France to go

Evan’s ready to cook!

One thing Evan and I have wanted to do for a long time is take a cooking class, and we heard that Chiang Mai was the place to do it. We signed up for a day-long course at the Chiang Mai Thai Cookery School, and were picked up in the morning and taken to The Wok restaurant, where we were going to learn about Thai ingredients and how to put them together.

We started by taking a trip to the market, though most of the class actually stayed in the cooking demonstration room to hear about what we got to see in the market. When we got back, we started on the first of our 6 dishes of the day. Unfortunately, we wolfed almost all of the food down so fast that we didn’t didn’t get any good photos of it. Oops. Or should I say, burp?

Our first dish was tom yam soup, which is a sweet/sour/spicy prawn soup. Since I don’t eat fish and Evan doesn’t like prawns, though, we made tofu and chicken versions, which turned out splendidly. We just added some ginger, lemongrass, mushrooms, tomatoes, shallots, chili peppers, cilantro and lime to our broth, and we had a delicious and quick soup. Definitely one to try at home — and we got a recipe book so we could recreate the dishes we learned to make.

The next dish was fish cakes. Evan made the fish version while I made a tofu version that came out really well. All I did was mash up tofu with some soy sauce, egg, tapioca flour, green beans, kaffir lime leaves and palm sugar than toss it into oil in a wok. The instructor made some sweet and sour cucumber sauce to go along with them, too.

Next, we made green curry, which was our most complicated dish because we had to separate the oil out of the the coconut cream in our wok, which wasn’t exactly an obvious process. Thank goodness our instructors told us when to leave it, turn up or turn down the heat. As with most of our dishes, our instructor encouraged us to use lots of chilies, so it turned out super spicy. It was still really delicious, though, and we also had a chance to let it cool off while we cooked some pad thai.

I’ve done pad thai before at home, and as expected, it was a bit of a scramble to get everything cooked  the right amount. Still, it was relatively easy, and for the veggie version, instead of fish sauce I used soy sauce, and instead of oyster sauce I used mushroom sauce. The pad thai and curry lunch with rice was delicious and filling, and it was interesting to compare how the dishes could turn out a bit differently even with the same ingredients and the same instructions.

After lunch, we finished up by making a chicken salad — I made mine with mushrooms — which was my least favorite dish of the day, though still quite tasty. And we made a dessert of boiled, dyed-red water chestnuts, which we coated in tempura flour before boiling. They turned out translucent and ruby-like, and we at them in coconut cream and sugar syrup with ice to keep it cool. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did — it was a great, refreshing end to a thoroughly delectable yet stuffing day.

Who wants to come over to dinner when we get back to LA?

Last night, I finally got to take the Melt Chocolate Master Class at cookbook cafe that I tried to take last month.

There were 11 of us in the group, set up in a small area of the restaurant just to the left of the open cooking area. It was a bit distracting at times, when wafts of just-cooked fish would come over, but otherwise the space worked well, with three rows of chairs set up, a table full of chocolates and a drink-mixing station set up behind us.

We were offered champagne when we arrived, and the £35 class started about 10 minutes late because one of the attendants was a bit off schedule. Keith Hurdman from Notting Hill chocolate shop Melt led the class and took us on a worldwide tour of chocolates, starting with some French and Venezuelan white chocolate, moving to Belgian, Swiss and French milk chocolates and then giving us a variety of dark chocolates, too. We learned about different cocoa beans and growing regions, why organic chocolate isn’t always the best option, and how Chef Hurdman comes up with some of the flavors for his confections: “What grows together, goes together,” he says.

My favorites were a slightly crunchy hazelnut-filled chocolate, a chocolate truffle with a creamy soft chocolate center that tasted like rich hot chocolate, and the jasmine chocolate.

Though I was disappointed that there wasn’t any hands-on chocolate making — I thought we would be learning ow to make truffles from the description I read of the classs — we did learn to make some delicious chocolate martinis from the Intercontinenal Hotel’s bar manager and mixologist, Joel, who also taught us how to make our rose petal martinis on Valentine’s day. I feel inspired to start stocking a bar and making some cocktails. I would definitely love to have that chocolate martini again.

My favorite aspect of the class was that Keith and Joel were both really open to taking questions, and in such a small class, plenty of people were happy to chime in and ask about the topics they wanted to learn more about. We also got to take a whole goody bag of chocolates home. Not that we really needed any more — we were all totally stuffed.

