The Domestic Scientist: Sewing and Culinary Adventures With HuxleyWuxley

50's-style party dress, or knock-off of a knock-off

2011-04-04T22:59:00.000-07:00

I saw this beautiful dress some time ago on this blog. It was a knockoff of this Oscar de la Renta dress:

It was actually the knockoff, not the original that grabbed my fancy. I just loved the floral print and the tutu-like silhouette.

The February 2011 issue of Burdastyle magazine featured this dress pattern:

I had a wedding to go to in 2 weeks, so what better excuse to go shopping at Britex Fabrics where I paid a relative fortune for the perfect print in 100% Japanese densely-woven cotton and I made this:

It had a deep 4-inch hem so it puffed out pleasingly, but I think I will need to make a petticoat with tulle layers to get the appropriate tutu silhouette.

My mother-in-law just emailed me directions on how to make a petticoat so that's what I'll be attempting this coming weekend. The dress looks fine without the petticoat, so there's no pressure to get one done, but it sure would be fun to have one made in time to wear to the wedding. I'm suddenly into tutu silhouettes because of this new book I got:

I am in love with all of the dresses in this book, which all have the 50's-style skirt that requires a petticoat for the shape.

Stay tuned for an update if I get the petticoat done and it works out!

A meal that both humans and dog can enjoy

2011-03-31T22:14:00.000-07:00

After the success of the last meal, it was time for something similar, yet different. At the time, we were still very much having winter weather in San Francisco, and nice meaty saucy things were what we were after. So, I decided to make the famous potato-scallion cakes again:

and chose a main of braised short ribs to go with it. The short ribs were a basic recipe with the usual French herbs and aromatics braised for a very long time in the oven with red wine, from this cookbook

(Hmm, I seem to own a lot of cookbooks from Manhattan restaurants, maybe it's a sign we should visit soon?!!! - still haven't been to Momofuku yet! although we've already eaten at Alinea, which is truly amazing)

For something green, I made some simple sugar snap peas sauteed with garlic and red pepper flakes. This is what our dinner plates looked like:

The wine was a Bordeaux blend from Gundlach Bundschu in Sonoma.

We had a nice pile of beef bones after the main was eviscerated:

Huxley was very interested in the "leftovers":

He was a pretty happy dog! - which is to say, his begging worked.

For dessert, it was another one of my trusty pear rustic galette:

I know, I know, I make it a lot, but it is truly so delicious you could never tire of it. It's about the only dessert I like and will eat. I make desserts just for Dave, how lucky is he?!!!

A restaurant-worthy (really, several restaurants-worthy!) meal

2011-03-31T21:37:00.000-07:00

I once made a meal entirely from recipes of famous chefs bearing very different cooking styles, and it surprisingly came together extremely well!

The main course was braised duck legs with a red wine reduction from a recipe from a cookbook from one of our favorite restaurants specializing in duck:

And the sides were 1. a potato-scallion cake from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc restaurant cookbook

and 2. a roasted brussel sprouts/kimchee concoction from David Chang's Momofuku cookbook

Actually, I chose David Chang's recipe because I'd had the cookbook forever and not cooked from it and the roasted brussel sprouts recipe was about the only thing that didn't take two days to prepare.

Here are the two sides:

And, the pièce de résistance - meltingly tender, luscious duck legs with crispy, savory skin, bathed in the most delicious sauce made from pan drippings and a red wine reduction- shown here with the potato-scallion cake side:

We paired the main course with a Santa Barbara Pinot Noir (not shown for some inexplicable reason in the photos).

For dessert, I had made my trusty pear rustic galette, paired here with a Lustau Moscatel (yes, we actually had our first taste of this excellent dessert wine at the winery in Andalusia!):

Some notes:
Thomas Keller's cookbook was worth it just for the potato-scallion cake recipe.
Roasted brussel sprouts are good, but even better with kimchee.
The duck legs are amazing and were surprisingly simple to make. While the dish was braising in the oven, I had enough time to make the sides. Those duck legs are going to become a favorite, I can just tell!

Dave's Pre-Birthday Dinner

2011-03-31T20:59:00.000-07:00

Dave's birthday was on the 18th, during which we went out for a nice dinner at Commonwealth restaurant in San Francisco, but the day before the actual birthday dinner, I asked him what he wanted me to make for his pre-birthday meal, and he said, "Pork chops with cabbage" and "Chocolate cake", none of which were my favorite things, but I guess that was the point, to request things that I would never make spontaneously but that he wanted to eat.

The pork chop recipe was from a Fine Cooking magazine article, still available free on-line here. It is a marvelously simple recipe to throw together and appears more complicated than it actually is to make. We paired it with a very nice Gewurztraminer from a new winery that we discovered on our most recent trip to the Anderson Valley in February:

The smell of pork chops was too much for Huxley, who can be seen here shamelessly employing all his guiles to extort food from the humans:

He did get the cork from the wine bottle, which he heartily approved of. Here is what was left after he was done "tasting" the wine:

Dessert was the aforementioned chocolate(-and-almond) cake, from this cookbook:

We paired it with some nice Oloroso sherry:

Not too shabby a dinner, but I think Dave enjoyed it more than I did. Huxley definitely loved it. He got to chew on the cabbage core and had pork bone snacks for several days afterward. So, what's my kind of dinner (as opposed to Dave's)? The next two posts will reveal!

Cleaning out the refrigerator

2011-03-31T20:17:00.000-07:00

To-day was unseasonably warm in San Francisco (temperatures in the 80's) and I didn't feel like stopping at the grocery store on the way home, yet wanted a nice meal because 1. it was Thursday and thus almost the weekend and 2. I felt like celebrating what felt like the advent of spring on such a nice, warm day after all the rain we got the last two weeks. Also, because it was so warm, the meal couldn't be too heavy (so the slow-cooked chicken with caramelized onions and cream that Dave wanted is out). And the meal had to come together with the produce that was already in the house. Well, we always have on hand staples such as rice, onions, garlic, bacon, frozen ground beef, frozen green peas, chicken broth, and all the spices imaginable. And I had half a head of cabbage left over from Dave's pre-birthday dinner. So, when I found the recipe for "Cabbage and chopped meat paella" in this book

it couldn't have been more perfect! The only substitution I had to make was to use green peas instead of julienned snow peas.

Here's what it looked like before we dug into it:

Yes, that's crisp-fried and crumbled bacon sprinkled on top. Yum! Bacon is like the most perfect food. The flavors were built up from a sofrito base of sauteed chopped onions, chopped serrano pepper, and chopped ham. Then, finely-sliced cabbage was added (Huxley LOVED gnawing on the cabbage core!) and then the rice was stirred in and then chicken broth kept simmering with a pinch of saffron was added, together with previously-browned ground beef and chopped scallions and a generous amount of that nice Spanish smoked paprika that I always have loads of in my pantry and the frozen green peas. 10 minutes on top of the stove and another 10 in the oven and some standing time and dinner was ready!

Some chilled Cline Mouvedre Rose wine was just perfect with it and with the warm evening. And, best of all, I got to clean out the refrigerator and use up some of the produce in it. We bought a really big tub of Kimchee from the Korean supermarket in Oakland last weekend and space is getting to be a premium so it was good that I got to make more space for... leftovers??!!

Less Can Be A Lot More (The best roast chicken!)

2011-02-19T13:00:00.000-08:00

My very first cookbook was Madhur Jaffrey's "An Invitation to Indian Cooking", which, in retrospect, was a great starting point for learning to cook.

Indian food tastes pretty good even when made at the hands of someone who doesn't really know how to cook. The abundant spices easily cover up any mis-steps and less-than-pristine ingredients. We were poor starving graduate students at the time and couldn't afford fancy groceries, and, more to the point, were car-less and trapped in a place and in a time that in sum was not particularly known for the variety, availability and quality of produce. In those days, I would choose a recipe to make based on the list of the ingredients. I figured that the longer the list, especially in the form of spices, the better it would come out. I was correct on that point! We had many marvelous meals from that cookbook, which I still own and is tattered and splattered with food residues now. One of my favorite dishes was the lamb korma. Take at look at how long the list of ingredients is!

