasn't looking, my companions (the ones that didn't like meatballs) would roll them down through the floor near to my chair, I would pretend my napkin had fallen and take the meatballs to my plate. UUUUUhhhhhhh I still don't know how I could eat those!!!!! Puaffff... I'm alive, though!

And this is my Skeleton in the Pantry. Well, in a near future, just after Xmas, I will post how to do Christmas Catalan meatballs (following all hygienic conditions, of course, je, je, je) . I'm sorry I'm not posting recipes now... these days I'm just too busy!!!

Food stamp asset test

In food policy class this Fall, I explained how eligibility for food stamps is determined: gross income below a certain threshold (130 percent of the poverty standard), net income below a certain threshold (100 percent of the poverty standard), an asset test ($2,000 or $3,000 asset limit), special rules if you already receive cash assistance or SSI or are disabled or elderly, and so forth.

"Can that be right?," a student asked, upon hearing the part about the asset test. "I know for certain that there is no asset test in Massachusetts, at least not for families with children."

Sure enough. In Massachusetts, families with a child under age 19 benefit from more lenient rules, including a more permissive income cutoff (200% of the poverty standard) and no asset test. Asset rules for the Food Stamp Program vary substantially from state to state.

Good sources of information about the details of food stamp rules in Massachusetts include Massachusetts Legal Services and Project Bread, and good sources at the national level include the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Food Research and Action Center.

What is this?

This request for a report to Congress (see page 15661) was apparently buried in the manager's amendment to the Senate Farm Bill.

SEC. 49__. REPORT ON FEDERAL HUNGER PROGRAMS.

Not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Comptroller General of the United States shall submit to Congress a report that contains--

(1) a complete list of all Federal programs that seek to alleviate hunger or food insecurity or improve nutritional intake, including programs that support collaboration, coordination, research, or infrastructure related to these issues;

(2) for each program listed under paragraph (1)--

(A) the total amount of Federal funds used to carry out the program in the most recent fiscal year for which comparable data is available;

(B) a comparison of the amount described in subparagraph (A) with the amount used to carry out a similar program 10 and 20 years previously;

(C) to the maximum extent practicable, the amount of Federal funds used under the program to provide direct food aid to individuals (including the amount used for the costs of administering the program); and

(D) a review to determine whether the program has been independently reviewed for effectiveness with respect to achieving the goals of the program, including--

(i) the findings of the independent review; and

(ii) for the 10 highest-cost programs, a determination of whether the review was conducted in accordance with accepted research principles;

(3) for the 10- and 20-year periods before the date of enactment of this Act, and for the most recent year for which data is available, the estimated number of people in the United States who are hungry (or food insecure) or obese; and

(4) as of the date of submission of the report--

(A) the number of employees of the Department of Agriculture, including contractors and other individuals whose salary is paid in full or part by the Department; and

(B) the number of farmers and other agricultural producers in the United States that receive some form of assistance from the Department.

Congress can strengthen food assistance programs by calling for and funding high quality evaluation research with strong research designs, but simply asking for the results of independent reviews that one can easily verify have not been done would be a tactic for undermining the food assistance programs. What's the angle here?

Welcome Aliza

It is time for an introduction. For several months, my occasional collaborator on U.S. Food Policy has been Aliza R. Wasserman, a graduate student at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts, whose studies focus on food policy and environmental health. You may have read her posts on the Senate Farm Bill and the Wansink appointment. Aliza also writes sometimes for The Jew and the Carrot, a blog about Jewish food and contemporary life. Welcome, Aliza.

The Seven Deadly Sins

First of all, I want to let you know that I'm not a religious person, but in view of the fact that I'm falling into temptation... just wanted to see how many sins I will commit.

Here you have my dilemma!!! Isn't it beautiful? Ohhhh, adorable... and the purple colour... soo cute and will fit so nicely in my kitchen... I just have to have it! Do I need it? Noooooo, I already have the Italian one: makes such good coffees, I had it for years, it has such classical design... but look at Nespresso one, it will be so nice to have it now for Xmas, my family will be able to choose between all these different kinds of coffees: Ristretto, Arpeggio, Roma, Livanto, Capriccio... only by hearing their names their smell comes to my nose!!!

So I guess I will be a bad and spoiled girl and ask Santa for this Nespresso coffee machine! Let's see how many Deadly Sins I will fall in:

Luxuria - Lust Well, maybe George Cloney could arise some "nice" thoughts in me... He is playing that sweet role in the commercial... and he has this handsome face... yes maybe this is the first sin!

Gula - Gluttony Definitely Yes! I won't have enough with just one coffee!!!

Avaritia - Greed Yes, I must have this new Machine, it's so lovely and so easy to clean!

Acedia - Sloth No, this one doesn't go with me. I will be so pleased to prepare the coffees, I will jump from the chair/sofa just by the simple mention of the key words: coffe, george clooney, nespresso, bla.

Ira - Wrath Once I have it don't even try to take it away from me or you'll see my worst side... Mr Hide was a joke... I can get very angry!!!

