Buttercupchappati Chronicles

Risotto for two?

Hello,

my name is Karen and I am an over-caterer.

There I've said it, can we move on now?

Really, what is the big deal? For the last twenty odd years I have been cooking for a family, a family of men, and now there is just the two of us at home, it is going to take me more than a week to scale down, ok?

To me it is an unforgivable horror to send people away hungry. If you are invited to my table, then it is my pleasure and my responsibility to make sure you have enough to eat, to drink and whatever else you need to have a beautiful time there.

But - just for the record, whatever your particular feed-the-hungry-hordes instinct tells you, two cups of Arborio rice is actually, yes, enough, when you are making risotto for two.

sigh

at least the dog is not complaining ... he is dining well!

For the record it was a delicious dish with chicken, garlic, red onion, parsley, lemon zest - and of course, parmigiano.

Eggplant parmigiana and Emilio

Well, strictly speaking, Emilio's Grandmother.

So there we were on the bus, the small bus not the big bus. Important distinction because the big bus was for the Italian group and the smaller bus was for the motley collection known as the English Speaking Group. Oh and yes, this is while I was in Tibet.

Back to the bus, the back of the bus to be exact, where Emilio has taken a seat by invitation, we made him an honorary English speaker. Emilio is very cool and makes me laugh all the time. We are driving from Mahlo to Labrang, not so far as the crow flies but a long way by roads that are either being re-built or have been washed out by all the recent rain.

We have been late to get started due to various administrative details and it always takes a while to round up all of our Italians and get them on their bus and ready to go.

This means no lunch on the way. While we do have bags of interesting Chinese snacks and biscuits which we all share around, that's not lunch is it? And remember, we have been away from western food for over three weeks now.

This is when Emilio decides to give us, in great detail, with great passion and appreciation, his grandmothers recipe for eggplant parmigiana. You could almost smell the basil and the tomato and the thought of actual melted cheese had most of us in tears. We had to threaten him with eviction to get him to stop.

But I couldn't wait to try it when I got home, and after finding some gorgeous eggplant at the market, today was the day!

 

 

It was delicious!

Who doesn't go to Tibet to get great recipes for Italian food? A hundred thousand blessings on this Italian Grandmother and her slightly crazy but very lovable grandson!

Thugkpa

Cold days call out for thugkpa.

My kitchen now smells like Tibet.

And that is a good thing.

(All thats' missing now are momo's, but not enough time today)

How many chickens have you eaten in your lifetime?

I don't really want to do that sum for myself, and I am very glad that the bird we had enjoyed for our dinner was a genuine free range organic chicken. After watching the second episode of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's three part programme on the chicken meat industry, if we had eaten anything else I think it would have been like poison in our stomachs.

Most people would know Hugh from  his River Cottage show, all about self sufficiency, small holdings and eating real food that you have hopefully grown or collected yourself. He comes across as a bit of hippy, bit of a prat sometimes, but entertaining. The thing I have always liked and respected him for is his stance on raising animals for meat. If you are going to eat meat, make sure the creature has the best possible, most natural and humane life it can have before you take its life.

Hence this tilt at the chicken industry. And it is truly frightening what a cold and cruel operation it is to bring an average bird, cheaply, to the table. The statistics are horrifying, the footage of his own intensive farm (started as an example because none of the commercial growers would allow him to film in their sheds - and that says plenty doesn't it?) is awful. Last night, in the daily cull of small, sick or injured birds - a job which is clearly killing him - we saw a bird taken out to have it's neck broken; but the kicker was it was the first time that bird had been out in sunlight since the day it was delivered to the shed in a big cardboard box as a day old chick.

How can we do this to fellow creatures? I agree the whole meat eating issue is charged with emotion and not cut and dried. But surely we can give a little more kindness and respect to these animals that sustain us.  What is this sort of food doing to us anyway?

I urge everyone to visit the site and register as a supporter or at least have a look at what he has to say.

I am a bit of a hypocrite I know, we keep chickens for eggs and there is no way I could kill a bird for the pot, but I will buy a free range organic bird to cook for the family. It is important to me to know that animal has had the best possible life and most humane death.

Chicken out

Life without tomatoes

and potatoes, and eggplant, and peppers.

It gets more depressing each time I say it.

I am trying a new diet for various health reasons and one aspect is no vegetables of the nightshade family, see above.

Hand on heart I love my veggies (well, not Brussels sprouts).

I never realised before how much I rely on tomato and potato, now seen as old and dear friends! There is no meat on this diet, which doesn't worry me, I've been vegetarian on and off for a number of years now. But vegetarian food without these staples is a bit more challenging. (Add in the fact of no wine, no coffee and no chocolate and one begins to lose the will to live.) 

Try going out to lunch without tomato in this land of the always present focaccia. No-one seems to make soup without tomato in some form, unless you choose Asian food, then there is all that salt. Pasta? Only if you want that fat filled cream sauce. Yes I am whinging.

Yes to rice, yes to noodles, yes to lentils and all their little cousins, yes to tofu, yes I live on spinach and mushrooms - at the moment. I am sure we will come to grips with this. A delicious Thai inspired red curry with vegetables was made this week.

There is also a ban on almonds, bananas, corn and peanuts. Quite an odd combo. Peanuts is hard, I have been a peanut butter girl for years and years. Sob.

wedding cake and momo's

It's been a very social buttercup this week. We went to the wedding of a long time colleague of PRS, a restauranteur he has known for many years and quite a few restaurants. I wasn't sure what kind of a night it was going to be as we didn't really know any of their family or other friends, and it was at Crown Casino, not my favourite place. (eek, the energy in there makes you want to rush home for a shower).

But - it was a lovely, lovely wedding. An Italian family marrying with a Sri Lankan family, it was all family! Children everywhere, everyone dancing, singing. The father of the bride, at 72 years of age, would put a younger John Travolta to shame. Even PRS was happy to shake his groove thing! And only one couple on our table insisting on playing the "we have known them longer than you" game. Why do people do that??? These two were friends of the groom, and I am sure if we pushed it, they would have claimed to have known him longer than his own parents!

Sunday, which seemed to arrive very quickly on the heels of Saturday night, was a smaller party, just family for my Dad's 77th birthday. As is normal for my family there was way too much food. Mum keeps adding items to the menu as the day approaches; and my brother who also loves to cook will throw something into the mix along with me. I made momo's, it was time to initiate them all. I think they went down okay, if not it doesn't matter; I love making them and my lot love eating them, so it's all good. And they get better with each batch.
I can sense the people who taught me in Tibet, watching me while I do it, it's a good memory. And good memories combined with good food is one of the greatest pleasures we have I'm sure.