Big news and a panna cotta!

FIRST SOME EXCITING NEWS!!!

Nolan and I are engaged! It took literally years and I have been waiting to share it with everyone, but I wanted some people in my personal life to know directly from the horse's* mouth (*I'm the horse). Yaaaaay!

And now the blog post....

Spring is finally here and so are new projects, plans, and vacations. This year, so far, we are going to Tennessee (Dollywood), Washington, D.C. (a Feist concert), Vermont (details to come), and Vegas/Seattle (work and vacation kinda thing). It will be fun.

One thing that I enjoy about being back home is the new custom of being surrounded by family and friends. I never had that in Pittsburgh when I was too stubborn to be around others. I never had that in California, when it was just us and work and the daunting reality of money running low. But it's different now and we go to baby showers and birthday parties on our Saturday afternoons.

Last week, we looked at wedding venues in my home town and had lunch with my sister and niece. So small and pink, so beautiful in her rabid curiosity. I fall in love each time I see her. That night, I went home and thought up this dish, so small and pink and fleshy. Delicate. Fun. Just for Lana, my little baby girl.

lood Orange and Coconut Panna Cotta

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream, divided
• 1 1/2 teaspoon gelatin
• 1/4 cup blood orange juice (feel free to reserve a couple little dices of orange to include in dish)
• 1 can coconut cream
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 teaspoon Grand Marnier
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt

Directions:

1. On a pan, place four 6 oz ramekins. Grease lightly with oil
2. In a mixing bowl, whisk together 1 tablespoon of your heavy cream, gelatin, and blood orange juice. 
3. Allow gelatin to bloom for 10 minutes
4. While gelatin is blooming, in a medium saucepan, heat remaining cream, coconut cream, and sugar and stir continuously until all ingredients dissolve together
5. Continue to heat until nearly boiling, with bubbles around the edges
6. Take off heat, immediately add the gelatin mixture and whisk
7. Whisk in remaining ingredients
8. Return to stovetop and heat for a minute or so
9. Remove from heat, divide into your dishes and refrigerate for 4 hours or until set
10. When set, some of the fatty coconut cream will have risen to the top and solidified. When you turn it out you'll see the beautiful pink panna cottta underneath!

Mizuba, Matcha, and my wasted summer days

I waste everything.  I waste the breath it takes to say, "Thank you" on small talk, inconsistent storylines about how my day was, how my weekend was.  I waste the moments between sleep and reality to think about my day ahead, never looking back to be grateful of the day I just finished.  I work in a linear fashion, one foot marches in front of the other and everything that is not the current vogue of my tastes and ambitions gets thrown out.

I looked in my fridge the other day and saw cheese spotted with mold.  I saw a small, plastic jug with a sliver of milk swirling at the bottom.  I looked at the side door and saw the quart-sized mason jar of murky balsamic-pickled strawberries sitting untouched from last week.  Sometimes for me, in my linear mentality, the baking is done for the creation, not the ingestion.  I find more beauty in the in-between than any kind of final product.  Between the cooling and the icing periods.  Between the hulling and the pickling.  Between the rising and the falling of the yeasted dough and the Roman Empire.  It's all the same pleasure of the ephemeral and the sickening feeling of realizing you're stuck with things you never wanted, creations you let decay while your brain is thinking about tomorrow.

I wish I could be like my mother when it comes to waste.  I remember the summer before I moved to California, I quit my job to spend those last three months with her.  Yogurts were on sale at a discount grocery called "The Food Barn" and so we had a yogurt every morning, with coffee and an episode of "I Love Lucy".  I think about that now and how simple it all was, so simple to share those moments with my mother and how I wasted them on talking about the future, the big dreams of being a lawyer and the palm trees that would line my drive-way.  I should have taken that time to say, "I love you" more.  Instead, we would sit in silence and tan by the pool, yogurt cups blown by the wind and tipped underneath the patio furniture.