Invidia - Envy This is what I will provoke to the people coming over my house and seeing that purple beauty in my kitchen... well, what can I do?, just ask Santa to have one like mine!

Superbia - Pride Sure I will feel so prideful and happy.

So, you are all welcome to my kitchen hell to have a cup or two or as many as you wish, of this great coffee!!! Salud! Cheers!

Special dressing: Seven deadly sins (don't know authors) Turn player on

The front-runners: Mike Huckabee

Speaking of Huckabee, Washington Post writer Liz Clarke fielded a question from me as the first item in her online discussion about the GOP candidate today at washingtonpost.com.

Arlington, Mass.: In part because of his own experience with successful weight loss, Gov. Huckabee paid more attention than most governors do to food policy -- how public policy can support a healthy food environment, for example. This fall, we just suffered another disappointing reformless Farm Bill. Do you think Huckabee would be more likely than other candidates to support a new direction in food and farm policy?

Liz Clarke: That's an interesting question. Let's start here. In my time speaking to Gov. Huckabee, reading his books and interview transcripts, this didn't come up. But from what I learned, I would guess that he would be more proactive than some others. Largely because of his own experience, having been diagnosed with Type II diabetes and warned that his lifestyle and eating habits were on the way to sending him to an early grave, he did become more pro-active about how public policy can help steer people to a healthier lifestyle. He favors a shift in health-care spending to preventive care. And has spoken about finding ways to reward people for healthy lifestyles--lifestyles, specifically, that will save taxpayers money in the long run.

Huckabee's views on food policy

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) is the flavor of the day in the national news media. MSNBC this morning describes him as the closest thing the GOP has to a front runner now. For background, the Washington Post has a recent biographical feature, focusing largely on Huckabee's religion, and an account of Huckabee's successes in Iowa grassroots politics, which led in turn to his national surge in the GOP presidential race.

Huckabee's distinct history of interest in U.S. food policy has received less attention. Motivated in part by his own experience with successful weight loss, Huckabee gave a lot of attention to obesity prevention and related issues while governor. Huckabee discussed these views at length in the introduction to a 2007 book on Obesity, Business, and Public Policy (to which I contributed a chapter about the federal government's checkoff programs). Here is an excerpt:

[H]aving considered the relationship between personal responsibility and government regulation, I arrived at several conclusions, and these conclusions have guided my Healthy Arkansas Initiative.

First, from a moral perspective, I believe we are called to be stewards of everything God has given us -- whether it is the environment, our finances or our health....

The second conclusion that's driven my health policy is the fact that, in America, people have the right to make choices that some might consider stupid. Americans jump bikes over buses, drive golf carts off cliffs, skateboard down stairs and bungee from bridges. While we can't regulate all behavior, we must promote wise choices in hopes of preventing expensive consequences for which we all have to pay.

To help parents make wise choices for their children, in Arkansas we now measure each school child's Body Mass Index and send it home in a private health report. This report is not intended to be a diagnosis, but it is serving as a way to inform parents when their child may have a problem, whether it's too much weight or too little, and they are given information about local resources where help can be found. Again, we believe that, given the information, people will more often than not make the right choice.

Third, our policies have been tempered by the understanding that Ronald McDonald is not Joe Camel. We have refused to make villains of the food industry for giving us what we demand. This means we have not attempted to regulate what people eat by advocating price controls and unhealthy options or by threatening restaurants with lawsuits. I know this puts me at odds with some of the more vocal public health crusaders, but I believe in the wisdom of the free market and we are already starting to see an evolution of the food industry as consumers begin to demand more healthy options.

Fourth, we recognized an obligation to protect consumer and employee safety. If property rights were absolute, the state would have no business enforcing health codes in restaurants to protect our unsuspecting bodies from invaders like E.coli. Just as we find it acceptable to protect workers from asbestos, radiation exposure or loud noises, it seems reasonable that we would find it appropriate to protect them from exposure to the toxic fumes of secondhand smoke. Like personal liberty, property rights are tempered when the exercise of those rights puts others in harm's way.

Finally, and this is a truly groundbreaking point, our policies have been driven by the belief that being well is better than being sick. Whether we are talking about our personal budgets or quality of life, it is more fun and less costly to be well.

Agree or disagree, that's a longer record of thought and reflection about food policy than you will hear from most candidates. Comments are open.

Turrones, Polvorones, Mantecados... our Xmas candy tradition

These days I have been virtually travelling to your kitchens and seen all these beautiful candies and cookies you bake for Xmas days; all these moving stories, cooking with your moms when you were just kids and learning the recipes while it was snowing outside, I could just see the picture...

I wish I had cooked with my mom when I was a kid too, but I never did, oooohhhh, and I wish I would, really!. We have been cooking together only once or twice when I've been a grown up. The only thing I did at my mom's kitchen when I was a baby was to sit on the floor and play with her tupperware recipients and the wooden forks and spoons and see how it sounded when beating the aluminium pots! (In the picture holding a cook book, though ;-)) And the only thing that she does when she comes to my kitchen is sit down, relax and talk with me and my dad. I just love to have a beer with them while I cook. I like being the one who "works" and have them resting as spoiled kids.