I was a little late to the game realizing that yesterday was pancake day, apparently the much tamer, more British version of Mardi Gras, which involves gorging yourself on pancakes for the day. Well, I didn’t go out yesterday. I was working on an article, and I was focused. But I started seeing pancakes everywhere — the BBC, Londonist, other websites I just happened upon, they all had these pictures of perfectly cooked, fruit-filled crepes. I considered trying my hand at making a dutch baby or some other exciting pancake recipe, but I never bought ingredients and it just didn’t happen. Evan made sure to have some pancakes at lunch. Good thing I don’t celebrate Lent — I can still have all the pancakes I want.

P.S. Remember that picture? Latkes in Budapest! Potato pancakes count, right?

One of my favorite things about London so far is the abundance of vegetarian food. And not just an obligatory veggie meal at a restaurant, but an array of options everywhere I go. From the sandwich selections at Pret a Manger and Benugo to the best veggie burger of my life (Evan went back and had one today for lunch) to the veggie-friendly labels on supermarket items, I feel completely spoiled.

Check out the label for some butter we bought. A nice green leaf assuring me it’s veggie-friendly (not that I was worried about butter, it was just one of the only packaged things labeled like that that I had handy for photographing). Anyway, I think it’s a great idea, and know that I read about some similar labeling simplification efforts in the U.S. and hope that they’ll be put into practice sometime soon.

Not all the food here is labeled like this yet — I think it’s a pretty new program and it has a ways to go before standardization — but I think it’s a great start.

So far, I haven’t had all that much to write about since I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to adjust to the time difference, unpack and start feeling settled. I have, of course, staked out my local grocery stores — there’s a Marks and Spencer nearby as well as a Sainsbury’s and a small Tesco. There are also a few mini markets.

The food selection here is absolutely amazing. Especially compared with Budapest. The options, the availability of fresh everything and the streets lined with restaurants and cafes are very exciting. And there are a ton of gourmet chocolate places — we already bought a box from one.

Saturday, we met a friend of a friend for lunch at Waterloo Brasserie, which was very nice. The restaurant was modern and warm, with lots of deep red paint and dark wood. There was a fireplace with couches and a bar with hanging clear glass ornaments above it, and our tall table was decorated with small vases of vibrant orange and pink two-tone roses.

I had a fig and cheese tartine and some delicious blackcurrant hibiscus tea and Evan had a two-course meal with lentil soup and duck. We split the hot chocolate fondant dessert, which came with salted caramel sorbet and was warm, gooey and a delicious end to our meal.

Sunday, Bernat and Peter got into town, so we all had dinner at Sofra, which was also good, though my vegetarian moussaka could have been a bit hotter (I suppose I am my mother’s daugher). The restaurant was nice and cozy, but we got there a bit late, so our meal felt rushed since they were trying to get us out of there quickly.

Monday I ran some errands, started unpacking, had a job interview (we’ll see how that turns out–I forgot how stressful interviewing can be), and we just ate some pasta and salad at home. Today, I nearly finished unpacking, figured out how to use our washing machine and just worked on some things from the apartment. I’m also making some soup. It’s simmering as I’m typing.

Last night, I tackled item #5 from my list, and cooked dinner for the editorial team. Our place is pretty small and we only have three chairs, so we went to Bernat’s to cook — he has a bigger table and enough chairs for the five of us. We still had to bring over some extra plates and silverware.

I made guacamole and cooked what I like to call my Mexican veggie stew, which is really just black beans, corn and whatever veggies I have around cooked in salsa. We also had rice and tortilla chips. It’s a pretty easy dinner, but the kind of veggie meal that fills everyone up and doesn’t leave them asking “Where’s the meat?” The guacamole didn’t last more than 10 minutes before it was totally devoured, and we made a good dent in the large pot of stew. Evan’s bringing the rest to work today.

And to top it all off, Peter brought an assortment of pastries from Lukacs that we shared, and we cracked open the bottle of Tokaji Evan’s brother bought him for his birthday. I’m not usually a fan of dessert wines, but this one was fantastic.

I’m still full.

Thursday night, we decided to have a latke party for a few of Evan’s friends from work. I made latkes with homemade applesauce, a zucchini salad, which was better than I even expected (thanks Martha Stewart!), and bruschetta. We also had baguettes and cheese and wine.