It was pretty crazy, but because I learnt to cook exclusively from cookbooks, I thought nothing of working 12 hours in the lab, coming home and then making a meal from scratch from one of these recipes. I thought that was how people cooked every day! I suppose, in consequence, we have always eaten very well and deliciously. There was no fast, throw-everything-together sort of cooking at my place. I was making slow food long before it became fashionable!

However, as I have expanded my horizons to other cuisines, moved to Northern California - the birthplace of cooking by doing as little as possible to pristine produce- and, finally, gotten tired of cooking elaborate meals every night, I have come to appreciate the genius of simple recipes that work. The genius in these recipes have their proof in dishes that, because of particular cooking techniques, great ingredients and just the right balance of flavors, taste like something you'd have sworn was a lot more complicated to put together than a brief perusal of the recipe might suggest.

Last night, I discovered just such a gem of a recipe that I plan to make many, many times again. It is from the latest cookbook by my favorite experts on Moorish food:

This recipe had just 4 ingredients, not counting cooking oil and water, which would have dis-qualified it from consideration 15 years ago.

But I chose it because I wanted to cook out of this cookbook, which was a recent acquisition that I had not previously made use of, and because I thought it would be a good way to use the sumac that my mother-in-law had brought home all the way from Turkey and was kind enough to share with me.

What a treasure I found! It really had all the elements working for it. Great cooking techniques to draw out and build the flavors: chicken was first seared in a pan to crisp the skin and then roasted in the oven; great ingredients: the best, freshest sumac ever straight from a Turkish market and the best pine-nuts ever (Dave called them "grey-market pinenuts" because he'd acquired them from a chef who had personal connections for the most pristine produce); great flavors in the crisp, brown chicken skin and dark meat combined with a great sauce that formed from roasting the chicken drippings with spring onions, sumac and pine nuts.

I made a side dish of green beans with garlicky tomato sauce, fenugreek seeds, fresh red chillis and coriander to go with it. It was from the same cookbook and was quite unusual and delicious.

The whole dinner took less than an hour to make - 10 minutes to sear the chicken and another 20 minutes to roast it, during which I made the beans. Not really fast food, but it was so good you might have thought that it took me much longer to make.

We had a Cline Mourvedre to go with it, which was a little heavy but I thought went well with the sumac in the chicken and the fenugreek in the beans.

Dessert was some of that marvelous Madeira from our stash that we smuggled back from Portugal.

Here's to discovering more recipe treasures in the future!

Knit Top/ Burdastyle 09-5-103A

2011-02-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

I am way overdue for a sewing post. I have been sewing lots but if I don't get a picture immediately and end up wearing the outfit a few times, I lose interest in documenting my creation.

I recently re-made this top and managed to get a picture of it upon the first wearing!

This is the top that made me realize that I'd been sewing one size too big in Burdastyle knits! I first made this top in a black cotton jersey about a year ago and it was far too large in the chest and had major gap-osis problems. So I remade it one size smaller at the shoulders and bust, this time in a navy blue cotton/lycra knit. Much better!

I have to remember that I am a 38 in Burdastyle wovens but a 36 in knits. Somehow this makes me happy, as though I have magically gone down a whole size!

Malaysian Fresh Spring Rolls (Popiah)

2011-02-15T20:39:00.000-08:00

Things always cluster in threes, they say, so I feel compelled to complete what appears to be a series about my favorite childhood Nonya foods with the third entry: Fresh Spring Rolls, or "popiah". We frequently had popiah as an appetizer to be followed by either Sarawak Laksa or Hainanese Chicken Rice. At a kopi tiam (casual food court), the popiahs would arrive assembled and ready to eat. My third aunt often had popiah parties, where one would assemble one's own popiah out of prepared ingredients; this is how I serve popiah at home. So, without further ado, this is how we eat popiah at Chez Huxley Wuxley.

First, you need to get together these ingredients:

Wrapper skins, preferably Menlo wrappers (these are made in Menlo Park, CA and are available in most Asian groceries/supermarkets; in Kuching, you would just buy a bunch of freshly-made skins from your favorite popiah lady):

Condiments, including Hoisin sauce & Sriracha hot sauce, lettuce leaves, and freshly ground roasted peanuts:

Thinly-sliced, steamed chinese sausage:

Blanched bean sprouts, thinly-sliced plain omelette, and thinly-sliced fried tofu cubes (the last is optional because I decided I don't really like them):

And, most important of all, popiah fillling, consisting primarily of jicama (recipe follows):

To make popiah filling, saute 4 finely chopped peeled garlic cloves and 3 tablespoons finely chopped dried shrimp (previously softened in hot water) in 2 tablespoons oil until fragrant. Mix in 2 medium peeled and julienned jicamas and about 6 finely julienned black dried chinese mushrooms (previously soaked in hot water to soften), turn heat to low and cover and cook gently for about 10 minutes. The jicama will release moisture and steam in its own juices. When it is cooked to your liking, make a sauce with 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 teaspoons oyster sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil and 1 tablespoon cornstarch. Make a well in the vegetables, pour in the sauce and let cook a little before stirring to mix. Cook over low heat and reduce until mixture is somewhat dry. Add about a cup of peeled, coarsely chopped fresh shrimp and mix until shrimp is cooked through. Turn off the heat and mix in some chopped scallions.

OK, now you are ready to assemble your popiah. First layer your plate with a Menlo wrapper, place a lettuce leaf on it and drizzle hoisin sauce and sriracha hot sauce over the leaf.

Then place a little of the popiah filling, the blanched bean sprouts, the sliced omelette and fried tofu on top of the lettuce leaf. Sprinkle with the sliced cooked chinese sausage and ground roasted peanuts.

Then roll everything up like a burrito. This is what Dave's looks like:

You are ready to take a bite!

Yum! There is the crunch of the lettuce leaf, the crisp-cooked jicama and the bean sprouts; the savory-sweet-spicy flavor of the condiments, the chinese sausage and the cooked sauce; the umami-ness of the fresh & dried shrimps and the mushrooms; and the nuttiness of the ground roasted peanuts. Somehow everything comes together magically to make - you've guessed it - the most delicious spring roll ever!

Very English Meat Pie

2011-02-04T22:13:00.000-08:00

Dave brought my attention to this hilarious interview of his favorite chef in San Francisco:

Offal Chef Chris Cosentino Is Happy to Make a Meat Dress for Lady Gaga

The title says it all. The funny thing is, I can totally envision a tripe dress looking like an ethereal white tulle gown. You absolutely have to read the article; it is too funny for words but this guy can totally make fish sperm taste good (I would know: I've had it at his restaurant).

Anyway, all the talk about offal reminded me of a meat pie recipe from an article in the New York Times magazine that I had once made because the recipe was associated with Fergus Henderson, another chef proponent of offal and author of the cookbook "The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating", whom we had actually sat behind once during a memorable dinner at Chris Cosentino's restaurant.

I always thought of it as "Fergus Henderson's Meat Pie" but when I dug up the recipe, it was only associated with the guy insofar as the use of the optional "Trotter Gear" in the meat pie. Now, it was a Sunday when I thought to make the pie, and my butcher shop where I might have gotten some pig's trotters was closed, so I opted to use the suggested cheddar cheese substitute instead. So my version of the pie didn't have much to do with offal, but oh well. Maybe next time...

We had it with peas on the side, not mushy peas like they would have had in London, but nice barely-cooked peas. And a pint each of Anchor Christmas Ale! There was enough left over for several lunches and dinners. That stuff is really filling. Maybe I'll make it again in a few years, perhaps with the Trotter Gear this time.

Hainanese chicken rice

2011-02-02T19:00:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I said that Sarawak laksa is the best dish ever, but another dish that comes a close second when it comes to childhood comfort food that I crave, is Hainanese Chicken Rice. Luckily, this dish is easy to put together with widely available ingredients and requires no covert smuggling of secret spice mixes from halfway around the world. In fact, I made it once for a dinner party many years ago at my friend Amanda's and it was the hit of the party. Amanda kept asking me for the recipe but I never got it to her, in large part because my version of Hainanese Chicken Rice is an amalgam of two different recipes, from these two cookbooks:

so it wasn't an easy matter of just sending her photocopies of the recipes; I'd have to stipulate which parts I used from which recipe and when. In a way this post is for Amanda: after more than 5 years (!), here is the Hainanese Chicken Rice recipe you asked for. Sorry for the delay, but better late than never, right?

