Notea

How happy we are! Those Englishmen enjoy only one family of Tea, that is, that black-tea family. No doubt Black Tea is a Superb Tea, but… would you look to ‘agriao’ and call it ‘vegetable’? I would not. I state this because of my recent reading of George Orwell’s short and funny article “A Nice Cup of Tea”. You can read it by clicking on the very title written on the last sentence.

Eventhough Orwell’s deceased already, I make my stand on discussing with him a few points, being myself a tealover since my kid’s Era:

“Anyone who has used that comforting phrase 'a nice cup of tea' invariably means Indian tea.”

You can re-read my third sentence in this article to know what I think about this narrow-minded statement. I’m not fond of fruitish and flowerish teas, such as strawberry (nowadays there is even strawberry+chocolate...), chamomille, pekan, etc., but it makes me sad to think that maybe Orwell and Englishmen nowadays know nothing about the marvellous Mate tea, which I am very fond of, or, say, relaxations that come from Peppermint.

That goes to my second point: the Milk.

“Ninthly, one should pour the cream off the milk before using it for tea”, says Orwell.

I say: should one put any Milk at all? Orwell has much to say about the nonsense of adding sugarcubes on tea, for it ruins the original taste – agreed agreed agreed agreed – but how come Milk does not ruins it also? I think its common, as in for Mate, to put some of it (in my belief, I think it’s manly a Carioca thing, don’t know why), but... gee wiz, I don’t like it at all.

I had a recent teasasterous experience with Milk, for the night I read the article I decided to mix some of it on my Mate. It may sound nonsensical, but it tasted as if a rubber balloon had been melted down and blent to the tea. Much of the herbal and burnt-down taste of the Mate – that is, the teay taste of it – was gone.

And last but not least: I cannot find myself agreeing with all his spiffiness about the pots and instruments. Especially writing this in TeenFood, I believe one should not be restrained to “not making tea without the uses of a ceramic pot”. Go ahead and enjoy your tea as you should and can and would!

That said, I find Orwell’s article most enjoyable. Maybe it is just my problem that I’m not fit for the english-style drinking.

Plat du jour: oeuf poché



This food is not teen and comes directly from... Denmark!

Well, it is a french recipe, i know, but my egg-poché-meister is half dannish, half french. This is for you, Johannes Siverstsen, from who i took all my knowledge*.

The ingredients:
egg
water


The method:
make the water boil;
break the egg into a cup;
put the egg inside;
wait;
take it out;
eat.


The tips:
- have your eggs into the fridge, so that they are colder and easier to work with;
- use the cup to throw the egg into the water the smoothest possible: put it closest, half underwater maybe, and spin it slowly;
- control the boilness of the water: don't put the fire to high, it is going to break your egg in some ghostpieces of white thing;
- just tooth the yellow part of the egg when you are sure it is time to eat it!

The addons:
my poché tonight goes with "french" (portuguese) bread with cream chesse and copa (an expensive salami). my salt flower (from guérande!) is over, so i decided not to use any salt: do like me, exchange your salt by a good olive oil: it is very well exchangeable in almost any case.

do your fill combination! when i mean it is not teen food, maybe trying to shield myself from the tradition, i mean it only depend on us to do teen food!

(one last nasty photo for you :) )



*in fact, this is not true at all: once, i was in the veryfarland, in the countryside, my grandpas farm. i had nothing to do, so i decided to take a look at the books in the shelf. i found a very interesting book, called "Claudias book of the modern woman - kitchen"; i read it, and found 3 egg-poché recipes: the traditional one, something i don't remember, and the "twisted" one... well, have in mind that if you are a modern woman, you are able to make a big waterspout into the pan with some spoon just before throwing the egg inside and let it spin... this, my lords, is really freak food.

Mauricio de Sousa put Monica's Gang for cooking. In fact, the characters were the inspiration for the new kids menu restaurant Paris 6 (west of São Paulo), which is filled with suggestions for snacks, salads and desserts for the kids.

On the menu - illustrated with drawings by Monica, Chives and Magali, and historic sights of Paris - there is a basket of cheese bread and butter ($ 5), minichickens stuffed with french fries ($ 16), and escondidinho minissalsicha of chicken with mashed potatoes and white rice ($ 19).

For dessert, fruit popsicles ($ 7) or cream ($ 9) and ice cream crepe with Nutella ($ 14). Children can also have fun, over lunch or dinner, coloring pictures of Monica's Gang - and also give exposure to some pictures of the characters, decorated with French motifs.



(After googletranslator and http://guia.folha.com.br/crianca/ult10047u945970.shtml)

Everyday i make some coffee. And everyday, my coffee is different. I give "same conditions", and the providence gives me different coffee.

Todays coffee is worse.

But thats ok! In fact, that is what is magical in kitchen. There is no "same conditions".

To think in real kitchen, this teeny one, is to think in a non-repetition (perfection?) kitchen.

natural strawberry sweet (by h.chiurciu)

My friend said something that is true: a very important deal of fooding is how it makes you feel when you cook or eat something.