I thought about this when I opened a bag of matcha that I hadn't touched in two months.  I know my history with waste and this product was good, so pure and farm-grown in Japan.  When I received it from Lauren over at Mizuba Tea Co., I tucked it in my little pantry in Texas, then tucked it in a box on its trip to San Diego with me, and now I finally used it to make a dish I wasted going to waste.  I repurposed the pickled strawberries into a jam and made my own version of those yogurt cups with a matcha panna cotta with "fruit at the bottom".  And it was wholesome, and it was light, and it was good.  And it was one of many lessons this week to not trudge ahead and collect the detritus of what we want, holding on until we feel suffocated by our surroundings, but to buy consciously, live in those simple moments, and to not waste if you can help it.

Matcha "Fruit at the Bottom" Panna Cotta

View fullsize

View fullsize

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, pour milk and sprinkle over 1/2 sachet of unflavored gelatin.  Let sit 4-6 minutes until gelatin has bloomed
2. While waiting, whisk cream, matcha powder, honey, 2 TB sugar, and vanilla.
3. In a small saucepan, turn on medium heat and pour both milk and cream mixture into pan.  Stir occasionally until sugar dissolves (about 5-6 minutes).  While this is cooling, go to step 5 to prepare the jam.
4. Take off heat. Let sit to cool while finishing jam.
5. In a small bowl, sprinkle remaining gelatin over pickling liquor and allow to blossom.
6. In a small saucepan, break up strawberries and macerate with two tablespoons sugar.  When beginning to simmer, add gelatin mixture and stir until combined.  Allow to sit 3-5 minutes and cool before adding to jars/ramekins.
7. To assemble:  Pour jam in bottom of container, then refrigerate for 6 minutes to cool and thicken slightly.  Then, carefully pour cooled panna cotta mixture on top.  Put in fridge and allow to congeal and cool completely, about 5 hours.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1 sachet unflavored gelatin, divided
• 1 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
• 3 TB Mizuba matcha 
• 2 TB clover honey
• 4 TB sugar, divided
• 1/2 TB vanilla
• 10 pickled strawberries + 2 TB pickling liquor, strained

View fullsize

View fullsize

A City of Wolves

I've lived so many lives in four years, it's hard to count on one hand.  It's grains of sand on a beach.  There are not enough of them to account for every person I've been in these last handfuls of years.  And some of those sand-kernels get stuck in your teeth, crunching down at night, grinding at the enamel of the strongest material in the human body.  So many lives, so many losses along the way.  In four years, there have been hurricanes and oil spills, president elections and a nephew born here and there.  Lives have started, ended, and stagnated in the rich greenery of Western Pennsylvania, the only life I knew and identified as such for twelve years prior. I lived in Italy for a period of time, when I was turning 19.  It happened four years ago today.  I was so young then.  It was when I had no one and didn't shave often.  When I still had a child's face and the innocence of a madame at a brothel.  When I was malleable and agreeable to everyone I met.  How I flirted, how I would enchant people to get a few euros or a cigarette.  I wore all black because I was supposed to, and I revert to that same color palette when the time seems right, when I want to be someone else.  I danced at a discotheque called Coyote and never told anyone that my uncle had just died in Afghanistan the day before.  I was whatever I was needed to be, and it broke me in a way smiles break--around the edges at first, then quickly towards the center.