First, what is Hainanese Chicken Rice? Again, it is one of those wonderful Sarawak Nonya dishes that is somehow more than the sum of its parts. There is rice cooked with shallots and garlic and rendered chicken fat in a good chicken broth, served with poached chicken marinated with a dark sauce and a dipping sauce of fresh red chillies, ginger, garlic, chicken broth and lime to pull it all together. But what a dish! I cannot really describe the unctuous mouth-feel of the rice, the delicious tang, heat and gingeriness of the dipping sauce, and the silkiest, tenderest chicken you have ever tasted.

Here is a picture of my most recent attempt:

The cucumber salad on the side is not authentic, but I think it goes beautifully with the traditional chicken, rice and dipping sauce. The recipe for the cucumber salad is from the New York Times, originally intended to accompany bluefish and rice. I have also served it with Vietnamese grilled meat patties; in fact, it pairs wonderfully with any South East Asian rice-and-meat dish, and especially Hainanese Chicken Rice, which is traditionally served with cucumber slices.

Alright, this is how I make Hainanese Chicken Rice:

Take a small chicken (about 3 pounds), trim it of excess fat and rub all over with salt. Reserve the trimmed fat - you will use it for the rice later on. In a large pot big enough to hold the chicken, boil 8 cups water with 8 cloves garlic (in their skins, smashed) and 5 slices fresh ginger (smashed). Lower the chicken into the pot, immersing it in the boiling water, weighing it down if necessary. Cover and boil for 10 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the chicken sit in the hot water without removing the lid, for 2 hours. At the end of the 2 hours, remove the chicken and plunge into ice-cold water for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, prepare the rice. Render the chicken fat (there should be about 1/3 cup), throw out the unrendered brown bits and then sautee 3 chopped shallots and 3 chopped garlic cloves until light brown. Add two cups jasmine rice (or a long-grained rice) and sautee briefly to coat the grains. Add 4 cups chicken broth (it can be from the water used to boil the chicken, which is now a stock) and salt to taste, bring to a boil, give everything a good stir and then lower the heat to low and cover tightly. The rice is done when the liquid has been absorbed and there are steam holes on the surface of the rice, about 20 minutes.

When the chicken is done, tear the meat from the carcass. Make a marinade by mixing 1/4 cup soy sauce, 1/4 cup chicken broth, 1 tablespoon sesame oil, 1 tablespoon oyster sauce, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar. Mix the chicken meat in this marinade.

Make the dipping sauce. Now, this is the most important part of the dish. It is absolutely essential and brings everything together. Do not even think of attempting this dish without the dipping sauce! Mix together: 5 fresh red chilies (stemmed, seeded and chopped) or 1 1/2 tablespoons or more (or less) of sambal oelek if you are too lazy to stem and chop fresh chillies (which is what I do), 4 cloves chopped garlic, 1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger, 1 teaspoons sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, the juice from one lime and 1/4 cup chicken broth. I usually taste and may add more ginger, lime juice, salt or sambal oelek. It should be tangy and gingery, with a nice fresh red chilli flavor. The chilli has to be red chilli, no green chilli substitutions!

To serve, place a portion of rice with some chicken and dribble dipping sauce over all. (I like to dribble a lot of dipping sauce; in fact, back home we use it like a dressing). Place a portion of the non-authentic cucumber salad on the side. This may not be traditional, but I promise you, it makes the dish even better! Sit back and enjoy!

Amanda, I hope you like the post and will let me know how the dish turns out when you get David to make it!

Borneo cuisine: Sarawak laksa

2011-01-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

This morning, during breakfast with the Sunday New York Times, I was thrilled to see that they had written a very nice travel article about Kuching, a town on the island of Borneo that I had grown up in. The writer highlighted various things that immediately brought back fond memories, including a mention of my favorite dish in the whole world: Sarawak laksa, which he describes as a fiery noodle soup. It is hard to describe what laksa tastes like to the uninitiated; somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, so simply to say that it consists of rice noodles bathed in a spicy, shrimpy, coconut broth and garnished with shrimp, shredded chicken, beansprouts and strips of omelette is not really doing it justice. Sarawak laksa is like the best thing you have ever tasted multiplied by ten. Here is a picture of it in the New York Times print article (the on-line article is missing this picture for some reason)

So, the way you might enjoy laksa without having to travel halfway around the world to Kuching is to acquire the laksa secret spice paste mix, perhaps from a friend or relative visiting you from Kuching who has smuggled this precious substance in a suitcase that has miraculously escaped detection by the Beagle Brigade at San Francisco airport. The precious bricks of laksa paste are kept in a safe place in your refrigerator and only very rarely broken out for very special meals. As you use up more and more of your stash, you start to hoard what you have left very jealously. Home-made laksa might be had no more than once a year, unless you can locate someone who can smuggle this stuff for you more frequently than once every few years.

I decided that the nostalgia induced by the article was a good enough reason to break out the second-to-last brick of laksa paste I still have in my refrigerator. It looks like this:

and is actually quite simple to use. First, you make a good stock (preferably from shrimp heads, or chicken or pork bones if you can't locate shrimp heads) and then you add the laksa secret spice mix and boil it in the stock for about an hour. You then strain the result and add coconut milk. Separately, you cook peeled shrimp and chicken in the stock and shred the chicken. You make an omelette and cut it into strips. You boil some rice noodles and drain them. Then you assemble the famous laksa dish. In a bowl, you add a nest of rice noodles, top it with some crunchy bean sprouts, the shredded chicken, the shrimp and the omelette strips. Then you ladle the laksa broth over all, sprinkle with cilantro leaves, a squeeze of lime, and serve. Voila!

The most delicious dish in the world. Ever.

In Kuching, laksa is a morning breakfast dish. If you venture out looking for a bowl any later than 11 am, you are bound to be disappointed. We had this for dinner tonight, but I am really looking forward to my breakfast tomorrow morning.

Huxley Beagle was very excited about laksa. He sniffed the air very intensely and was more doggedly hanging by the stove waiting for me to drop food than usual. I think he senses that the humans are eating the best thing ever, too! He would like Kuching. All the outdoor hawker centers where people eat and drop food he can scavenge, the giant rafflesia flower that smells like rotting meat - it would be paradise for a beagle!

Huxley CK452 Superdog

2010-12-29T11:13:00.001-08:00

Dave commissioned this painting for my birthday. I was blown away! He was very mysterious for months, hinting at something big and I never could have guessed what it turned out to be. The artist is Sirron Norris who did some murals in the Mission district that I've long admired.

Everything in the painting really happened in real life. Huxley was CVFBAE the research beagle, who tested experimental heart medication CK452 before he retired from research and got adopted by us. He's got a permanent tattoo on his ear that marks him as CVFBAE. He hates cats and water, and his favorite toy is his rainbow ball. He loves visiting Lucca Ravioli with me and plunging his head into my shopping bag and sniffing the cheese and salami in it. He loves to lick the remains of anything I've made in my trusty orange Le Creuset pot. And, we all know he is a wine cork connoisseur! We also like to imagine that the drug he was testing gave him superpowers so that he has a double life as a superhero during the day while we are out working.

Time to take Huxley out for a long walk! He's been cooped up all Christmas with relatives visiting and would really enjoy a long walk and a chance to sniff out more chicken bones left by the mysterious Chicken Bone Man all over the Mission!

Tripas À Moda do Porto

2010-12-06T21:02:00.000-08:00

The story goes that when Henry the Navigator was preparing his ships to conquer the port of Ceuta in North Africa in 1415, he asked the people of Porto to donate supplies to stock the Portuguese navy and they did, so generously, that all that was left to eat was tripe. Thus, the people of Porto became known as "tripeiros", or "tripe eaters". "Tripas À Moda do Porto", or Tripe in the style of Porto, is a traditional Porto dish that we knew we absolutely had to try when we were in Porto. This we did, appropriately, at a restaurant called "Tripeiria".

