Food Break

I've been really busy around the kitchen recently.

Rice to the occasion.

My cousin gave me a bag of bibingka (rice cake) mix that I poured into my muffin pan. H is now a fan.

Shining, simmering, splendid.

Then I made my first ratatouille ever, with a set of instructions from a French cookbook. I didn't really know what I was doing, and I fretted the whole time if I was doing it right, but apparently I did. I put in 2 sprigs of thyme from the in-laws' yard. The Frenchman is amazed at my first attempt, putting it at the level of a great cook we both know.

So fond of fondant.

For dessert, a fondant with hot, slushy chocolate inside and a spoon of pistachio and nougat ice cream that the neighbor gave us about a month ago (*gasp*).

Margherita 1. Good for 2.

Then I got bread flour and made my very first pizza dough. Chopped some tomatoes, onions and garlic and let it boil for 2 hours to make homemade passata, then picked basil from the balcony and put them on top.

Because I had a lot of passata and mozzarella left, I made a ginormous pizza to finish everything off.

Margherita 2. Good for 2 also!
Our Snow White tray is the only thing that can carry it.

Fudams*

While cleaning my bedside table, I found a dot matrix printout of a recipe my mom gave me before I left. I made a few adjustments according to my memory of how we used to do it at home.

Roasted chicken a la Stripeysocks.

The condiments were something I picked up from my brother. One thing I learned by doing this in Paris is that lemons are no substitute for good ol' calamansi.

I've also risen up to the challenge of my beaux-frères to make a 6-layered gateau Petit Lu, a cake that has as any versions as there are families in France. They usually ask for it on their birthdays, but my belle-mère has a hard time putting the soft stacks of cookies on top of each other so she either flat out refuses them or makes a 4-layer cake instead of a 6-layer one. So belle-mère gave me the family recipe on our last visit and wished me "bonne chance." Sadly, I think I rushed the process because my butter cream was too "liquide" but it wasn't sooo bad.

Candy, chocolate, coffee and butter all in one bite!

 Speaking of food -

I've been starved for books these past months. H bought me the unofficial guide to France, "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong" by Nadeau and Barlow back in September saying I have to study what it's like to be French now. It was a little outdated, but informative: it was fodder for a number of conversations with the "natives" months after.

The Diana Wynne Jones book I ordered in December through FNAC (along with a Monty Python box set) encountered some delays because it was shipped from the UK, but it got here eventually...  in January. Winning a bet against H bagged me an H.P. Lovecraft compilation and Susanna Clarke's "Ladies of Grace Adieu" (minus 2 euros for a little scratch on the cover) from Galignani - all three I finished by February.

Being a book slut, I'm not happy unless I'm reading two or three books at the same time. My friend, Agay, sent me "Almost French" by Sarah Turnbull; which I'm in the middle of at the moment. I'm finishing Kerouac's "On The Road" and Michael Chabon's "Gentlemen of the Road" but I'm starting to get anxious about my next fix... Although, the books I should be opening are my French study books (of which I got plenty).

So, I hit upon this genius solution to study French while reading something more entertaining than my drill books: I decided to get "Les recettes amoureuses d'un sorciere" through Amazon. It's a lovely vintage style recipe book adorned by various ephemera. I'm supposed to get it in a week or two, fingers crossed, and while I'm waiting, I also thought I could practice with H's romans (novels) lying around the house.

Great excuse to start reading Murakami. But it's bound to be a hard read so I expect to quit after an hour... maybe less. When I told H, he shoved a copy of Daniel Pennac's "Au bonheur des ogres" in my hands. The cover is cute, reminds me of Quentin Blake. Imma give myself one year to finish it.

*Fudam - Pinoy gay lingo for food.