Rome is a palimpsest of a city, handwritten over and over again by the people who write those kinds of histories.  I drank out of a water bottle where Octavia gave lunches.  I saw the graves of children who died in a fire started by a mad emperor.  I craned my neck and felt dizzy when I saw the hand that made man draw in realism yards above my head.  I never felt the sense of wonder, I never felt the connectivity to the Why's of life.  I faked it.  I would be a palimpsest to myself, too.  I would write over who I was at 19 again and again, sometimes scrawled quickly and sometimes in the perfect cursive my mother uses to sign checks.  I would feel God in every doorway, and breath a sigh of relief when I saw how the Church glorified death.  Or, at least I could hope. I didn't know any better but to seek approval.  To carry conversations for the face-value I gave them, to take the minimal amount of credits to still be a full-time student so I could have a four-day weekend, and to still complain about my classes at 8 in the morning.  I had to buy metro cards and lost two of them.  I phoned my parents for money three times and ignored their emails until the money hit my bank account.  I was ruthless in my need for identity, and molted friends and selves and childhood memories at the chance of living up to a standard I could not identify just then. And so, because nothing fulfilled me at that period of my life, that dark in-between of adolescent and undergraduate, I crawled to the comfort of my bed.  I sat and read my Renaissance art books instead of using my student pass and seeing them myself. I felt foolish to go alone.  And the one time I did go anywhere myself, I met up with a guy and, after growing bored around midnight, wore his shirt home and deleted his number.  I was living through others, and even the majesty of Rome, with all of her womanly hills and curves, were not enough for me.  It was during this period that my friend of ten years, with whom I planned our Italian lives with, decided I was no longer good, no longer purely hers.  She told lies, and they devastated me to my core.  And it was in bed, in men, in other people that I found redemption. And, it was because I was so distracted with my small insignificancies of myself.  How I tried myself into believing that the first person you come out to is supposed to be the most influential.  How this travesty was somehow supposed to outweigh my uncle's death, a country's loss.  How watching movies in the common room of the convent I stayed at, avoiding eye contact with the nuns who fed us prodigal students, was a better idea that the Borghese on a Monday afternoon.  I was childish and took the lazy route and it's because of that experience that I never tried to live in New York, where I would surely hole myself up if anything ever went wrong. I regret it all in Italy.  How I left things with Sam.  How I never tried octopus. How I meant to give the twenty euro I borrowed from a girl named Elizabeth back, but bought condoms and a pistachio gelato instead.  How I wore a necklace made from a mink's foot, given to me by an ex, to the holiest of holy kingdoms.  How I was kicked out of a church for being drunk.  How I smoked weed on the Spanish Steps with boys whose names I stumbled over.  How I drank my espresso with milk and sugar.  How I took the wrong metro and ended up at the beach and, instead of just sitting there for an hour, I cursed Italy and all of Europe.  How I didn't call my mom enough and got an AIDS test on my dad's birthday.  How I took a total of 170 pictures, and most of them were of myself.  How I didn't know the exchange rate when I went abroad and only took half of what I thought I would need.  How everything meant so much to me for all the wrong reasons.  And now, four years too late, I can come to terms with this failure of failures. When people ask if I know Italian, I'll often lie and say I used to.  When people ask how long I lived there, I'll often lie and say, "A year or two."   And it's funny to me how easy it is to lie about the experience instead of just doing it, and I've tried to learn how to handle my fatigued motivation and really begin to do something.  I make lists now to overcome this ennui.  List after list of useless suggestions, but I wish I would have done that four years ago, and I could have crossed each off every weekend. I would have said my prayers at dinner with my eyes closed, instead of one eye open at my friends and giggling.  I would have read my homework more closely, remember the dates in my longterm memory to pull up now.  I would have bought the souvenirs and have the trinkets, because sense memory is stronger than the fictive pseudo-recollection I do to assure myself I was really ever there.  I would have dropped more coins into the Trevi and I would have made the promise to others to meet at that very spot, on the meridian of hill to fallen palazzo, year after year.  I would have learned to say words carefully and not to cry so much.  I would have sat on the roof of the convent and looked at the city I lived in, a city that wasn't Bedford, Pennsylvania.  A city founded by wolves, built by warriors, and nurtured by intellectuals for years and years and years. It should have been my pride that fell, but instead it was the Roman Empire.  Because time has no place in a city of antiqued buildings, and both could have happened at the same moment, but I just can't seem to remember.  And maybe I purposefully forgot.  But I hope, by the grace of some power--whether it's my will or God's--to return to that fabled city just one more time and do the things on my "Would Have" list.  And the image I have of myself in Rome is one that many romantics do, but I would give everything to be 19 and in love with the city, a scarf tied around my neck to keep the witch's breath away, holding a bouquet of flowers, and riding on a bicycle, taking the trail that runs parallel to the banks of the Tiber.  And for each petal that fell off that windswept bouquet, it would be another part of me that was grounded in others and it would have gladly fell to the ground.  I could have found myself during those days of being alone.  And if I ended up at the beach every again, I would stay there for another hour or two, even if I didn't bring anything with me but myself.  It would have been enough. So I want to share my gastronomic memories of Rome, so few and far between.  This was before I knew how deeply I loved food, when my palate was content with vending machine biscotti and fast food meatballs.  Because I used to think the generic was as good as the original--better, even, because of the money I was saving.  But, here is the first food I had in Italy, during orientation.  Two staples I picked up at the buffet line that was catered for the 37 of us, which now have been tailored to my ever-evolving palate.  I give to you Heirloom Tomato and Chèvre Pizza and Lemon-Buttermilk Panna Cotta.