It was really quite delicious. Tripe wasn't even the main ingredient, it was almost a garnish next to the white beans and the sausage that made up the main part of the stew. The stew was served over rice.

When I got home, I decided that it was time to try my hand at cooking tripe. I live in a neighborhood with a butcher that carries three types of beautiful, snowy-white tripe next to the other cuts of meat that I buy, so it was not a problem to procure some good tripe for my experiment. The recipe came out of my Jean Anderson Portuguese cookbook:

I have grown to appreciate this somewhat previously under-used cookbook more and more since our trip to Portugal. The recipe for Tripas À Moda do Porto is quite time-consuming: the tripe is first cooked very slowly in the oven for 3 hours together with aromatics, before the beans, proscuitto & sausages are added and cooked further for another hour and a half. The result is a little different from the tripe we had in Porto, being much more tomato-y than we remembered, but retains the essential character of the authentic dish. The recipe made so much tripe that we were eating leftovers for quite a few days. I forgot to take pictures the first night we had it. The picture below was taken after the 3rd reheating in the oven, after which the stew had lost a lot of liquid. It was originally more soupy, perfect over rice, like the authentic dish we had in Porto.

The wine was, unfortunately, a rather uninspiring red, one of a few bottles of Portuguese red that we had bought to try out. I was glad I got around to cooking with tripe. It isn't as scary as it might seem at first. Although, the recipe was so time-consuming I don't know if I would make it again. Perhaps for a special occasion! A dinner party, perhaps, with adventurous eaters? I told my mother-in-law, who is a pretty adventurous eater, about the dish, and even she said that it would be OK if I didn't make it for her the next time she visits!

A Portuguese dessert in search of a better name

2010-12-01T05:53:00.000-08:00

Why would you name your dessert "Rancid Cake"? This is precisely what we saw on the dessert list at a popular neighborhood restaurant in Lisbon. After a huge meal of garlic bread soup and salt cod baked with potatoes, we weren't really interested in dessert but took a look at the menu anyway, and this cake, because of its unusual name, caught our eye. Dave made up his mind immediately that he had to have it. The waiter explained that that the name had come about because of the use of "rancid butter" but followed with the promise that it was a very good cake. We decided to focus on the waiter's assessment of its deliciousness rather than on the potential rancidity of one of the ingredients, despite the opposing nature of these two details. And it was very good. I couldn't detect any hint of rancidness in it at all.

Anyway, after we came home, I saw an entry for "Putrid Cake" or "Bolo Podre" in another one of my Portuguese cookbooks:

The recipe does not use butter, but olive oil. The author theorizes that perhaps in the old days, the olive oil might have gotten rank or rancid, resulting in the unfortunate name, but prefers the alternative meaning of "podre" ("depraved" or "corrupt") to describe the influence of a rich and decadent cake.

Naturally, I had to make it to follow one of our Portuguese dinners. The list of ingredients is very interesting: finely ground anise seeds, 5 eggs in a total of 2 cups flour, olive oil, honey, and almost two cups of booze from a combination of tawny port, white wine and brandy. The top is supposed to crack as seen here:

We paired it with a semi-sweet madeira that we had brought home from Funchal, Madeira. This wasn't even the best madeira from our total Portuguese vacation haul:

but even so it was way better than the average bottle you can buy at your local wine store back at home. I can't wait to get into the other, better stuff!

So, what was the rest of the dinner like that I made to go with the Putrid/Corrupt Cake? I started this post backwards with dessert, but the rest of dinner was no less good. We had the Portuguese meatballs that I've made before again, this time paired with green beans with garlic, fresh coriander leaves, olive oil and lemon from the same cookbook that gave me the cake recipe. This is one of the best ways to prepare green beans that I have come across!

The Douro wine, made with Port grapes, was from our local gourmet purveyor of all things Iberian, The Spanish Table in Berkeley. It was a winner!

Meatballs XIV - Portuguese meatballs

2010-11-18T18:55:00.000-08:00

This is a catch-up post - about a meal I made a few months ago, but it was a meal made in preparation for our Portuguese vacation, so it seems to fit in with the last post. I ordered this cookbook to prepare for our culinary adventures in Portugal:

And, of course, since I was still on a mission to make as many types of meatballs as I could, the recipe for Portuguese meatballs caught my eye. They are supposed to be made from ground lamb, but I didn't have any around in my freezer and so I used ground beef, which was flavored with ginger, orange zest, paprika, cumin, cinnamon, black pepper and chopped fresh cilantro. The browned meatballs are then simmered in a wine and broth sauce flavored with the same spices that were in the ground meat mixture, and finished off with more fresh chopped cilantro. As a side, I made spinach with toasted bread crumbs (also from the same cookbook), one of the best spinach sides I've ever tasted!

I have to say, we didn't have any meatballs in Lisbon or Porto and the meatballs we had in Madeira weren't at all like what I made (but then lots of dishes that we did try had different interpretations in Madeira), but it is a delicious dish all the same!

I'm back again, this time after vacation

2010-11-18T18:19:00.000-08:00

I knew I said I was back, and then disappeared for another 3 weeks. This is because we'd been spending the first two weeks of November on vacation - in Portugal!

Huxley Beagle got boarded for two weeks at a dog daycare/boarding place. Within the first 5 days, he got bitten by a German Shepherd dog that he was attempting to hump. What an ambitious beagle! - or maybe the German Shepherd was just really hot! Anyway, the folks at the daycare took care of him and he got all his stitches out the day we came back. Since then, he's been EXTRA affectionate and clingy. I think he's afraid we will leave him again! Anyway, I think he had fun despite his misadventure. Here are some pictures of him "on vacation":

Dressed up as a bunny on Halloween (what humiliation!)

I made a corduroy pea coat for the mild November weather in Lisbon and Porto, where we spent about 5 days each. (Will post about the pea coat in a bit.) We spent the last 4 days of our Portuguese vacation in Madeira, where it was very warm and pleasant. Why Portugal, and those particular places in Portugal, you ask? Well, we always like to take vacations in places where we can learn about a new cuisine or wines. Last year, we enjoyed visiting sherry bodegas in Andalusia so much and learning about the different kinds of sherries and how they were made that we decided to visit Porto to learn about Port wine and Madeira to learn about Madeira wine. And how can you visit Portugal without visiting Lisbon! Of course, we also had lots of chances everywhere to sample the dizzying array of Portuguese table wines made from all sorts of interesting grape varietals that we had never heard of. And, the best part was all the food we got to eat! One thing we learnt - Portuguese portions are HUGE! You will see this shortly from pictures we took of almost every meal. We are on a sort of exercise regimen now, to try to lose all that weight we gained. Not that it wasn't a strenuous vacation - Portugal (including Madeira) is a very hilly country and we took some steep hikes that were really good workouts.

Anyway, I will be posting about Portuguese food and wine shortly, as well as some sewing topics related to our vacation. Stay tuned!

The red balloon marks the location of Madeira.

Metaballs XIII - Turkish meatballs with eggplant puree

2010-10-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

This is a most unusual, and delicious!, recipe from this cookbook

It's sort of like meatballs cooked in baba ghanoush!

The meatballs are made from a mixture of ground beef, eggs, breadcrumbs, allspice, cumin and black pepper, and are first browned in oil and then cooked in an eggplant sauce, prepared as follows. The eggplants are first roasted/grilled over the stove top gas burner until the skin blisters and blackens and the flesh is soft. The skin is removed and the flesh, which has become pleasingly smokey, is mashed up. Sliced onions from a large onion are sauteed until golden and soft, and then the mashed eggplant and a bit of tomato paste is added. The browned meatballs are simmered in this mixture.

I made some tabbouleh (from the same cookbook) to go along with it and served everything with some pita bread. This was a good recipe! - I might have to make it again soon!