Today I made a natural stawberry sweet. It was almost like a jelly, actually, and I find it a very interesting activity. Natural sweets, made by cooking fruits (sometimes with a little sugar and spices) are a very simple and tasty way of saving fruits from rotening.

So, I had a whole pack of strawberries that were already getting "over-ripe". I washed and cut them in halves, and cooked with a little of sugar (no more than 5 teaspoons! fruits are already sweet enough, at least for me) and a spoonful of vinegar - don't really know why, some people add a bit of vinegar to keep the cooking pan from getting stained, others to keep the fruits from darkening with the heat or to cut the sweetness of the whole thing; sometimes i think i only do that because i watched that "courage dog" cartoon, and a ghost-aunt kept saying that the secret to her jellies was a bit of vinegar. In any case, it seems to work really fine!

I cooked it on very low fire, adding small sips of water from time to time to keep it from getting dry too soon - for me, that is when all the strawberries are not entirely melted yet.

And be ready: you need to keep standing and stiring the pan for something like 1 hour! Be sure not to let too much of it stick to the sides of the pan and burn.

After all the fruits have vanished on that beautiful and sweet-smelling red goo, stop adding water and reduce it to the point you wish. I dried it substantially, almost to the hard-candy point maybe. It got really thick and of a deep red, beautiful!

I don't know why people don't make this more often, since it is so easy and delicious! Maybe it is because it takes a reasonable amount of time to get ready, but i find it most relaxing.

The slow cooking of the ripe fruits, softly melting into a sweet and scentfull substance, transforming itself with the heat... Everything floods your senses, the smell, the colors, the sound of the whole thing boiling (or even a good music playing). It is a great way to meditate, if you ask me!

And the best part is you can make it with almost any fruit you want! Bananas, apples and mangoes are my personal favourites. You can try adding the spices you like, too: cinnamon, anise, cardamom, clover, ginger...

Enjoy yourself!

Make life a bit sweeter, and share it with your dear ones.

=)

HOW TO make the most delicious EGG-FLIP ("gemada")

This is a very quick recipe ive just invented so i make you make good use of it (its wonderful)

1 egg
2 spoons of condensed milk
a tiny portion of milk

You are going to need to separate the white part of the egg from the yellow one. You are going to use only the yellow one, so you throw away the white part or do anything else with it.

Thus you mix the yellow part with the spoons of condensed milk in a cup of tea and mix it very well. Then you add the milk until you have half of the cup full! Put it in the microwave oven for sumthing like 45 seconds or more, mix it well again and enjoy your wonderful EGG-FLIP!

Its very reassuring of your manlihood. Its great! Makes me very happy when i eat it.

Pasta with Fresh Tomatoes (by h.chiurciu)

Today I had a realy simple and delicious lunch that I'd like to share with you all.

Macaroni is a very popular food, for it is simple and it can taste really great when done properly. But I see most people doing always the same business - pasta cooked on water, ready-made tomato sauce heated and cheese on top. I don't like that too much. And I confess I don't like that bolognese sauce either, at least not the usualy seen one - with "minced meat". And then I see some fancy-ass restaurants selling "pasta with fresh tomatoes sauce" for a small fortune, like it's something sooooo special...

And somehow it is, but it shouldn't.

That's why today I show you a really easy, healthy and tasty way for making your pasta. :)

Stir on olive oil a small onion, well-chopped, untill it gets goldy. Add some 4 or 5 red tomatoes also very well chopped (it is better to use them the most ripe as possible, though I usually use them a little pale) and let it cook for a while. It will become a thick paste. You shoul add a sliced zuchinni now, and let it cook with the tomatoes. Don't forget to adjust the salt, as well as throwing a pinch of sugar to keep it from tasting too acid.

Add a bit of water and keep it cooking untill the tomatoes melt nicely, always letting it more watery than you want it. Now all you need to do is add the pasta - today I used a mini-penne for my lunch, and it tasted really great! I recommend this kind of macaroni, instead of spaghetti-like ones: penne, farfalle, etc. Let it cook alltogether, untill it's dried-up the way you want.

It is done!!

I added just a pinch of basil, because I love it.

It tastes as simple as it is, and sometimes that's all that you need: a simple, delicious lunch to keep your day shining with health and freshness!!

;D

The Basic Cream Soup (by h.chiurciu)

Today i had a great dinner, so i write about good things! =)

I don't know about you there, reading this, but here in Brazil (and specially at São Paulo) it is friggin' COLD! On a night like this, nothing warms your soul & body more and more nicely than a good bowl of soup. So, tonight i'll show you the basics for making a great CREAM SOUP.

I cannot say this is my specialty (Tiago himself has seen at least one of my failures on this matter!), but it surely is one of my favorites ways of cooking and I've been training on it for a few months now. It all started when i saw an Onion Cream Soup recipe at my girlfriend's place and decided to try it out. I'll teach you how it goes! =D

You'll need 4 big onions (maybe 5 or 6 of smaller ones), a cup of flour, 2 to 3 spoonfulls of butter and some boiling water ready to be used- as you see, all very simple ingredients!

