New England Glam Chowder

I made my first recipe last night from Isa Does It! It's a clam chowder type thing but with shiitakes subbing for the clams. You're supposed to also add chopped up nori (seaweed) to give it a fishy flavor but I have no interest in fish-flavored soups, so I left it out.

It was excellent. I'm really really glad I have this cookbook to refocus my attention on new healthy recipes. I have been sort of off the rails lately. Here is a video of Isa making this chowder!

The only bummer is that I made her olive oil bread to go with and it tasted like absolutely nothing.  I only ate a few bites and thought, "why was there no salt in this recipe??" and then I reviewed the book and there WAS salt in the recipe. I just forgot to add it. SIGH. Ben likes tasteless bread, apparently, because he seemed perfectly pleased with it, so at least it won't go to waste.

Bida Manda Birthday Dinner

I've been wanting to go to Bida Manda, a Laotian restaurant downtown, for quite a while but Ben felt their whole marketing strategy was pretentious and annoying. Well, yesterday was my birthday, so I get to make him do what I want. We ended up having a fantastic experience - the food was great and the service was even better, genuinely friendly and extremely prompt.

We ordered some crispy ground pork egg rolls to start. They were excellent, far better than the standard type of egg roll I expected.

For my entree I ordered the shrimp & bacon saffron crepe, which was huge! Fortunately I was able to finish it with no problems because it was also great.

Ben ordered the caramelized ginger pork ribs with grilled asparagus and sticky rice. I have to admit I was pretty jealous when this showed up at the table, because it looked amazing.

And then they brought us a free birthday dessert!

These items are mango sorbet, tamarind cobbler, and coconut custard. It was the perfect end to a great meal! Happy birthday to me!

New stuff!

Since we've been home I've gotten two new cookbooks!

Both for obvious reasons. Penelope Casas was one of the most famous American chefs of Spanish cuisine and, while I considered getting her The Foods and Wines of Spain, I went with the tapas book to start (even though these is no recipe in it for Bacon of the Sky).  I broke it in last weekend with a moderately sized tapas feast for Ben and a friend - unfortunately the only thing I took a picture of was this excellent potato salad with egg and tuna.

I've had Isa Does It preordered for months and months, and it finally showed up yesterday just in time for my birthday! Even though obviously I'm eating meat again, Isa is my favorite chef and has made an impact on the way I cook and eat that will never go away. Perusing her list of kitchen and pantry staples in this book last night, I realized my entire kitchen is based around her style - and that's because she's the best! This cookbook is huge and I am super excited to spend the next few months devoting a lot of dinners to trying all her new creations. Stay tuned!

Trip Report! Day 9: Back to Madrid

Finally we come to the end!

We woke up in Seville and got on the road early to head back to Madrid. The drive was 5 hours on easy highways - until we reached Madrid itself, which was of course very busy and unpleasant. We were returning the car to the airport, though, which was considerably easier to find and navigate than the city, so it wasn't too bad.

We stayed at the taCH Hotel near the airport for easy access. For some reason I had not printed out a map of this area prior to arrival, so we had a bit of an adventure trying to find it that was resolved when I had the idea to ask a taxi driver to look it up on his GPS. Whew! Safe & sound in Madrid. After resting for a few minutes and eating some jamon-flavored Ruffles, we decided to take the metro back into the city.

The Prado, Spain's greatest art museum, is free on Tuesday nights, so we took advantage of this to go in and see a few of the highlights. I was most interested in seeing Heironymous Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights, which proved to be much better in person than I had even hoped. It wasn't crowded, either, so we had plenty of time to peruse at our leisure.

Then we walked over to Retiro Park nearby.

I'm really glad we decided to give Madrid another go - I was not impressed the first day we arrived, but had a much better feeling about it this second time around.

We stopped at a tiny hole in the wall tapas bar and ordered a couple of waters, and then they immediately started bringing us food. We ordered those meatballs but I think it was the only food we paid for - everything else they just gave to us. It was pretty awesome! I ended up ordering a beer because I felt bad. The whole dinner cost us 9 euros.

We left Madrid the next day at noon and got home at 9:00pm Eastern.  It was a long day!

We are glad to be home, obviously, but already jonesing for the next trip. Paris 2014! Unless I change my mind.

Trip Report! Day 8: Seville

On our full day in Seville we intended to see the big tourist sights, the Alcazar and the Cathedral, and set out for the Alcazar first. This is a palace and fortress built after the Christians had recaptured Seville, but in a Moorish style to mimic the Alhambra.

The gardens are huge and were probably our favorite part. It was a nice day and there weren't nearly as many people outdoors as inside.

The palace itself was beautiful, but having just seen the Alhambra, we probably weren't as impressed as we would have been otherwise.

It was also absolutely packed with people. 

The tilework especially was very reminiscent of the Alhambra.

This is a ceiling.

This is the Giralda, the Cathedral's bell tower, taken from the Courtyard of the Banderos just inside the Alcazar grounds. The Giralda clearly used to be a mineret in the old Muslim days. The architecture in no way resembles the Gothic Cathedral attached to it.

After the Alcazar we attempted to do Rick Steves' walking tour of the Barrio Santa Cruz, but almost immediately got lost. We found our way to the Plaza Santa Cruz at the center of the neighborhood, where there was a quiet restaurant patio that seemed perfect for lunch.

This was my first course - reminiscent of the salads we ate in every restaurant in Tunisia! 

Benjamin ordered gazpacho.

I got paella as my main course - I figured I had to order it at least once! There were a lot of weird seafood items in this.