Meatballs XII - Indian meatballs/koftas

2010-10-28T18:44:00.000-07:00

These meatballs are different from your regular meatballs not just because the ground meat has a lot of spices mixed in, but mostly because they are also stuffed with an aromatic mixture of green chillies, garlic, ginger, scallions, lemon juice and salt and pepper. The stuffed meatballs are then browned with yet more spices (cinnamon, cardamom...) and then cooked in a tomato-based sauce with yet more spices. It was really quite delicious, served over rice boiled with a bit of butter and salt to soak up the sauce. Here is a picture of it

The recipe is from the oldest cookbook I own. I bought it in 1992 or so, when I moved out of grad school dorm into an actual apartment where I'd have to cook my own meals instead of eating in the dining halls. I still remember that I bought this cookbook because my good friend Melissa owned it and had invited Dave and I over for dinner at her apartment, where she cooked the "Chicken with tomato sauce and butter" recipe. It was so good it made an impression on me! - and I bought the cookbook as soon as I had a kitchen of my own.

I'm back

2010-10-28T18:20:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been a really long time since I posted anything. The job sort of got in the way, and then when I had free time it seemed more fun to spend the precious time actually really cooking and sewing than to blog about these activities. I have been actually sewing a lot, a whole summer's wardrobe really, because it has been unseasonably warm in San Francisco and I didn't have anything appropriate for warm weather! And I have been working my way through the meatballs theme, and taking pictures, so there is a lot of meatballs posts for me to catch up with!

So here we go, a meatballs extravaganza...

And here is a picture of Huxley, just because. Isn't he just the cutest, little wudgy doggy?!!

Meatballs XI

2010-06-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

Meatballs three days in a row!!! We had meatballs again last night. OK, maybe tonight I will make something else. I saw a most unusual meatball recipe using peaches and knew I had to make it. It was from this cookbook

The meat mixture was pretty standard, containing breadcrumbs, parsley, onions and garlic, but it was the sauce that absolutely transformed this dish! The browned meatballs were simmered in this sauce made from caramelized sugar, butter, browned pears, sherry vinegar, broth, cinnamon and toasted pine nuts. It was like a really, really amazing rendition of familiar sweet-and-sour flavors. I also made a standard Spanish side of spinach with pine nuts and raisins. The wine was an Albarino from Spain, which turned out to be a little too delicate to stand up to the robust flavors of the meatball sauce. Perhaps a heavier white, like a slightly oakey Viognier would have been a better match. I offered the remains of an apple gallete to Dave, but he said he didn't need dessert because the peaches in the sweet sauce was dessert-y enough!

Meatballs X

2010-06-03T08:35:00.001-07:00

I finally cooked out of a cookbook I'd owned forever and never used.

Earlier, I had passed up on the meatball recipe in there before because the meatballs are poached, and I thought, boiled meatballs can't be any good! However, after meatballs IX, which were roasted in an oven, I became more open to new ways of cooking meatballs so I decided to give these ones a try. Besides, the meatballs are poached in broth, which can't be all that bad!

The beef mixture was flavored with parsley, cloves and nutmeg, and the meatballs were poached very slowly, the recipe instructing you to keep the broth simmering "at a tremble". Wow! They came out really light, almost like dumplings! They were served with horseradish sauce and some more of the cabbage from our previous meal the day before (meatballs IX - yes, we had meatballs two days in a row).

Meatballs IX

2010-06-03T08:16:00.000-07:00

I acquired a new cookbook:

and when Dave asked, "Is it time for more meatballs?" I looked in my new cookbook and found a recipe for lamb meatballs. Unlike all the previous recipes where the meatballs are browned in oil in a pan on the stovetop, this recipe instructs you to cook the meatballs spread out on a parchment-lined baking sheet in the oven. Mixed in with the ground lamb was sauteed chopped shallots, garlic & zucchini, as well as fresh chopped mint and (this is the ingredient that makes the dish) preserved lemons. I had made a big jar of lemons preserved in lemon juice and salt years ago, and it was one of the best thing I ever did. It keeps in the fridge forever and I use it in stews, salads, and recipes such as this one requiring unusual ingredients. Dave liked the meatballs, he said it had good meat flavor. I also made a garlic-yoghurt mix to go with the meatballs, and side dishes of brussel sprouts and sauteed cabbage. The wine was a Cline Small Berry Mouvedre that we had acquired on a recent trip to Sonoma county. It was delicious, but we decided to let the rest of the bottles age for a few more years to bring out the complexity in the wine.

Dessert was an apple galette, paired with a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc from Dry Creek Vineyard. I had a nice time sipping it while sight-reading Jerome Kern on the piano. I sight read much better with a glass of wine! It was a nice end to a long Memorial Day weekend.

Meatballs VIII

2010-06-03T07:56:00.001-07:00

Here's a recipe that seemed unlikely, but turned out to be one of those things whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's from one of Marcella Hazan's cookbooks:

The recipe for "Pork balls with beans and tomatoes" instruct you to serve the dish with polenta, which seems a little strange, considering that there was already plenty of starch in the form of cranberry beans (I used navy beans instead) in the meatball stew. But, I do love polenta (perhaps because I love grits from having gone to school in the south) so I did as instructed. The other change I made was to add some beet greens I had been saving (the beetroots had been roasted and eaten a few days earlier) to the stew for the last 15 minutes of cooking. Wow! The combination of the meatball stew, the greens, and the polenta was hearty and satisfying. Dave said that the beet greens were the best part, because they had picked up all the flavors of the meatball stew.

The wine was made from Lagrein grapes from Jacuzzi in Sonoma. It was very purple and hearty, perfect for the meal.

Cute top

2010-05-21T19:00:00.000-07:00

This cute top (#129) from the February 2009 Burda magazine has been reviewed favorably by many people and I suddenly had a desire to wear it to dinner this last Saturday:

So at about noon the same Saturday I wanted to wear it, I started tracing the pattern and got the fabric cut out and partly sewn, but of course I did not make it in time for dinner. What was I thinking!

I finally finished it some time this week. I love it in black-and-white print I finally decided on, which had been in my stash for a long time. I don't think the actual fabric, a cotton blend with a slight stretch, was a great choice, being a little stiff. Dave likes the top too, mostly because he likes black-and-white abstract prints on me.

The pendant on the necklace I am wearing is a likeness of a yeast zygote. See, I'm not just a domestic scientist, I am a real scientist who did yeast genetics many years ago. When yeast mate, they form this distinctive structure called a zygote. Here's a picture of a real yeast zygote, and below it, a close-up of my necklace.

I like the top a lot, so much so that I went out and bought some nice silk in a silvery color to make the same top to wear for fancier occasions. I think the pattern would work better in a softer, drapier fabric. The cotton blend I used is a bit stiff, and I also interfaced the bands, which is a bad idea. The stiffness causes the top to sort of poof out under my bust, which is precisely where you don't want your clothes to poof out!

Meatballs VII

2010-05-21T18:48:00.001-07:00

After all the exotic meatballs I'd been making, I decided to go back to basics and consulted this cookbook, the most-used of my half-dozen or so Spanish cuisine cookbooks:

There are no fewer than nine meatball recipes in this book alone. I chose the one that appeared in the "Tapas" section. You can't get more basic than that!

Meatballs in Almond, Garlic and Parsley Sauce:

As you can see, Huxley Beagle thinks that the meatballs smell delicious! He didn't get to have any, though. A friend of mine who is a fan of my cooking once said that it must be torture for Huxley Beagle to have to live with all the cooking smells and not get to eat the food! He did get to lick the sauce off our plates and he did such a good job he must have thought it was delicious!

Meatballs VI

2010-05-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

Maghrebi Veal Meatballs with Spinach and Chickpeas is from another excellent cookbook that I have lately been sadly neglecting:

The dish is more like a stew containing meatballs cooked with spinach and chickpeas. I used a mixture of beef and pork instead of veal for the meatballs, which were flavored with a complex Tunisian spice mix containing paprika, coriander seed, caraway seed, anise, cumin, cloves, turmeric, black pepper and cayenne.

It was very delicious and went particularly well with the Pinot Noir from Mendocino County that some nice friends had left at our house (Thanks, Beth and Tim!) A great hearty one-pot meal to make on a cold weeknight; all you need to complete the meal is some nice wine to drink with it!

Sheer tunic

2010-05-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

I found this great sheer fabric with an interesting geometric print and decided to make this Burdastyle February 2009 top #110

Here's my version, with fabric-covered buttons. I left out the elastic gathering on the sleeve bottoms, although I am thinking maybe I should put them in afterall with drawstrings.