First thing is to slice your onions very thinly! If your knife abillities are not that great, you can use a slicing device - but beware not to destroy your onions!

On a big cooking pot, melt down your butter on slow flame. Add the sliced onions, add some heat and gently fry them. Pay attention not to let your onions get too dry, or else they may burn; add more butter if necessary. As onions are somewhat acid vegetables, a nice trick is to add a pinch of sugar to them - but not too much, this is not a dessert!

Once they are well-fried, it's time to add the flour and make the cream.

You can do this in two different ways:

HARDCORE WAY: Throw your flour on the steaming onions while stiring it quickly! Mix it all up untill you get a very dry and hot mixture; then, add boiling water and mix it well.

PROS: you see the magic of the flour-turning-into-cream right in front of your eyes! it makes you feel a true alchemist and can impress deeply your dinning-company. ;)

CONS: it's possible you'll get flour-clogs in your cream; you may need to work your way with a spoon to dissolve them, but this can be minimized using sifted flour.

PRECACIOUS WAY: Gently mix your flour on a glass of water, making sure there are no clogs and it is all well dissolved. Add it to your pan out of the fire.

PROS: you'll get a more homogeneous mixture, greatly avoiding clogs and needing less abillity; you mayimpress your dining-company with how precacious and thoutghfull you are! ;)

CONS: well, it's a bit less exciting. =P

Now what you'll want is a boiling somewhat-waterish cream: add a little more water for that and let it boil for a good while (maybe 1h or so), cooking the flour and melting the onions into the cream. Keep adding water to keep it cooking, just stopping when you feel that it's all done and the thickness is the same as desired. You should taste it and add salt just then (not to repeat my last post ridiculous mistake).

It is done!!! =D
If you wish, before serving, add some fresh mint leaves and a mixed egg to it - they will give your soup a very special taste!

If you manage to make it right, congratulations!! You made your very first cream soup, and also learned all that you'll need to keep making cream soups! - of course, you'll need to reduce the amount of onions depending on the kind of soup you are aiming for.

Tonight, I made myself a very tasty Spinach Cream Soup using this exact principles.

I used just one onion and added a bit of garlic to it; shamefully, i also added a pinch of ready-made vegetables-sauce, but a fairly good one. After the cream was done, I added a handfull of chopped spinach leaves and boiled it for a few minutes. I also added the cracked egg at the end, and a bit of nutmeg during the process.

And it tasted quite great!!

All i wish is that i had sharen it with a dear one... but then i write here and share it with you! =)

Hope you guys try it out and make lots of delicious hot cream soups for your winter!!

on tragic events (by h.chiurciu)

Today I write here about something not so great that makes part of the art of cooking (and specially the teenfood cooking): the mistakes.

There are a few examples of how kitchen mistakes turned out to be something new and great - like brownies, rotten-cheeses and penicillin. But it's not easy to transform an error into a jackpot, and most of the times when you are trying to make a thing and something goes wrong, the results are pure crap.

When you are teenfooding, that is, when you are free to experiment and do whatever pleases you on the cooking, these mistakes are much more easy to commit. It is sad, but very important not to forget and admit that errors and failures are a very real and frequent part of the cooking activity.

Today, I woke up late and went straight to lunch-making. I ate lots of meat yesterday, so I thought today should be a vegetables-galore day (much like my sundaytime lunch below). I decided to try new vegetables, like the gilo ("Scarlet Eggplant" fruit) and the green bell pepper I've bought on the street fair last tuesday. Everything was going well, the vegetables stirred on olive oil and a little bit of cabbage and spinach already chopped to be added to the pot. Then I commited the most horrible and stupid mistake one can do when in kitchen: I accidentally oversalted it!

I tried to save it, removing all the salt I could, but I knew it was already doomed. So I did the only thing I could do: in the heat of the moment, I chopped a raw potato - as I've heard all my life that, when you put too much salt on something, all you need to do is to cook a potato with it and it would consume all the salt. That works great on something like cooked beans, but not in this case. The chopped potato cooked and melted, and any salt it could have absorbed was again loose on my vegetables.

It was very sad and awfull to eat it: instead of a dish with freshly stirred vegetables, like I wanted, I ended up with my plate full of "Over-Cooked & Salty-as-Hell Vegetable Purée of Death". Thankfully, I didn't took any photos - it looked truly horrible.

It was not my firt nor last and surely not my worst kitchen mistake (the memories from my kaki-with-shoyu red sauce still haunts me). But it makes me really sad to see that all I did was spoil ingredients and waste time. Everything seems to be worst after a mystake like this - the juice was rotten, the mango I had for dessert tasted like cardboard and some prick threw a stone on my backyard. The dishes remain unwashed as a graveyardish monument, a memento to my unability to do anything right.

But one shouldn't let the mistakes of a life put everything down. It is an unavoidable part of being truly alive, of being young, of making things happen. With time, one learns to reduce the chances of making mistakes, as well as solutions for the mistakes that eventually happen.

The important thing is to keep in mind that everything can go wrong sometimes - and that that's the beauty of it all.