For dessert we had the option of ice cream or tocino de cielo, which my Spanish app translated as "bacon of the sky." We had no idea what this could possibly be, but I ordered it just to see. It is egg yolk custard!  And it was delicious.

After lunch we had intended to tour the Cathedral, which in addition to being one of the largest cathedrals in the world is also where Columbus is buried. However, we just couldn't do it. There was a long line in the hot sun and we were so tired of the crowds and ultimately decided to take a little break back in the hotel instead.

In the evening we walked through town down across the river to the Triana neighborhood.

And then we finished our time in Seville with yet more patio dining (and deep fried chorizo) along the Alameda de Hercules. Seville is beautiful and atmospheric, but there were just way too many people there for us to fully enjoy it as we had the other towns. If I ever go back it will be in the dead of winter.

Trip Report! Day 7: Arcos to Seville

All of the guidebooks were very, very serious about avoiding taking a car into Arcos de la Frontera, so we parked at the very bottom of the hill on the outskirts. This little guy watched us walk by at the beginning of our hike to the top.

It is a very serious, straight-up, 20 minute walk to the top of Arcos de la Frontera. Grueling, you might say.

But we made it, and stopped at the first place we saw for refreshments.

And churros. Churros are big in Andalusia and we had so far managed to not have any at all! You dip them into hot chocolate. 

Like Ronda, Arcos is situated on a cliff with dramatic views of the landscape.

Unlike Ronda, there is not much to see or do there. After seeing the town, I was even more grateful we had chosen to stay at the hacienda. It definitely would not have been worth figuring out how to get our luggage into the center of the historic area.

This church is at the very top of the hill. Its original tower was destroyed in an earthquake in 1755 and the new one doesn't quite seem to fit.

This is the interior entryway for someone's house. They all looked like this, more or less. 

The streets in Arcos were definitely the craziest we had seen yet. There were lots of times we would be walking along and see a parked car and have no idea how it got there.

We stood and watched cars squeeze through this little alley for a few minutes.

Another church - the whole upper town was a confusing maze of streets and it was difficult to really get a good idea of the town's layout.

After exploring for an hour or so we headed back down the hill. It was much more pleasant on the return trip.

Seville was only about an hour away, so we set out once again on the highways. These huge bulls loomed over the highways all over the southern part of Spain. Creepy!

So I had figured that by the time we reached Seville, Ben would be more or less used to driving in Spain and we wouldn't have too much trouble getting to our hotel, which was located near the Alameda de Hercules, considered a sort of hipstery area. There weren't too many turns in the directions, but the streets were very narrow and there were people everywhere.  Ben almost had a nervous breakdown.  But we made it.

We stayed at the Conde de Torrejon 10 apartments, which were absolutely perfect. I had booked a studio but they upgraded us to a 2-story apartment! The women who work there were over the top friendly and excited to see us, too. 

Like almost every place we stayed in Spain, we had two twin beds pushed together. Is this the way private homes are in Spain too, I wonder? It actually makes for better sleeping because there is no fighting over the covers.

We even had an interior patio! I could live there.

After settling in and calming down from the drive, we walked over to Alameda de Hercules to get some lunch. The whole area is lined with patio dining. I think we only ate indoors 2 or 3 times during the entire trip.

The extremely cheerful lady at the hotel recommended Casa Paco, so that's where we went, and I think it was probably the best of all the food we ate in Spain. By this point, we were pointing at items on menus with vaguely familiar words in them and eating whatever showed up. These items pictured were bacon-wrapped dates with some kind of sugary sauce poured over potato chips (!), white and green asparagus broiled with cheese, and chicken with some kind of delicious sauce. I don't even really like chicken and I could not stop eating it.

After lunch we started wandering around, heading first over to Plaza de la Encarnacion to see this controversial thing they've built over the square in the last couple of years. It was definitely a bit weird in the middle of historic Seville but we liked it.

We walked down Calle Sierpes, one of the oldest parts of the city which is now the central shopping district, and ended up along the Gran Via in the touristy historic core. We were a bit taken aback by Seville, to be honest. There were so many people wandering slowly and aimlessly in practically every corner of the city - it was very much like being at Disneyland on an extremely busy day, except everyone seemed to live there. We are businesslike walkers and it got frustrating pretty quickly. I asked our hotel lady later if Seville is always so crowded and she said it isn't - April and October are apparently the busiest, because the weather is so nice. I guess everyone else had the same idea I did.

They were also having a procession for some reason, which as far as we can tell is a very slowly marching brass band playing really loud music with some people behind them holding huge gold crosses. It was neat to see.

We walked down to Plaza Espana, which was built in 1928 for the Ibero-American Exposition (like a World's Fair, but only for Spanish-speaking countries). It had fallen into disrepair over the years but they have recently began a renovation project to save it.  It's gorgeous!

After this we walked back to our apartment for relaxing before dinner. I also did some laundry, which apparently tripped the breaker because all the power went out in the entire apartment. It was pitch black outside but fortunately I had upgraded to iOS 7 before the trip so I had easy access to the iPhone flashlight!  We eventually found the breaker box behind a mirror downstairs - thank goodness. It was this incident that made me decide I really need to shell out for the international phone plan the next time we travel. If we hadn't been able to get the power back on I don't really know what we would have done.

We went back over to the Alameda de Hercules and chose a different patio spot for dinner. Again we ordered lots of tapas, and finally chose the jamon iberico, considered to be the finest ham in Spain. It is very expensive in the US, and was actually not available here at all until the last several years. It was worth the hype!

This was our latest night of the trip. We finished dinner around 11:00 and people were still arriving - they really do eat that late in Spain!