The dritz button kit for making fabric-covered buttons came from Grandma Laura's stash of cool sewing gizmos and buttons. It is very cool, this is the first time I've made self-fabric buttons.

I'm not sure I like the tunic all that much, but then I'm not sure I like colors other than black all that much... on me, that is. Dave isn't a huge fan of the tunic style. He says that it makes me look like a worker on a farm collective. I wore this to a show and dinner with nice wool pants. Maybe next time I'll try it with jeans for a more dressed-down version which might be more my style. I do still like the fabric, though, just to look at. Perhaps I should go back and buy some more for a different kind of top. I still like the idea of having a top with those colors and crazy swirling print.

Meatballs V

2010-05-09T12:42:00.000-07:00

Looking for a more basic meatball recipe to try next, I made Moroccon Lamb Meatballs from the following cookbook

The meatballs were made from ground lamb and flavored with cumin and paprika. They were browned and then served with the following essential relishes, cucumber yoghurt salad and a salad of dressed mint leaves, all part of the same recipe. I also made a classical Spanish side dish of spinach sauteed with garlic, pine nuts and raisins.

The wine was an imported Spanish white from The Spanish Table, made from moscatel grapes grown in Malaga, from where one can spy the Moroccon shoreline directly across the Mediterranean Sea.

Huxley Beagle, Wine Critic Extraordinaire

2010-05-09T12:09:00.000-07:00

Huxley beagle has many talents, one of which is his discerning palate for fine wine. He doesn't get to drink any of the wine that the humans have with their delicious dinners, but he gets to enjoy the bouquet and taste a bit of the wine from the wine cork.

When the humans open a bottle of wine, they toss him the cork, which he gleefully runs after and sniffs delicately. Then, if he approves, he will settle down to enjoy it by chewing off the end of the cork that was in contact with the wine.

He doesn't actually eat the cork. He just chews it up to enjoy the aroma and taste. Here he is spitting out the cork bits after he's savored them.

Often, you can tell by the remains how much he liked the wine.

This cork got almost totally chewed up, so he must have liked the wine a lot. The end that is still intact is the end that was farthest from the wine in the bottle, of course!

He also prefers red wines to white wines, and he likes fortified wines best of all. He also rejects old, dried up corks (only a cork from a freshly-opened bottle will do) so we know he is really in it for the wine. Also, he will not touch a TCA-contaminated cork from a corked bottle of wine. No bad wine for Huxley Beagle, no sir!

Meatballs IV (Bacalao Croquettes)

2010-05-09T11:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a very different kind of meatball than the sort that usually comes to mind, but fish is a type of meat too, right?

These are salt cod croquettes, made from a recipe from the first Moro Cookbook.

Salt cod (bought from our neighborhood Italian deli, at a good price!) was soaked for 24 hours with several changes of water, then poached, shredded and mixed with boiled mashed potatoes and parsley and formed into quenelles that were then fried in olive oil. It was served with a green salad and home-made aioli and a Oregon Pinot Gris from Lazy River Vineyard.

Dave really liked them, said it reminded him of the fish cakes that Grandma Laura used to make when he was growing up.

Meatballs III

2010-04-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, as I was pondering what to make for dinner, Dave pointed out that perhaps it was time for Meatballs III. I remembered a great recipe from this cookbook

The recipe is called "Polpette d'Artusi alla Villa Gaidello", and was adapted from a 19th century cookbook. The meat mixture is formed into patties, rather than meatballs. This recipe had by far the longest listing of ingredients for the meat mixture I have encountered: ground pancetta, ground chicken thigh, ground beef, chopped parsley, onions & garlic, currants, toasted pine nuts, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves. The meat patties were browned first and then finished in a sweet/sour sauce of glazed pearl onions, reduced stock and balsamic vinegar.

I made a side of brussel sprouts steamed and then sauteed in garlic and olive oil. The wine was a Cline mourvedre from the Sonoma-Carneros district whose bright berry notes went well with the currants in the meatballs and the sweet/sour balsamic vinegar sauce.

Dave says that of the 3 meatball recipes I've made lately, this one is the best. We'll have to see if I can top it...

Meatballs II

2010-04-23T07:31:00.000-07:00

I loved the tartness imparted by the pomegranate juice in the sauce of Meatballs I so much that when I decided to make a Spanish meatball recipe I chose one that had lemons in it. I have many Spanish cookbooks and each cookbook carries several meatball recipes, but this is the first recipe I've ever seen that used lemons. The recipe, "Pilar Monteoliva's Meatballs in Lemon Sauce", is taken from Penelope Casas' latest cookbook, La Cocina de Mama.

The pork-and-beef meat mixture contains chopped cured ham, parsley, garlic, breadcrumbs, milk, two whole eggs and fresh lemon juice. This is browned in olive oil and then cooked in a sauce of onions, chicken broth and white wine. To finish the sauce, a crushed mixture of parsley, garlic and saffron, together with more fresh lemon juice, is added at the end. Now the next step is interesting. Two egg yolks are first thinned with some broth and then added to the sauce to thicken it. The egg yolks and the saffron from the crushed mix contributed a yellowish hue to the sauce, which goes with the idea of lemons, I suppose!

The crushed mixture of parsley, garlic and saffron imparted a very typical Spanish meatball flavor to the dish. The lemon scent and very slight tartness made the meatballs very appetizing. Dave said they were so easy to eat, he ate almost the whole thing! I made some green beans with garlic, smoked paprika and olive oil as a side and we had a bottle of Limerick Lane Zinfandel from the Russian River Valley to go with it. The beautiful table runner was made by Dave's mom (check out her quilting projects here).

I think these Meatballs II are even more decadent than Meatballs I (where a friend pointed out, rightly, how it was funny that I tried to make MEATballs healthier by using olive oil instead of butter!). I didn't attempt any healthier substitutions in this recipe, but I did make a side of green vegetables to go with it, and the red wine will hopefully work its "French paradox" magic...

Meatballs I

2010-04-21T08:20:00.000-07:00

So I had recently made something from a cookbook I own that I hadn't used for a while (ie, a few years!). It was a bulgar wheat pilaf with green and red peppers, chickpeas and tahini sauce that Dave had requested for a picnic we were going to with a middle eastern theme. While flipping through the pages after I had made the pilaf, I noticed a meatball recipe from Azerbaijin (a country in Eurasia bounded by the Caspian Sea, Russia, Georgia, Armenia and Iran). The recipe caught my eye because of its unusual sauce made from pomegranate juice. I love meatballs, from spaghetti and meatballs to albondigas tapas, and I just had to try the recipe and I thought that, much as I was on a ravioli kick earlier, I could go on a meatball kick and make all the unusual as well as old favorite meatball recipes I could find and blog about it. Dave realized that he would be benefiting from this blogging idea and he was all for it.

The beef-and-lamb meat mixture was flavored with allspice, paprika, onions and mint. After browning on all sides (it was supposed to be browned in butter, but I substituted olive oil as a healthier alternative - although I shouldn't have mentioned that because once Dave reads that he's going to want me to make it again with butter) and then simmered in a sauce of pomegranate juice (I get mine from The Spanish Table outpost in Berkeley) and chicken broth and sprinkled at the end with chopped mint leaves. I made some steamed rice flavored with salt and butter to go with it, which was the perfect accompaniment to the tangy sauce. Here's a picture of the meatballs (taken before I remembered to sprinkle them with the chopped mint leaves), with the cookbook next to it

Stay tuned for more meatball entries!

Tailored tops for the summer

2010-04-21T07:55:00.000-07:00

After sewing all those knits, I was ready for a change of pace and since summer is upon us (even though it never gets very hot in San Francisco) I thought it would be nice to have some short-sleeved shirts made from woven fabric.

I made this February 2009 Burda magazine blouse (#125) from a black cotton blend, sort of as a wearable muslin because of reports from some people that the sleeves come out a little tight.

Here's my version

It fit fine, although I don't know why there are wrinkles across the upper chest in the picture. I think I'm going to make the same pattern in a different, brighter color.

Next shirt is a shortened version of this dress (#116) from the April 2010 Burda magazine

When I was tracing it out, the collar came in two sizes, and I accidentally made my shirt in the larger size destined for a different pattern. I didn't like it at first, but I think the unusual large collar is starting to grow on me...

