Whistling in the dark

Fun day in Sunderland

Had a day off of work today.  Took the train to Sunderland to meet Richard. We started off going to Sunderland library home of the Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art. There were a couple of exhibitions on. Giuseppe Davies: Vie is an interactive installation on until the 3rd of April.  It is a screen that responds to touch with lights and sound. It’s very pretty.  The larger exhibition on is  Think  Tank: A marketplace of ideas ending 13th of Feb so we are lucky we caught it. A bunch of ideas to reflect and improve society…Richard liked the We Not Me poster.  I liked the Institute of Economic Affairs map, simple, pretty and interesting – reminiscent of the Information Aesthetics Blog.

Then we went to Angelo’s Ristorante for excellent Italian food which  Richard got to order with a silly Italian accent – good fun.  For appetizers we had Formaggio di Capra e Rosti di Patate Croccante and Camembert. The main event was Ravioli alla Pizzaiola and Tagliatelle con Vedura e Zafferano.

For desert we went to Stardust which has a cute and crafty gift shop downstairs and a pretty cafe upstairs. Picked up the ring at left from the gift shop. Under £4 and a bit of fun. Upstairs, it’s a shame there weren’t more people there – the couches are the kind you sink into and the coffee and lemon cake were yummy. It seems like a perfect spot for students to camp out in with laptops and to just hang out.

I then attempted to recreate the artwork on the wall of Stardust, a photograph of a sculpture just outside.  It is a 2008 sculpture called Seachange by Laura Johnston.  It is meant to recall the hull of a ship and the shipbuilding heritage of the area as it transforms into something new. [Part of the Sunderland City Centre Public Art Trail]

Unfortunately it was raining so we didn’t want to spend too much time attempting to get the shot. You can see my few attempts on flickr.

I got distracted from the original mission of recreating the photo in the cafe because I loved the trees being reflected in the steel:

Seachange sculpture in Sunderland

To get out of the rain we headed into Primark and picked up some cheap and cheerful shiny, pretty things – a sparkly bracelet for £2 and some pillar candles for £1.75 each. The little charge you get from picking something up for £2 and £10 is really the same and lasts about the same amount of time (and £100 doesn’t really last ten times as long) – it’s a good thing to remember. We then stopped off at Richard’s to pick up the cute and stinky Florence and set off for Hartlepool.

I am a terrible navigator. Hopefully this will change when I learn how to drive. After a number of phone calls to Kev to set us back in the right direction we had a nice relaxed evening with some gewurztraminer from Chile via Morrisons and a quick sweet and sour chickeny bits with rice dish a la Kev.

Mostly it’s just the two of us but it was nice to have company too.  It’s easy to forget when you get into you routine.

Food Friday 12: Recent Food Links And Pesach – Passover Panic

This (past) week’s slightly belated Food Friday is a round-up of recent food related links plus a bit of pre-Passover panic.

• Scanwiches – Blog of bizarre and cool scans of sandwiches.
• Story on the Obamas planting a vegetable garden at the White House – This is the first time since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II.
• 1943 Pamphlet on Victory Gardens – Scans.
• Top 10 Bizarre Food Festivals
• Mona Lisa made of Hamburger Grease Video – This is an Arby’s ad.
• This Is Why You’re Fat – Blog of some super-fatty foods people eat.
• Sudoku Pizza

Facebook statuses let me know that a bunch of people I know are cleaning their homes for Passover. I will be hosting my first Passover Seder this year on April 8th. I’m looking for vegetarian seder ideas. Finding stuff here, here, here and here.

Instead of a shankbone for the seder plate, there are some interesting ideas in this article.

Posted belatedly.

Food Friday 11: Spinach and Broccoli Quiche

Ingredients:

• 100g Spinach
• 100g Broccoli
• 3 Eggs
• 3 Tablespoons of OSEM onion soup mix (You can probably substitute any other soup mix / powder or even stock cubes.)
• 1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
• Bread crumbs (or corn flake crumbs)
• Flour

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. In a slightly greased pie dish scatter a light dusting of bread (or corn flake) crumbs. Quite thin, it just needs to stick.
2. In a large bowl combine all of the other ingredients. You can use a food processor to make it easy. If you are using frozen vegetables, soak them in some hot water and drain, before adding them to the mixture.
3. Bake 45 minutes or until a fork poked through the middle comes out dry.

Sarit, this is the recipe I promised you ages ago. Five minutes of work and then you stick it in the oven.