It all turned out well, and I had a fun day in the kitchen, though the apartment still smells like oil 2 days later. Also, we learned that Hungarians don’t use canola or vegetable oil, just sunflower and olive oil. We used olive oil.

I usually don’t cook foods that involve that much peeling and grating, but it was worth it. And the applesauce was surprisingly easy to make. Let me know if you want any recipes.

I really didn’t think when I started this blog that the most interesting thing I’d have to talk about would be food, but when I stay in working most of the day, it becomes quite a highlight. And it’s been fun to cook–I never did much cooking when I lived alone. I always felt like I had a good general aptitude for cooking, and thankfully I was right. Yesterday, I tried my hand at making pasta sauce for the first time ever, and I was surprised by how well it turned out.

I called my mom a few days ago to get her spaghetti sauce recipe and to see if it would work without meat in it. She said it was more in her head than anything else and suggested just sauteeing a bunch of vegetables in a pot then adding a few different kinds of tomatoes–canned, freshly diced, tomato paste, etc, then letting it simmer for a while and adding some herbs. I used mushrooms and onions and lots of tomato products, then spiced it up with garlic, basil and my mystery herbs, then added some spicy paprika to give it a kick, and it was great–chunky and saucy and went well with the penne I served it with. I also topped it off with some grated cheese (herbed gouda, I think), and some fresh basil.

It’s nice to have time to cook. And now we have more leftovers.

And a note on the fresh basil: When I bought the plant, it had two stalks and lots of leaves. Then it looked like the whole thing would die rather quickly. Now it seems that the larger stalk has killed the smaller stalk and it doing somewhat OK. Only a few leaves right now, but it’s all still green. Hopefully it lasts another few weeks.

New culinary adventure: I’ve been trying my hand at making soup.

Monday, I made garlic broth, though I think I should have put in some more garlic, and followed a recipe that had me poach an egg in the soup, which turned out quite well, considering I’d never poached an egg before. And being inspired by my soup from Klassz that had a poached egg, I was definitely more than happy to try my hand at it. Unfortunately, the recipe also called for putting dried bread in the soup, which I didn’t like at all–it got so soggy, I threw most of it out. I think I could have also used a bit more garlic–and I wish I would have added some other vegetables. I consider it a moderate success.

Today, I went to the market–I actually found a new market that I didn’t know about at all. It’s just a few blocks away, and by a great import food store called Culinaris. I noticed a few people selling vegetables at stands on the outskirts of the park across the street, and I went over to take a look. There wasn’t a big selection–the vendors were packing up for the day. But I looked back across the street, where someone was opening a large wooden door, and lo and behold, I saw a whole display of fruit! I crossed back to the other side of the street and went in, and there was a large indoor market with about five different fruit and veggie stands, meat counters, a bakery and more. I bought some bread and a chocolate croissant at the bakery. Found some big Israeli avocados at a fruit stand, and bought a leek and an onion, thinking they’d be good in my next incarnation of soup.

They were! I made broth from chopped up leeks, onions and garlic, and I seasoned it with salt and pepper and some spice I bought at the market–maybe tarragon? Evan had his broth plain, since he isn’t feeling fantastic, and I poached another egg for myself and added some diced tomatoes. Much better than the first attempt.

Also, I was excited that I got to carry everything home from the market in my new tote bag (pictured below–yes, it has a weird monster on it) that I got at Bolt–a small, quirky shop that sells art objects, T-shirts, accessories and more for the environmentally conscious Hungarian hipster. I’d been looking for a fun tote for a while since stores rarely give you bags here.

Yesterday was, of course, Thanksgiving. I’m not the biggest Thanksgiving fan–I lived in Canada until I was 10, so I didn’t celebrate it until sometime after that and I’ve always felt pretty disconnected from the holiday. I never made hand turkeys, I don’t actually eat turkey or very much like many traditional Thanksgiving foods, and I never had to be in any silly, politically incorrect Thanksgiving plays.

Still, my family developed some nice traditions around it–namely, going to our friends’ house and having a nice dinner, avoiding Black Friday specials at just about all costs and having a relaxing weekend. I’ve been known to skip out on Thanksgiving some years–take it as an opportunity to go to snowboarding or get away a little–but this is the first year in a long time that I was in a foreign country for Thanksgiving.