It never snows in Barcelona during Christmas, it has only happened a few times and one of them was on 1962, when my mom was pregnant a huge snowstorm covered Barcelona during Xmas eve, people still remember it, it was sooooo huge that getting the car outside the parking place was impossible, they were fully covered of snow. My mother was in her 7 month of pregnancy and that day they had to go for Xmas lunch to her aunt's house... my parents, by that time, didn't have a fridge and therefore they didn't have food to eat at home! So my mom and dad had to walk all the way to her aunt's with all that snow on the streets, with her big belly and with a freezing cold!!! They walked for 3 to 4 kilometers and finally got there. That's an experience they won't forget.

Here the foodie tradition is to buy special Xmas candies and cakes. There's specialized shops where you can find all these mouthwatering delicious "desserts". Of course you can also bake them at home but I know nobody handmaking turrones for example. During Xmas day all family gets together and eats and drinks a lot, we seat on the table from 2pm to 6 or 7pm and these you will see here under are all the sweet things that come after the huge lunch.

There's many kind of turrones: jijona, chocolate, fruities, hazelnuts, walnuts, rice, licours... anything you can imagine! There's also polvorones and mantecados: flour and spices with nuts. And also Bombones: that's black or white chocolate sweets, small sized, sometimes filled with licour and sometimes not (you probably have those too). And finally here in Catalunya - Catalonia we have neules which are these tubs some of them covered with chocolate. Lovers eat them each one starting one side and finally kiss.

The weather man just said that cold winds are coming over (this morning at 8am we had 5ºC below 0... that's very low temperatures for us! And next week snow will fall over 600 meters!!! I'm not 600 meters high, I'm lower, but hopefully we'll have some snow this winter!!!

Farm payment reforms fail in Senate

Both amendments--Lugar-Lautenberg's "Fresh Act" and Dorgan-Grassley's payment limits-- that would have included meaningful farm subsidy reform in the 2007 farm bill failed in the past two days, the latter falling only 4 votes short of the 60 it needed to be adopted.

The Environmental Working Group and the Center for Rural Affairs blogs have some interesting analysis of how the Democrats sabotaged reform by playing politics with the vote's parliamentary procedure, in order to prevent Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) from embarrassing her own party. They place blame for the failure of Dorgan-Grassley squarely on the Democratic leadership and those reform-touting Senators who voted against the amendment.

A number of other amendments to reform agriculture policy remain to be voted on, including Sen. Tester's (D-MT) attempt to "beef up" the new Livestock Title by adding a "packer ban" to check the power of industrial meatpackers and processors by reinforcing the Packers and Stockyards Act's rules against market manipulation. Apparently, the meat industry has been hard at work preventing this amendment from passing.

You can watch here. Update 12/20/2007: fixed broken link.

A different way to make a Tortilla

Special dressing: Tom Waits (turn player on)


This is a different way to perform the omelette. Usually, I take a saucepan and cook it there, but to follow this recipe you will also need the oven. The result is really good and it has this different touch! When done in a saucepan and without the cheese as ingredient is called "Tortilla a la paisana" but we could call it Veggie's Omelette. Eat it as a main dish with some multicolored salad or have it as a tapa with a good red wine or a cold beer!

Get PowerPoint recipe
Get WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 garlic clove, 3 green fresh onions, 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, 200 grs. of potatoes (one medium size), 5 big eggs, 175 grs. Of cheese (I used mozzarella – I don’t like strong cheese), salt and olive oil.

•Use a saucepan with some olive oil and when its getting hot add the red and green pepers cleaned, washed and cut without their seeds, the onions (reserve green part aside) and the garlic. Stir during 10 minutes, add some salt and then let cool.

•Preheat oven at 190ºC and cover with silk paper an oven tray. Pour some olive oil and spread all over the surface.
•Cut the green part of the onions we have reserved in small pieces and add to a bowl where you have previously beaten the eggs and added some salt and the mozzarella cheese.

•When the veggies are cold add them to the bowl. Try to leave the oil in the saucepan.
•Boil the potatoe or put it in the micro for faster cooking. Peel it and fry in the same oil used for the veggies for 1 minute.
•Cut in small dices and add to the bowl when it’s cold. Mix all ingredients well.

•Pour all the mixture in the oven’s tray.
•Position rack in the center of the oven and let it cook for 30 to 40 minutes.
•When done, let it cool down and take carefully away the silk paper.

•Cut in same size pieces.
•Yummmmy!

Maybe there's enough for 5 servings.

Crop insurance fraud

Given that a Republican sits in the Presidency, which has the power of the veto, it is not easy for the Democratic leadership in Congress to pass legislation. Hence, one of the main consequences of the return to Democratic Party leadership in the Congress is heightened oversight from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA).