Food Friday 10: Oznei Haman, Hamantashen

Purim starts Monday night, the 9th of March this year. It is a Jewish holiday celebrating the way the beautiful Jewish Queen Esther saved the Jewish people from the villain Haman, an evil adviser to the king. Oznei Haman are traditional, triangular, baked goods with fillings made for the holiday. Depending on who you believe they are symbolic of the evil Haman’s pointy ears, pointy hat or a bastardization of the German mohntaschen – meaning poppyseed-filled pouches. Traditionally, Oznei Haman were made with poppy seed or prune filling. Both of these are horrifying flavors as children, the recipe below uses yummy strawberry or apricot.

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 6-7 cups of flour
• 3 sticks of margarine (approximately 300gr)
• 2 cups of sugar
• 3 yolks
• 1 whole egg
• 1/2 cup orange juice
• Rind of 1 lemon
• Juice from 1/2 a lemon
• 1 tablespoon Vanilla Sugar
• 21/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 whole egg

Filling:

• Jelly / Jam – strawberry or apricot flavor
• Ground walnuts (or almonds)
• Sugar
• Sweet red wine
• Fine bread crumbs

Preparation:

1. Mix all of the ingredients for the pastry together. I put them all in a massive bowl, mixed briefly with the dough hooks on a hand mixer and then kept going with my hands.
2. In a separate, small bowl, mix all the ingredients for the filling together. There are no exact amounts, I tried getting my mother to be specific for each of the ingredients and she said “a little.” I don’t like walnuts in general, except for ground walnuts in cakes. I couldn’t find ground walnuts here, and didn’t want to take the time to bash whole ones so I used ground almonds and it worked fine.
2. Cover your work area with a light dusting of flour and take a bit under half the dough and roll flat with a flour covered rolling pin.
3. Cut out circles. I used a cup that had an approximately 3-inch diameter at the top to make the circles. Knead the scraps of dough from around the circles back into the larger batch still in the bowl.
4. Put about a teaspoon of filling in the center of each circle. Fold the circle down on three sides to make a triangle, pinching the corners to seal it.
5. Bake on a greased cookie tray at 190 degrees between 10 and 20 minutes (varies with the oven), until they start to brown up.
6. Keep doing this until you run out of dough. While you are in the middle it will seem like the dough is multiplying because every time you separate half you still end up with more in the bowl. It does run out eventually – makes 50-60 Oznei Haman.

Posted belatedly, but useful for next year.

Food Friday 9: Shakshouka

Yossi’s Shakshouka Recipe

I brought back an external hard drive with me from my recent trip to NY. It is filled with all sorts of randomness including scans of assorted ephemera including this recipe for shakshouka written in Hebrew from my time living in Tel Aviv.

On Ibn Gvirol Street, where I lived, every other shopfront seemed to belong to hairdresser. Among these was Yossi, a sweetheart, who I would drop in on from time to time. One day while I was hanging out, he made the most amazing shakshouka. The owner of the kiosk nearby brought some fresh bread and the group of us had a great meal dipping the bread into a communal shakshouka.

If you happen to be in Israel, you can always go to Dr. Shakshouka in Yafo for a nice meal. Or if you come across a Hebrew recipe you want to try here is a link for translating Hebrew or Yiddish spice names.

Ingredients:

• Olive Oil
• Sliced Chilli Pepper
• 3 Garlic Cloves (however you like them)
• Salt
• 1 Cup Water
• Tablespoon of ground paprika
• 4 Grated tomatoes
• Eggs (2-6)
• Additional Chilli Pepper (optional)
• Red and/or Green Bell Peppers (optional)

Preparation:
1. Fry oil, chili pepper, garlic, salt, 1/2 cup of water, ground paprika for 10-15 minutes.
2. Add 1/2 a cup of water and the grated tomatoes.
3. Cook on large flame for 5 minutes.
4. Turn down the flame and break the eggs over the mixture.
5. Cover the pan and let cook for a bit.
6. If you want it super spicy you can add an additional chilli pepper. This dish also works with red and green bell pepper strips or pieces thrown in.
7. Serve in the frying pan with a thick white bread for dipping.

For thos of you who can read the recipe you will see it is not very specific. I find it hard to tie people down to specific amounts when they are dictating a recipe they have made for years. This is the case with the next recipe I will post, an Oznei Haman recipe from my mom. Posted belatedly, but I do want to have a Food Friday post written for every Friday of this year.