That's it for the woven shirt-sleeved shirts for a while. The weather got cold again and I'm thinking about warm wool jersey tops again...

Going crazy with the serger

2010-04-08T07:49:00.000-07:00

I have not been blogging lately because I've been busy sewing, or should I say, serging, instead! I've re-discovered knits because of my new toy, the serger my mother-in-law gave me. It is a breeze serging seams instead of sewing them and I love the professional-looking finish I get on the inside of my garments. Also, it is very easy to stabilize the shoulder seams and the neckline with clear elastic by feeding it into the serger foot.

My first dress made with the serger is this pattern (#129) from the June 2009 Burda magazine:

I made it from a aubergine 100% wool jersey and the weather turned cold enough briefly for me to wear it once last weekend:

Dave actually likes this one, despite the gatherings at the waist, which he says usually make me look like I have something to hide. He says that the gatherings in this design look good, for a change!

Following the dress, I decided that I needed more knit tops, so I made this interesting one with the puffy sleeves (#118) from the February 2009 Burda magazine:

Here's my version, and I love it for the fit and how comfortable it is to wear:

Then, because the weather got cold briefly, I decided I needed a long-sleeved top, like this one (#114) from the October 2009 Burda magazine:

Here's my version:

Dave dislikes this one, he says the gathers at the front make me look pregnant, but the girls at work complimented me on what a nice top it was. I think it's not really one of my favorites, but it is very comfortable to wear so I'm sure I'll wear it a lot. Dave also wonders what the tab is for, and what would happen if he removed it. The answer is nothing, it's just a design element; it looks like it's holding the gathers together but it doesn't really do anything structural. It actually gave me a bunch of problems, I installed it incorrectly and while I was ripping it out, I ripped a hole in the garment. Luckily, 1. jersey doesn't fray, and 2. I had read about someone repairing a tear by ironing on a piece of fusible stretch interfacing over the tear, which I did and then I stitched the tab over it and now it is hidden. My goodness, that could ruin your whole day, finishing a garment and then tearing a hole in it at the last step!

I also made this cute flounced-sleeved top (#106 from the January 2009 Burda magazine) but haven't worn it yet so I don't have pictures to upload:

And lastly, although I made the following dress a while ago, before I got the serger, this seems like a good place to post a picture, as it has become one of my very favorite dresses. It's from the January 2010 Burda magazine, dress #130:

My version is made out of stretch velvet and lined with brown cotton/lycra jersey. Because it is lined, the inside of the dress looks nice and there are no exposed seams. I wear this dress everywhere whenever we go out!

Next I think I'll do something different for a change, some short-sleeved, collared tailored tops from cotton or linen wovens for the summer. Stay tuned!

Another Meal of Ravioli

2010-03-19T08:21:00.000-07:00

I have been on a ravioli kick lately. The Turkish Raviolis I had made a couple weeks ago inspired me to look up some older ravioli recipes that used to be favorites but that I hadn't used for a long time. Last Sunday, I made sweet potato raviolis from this Marcella Hazan cookbook

The filling consisted of roasted sweet potatoes, grated parmigiano-reggiano, chopped prosciutto, nutmeg and crushed amarreti cookies and egg. The sauce was caramelized butter with fried sage and more parmigiano-reggiano.

The wine was a 2005 Carbenet Sauvignon from Brander Vineyard in the Santa Ynez Valley. We bought the wine there during a visit in 2006, which we remember fondly because Huxley Beagle accompanied us, lying strategically in the sun while we picnicked at the Vineyard.

For dessert, we had an olive oil cake, made from a recipe in the same cookbook and paired with some nice Madeira.

I wonder what my next ravioli project is going to be...

My First Serged Garment!

2010-03-19T07:39:00.000-07:00

I know I said two posts ago that I wasn't going to make another one of this draped top. However, I had just gotten a serger (my mother-in-law, who is also a fantastic quilter, gave me hers) and was just raving to make something with it. I wanted my first serged garment to work out with a minimum of fussing, so I decided to go with a pattern that I had used before that I knew would fit and chose the draped top pattern. I was pretty happy with the original version that I had made, but after wearing it a couple of times, I decided that it could have been cut a little smaller and, in particular, the the back neckline could be reduced down one size for a better fit. For my second attempt, I also had much nicer fabric: a nylon lycra knit which felt nicer against the skin and also draped much better. I moved the center back fold line about half an inch closer to the side seam and was going to leave the front piece alone but then discovered that this new fabric was narrower than the 60 inches I had assumed it to be and so, to make all the pattern pieces fit, I also moved the center front fold line slightly less than half an inch closer to the side seam. I reduced all my 5/8 inch seam allowances to 1/4 inch because the serger was going to trim everything down to 1/4 inches anyway. Viola! Here is my first serged garment:

The nice draping is much easier to see in this fabric. It was a snap incorporating clear elastic when I sewed the shoulder seams, using the feed function on the serger foot. All the nicely finished edges made me very happy. Here is a view of the serged inside of the garment:

Wow! All I have to do now is figure out how to get professional-looking labels for my clothes and I will be all set! I've been making them by using the letter embroidery function on my sewing machine to sew the words "HuxleyWuxley" onto wide ribbon but they look sort of home-made. If you sew and put labels on your clothes, please leave a comment letting me know how you get your labels made.

A Moorish Dinner

2010-03-10T07:28:00.000-08:00

Our vacation in Andalusia, Spain last November was a culinary revelation of sorts. The flavors of Southern Spain, which included Moorish-influenced cuisine, were unique, and we also took the opportunity to visit bodegas in Jerez, Sanlúcar, and Montilla to figure out the differences between the different kinds of sherries. Here are some of the meals we had:

Marinated anchovies and confitted tuna in Seville

Andalusian fried food (shrimp wrapped in eggplant and typical Andalucian croquettes), in Seville

Potatoes with chorizo & eggs, and clams in Seville

Pickled roe, cuttlefish meatballs, shrimp tortilla, fried sea anemone(! - I didn't know you could eat these things) and manzanilla in Sanlúcar

White gazpacho and a salt-cod-and-orange salad, in Cordoba

A plate of locally cured ham and a local rosado in the mountain town of Trevelez

An updated interpretation of morcilla and beans, at a somewhat fancy restaurant in Granada

Local mountain trout, in Ronda at a restaurant perched on the edge of a breath-taking gorge

Anyway, when we got home, I was obsessed with trying to recreate the flavors we had tasted and came across these two cookbooks, which are perfect ambassadors for this type of cuisine

I have already made many delicious meals from these two books, some of which almost perfectly recaptured a few of the most memorable dishes we had, notably the fried marinated dogfish, but unfortunately I have no pictures of these past meals to share. Instead, this post is about a dish I made over the past weekend that grew out of my current interest in Moorish-inspired cuisine and my obsession with the recipes in these two cookbooks. Here it is, Turkish lamb ravioli from the Casa Moro cookbook. (Huxley Beagle was VERY interested in the ground lamb. He kept trying to get a good sniff (and a bite) while I was assembling the raviolis. Fortunately, he's too short to reach!)

Turkish ravioli, from home-made dough stuffed with lamb flavored with allspice, mint and oregano, boiled in chicken broth spiked with cinnamon and cumin, and then served soaked in the broth, garlic-scented yoghurt and caramelized butter. Sides are roasted beets and sauteed beet greens. The wine is a 2006 Lazy Creek Gewurztraminer from the Anderson Valley, California. For dessert, we had a plum galette.

It was delicious! The flavors in the ravioli came together so well - the lamb, the spices, the herbs, the yoghurt, the caramelized butter and the savory broth. It was so good that there was nothing left over for Huxley Beagle to sample, sadly. I might make this again for a dinner party I am considering having, although making ravioli from scratch always tires me out so I'd have to consider carefully before committing to making enough ravioli for 12 people...