Bloggers have been bubbling with enthusiasm for the committee's increased information sharing on its website, including new copies of hearing transcripts. To take a U.S. Food Policy example, here is Waxman's introduction to a hearing (.pdf) last Spring on crop insurance fraud:

The Federal Crop Insurance Program has become a textbook example of waste, fraud and abuse in Federal spending. Under this program, farmers received $10.5 billion over the last six years, but it has cost the taxpayers almost $19 billion to provide this financial protection to farmers. Over $8 billion in taxpayer funds have been used for excess payments to insurers and other middlemen. Somehow, about 40 cents of every dollar that the taxpayers have put into the crop insurance program has been for unproductive expenses.

Here's the full explanation of the problem with crop insurance (.pdf), from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress.

Here's an interesting image and article from NASA last year, showing how satellite images of farmland can be used to prevent crop insurance fraud.

Lobster & Veggies Salad

Special dressing: The Honeydrippers (turn player on)

Doesn't this look like a Christmas salad? Yeeeeees, it does! It's a bit expensive, but if we don't do it for Xmas, when then?

When I was a kid I never ever dreamed of having this kind of lobster salad, nor Iberian acorn ham, nor caviar, nor all these gourmet foods... for me a special dish was a dip in my weekly fried egg. By the time I was a girl, doctors here didn't think it was good having more than one egg per week and my mother just followed their advise. "Baby and Child care" from Dr. Spock which is a book I read while I was pregnant told american mothers that they could cook eggs for their kids at least 3 times a week!!!

Why didn't my mother read that book???
We always want more, don't we?

Get PowerPoint recipe
Get WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: two different lettuce leaves, 3 artichokes, 2 lobsters, veggies cream, olive oil, balsamic vinegar and thick kitchen salt.
•Clean, wash and dry the lettuce leaves, pour the dressing on them and mix (vinegar, salt, olive oil). Reserve.
•Take the green leaves of the artichokes away and slice the thiniest possible. Fry when oil is hot and reserve on kitchen paper when done.

•Boil water in a big pot, when it starts boiling add some salt and the lobsters. Cover the pot. Boil for 5 minutes. Take out of the water and refresh in a bowl with cold water and icecubs and some salt.
•When its cold proceed with the dish: First place the lettuce, the artichokes and the lobster, add a spurt of extra virgin olive oil.
•Decorate with a veggies cream (this one has: 200 grs. Spinachs, 1 carrot, 1 onion, 1 liter of water, 1 potatoe ,1 zuchinni, olive oil and salt.)
Enjoy the moment! Enjoy the lobster!

Well Fed Network blog awards

In the running for the Well Fed Network's poll for best food blog covering the food industry:

Eggbeater. A talented pastry chef in San Francisco. Recently served Al Gore, who cleaned every morsel from his plate.

Michael Ruhlman. Chef and writer. Author of the well-received new book: The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen.

The Food Whore. Very funny. Most entertaining of all the nominees.

Word of Mouth. From Guardian Unlimited.

U.S. Food Policy. "But is it really a food blog?" you might ask. What, haven't you tasted my bread machine bread or plum torte? Well, okay, it may not quite steal your vote away from that pastry chef in San Francisco!

Voting is open until December 14.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

Special dressing: The good, the bad and the ugly (turn player on).

The description is not in order of appearance and it's not a right description either... I don't know how I would call this people: George Bush, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and José Montilla. These are the people in charge of our gobernments (well some of them) and I'd like to know where all their promises have gone?????? Where the good purposes... if they ever had any...

Here in Catalunya - Catalonia, one of our traditions during Xmas time is a character that we place in the crib, normally hidden behind a tree or a big rock, called Caganer. Caganer means "the shitter". Yes, I know, we are a bit eschatological... but one of the reasons for having this character in the crib was the thinking that it would bring good luck and it's a symbol of fertilized earth and good harvests. See the link for more info. It all started with a caganer dressed in the traditional catalan way and nowadays we have all kind of caganers: politics, football players, the kings, even the pope!

My home is not different from other Catalan homes and our sense of humor, I think that helps us deal with all these badly handled political affairs. This year I think that the ones that deserve a good place in my crib are these three men... hope the Guiding Star will guide them through better paths and they can finish this year doing something GOOD to the rest of human beings!!!


Didn't find a dish that would suit this post... hou, hou, hou!

Duck Breast with Wine Pears

Special dressing: Michael Buble.








This weekend has been very windy. It's been soooo windy we couldn't even go for a walk, instead, I have been cooking like a maniac: cooked some more tapas (a new post will follow) some Rice Lobster (also will post soon) and this Duck's breasts... and we ate it All!!! Thank god is not windy very often or we will have the same profile Santa has!

I thought that this would be a hard recipe to perform. The truth is that since I started this blog, it's my first time in most of the recipes, but this one is so easy and so good that honestly, I will cook it more often from now on.

Get the Powerpoint recipe
Get the WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: 4 pears (not ripe), one cinnamon stick, one orange peel, 1 red wine liter (a rioja is a good selection), 1 duck’s breast, salt and black peper, some olive oil.

