Paella

     Paella is actually pretty easy to make. There are very few exotic ingredients, a special pan but the cooking is quite easy. What is hard is making it great. I would say that less than half of the times I have made it I have achieved socarrat. Socarrat is when the rice makes a tasty crust that caramelizes the rice and makes it crunchy and sweet. Last time I added to much water during the cooking and it stayed too wet. Another time I am sure that the grill was not quite hot enough. When I was in Spain in 2012 we went to the fantastic restaurant in the Mercado de la Boqueria. We had a wonderful meal. However we had three kids and a very short attention span and had to hurry their paella. They were horrified and now I understand. Triste.
     I used Gourmet's Grilled Lobster Paella recipe but I replaced the lobster with shrimp. I think is looks great and tasted good but not great. I will do better next time. I still have lots of summer left.

Thanks Alton Brown

I love Alton Brown's simple dietary list. Well I love lists and hate the idea of diets so this looks like a great plan. He lays it down nice and simple. Not like I can follow all of it.

Daily: whole grains, green tea, fruit, nuts.

Three times a week: oily fish, tofu, yogurt, sweet potato.

Once a week: alcohol, desserts, red meat, white starch.

Never: soda, canned soup, “diet” anything, fast food.

http://lifehacker.com/simplify-your-diet-with-alton-browns-four-lists-method-1699651847

Waffles from scratch

     It's not often that I have buttermilk around the house. When L requested waffles this morning I was happy to oblige. I also am usually a prepared mix kind of guy, going all the way back to bisquick. This recipe for Buttermilk Belgians in the Big Yellow Gourmet Cookbook did the trick nicely. Much better than a mix. I made a 1/3 batch and I used canola instead of butter. 1/2 a cup of batter did not quite fill my waffle maker. They were delicious. And they were gone before I could take a picture.

I got a picture this time. Special chocolate chip waffles for L's 6th Birthday!

Cake part one

     We make our nieces and nephews birthday cakes and my wife's sister makes our kids birthday cakes. We have made some pretty grand creations in the past. Today I started the 'How to Train Your Dragon' cake. It will be three layered and checkered chocolate, mint and buttermilk cake with Toothless on top. It we will be awesome but probably not a Pinterest moment. See phase one.

Chocolate cake tomorrow, then the building. Did you see that rainbow cake video in face book? We are trying a scaled down version of that. Go see our older creations on our Flickr site, see Birthday Cakes Album.

Last trip to the Boat Street Cafe

     Back in 1999 Stephanie and I got engaged at the lovely Boat Street Cafe just north of the ship canal. It has since moved to a grander spot but is now closing. The chef wants to pay more attention to her other reasurants.

      We went this last Friday for my birthday dinner and were blown away by the delicious food and great service. See my dinner below. Not my photo. 

     We look forward to going to The Whale Wins in Fremont. I have heard great things. 

Ceviche por la Madre de Ivonne y Luis

Our Spanish teachers, the sister and brother team of Ivonne and Luis, brought in their Mom to show us how to make traditional ceviche. This is the recipe. Here are pictures of the class.

Trumpet fish (small and white)
juice of 10 key limes. Key limes are small so maybe 5 normal limes are equivalent.
1 1/2 red onions
three tomatoes
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
juice of 2 oranges
2 T olive oil
Black pepper
Green plantains thinly sliced

Debone and devein fish, cut small and put in juice of  7 limes with salt for 2 hours. Thinly slice (picar) red onions, wash onions with salt to reduce acid then squeeze in 3 limes, soak for ten minutes. Thinly slice tomatoes. Combine all with olive oil, cilantro, orange juice, and fish. Black pepper to taste.
Meanwhile fry sliced plantains in oil to make chifles.

Serve soup with chifles. Popcorn works too.

For shrimp, boil shelled and deveined shrimp for 5 minutes then soak in lime and salt for 2 hours.

Tortillas de Verde

The first recipie posted from our Ecuador trip. They taste like plantain latkes. Made by them given to us by our friend Anna who says she can't cook. Wrong.

4 plantain
50 ¢ queso fresco
2 eggs
1 onion (white)
Salt (one salt-spoon-ful)
Cilantro

=makes 10 quite large (could possibly be 12 smaller.
Fry in deepish oil, not as much as chips but nearly.

Anna Milsom