“Well, basically, there was this little dot, right? And the dot went bang and the bang expanded. Energy formed into matter, matter cooled, matter lived, the amoeba to fish, to fish to fowl, to fowl to frog, to frog to mammal, the mammal to monkey, to monkey to man, amo amas amat, quid pro quo, memento mori, ad infinitum, sprinkle on a little bit of grated cheese and leave under the grill till Doomsday.”

– Johnny (David Thewliss) in Naked

Buenos Aires – The week began with fowl – chicken in particular – the plan had been one chicken and one duck dish, but lack of good duck and one other key ingredient for the recipe that my Brazilian cooking professor wanted to teach me negated the latter. Instead, we talked about it and then prepared three different traditional styles of chicken – the originally planned xinxim de galinha, chicken stewed in cashew and tomato sauce; a pollo con molho de choclo, or grilled chicken breast in a creamed corn sauce; and pollo con maracujá, chicken in a passionfruit and carrot sauce. All delicious! I’m disappointed that this was the last of the four session course (I do recommend it for anyone local, and am happy to provide the info for contacting Eduardo – you’ll need to be fluent in either Spanish or Portuguese…).

Here at Casa Saltshaker, group two worked their way through a quintet of contorni recipes – the braised endive, the peppers in bagna cauda, and the fried fennel from the previous week, plus a twist on eggplant parmesan using tiny little baby eggplant, and roasted porobello mushroom caps filled with pumpkin seeds and garlic. That was all yesterday. Today, group one launched their way into filleting fish and then making a trio of dishes – olive oil poached razor clams, Mario Batali’s “sicilian lifeguard” calamari, and my own breaded pomfret with a green olive, bacon, and chili topping. New photos, of course, on the flickr stream. Group three is waiting in the wings to start towards the end of the month after group one winds down, and meanwhile, I’m thinking through various ideas for the next series of classes… I’m happy to consider suggestions if you’re interested in a particular topic.

“No matter how good the entree is, the entire dinner falls apart if the side dishes don’t add up.”

– Anne Braly, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Buenos Aires – Just the roundup on this week’s classes – our Color Palate of Italy session 5 came off without a hitch and with a quartet of i contorni, or side dishes – deep fried fennel with a pistachio and pecorino breading, slow cooked endive with garlic and basil, roasted peppers bathed in a traditional anchovy and garlic bagna cauda, and the sweet and sour eggplant stylings of a classic Sicilian caponata. Full pix, as each week, on my Flickr page.

And, in my own studies, Brazilian cooking this week covered acarajé com vatapá and bobó de camarão.

“Rice is a beautiful food. It is beautiful when it grows, precision rows of sparkling green stalks shooting up to reach the hot summer sun. It is beautiful when harvested, autumn gold sheaves piled on diked, patchwork paddies. It is beautiful when, once threshed, it enters granary bins like a (flood) of tiny seed-pearls. It is beautiful when cooked by a practiced hand, pure white and sweetly fragrant.”

– Shizuo Tsuji, Chef and cookbook author

Buenos Aires – Moving swiftly along with our class schedule, this week our first group simmered their way through a trio of grains – we looked at the different types of risotto, polenta, and farro, and had our way with a Saffron-Asparagus Risotto flavored with Gremolatta, a slow cooked Polenta with Cremini mushrooms and homemade Italian sausage, and a bubbling pot of Wheatberries with a Quartet of Spring Vegetables. Thus ends our carbo loading – next week on to vegetable side dishes.

More detailed pictures on our Flickr page.

On my side, I swam my way through a duo of Brazilian classic fish dishes – casquinha de siri and moqueca de peixe, both delicious – Henry insisted on more moqueca after sampling, so I whipped up a version using calamari that evening, simply because I had some….

“OPA’LIA, a Roman festival in honour of Opis,a which was celebrated on the 14th day before the Calends of January (Dec. 19th), being the third day of the Saturnalia, which was also originally celebrated on the same day, when only one day was devoted to the latter festival. It was believed that Opis was the wife of Saturnus, and for this reason the festivals were celebrated at the same time. The worshippers of Opis paid their vows sitting, and touched the earth on purpose, of which she was the goddess.”

– William Smith, D.C.L., LL.D., A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 1875

Buenos Aires – With the success of our series of Italian cooking classes, the cuisine has been on my mind much more lately, so it won’t come as any surprise that I’m trying out recipes here and there during our Casa S dinners. On to the food….