•Put the peeled pears, the stick of cinnamon and the orange peel in a pot. Pour the red wine and place it on the heat. Have it at low heat for one hour (very soft boiling).
•Once it’s done, turn heat of but keep warm.

•Have the breasts ready with salt and black pepper.
•Place on a hot saucepan with a bit of olive oil. The skin of the breast should be first in contact with the heat. Let it cook at high heat until the skin gets golden and brown and the grease disolves.
•Now turn and cook the other side. Don't cook too much, we want the inner part to be pinky.
•When done, place the breasts on a wooden surface and slice the meat.

•Prepare the plate with a pear, some red wine pears sauce and the meat with a pinch of salt on it (if it’s sea’s salt, better – the thick one).

•Really easy to cook and something different to offer for Christmas. The meat is delicious!

Meat cloning as art

Xeni Jardin from boingboingtv today tries her hand at cloning meat, under the tutelage of a crew of artist/scientists.



If you're interested in meat that is not so much cloned as merely processed nearly beyond the point of recognition, see another boingboing post recently from Cory Doctorow, which links to a particularly clever and usable web-based display of nutrition facts for hamburgers and other fast food offerings. The application comes from a calorie counter, which also allows easy searches of the USDA database of nutrition facts for other foods.

Should FDA give waivers to panel members who have conflicts of interest?

Two recent analyses offer opposing views about whether the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) should give waivers to outside experts, allowing them to participate on important government panels despite conflicts of interest.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relies on expert scientists as advisers on a host of panels, which strongly influence the agency's oversight of important issues ranging from food safety to the approval of new drugs and medical equipment. The advisers may have conflicts of interest, such as having received research funding from a company whose products are being reviewed by the panel. In some cases, FDA grants waivers to the rules prohibiting conflicts of interest, on grounds that the conflict is minor or that the adviser offers unique expertise that outweighs the concern about conflict.

Last spring, the FDA proposed new rules that would limit such waivers. According to a summary from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI): "Those guidelines would ban anyone with greater than $50,000 a year in financial ties to industry from advisory committees and deny a vote to anyone with lesser conflicts."

However, more recently FDA has emphasized the value it places on waivers, arguing that it would be difficult to replace the expertise of many advisers who have conflicts of interest. FDA cited a report (.pdf) from the Eastern Research Group, which reviewed a number of panels and argued that FDA might not be able to make do without the experts who received waivers (the report's first author, Nyssa Ackerley, is a former student of the food policy program here at the Friedman School).

By contrast, according to CSPI's Integrity in Science newsletter, a coalition of public interest groups including CSPI analyzed the same data and reached the opposite conclusion:

For each of the four advisory committees analyzed in the study, it would have taken a single FDA official just one week to replace all the advisers who had conflicts of interest with experts who do not have conflicts of interest, according to CSPI's analysis of the ERG data. Moreover, the FDA would be able to choose from nearly two potential unconflicted experts for every open slot. And, based on the same criteria for the expertise of potential committee members used in the study, these easily identifiable unconflicted experts would be more qualified than the ones eventually chosen, whether they had conflicts of interest or not.

Do you think FDA should grant waivers to conflict of interest rules to recruit expert panelists who would otherwise be ineligible? Comments are open.

Warm Black Tagliatelle Salad

Special dressing: Luciano Pavarotti (with all my respect and admira-
tion)


Not a usual salad, not usual Pasta, but the mixture of ingredients is fresh and new and with a sea taste on top. Maybe this Christmas you give a chance to this salad. Your guests will be grateful... you'll see!

Get PowerPoint recipe
Get WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: Black NestsTagliatelle, half avocado, half salad tomatoe, half green pepper, one fresh green onion, 90 ml of extra virgin olive oil, 20 ml of balsamic vinegar, salt, black pepper. 16 fresh prawns or little lobsters and 2 or 3 kinds of lettuce. 10 walnuts.
•Boil water in a big pot and when it starts boiling add a pynch of salt and a spurt of oil. Add the tagliatelle and let boil for 4 minutes (whatever your package says). Strain and add a bit of olive oil so that it doesn’t get sticky.

•Meanwhile wash the little lobsters (their size is like a prawn but look like lobsters. You can use prawns if you want).
•Prepare the dressing with the avocado, tomatoe, onion, green pepper, olive oil, vinegar, salt, black pepper. All veggies should be cut very tiny.













•Place the tagliatelle on the plate, add the dressing on top.
•Place the letucce over the tagliatelle (previously cleaned and dried), add some more dressing.
•Fry the little lobsters just a bit in a saucerpan with some olive oil and salt. (aprox 2 minutes).
•Peel the little lobsters, take their heads off and use them to decorate the dish. Put their bodies on top of the lettuce.
•Add some more olive oil to the saucepan used to fry them, strain and use it to pour on top.
•Add the walnuts in small pieces.

You won't be deceived... Try it!!!

Artichoke's soup with bacon and iberian acorn ham

Special dressing: some artichoke's music...

