Back to Homaha.

No more fresh baguettes, smelly cheeses or red wine for me (unfortunately).

But, I still have my wonderful cookbook to cook through, so on to the next meal..... which last night was Brodetto.

Brodetto is an Italian fish dish made in many different regions with differing variations, but what remains common is the need for a good homemade fish stock.

Onion, celery and tilapia fillets (it should have been fish steak with bones, but due to the hot weather I didn't want to leave my other groceries in the car while buying it) are boiled for 30 minutes to make the stock.

Meanwhile tomatoes are scalded and peeled, more onion and garlic is chopped and fried in olive oil. The fish stock is added to the onion, garlic and tomatoes along with some white wine and saffron threads ($15 for a teeny tiny pouch!). Steamed mussels, squid, octopus, krab, shrimp and the boiled fish are added to the sauce and allowed to simmer for 5 minutes.

The final product was served with a small amount of jasmine rice.

It was yummy! All three of us went back for seconds (minus the rice) and Joshua especially liked to see the sucky pads of the squid :)

Matt compared it to a non salted version of the west indie breakfast Diarra made for the family in France, and I can see what he means. Which reminds me Helena, if you're reading this, can you please email me with that recipe??

The fish steaks would have worked better than the small tilapia fillets, it would have held together better. I also didn't care for the krab, the real thing would have been way better.

Josh followed his meal with a couple scoops of ice cream. I also had one small scoop, but had to fight my way through Matthew to be able to do so. He was quite right though, France has piled on another 6lbs and so I really don't have the room for any special treats yet; not until I meet my first weight loss goal. Don't worry people, I'm not going to starve myself. I just want to get to a place where I don't feel like I'm dragging around extra weight :)

What will I cook next?

Bread, bread, I couldn't get my bread....

... before I write about yesterdays cooking I have some WONDERFUL news to share!

Those of you who have known me growing up will be aware that one of my favorite food staples is tea and toast. I used to regularly eat 4 to 6 slices of toast with marmite for supper and basically survived on the stuff throughout my college years. Whenever I return to Ireland for visits I eat about 10 metric tons of toast with my youngest sister Ellie.

Over here, in America, the bread is very different; it is super sweet and has a different consistency. So in the past, when I've wanted some tea and toast I have not been able to do so because if I try making it with the bread over here I just end up getting angry at the sweetness and grittiness of the bread.

This morning our good friends Ryan and Julia took us out to brunch at a place called 'Wheatfields' The menu was huge and I finally decided on an Italian frittata with red onions and bell peppers. The menu said that it would be served with some ciabatta bread. The bread that actually arrived looked nothing like ciabatta and I assumed it was just regular sweet awful American bread.

However, being the glutton that I am I still tried a nibble of it and just about started crying!!! It has the same taste and consistency of the bread I have grown up with!!!! I ate my two slices with some delicious jam (another unusual thing to find over here, not a trace of high fructose corn syrup in it!) and then my wonderful husband allowed me to steal his two slices too. If Ryan and Julia's meals had come with the toast I would have had no problem groveling for theirs too, what do manners count for when there is real toast available!?!

To make things even better the restaurant sells their bread in an adjoining bakery shop!!!! Unfortunately they were out of it this morning, but Matt has promised me he will stop by on his way back from picking Joshua up to see if they have made some more.

Oh happy day!

Yesterday was Independence Day (or angry colonists day) and so we had Ryan and Julia over for dinner, games, a fire and to watch the fireworks from the deck.

For the occasion I made spinach empanadillas (anyone know if the dilla is pronounced the same as in quesadilla or do you say the l's?), a tomato mozarella and basil pizza, and goat's cheese and crostini with fruit. I forgot to take photos before serving the dishes and so the photos I am putting up were taken when Ryan reminded me, hence why most of the empanadillas are gone :)

Spinach empanadillas are puff pastry turnovers stuffed with spinach, pine nuts, raisins, garlic and anchovies. They turned out really well and I will certainly do them again as finger food when we have company over. I made them in advance and just bunged them in the oven for 20 minutes when the guests arrived. The good thing about them too is that you can pretty much put whatever you want in them. A great party food and very yummy.

The pizza is a recipe that I've been working on for a while now. It's a very basic recipe where I roast a full garlic bulb and use that as the 'sauce' before adding the mozzarella and tomato slices. Fresh basil is added when it comes out of the oven and it results in a lovely fresh tasting pizza with nice undertones that only roasted garlic can provide. One problem is that the mozzarella I have been using tends to release a lot of liquid when it goes into the over and so it can get rather soggy. I have used a low moisture version, but then the consistency of the melted cheese wasn't what I wanted. Any suggestions??