I spent most of the day working on my website. I talked to my parents and sisters, who are all together in Mammoth for the weekend. Evan and I made a late dinner–salad, gnocchi with pesto, and peas. And we finished watching season 3 of The Office. We’ll have to find something new to watch now.

All in all, not a bad day. It was actually a pretty good one. It just didn’t feel like Thanksgiving.

So for my own personal celebration a day late, I watched my favorite Thanksgiving-themed movie moment–the Thanksgiving pageant in Addams Family Values. (Enjoy, Suze and Mich and everyone else who grew up with this awesome movie.)

Also, strangely enough, of all the people Evan works with, the only one who went to a Thanksgiving dinner was a Hungarian.

We’ve been wanting to make some iced tea for quite a while now, since all the store-bought iced teas are sweetened, but we’ve had some limitations:

1. The only tea we had in tea bags was chamomile–the others were loose leaf, but we had no strainer.
2. We have no pitcher.
3. Our fridge doesn’t have a shelf tall enough to hold a pitcher, even if we had one.
4. We have no ice to make it in a glass (our freezer is miniscule–think smaller than a bread box).

Today, though, I thought, what about putting it in a water bottle? That would eliminate the pitcher and ice problems.

Here’s what happened:

1. We boiled water in our electric kettle, but figured it would be too hot to put directly into the plastic water bottle, so we decided to steep the tea in a bowl (the kettle has an electric coil in it and we had nothing else as big, except for a pot).
2. We used our loose leaf green tea, so after it was steeped we had to strain it through a colander into a pot–the only other thing in our kitchen big enough to hold it.
3. We were stumped as to how to get it from the pot into the bottle because we had no funnel or anything with a spout to pour with. We tried a ladle, but we couldn’t get much in the bottle that way. We tried a glass and had more spillage problems. Then I thought, we can make a funnel with a bag! So we cut a hole in the bottom, stuffed it in the top of the bottle and ladled away. Check out the picture, below.

Now it’s cooling in the fridge. Hopefully it was worth the effort. Ah, cooking in a small, understocked kitchen…

In yet more cooking news, last night I went to the market to search for something to make for dinner. I got a few different things, including  vegetable I’d never seen before (pictured, right). I also tried to buy some other veggies unsuccessfully–I didn’t realize I needed to weigh the ones sold by the pound before I got to the checkout, so I left without zucchini and cauliflower.

I also bought some mystery herbs–they had photos so I could sort of tell what they were despite not being able to decipher any of the names, though it wasn’t a foolproof system. What I thought was basil was actually mint, and I’m still not 100% sure what two of the others I bought were–my best guess right now is tarragon and thyme. I also bought a basil plant because I knew exactly what that was and it was no more than buying dried spices.

In any case, I made some couscous with onions, broccoli, kohlrabi (the mystery vegetable, which tastes a lot like a cross between brussels sprouts, broccoli and turnips), tomatoes and tofu (that totally fell apart). It turned out well, the mystery vegetable was pretty good–it probably could have been cooked a bit longer, but at least we learned something new. I didn’t figure out what it was until doing some research online this morning. And we have lots of leftovers, if anyone wants any.

Last night, I also made some guacamole–I know, lots of food talk for one day. But the fact that I made guacamole in Hungary is interesting, in my mind, at least.

It all started this summer when Evan and I went out to dinner and ordered an appetizer with avocados in it. Evan warned me that he hadn’t had any good avocados in the restaurants here, but after living in California for so long, who could resist the allure of something so delicious and so reminiscent of home? Well, after a bite into the green slice, I could. It was so hard I could barely cut it with a knife. Someone, and I’m not naming names (ahem, chef), didn’t let the poor little fruit ripen, so it was tasteless, hard and absolutely unappealing.

This sent me on a mission: Were all avocados in Hungary bad, or do people here just not know how to use them? Well, I went to the big market and bought two nice-looking avocados, let them ripen in a drawer and made some guacamole. It turned out great. And the more markets I went to, the more avocados I saw. They sell them at Match, they sell them in the small vegetable stands. They seem to be pretty common.

And though this past time I didn’t quite let one of the avocados ripen enough (my own fault for buying different varieties a few days apart), I was still able to make a decent one-avocado guacamole. And this time I found some hot sauce to put in it too–no more spicing it up with paprika.