This is not a Xmas traditional dish, you will notice that at first sight... but, we all agree that during Xmas celebrations, here in Spain, I don't know the rest of the world, we drink quite a lot! And I'm not talking about water... we drink wine, cava, liquors, beers, whisky... The whole family gets together and we eat and drink and drink and by the end of the holidays our liver has been suffering all this alcohol abuse and needs some repairing.
That's why I wanted to make this dish: simple, tasty and liver-repairing. It's known that artichokes have this liver healing quality, their components protect this organ... soooooo raise your glasses and cheers! Let's have a toast for Xmas and Artichokes!!!

Get the PowerPoint recipe
Get the WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: 25 artichokes, 35 grs. of flour, 1 liter of water, 100 grs. Iberian acorn ham, 50 grs. of bacon, 3 slices of the bread you use for sandwiches, 50 cl. of virgin olive oil, fresh mint leaves, one lemon and salt.

•Prepare the water, some salt, 4 spoon table full of olive oil and one spoon table of flour. When it boils, add the artichokes previously cleaned (take the green leaves away and have them with water and lemon before adding to pot so that they don’t turn black)

•Once they are tender inside, take them out of the pot, reserve the water that’s left, take the leaves away and keep the heart of the artichokes and make a cream out of them.
•Add some salt to the cream and the water used to boil the artichockes until you get the texture you want… it could be a cream or a soup.

•In a saucepan, have some olive oil and when hot, add the bacon cut in threads, when it goldens, add the iberian acorn ham also cut. After 2 minutes take away and reserve on kitchen paper.
•In the same pan, throw the bread cut in small squares and fry both sides. When done, put it on kitchen paper.

•Now pour the ham and bacon on top of the soup, the bread also on top and some mint leaves to decorate.
•Yummmmmmy. I love artichokes!

Iberian Acorn Ham

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO DID NOT FIND THE XMAS TREE HIDDEN POST...

Here is the King of the Spanish tables, the most desired, the tastiest, the exclusive, the only one... Ladies and Gentlemen... The Iberian Acorn Ham!!!
This extraordinary and special Ham deserves its own post, just like this, nude, alone, without sauces, without salads... its only presence is enough to have one of the best pleasures in life... only if you can eat it after ;-). The Iberian acorn ham it's exclusive from Spain. Iberian hogs are born, fed and raised in the south and northwest Spain (See it in the map). These facts, among others like the environmental and the acorn diet, make these hogs breed so special, their ham so tasteful and the recipes so exquisite!!! Since I first tried it, many years ago, I am addicted to eat/it!!!

If you ever come to Spain and want to buy some in a specialised shop or buy it through Internet, you should ask for the advice of an expertise or go to a recommended grocer's/gourmet shop because you might disagree in the quality/price you pay. I've been buying... and eating Iberian acorn ham for 15 years and I have always got the best quality, a good price and a very nice treatment in the same family shop. This family grocer's shop it's been running their business for 30 years now and it has never dissapointed me. Their shop is located in Barcelona in a very centric area nearby Rambla Catalunya (Reserva Iberica, Aragó, 242) and I must say they have the best ham in the world and they are the best in the art of slicing it! They also own a shop in the Boqueria Market (the famous Ramblas Market).

Visit their website Reserva Ibérica or drop by their shop at Aragó street and if you want to buy any of their products and you say you've known about them through this site, Spanish Recipes and say my name Núria, you will get a discount in the shop and a wine taste. For those of you who would like to buy through internet, say you've known them through this site + my name and together with your purchase you will get a present.

I do hope you try it, life is in black and white until you do!!!
Cheers!!!
Special dressing: Charles Mingus

A Particular Foodie Xmas Tree

Hola Everyone!

Christmas is getting near and I feel like having a particular Xmas Foodie Tree! I thought that it could be fun to have a little post hide and seek game. Every two or three days there will be a hidden link in the puzzle Tree to find! Tomorrow you can start looking for the "recipe-present-post" and you will get a Xmas food-drink-thought, which I hope you like. Isn't Christmas about sharing? I love to share with you all our Christmas food tradition. Have fun!

Wishing you the best for this Christmas Time... Lots of Love, Health and.... Good Food!!! Have a Merry Holiday!

Bon Nadal a tots aquells que el passareu fora de casa i els que seràn a casa també bones Festes!

Feliz Navidad a todos los que tengan que pasarla fuera de casa y a los que la pasen en casa también les deseo lo mejor!.

Special dressing: Jingle Bell Rock

First hidden post is set... Will you find it?

Iberian Acorn Ham

DECEMBER 1ST
Here is the King of the Spanish tables, the most desired, the tastiest, the exclusive, the only one... Ladies and Gentlemen... The Iberian Acorn Ham!!!

This extraordinary and special Ham deserves its own post, just like this, nude, alone, without sauces, without salads... its only presence is enough to have one of the best pleasures in life... only if you can eat it after ;-). The Iberian acorn ham it's exclusive from Spain. Iberian hogs are born, fed and raised in the south and northwest Spain (See it in the map). These facts, among others like the environmental and the acorn diet, make these hogs breed so special, their ham so tasteful and the recipes so exquisite!!!