Draped top 118B, March 2010 Burdastyle magazine

2010-03-04T07:22:00.000-08:00

When the latest issue of Burdastyle Magazine arrived, this top caught my eye:

I like such tunic-y styles, although Dave hates them on me. He prefers me in clothes that are more fitted, but I only listen to him some of the time. I was in any case so eager to start working on the top that I went to look for fabric as soon as I could. I thought a nice slinky sort of drapey fabric would look great in that style. So last Saturday, I took the dog for a nice long walk to our neighborhood fabric store 10 blocks away, where I knew they had a bamboo section with nice slinky. When we got there, there were all these people and a terrier standing mournfully outside the store - there had been a power outage and the store was blanketed in darkness! Having walked all the way there and being anxious to procure some fabric, I took up their offer of a flashlight and tied up Huxley Beagle to the railings and descended into the darkness. A nice young man helpfully held up the flashlight while I tried to make my fabric choices but in the end I gave up. I couldn't see enough of the color and texture to be sure what I was getting, so I told them I would just come back next week.

But I also had a backup plan, you see, which was to hit the other neighborhood fabric store on the way home. What a great neighborhood I live in, abounding with fabric stores within walking distance of my house! (Now, if only they were open on Sundays... but one should just be grateful for what one has, right?) So we went to Darlene's, and I tied up Huxley Beagle at the door and then asked the nice man minding the store if that was OK and he said I should bring him in! What a great day for Huxley Beagle - he loves to follow his human owners wherever they go, although he really wishes it was the meat market he was allowed into, not the fabric store!

They didn't have exactly what I was looking for, which was a nice quality slinky made from natural fibers, but I settled for a drapey slinky in polyester. I figure the tunic was so loose there wouldn't be a breathing problem even if the top was made out of polyester. Now the pattern called for 1 and 3/4 yards of a 60-inch wide fabric and they only had 1 yard left but I bought it anyway, thinking that I would use it for something else if it wasn't enough for the top.

When I laid out the pattern pieces, they just fit on that 1 yard. I had to piece the drawstring tie from two pieces, but that was alright! If I had bought the prescribed 1 and 3/4 yards, I would have had too much fabric left over and there won't have been enough of it to do much with anyway! So it worked out great.

Here is the finished top:

The picture on the right has been adjusted so that you can see the draping on the fabric. It was a really easy top to assemble, or would have been really easy if the fabric wasn't so darn slippery to work with! I really didn't do my usual precise job on the gathered darts but the fabric and style was rather forgiving, luckily. I stabilized the gathered darts as well as the shoulder seams with clear elastic. What a great invention clear elastic is, and to think I didn't use to know what it was! Now I have a great big roll bought for a great price from Cleaner's Supply. (If you sew, check out this place - the best place ever to buy Gütermann thread, zippers, buttons, etc at a great price, and they deliver fast!)

I don't think I'll sew this top again - one is enough, as it is a distinctive style. I haven't worn it yet, still waiting for warmer weather, which is hopefully upon us soon in foggy and rainy San Francisco!

Recycling fabric

2010-02-27T21:22:00.000-08:00

This is a story of how I recycled this shapeless turtleneck that I can't believe I used to wear 10 years ago

to this top

It all started when I noticed this top in the February Burdastyle magazine:

I liked the neckline and the gathered bust, and had actually traced out the pattern some weeks ago but then discovered I didn't have enough of a leftover fabric that I had planned for it. I didn't really have anything else suitable, so the pattern lingered for a while.

In the meantime, I sewed some other stuff, including the Eva Jacket and the accompanying skirt from the same fabric.

Then about two days ago, I was rummaging around my long-sleeved knit drawer for something appropriate to wear on a rainy day to work and pulled out that turtleneck. I think I probably bought it in like 1997 or so back when I was living in Connecticut and wore such things during the winters there. Well, I would never wear such a shapeless oversized thing in 2010 in California, that's for sure! That's when the inspiration struck me to recycle that grey knit fabric into the Burdastyle top.

Luckily, the top was so oversized, I was able to fit all the pattern pieces on intact pieces of fabric, the only concession being that I had to make the sleeves half-length. From reviews of this pattern, a commonly-cited problem was the tendency of the neckline to be too large and to fall off the shoulders. So I raised the neckline half an inch, and also re-drew the neck edge of the raglan seams on the bodice pieces to be about 1 inch closer to the center front and center back, grading back to their original positions at the side. Finally, I applied clear elastic to the neckline and this helped a lot with the neckline gaping problem a lot of people mentioned.

Well, I won't say the final top is a great success - it's wearable, but I think it really would have benefited from a crisper knit. That old knit from the old turtleneck had stretched quite a bit. I took in the seams but it still hangs sort of large, probably from stretching out some more. I think a knit with a bit of lycra in it would have held its shape a little better. But this was a great muslin for figuring out how to construct the next top I'll make from this pattern. Maybe something in a bright color for spring!

Eva Jacket from www.burdastyle.com

2010-02-18T19:05:00.000-08:00

I've made the Eva Jacket before, about a year ago when I first started sewing garments. In fact, it was the first jacket, and first really complicated garment, I'd ever made that was wearable. I was so proud of it and so impressed with myself that I went out and bought more fabric to make a second jacket from the same pattern on the same day that I had finished the first one! Here is a picture of the first jacket, made of some mystery garbardine fabric bought for cheap, compliments of Huxley Beagle's official web site. (Check out that cute beagle in the picture!) For the second jacket, I initially had a weird notion that I would make it in dark brown with teal piping around the collar and pocket flaps, but I couldn't find teal piping, so I settled for black rick-rack instead of teal piping, which was just as well, as attaching piping would have been too much for my sewing skills at that point and teal would probably have been too gaudy for me. Here is a picture of the second jacket, made of some mystery fabric, again bought for cheap. In those days, I was so uncertain of my sewing skills that I was afraid to spend the money on quality fabric in case I screwed it up!

Anyway, I wore the two first Eva jackets a few times, and but then never really took a shine to them. I now think it was because I had made them out of such cheap fabric I didn't like wearing them. Since those two first jackets, I have made a lot of other garments and improved my sewing skills greatly. I had also upgraded from my very basic Kenmore (bought originally so I could sew curtains) to a Bernina Activa 240, which allowed me to sew with even more precision and with perfect stitches. (I never figured out how to set the tension correctly with the Kenmore, with the result that the stitches always looked sort of home-made, but with the Bernina, I get perfect stitches every time). I had also learnt a lot more about the kinds of fabrics I liked to wear and to have next to my skin.

So it was that one day, while contemplating my problematic fabric-hoarding habit, I decided to make something with the plaided houndstooth 100% wool fabric that I had bought and had done nothing with for over a year. I initially contemplated making a BWOF swing jacket with the fabric, but I had never worked with plaid fabric before and I wasn't sure I would be able to match the plaids up properly at the princess seams. Then I remembered the Eva Jacket, which was made up in a plaided houndstooth fabric in the promotional photos at www.burdastyle.com. I checked the pattern, and the pieces even had guidelines printed on the pattern that told you how to match up the plaids! So it was a no-brainer: for my first time working with plaid, I would make the Eva Jacket. I loved the pattern, obviously, but I never wore the two Evas I had made because I didn't like the fabric. This time I would make it out of 100% wool and line it with rayon for breatheability, and I expected that I would get a lot of use out of it and can finally retire my first two Evas.

Anyway, here is the completed new, third, Eva jacket.

I have to say, I managed to match the plaids up alright! (Although, perhaps in another year after more experience sewing with plaids, I might not be as happy with the matching on this jacket; then I'll have to make another jacket with even more perfectly matched plaids to replace this one!) I added the sleeve bands this time (I had left them off the first two jackets because I couldn't figure out the instructions; I still haven't figured out the instructions but I just did my own thing this time). Then and now, I consulted my copy of theVogue Guide to Sewing for installing the flapped pockets. I drafted the lining from the pattern pieces by following the instructions in this great instructional video from Burdastyle.

I love my new Eva Jacket - I've worn it to work every day this week. It's really nice and warm and both the jacket and lining fabric breathe and feel great.

As for that swing jacket I was considering - I'm thinking of attempting it next with some wool with tiny houndstooth (not plaided) in this nice earthy, but bright, color scheme. But as for my very next project, I think it will be to make a matching skirt from the rest of the leftover fabric I have after making the Eva jacket, perhaps this one. I'll keep you posted!