Heirloom Tomato and Chèvre Pizza

Julia Child (according to Ina Garten) once said that Italian cooking wasn't cooking at all, but assembling.  Due to this paraphrased fact, the portions for the toppings of this pizza are entirely your own.  I took what I was craving and made it into a pretty amazing pizza (fits a standard baking sheet).  

For the crust

• 1 packet rapid rise yeast
• 1 cup warm water
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil

For the toppings

• 2-3 medium-sized heirloom tomatoes, preferably different varieties or colors for contrast
• 6 TB pesto
• 2/3 cup chèvre
• Basil for topping

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 450 (my oven is kind of permanently on the fritz, so I do this first)
2. In a large bowl, mix water and yeast with a whisk until combined
3. Sift dry ingredients into bowl and add remaining honey and olive oil.  Stir with a wooden spoon until combined.
4. Oil or flour hands and knead dough onto board for a good 4-7 minutes, until gluten begins to get elastic
5. Form into a ball and let rest for 10 minutes
6. While dough is resting, prepare whatever pan or pizza stone you'll be using.  I just greased a baking sheet for convenience and it worked great.
7. After ten minutes, roll out dough and brush olive oil onto dough to brown crust. Bake for 7-9 minutes until just golden and stiffening from heat.
8. While pre-baking dough, cut up tomato and basil.
9. Once dough is pre-baked, take out of oven and assemble pizza toppings.  Brush pesto, then layer tomatoes and dot top and bare spaces between tomatoes with goat cheese.  Drizzle a little more olive oil.  Season if you wish.
10. Place back in oven for an additional 12 minutes.
11. Take out of oven, allow to cool slightly.  Sprinkle fresh basil on top.  Maybe even a little minced garlic.
12. Buon Appetito!

Lemon-Buttermilk Panna Cotta

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup whipping cream
• 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 cups buttermilk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Pour 2 tablespoons water into small bowl
2. Sprinkle gelatin over. Let stand until gelatin softens, about 10 minutes.
3. Lightly spray six 3/4-cup ramekins or custard cups with nonstick spray.
4. Heat cream, lemon peel, and sugar in medium saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring constantly until sugar dissolves.
5. Increase heat and bring just to low boil, stirring occasionally.
6. Add gelatin mixture; remove from heat.
7. Stir until gelatin dissolves.
8. Cool mixture to lukewarm, stirring often.
9. Stir in buttermilk and vanilla; divide mixture among prepared ramekins.
10. Refrigerate panna cotta until set, about 4 hours.
11. Serve with fresh or thawed berries and a little honey and lemon juice.

“She had always been fond of history, and here in Rome was history in the stones of the street and the atoms of the sunshine.” - Henry James