Since I first tried it, many years ago, I am addicted to eat/it!!!
If you ever come to Spain and want to buy some in a specialised shop or buy it through Internet, you should ask for the advice of an expertise or go to a recommended grocer's/gourmet shop because you might disagree in the quality/price you pay.

I've been buying... and eating Iberian acorn ham for 15 years and I have always got the best quality, a good price and a very nice treatment in the same family shop. This family grocer's shop it's been running their business for 30 years now and it has never dissapointed me. Their shop is located in Barcelona in a very centric area nearby Rambla Catalunya (Reserva Iberica, Aragó, 242) and I must say they have the best ham in the world and they are the best in the art of slicing it! They also own a shop in the Boqueria Market (the famous Ramblas Market).

Visit their website Reserva Ibérica or drop by their shop at Aragó street and if you want to buy any of their products and you say you've known about them through this site, Spanish Recipes and say my name Núria, you will get a discount in the shop and a wine taste. For those of you who would like to buy through internet, say you've known them through this site + my name and together with your purchase you will get a present.

I do hope you try it, life is in black and white until you do!!!
Cheers!!!

Meat Stew with Potatoes

Special dressing: Tina Turner (turn player on)







It tasted as good as it looks, ... mmmmm. One of the kitchen smells I like the most is the Stew one, it stays in the air and it reminds me of winter days, steamy windows, and cold outside. It's a lovely sensation smelling and eating such tender meat and of course the potatoes... It's so easy to perform, you can do it this way or simply puting all ingredients inside a casserole and adding the potatoes at the end will also be a great dish!


Get the PowerPoint recipe
Get the WebAlbum pictures


•Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 Kilo of veal meat cut in dices, 2 onions, 2 carrots, 1 garlic head, 4 ripe tomatoes, 25 grs. of flour, 1 glass of white dry young wine, 3 big potatoes, 200 grs. of green peas, a bunch of herbs: bay leaf, thyme, oregano, salt and olive oil.

•Fry the meat (previously add salt and pepper) in a pot with 1 finger of olive oil. Once fried, reserve the meat.
•Have the onion and carrot chopped and add to the pot together with the garlic head, have it cooking at low heat until the onion gets transparent.
•Add the peeled tomatoes and the herbs. Stir and let it cook until the tomatoe is done.

•You will see that the sauce is thicker and more homogeneous. It’s time to add the glass of wine. Stir and cook for 5 minutes .
•Add the flour to thicken a bit more the sauce.

•Let it cook for a while (5 more minutes) and
•Add enough water to cover all ingredients. Let it cook for 2 hours or until the meat is tender with the pot covered at low heat.

•After that time, take the meat aside and convert all veggies into a thick sauce. Use some of the garlic cloves too.
•Use the electric mixer and add back to the pot with the meat.

•Peal, wash and cut the potatoes and add them to the stew.
•5 minutes before the potatoes are cooked, throw the green peas inside and let them cook for another 10 minutes. Add more salt if necessary.

•My daugther loves to smash all ingredients and eat as a “purée”.

Nova's Marathon Challenge

This Nova program uses the story of a group of non-athletes who train for the Boston Marathon as the vehicle to introduce a lot of other great material about nutrition and health, the interaction between genetic and environmental influences on fitness and athletic potential, the possibility of changing health behaviors in mid-life, and (perhaps unintentionally) about the ridiculous difficulty of running a marathon. You may find it motivating even if it doesn't make you want to run a marathon in particular. The show features Professor Miriam Nelson, from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, in a starring role as both team scientist and inspiration.

The Rabbit and the chocolate (not a fairy tale)

Special dressing: Ebony Jackson (turn player on)






This month's Joust at Jenn DiaPiazza's is about Chocolate, chili, and grains (any kind). You will find this Event organized at the Leftoverqueen every month. I must say I have a great time thinking/performing/eating/participating/sharing in the Joust. Last month was my firs time and this will be my entry for December's. Jenn is the best hostess ever, just enter her place and you will feel like home!

Rabbit and Prawns with chocolate sauce. Sounds a bit funny? I must say this is the first time I perform a salty recipe with chocolate as an ingredient. And the result has been Wonderful!!! Please try it, it's delicious! It seems that there's a long tradition in Catalan recipes to use chocolate... now that I'm reading all these cookbooks I'm finding out this about my own cooking tradition... I knew there were some recipes, but I never dared!

Get the PowerPoint recipe
Get WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 Kg of Rabbit cut in pieces, ½ Kg. of red prawns, 2 onions, 2 garlic cloves, 3 ripe tomatoes, a spurt of good brandy, wheat flour, salt, 1 teaspoon of hot red chili powder, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon of oregano, olive oil.
•For the final dressing: 1 garlic clove, 25 grs of black chocolate (at least 75% cacao) a spring of parsley.