The goat's cheese and crostini with fruit was a success too. It is basically toasted french bread slices rubbed with garlic, sprinkled with chopped spring onion and then topped with a slice of goats cheese that has marinated in olive oil, walnut oil and sherry (though I just used some Riesling as we had less than a glass left in a bottle). The toasted bread topped with cheese is put under the grill and then served with a tomato orange salsa. I was a little nervous about the salsa (tomatoes, oranges, fresh basil, olive oil and brown sugar) but they went really well together and the combination of the textures was rather pleasing :)

I'm not going to be cooking today, Josh is spending the night at his gramms house and Matt has a meeting this evening, so I'm going to eat mustgos.... food that must go from the fridge. That being said, there will probably be no blog entry until Wednesday.

Until then bon apetite!

Meal ONE

Due to a heavy brunch yesterday, courtesy of Village Inn, I decided that my first meal from my cook book should be a salad. So I turned to the salad section and made the first salad: Provencal Salad.

Nice and easy I thought to myself, what a great way to start. Little did I realise that this 'salad' would require 3 pots of boiling water and the oven!!!! For a salad?? My aim for the next salad is to sweat just a little less during the intense preparation.

The salad itself consists of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, green beans, boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, tuna, anchovies, olives, homemade croutons and homemade anchovy vinaigrette. It was a rather filling meal, I didn't finish my portion. The homemade dressing was delicious, I usually skip dressings altogether and opt for a naked salad as I feel that dressing can oftentimes be too pungent and/or oily. Yet this dressing (Dijon mustard, anchovy fillets, garlic, white wine vinegar, canola oil, olive oil and fresh ground pepper) was just the right consistency and left a lovely taste on the pallet for the rest of the evening.

I have already run into ingredients problems.... The vinaigrette recipe called for sunflower oil. But nowhere on the 14ft by 7 ft shelf of oils at walmart was there any sunflower oil! After a quick consultation with my HTC hero smart phone I opted for canola oil as a substitute.

Matthew has suggested that I have a system for getting through the cookbook. If I were to just pick things that look the most appealing to me I would inevitably end up with recipes that I don't particularly want to try! So when I decide that we are going to have a meat dish I shall go to the first recipe in the meat section and so on. A great suggestion from Matt, although he began to question himself when I told him there is a recipe of calf's liver with honey..... all of a sudden just choosing what we wanted seemed more appealing to him afterall!! But I do think his idea is the best way to go about it and so I'm going to stick to that.

However, when we have guests coming over (as we do tonight) I am going to pick and choose what I serve, so watch this space :)

Mediterranean Food of the Sun

Several months ago I was perusing books at a local bookstore and picked up a copy of "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell. I read the synopsis, quickly rolled my eyes and placed it back in the stand when I saw that it was about a 30 year old girl having some sort of life identity crisis. Blah blah blah I thought to myself, I'm nowhere near that stage of my life and have no desire to read about it.

Now I find myself in a very similar situation; looking for some kind of project that I can take on and gain some enjoyment through. For those of you unfamiliar with Julie and Julia you can check this out.

I used to love cooking! But recently it has become a chore and my meals lack any kind of imagination. I dread sitting down to make the weekly menu and so we have been doing a lot of eating out, which throws money away and results in us eating unhealthy foods. Both my husband and I have gained weight.

Today we went back to the aforementioned bookstore to buy French phrase books for our upcoming holiday. While there I noticed a wonderful brightly coloured cookbook "Mediterranean Food of the Sun: Over 400 vibrant step-by-step recipes from the shores of Italy, Greece, France, Spain, North Africa and the Middle East.."


Hmmmm, maybe I should do something similar to Julie and Julia!?!

I left the bookstore with the cookbook under my arm and a spring in my step :)

So here is what I am going to do: I am going to cook every single recipe in this book and blog about it with pictures! Prepare yourself for Baba Ganoush with Lebanese flatbread, Yogurt Cheese in olive oil, Seafood Soup with Rouille, and Radicchio and Chicory Gratin to name a few of the recipes that shall be cooked.

I may not be able to get all the ingredients due to the fact that I live in Omaha Nebraska and so I may have to improvise when it is completely impossible to find what I need. Other times we may have to go without power in order to pay for the lamb which will be required.

I invite you to join me on this journey through the ambrosial fares offered by the Mediterranean countries.... Bon appetit!