This is a minor change to past versions of an insalata romana, one of my favorite salads – with the tri-color (Italian flag) leaves of arugula, endive and radicchio, accompanied by fresh figs and blue cheese. The only change – I guess it’s the holiday season and a certain amount of missing “roots” – I’ve been experimenting with recipes for salad dressings – I grew up in a household where we always had salad with dinner, and usually an array of dressings (Kraft and Wishbone, of course) to choose from – one of my favorites was always Italian – this version a blend of cider vinegar, olive oil, water, garlic, onion, sugar, oregano, thyme, basil, parsley, celery seed, salt and black pepper.

A simple soup in which I sauteed minced garlic, rosemary and oregano with crushed anchovies, then deglazed the pan with white wine and reduced it a bit, added tomatoes and water and let it simmer away. Meanwhile I had soaked chickpeas overnight and then cooked them separately until soft – adding them to the soup. The first night I pureed the whole soup, the second night I pureed it prior to adding the chickpeas and left them whole – I liked that better….

Again two versions – homemade whole wheat pasta both nights, something we’ve been playing with in the classes – the first night tagliatelli – thin ribbons, I thought they seemed a little too delicate for the sauce, which was sweetbreads coated in cornstarch and cornmeal and fried in olive oil along with lots of chopped shallots and walnuts. The second night I tried maltagliati – just random forms – it seemed too much the other direction, almost overshadowing the sweetbreads – something in between the next time….

A simple veal piccatta – traditional style topped with lemon juice, parsley and prosciutto. Served up with garlic sauteed chicory – some people liked the chicory and ate it all, others just pushed it around the plate. Oh, and on night two, two folk showed up who’d made their reservation the day before and assured me that they “ate everything, no restrictions” – apparently, mentioning that he was a vegetarian didn’t seem worth mentioning – hmmm… didn’t mention the anchovies in the soup – nothing I could do about it anyway, pasta without the sweetbreads, just the walnuts and shallots, he seemed to like that, the veal, not much I could do at that point, a little extra chicory – which he turned out not to like, and I had a few loose vegetables around – carrots, onions, peppers, which I sauteed up quickly and tossed atop the chicory. I don’t get it – if someone has a dietary restriction that’s that… restrictive, why not mention it? Sure, I might have said no, but, probably not, I usually try to accommodate requests like that when I can – and he would have had a far better meal.

This was a hit – a traditional Roman dessert of gelato made from risotto rice – the rice is cooked in cream, cinnamon and sugar until al dente, then mixed with creme anglais, chilled, and then churned in an ice cream maker – it’s kind of like a frozen rice pudding, only richer. I scooped it over strawberries that had been macerating in berry liqueur and then drizzled a little balsamic caramel over the top.

“…a man that can’t quickly throw together a meal is always going to be dependent on someone else to feed him, be that his wife, girlfriend, or McDonald’s. Dependency is not an admirable trait in a man. You don’t want to be the guy that has to turn to frozen pizzas just because your finer half decided to have Cosmos with the ladies.”

– Scott Kustes, guest blogger on The Art of Manliness

Buenos Aires – I know I don’t really have to convince anyone reading this blog that it’s worth learning how to cook something… well. Or maybe I do. I know I don’t need any convincing, and as long time readers know, I’m always up for learning and/or teaching something new.

The first session of class number three in our Color Palate of Italy program came off without a hitch – well, only one person showed up for the class, but hey, we had a good time! The class session was on pizza and related dishes – we made a grilled pizza topped with radiccheta and parmigiano, a traditional style Sicilian pizza with pecorino and anchovies, a rosemary and sea salt topped foccacia, and a piadina filled with sauteed vegetables drizzled with a tomato vinaigrette. More photos here.

Now, you know I’m not standing around doing nothing in between classes. I made arrangements with a local Brazilian chef to spend some time with him in his home kitchen, learning a few of the secrets of Brazilian cuisine. While I’m not going to reveal any of his recipes, as he plans to be offering public classes in the near future (more details when they’re available), I’m happy to share a few photos of what we made.

We started off with a couple of bean based dishes, beans being quite important in Brazilian cooking. First up, a feijoada, the national dish of Brazil. You might remember my first attempt at the dish – let’s just say that while I may have been in the ballpark, it’s likely I was in the back of the bleachers….

Henry and I had tried this dish at a Brazilian restaurant here that’s now closed, feijao de tropeira, sort of a bean and greens scramble, accompanied if you like by a fried banana. While I noted that I wasn’t wowed by the dish when we had it, I loved this one, and it’s oh, so simple… really.

On to other classes – I had a request for a “basics of local cooking” class – a one session look at empanadas, locro, and chimichurri – what could be better than all that? I’ve currently got one class scheduled with spaces available (as of posting this anyway), but am open to repeating it on another day and time.

“Life is a combination of magic and pasta.”

– Federico Fellini, film director

[And, a write-up from one of the students in the class!]