•In a saucer pan with some olive oil add the rabbit previously cleaned, cut, salted and with some black pepper.
•When roasted, take away from the saucer pan.
•Clean the fresh red prawns from their long whiskers, let them dry, add salt to them and coat in wheat flour.
•Fry them in the saucepan in the same oil we roasted the rabbit, after 1 minute maximum, take them away and reserve.

•Now, add the chopped onions and the garlic and start a sofrito.
•Once the onion is transparent, add the tomatoes which have been previously converted into sauce, add a pynch of salt and stir for a while at medium/low fire until you get this oily and darker texture (see pictures in power point).

•Meanwhile prepare the dressing with the garlic, some salt, the spring of parsley, the chocolate and smash it all together until you get an homogeneous texture.

•Add the rabbit back to the casserole and stir so that all ingredients get mixed. Drop a spurt of good brandy on top, stir and after 5 minutes add 1 ½ glass of water, the red hot chily powder, the oregano, the bay leaf, and a pynch of salt. Let it boil (gentle boil) for a while until the rabbit meat is tender.

•When the meat is tender is time to add the chocolate dressing, use some of the stock of the saucepan to dilute the chocolate and add it to the rabbit. The heat should be low. The colour of the saucepan stock will change into a beautiful brown. Add the prawns back to the casserole and let it cook at low fire for 10 minutes, stirring now and then.

•Serve hot.
I can not give credit of how marvellous this dish turned out to be… I just love the taste!!!
If you are not much into eating rabbits, you can try the same recipe with any poultry or wild hunted birds.

Wansink Appointed Director of CNPP

Dr. Brian Wansink, who was recently interviewed on this blog for his receipt of the Ig Nobel prize, was appointed Executive Director of the USDA's Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) last Wednesday.

According to the USDA press release:

At CNPP Dr. Wansink will be responsible for overseeing the planning, development and review of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the food pyramid known as MyPyramid.gov and programs including the Healthy Eating Index, the USDA Food Plans, the Nutrient Content of the U.S. Food Supply, and the cost of raising a child.

Praise comes from Marion Nestle, the Ethicurean and Eating Liberally for USDA's appointment of a university researcher, as opposed to recent appointments that have come directly from various industry positions. Wansink's novel research on home and restaurant environmental triggers for unhealthy eating and overeating informs his book Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think- about how to modify immediate environments in order to change nutrition behavior, without creating new regulations or directly attacking individual behavior.

Trype Madrid-Style - Callos

Special dressing: Elvis Presley (Cook me tender, cook me through... ups! Love me tender, love me true)

I could understand some of you thinking... wow how disgusting... I would never try that! But, here in Spain is one of the most valuated traditional dishes. I never made it before because I'm not much into it, but my husband loves it and I decided to look for the recipe and show it to you.

I always thought that this dish was originally from Madrid but, to my surprise, (you always learn something new) it's originally from Asturias. If you look at the map notice that Asturias is in the North of the peninsula and Madrid in the center, and it's not the only recipe, you can also find Callos (that's how they are called in Spanish) in the Andaluzan-Style and Extremadura-Style too. I've chosen the Madrid ones for this recipe, but I've also find out that depending on who wrote the recipe some ingredients may be different and the method can change a bit too... After this looooooong introduction, here is the recipe.


Get the PowerPoint recipe
Get the WebAlbum pictures

•Ingredients for 4 servings: 1 ½ kilos of veal trype, 1 veal’s hand, 100 grs. Pork fat, 1 ham bone, 2 black puddings, 2 farm-made spiced sausages, 1 garlic head, 2 onions, olive oil, parsley, bay leaf, flour, paprika, milled white pepper and salt.

•When preparing this dish, the prior cleaning of the veal’s trype and hand is of the utmost importance. My butcher sells it clean and I don’t have to go through all the cleaning process. (if not your case, see end of recipe for procedure)
•Boil the intestines and the hand in a casserole full of water, when it boils, leave for 5 minutes and discard all water.
•Add fresh water to the trype and hand and add the pork fat, the ham bone, the black puddings, the spiced sausage, one onion, the garlic, the bay leaf, the parsley and the salt and pepper.
•When it boils again, take the foam away and turn heat very low and have it cooking for 3 hours.

•In a frying pan drop some olive oil and lightly fry the onion, when transparent,
•Add the hot paprika and a spoonful of flour. Stir for 8 minutes aprox and pour to the casserole.

•Bring to the boil again and alllow the whole thing to simmer for 15 more minutes. Once ready, take the bones of the ham and the veal hand away and cut in medium pieces the hand meat.

•Callos taste much better the day after.
•The texture is very gelatinous and the taste… unforgettable!

•Hope you enjoy it! As a main dish (serve in individual earthenware dishes)
•Or as a tapa!
•The cleaning procedure is as follows: Scrap the intestines with a knife, scalding them in boiling water and, with the help of a brush, scrubbing them with salt and lemon juice or vinegar, until all the fat is removed. Then they should be rinsed several times.