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Happy new year, everyone! Thanks for reading, commenting, emailing and being nothing but fantastic.
2010 has been all kinds of delicious and I noticed some peculiar developments in terms of how my palate has changed, or as I’d like to think, evolved. Milk chocolate was always my preferred chocolate, but now I can’t get enough of 70% dark chocolate. I LOVED white chocolate – but (sadly) not anymore. I was never a fan of anything coconut-y in my food, but lo and behold, I’ve eaten more South Indian and Thai food in 2010 than ever before. And oranges! I never really understood the fuss about candied oranges, but one wedge of candied orange from Madrid made my taste buds sing in delight. These were some things I could think of impulsively, but what I’m going to do in 2011 is diligently maintain a record of such palate milestones.
And of course, like I did last year, I made a list of food resolutions for 2011 that I hope to achieve. But let’s look back at last year’s list for a moment. Out of the twenty things I set out to complete as a part of my foodie resolutions in 2010, I’m thrilled to have checked most of them off. Go look!
My New Year’s Food Resolutions for 2011:
- Make croissants from scratch – don’t think I *need* to because I’m in Paris now. =)
- Compile all my grandmom’s recipes for a family cookbook – work in progress.
- Try two new meats without making a queasy face – deer,
- Learn how to cook an artichoke the right way (somehow, they’re never tender when I make them) – pretty sure I’m going to get it right after watching how they trim artichokes in Rome. (video soon!)
- Make the perfect candied oranges – Done!
- Make Burmese Khowsuey – got the recipe from my aunt who makes the best one I’ve eaten, now to make it.
- Create a dish with rice and beef – Done!
- Make my own mayonnaise – Done! Somehow, I wasn’t overwhelmed or weepy eyed with it.
- Give melons and papayas another chance – Melons in Europe? The best. Melon and prosciutto – how can anyone not love it.
- Grow my own starter culture for sourdough bread. Name suggestions for my new pet, anyone? – Again, living in the land of bread, so the sourdough culture can wait.
- Get a hand-cranked pasta machine and make the red wine and roast vegetable fettucine I photographed. Still need to get that pasta maker.
- Learn to clean and scale a fish – March 2012 – Le Cordon Bleu!
- Make Nigel Slater’s apple shortcake had to leave the book behind when I moved to France, but I made the fantastic apple updside down cake from Falling Cloudberries and I’ve got to make it again just to blog about it.)
- Make tiramisu from scratch – Done! The homemade tiramisu is one of the best things that happened to me in 2011.
- Taste fresh olives – I stole olives from the neighbour’s tree in Verona. The purple stains from the olives were gorgeous, the taste and texture is nothing to write home about. I took the tiniest little bite because of all the horror stories I had heard.
- Try pomegranate molasses – not yet.
- Pickle some ginger – didn’t.
What are your food resolutions for 2011?
We’re seven months into 2010 and I thought now might be a good time to review my to-do list for 2010.
Out of the 20 things on it, I’ve successfully accomplished the following:
- Made marshmallows
- Made Spanish churros
- Read 4 chef biographies/memoirs: Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, Daniel Boulud’s Letters to a Young Chef, Humble Pie by Gordon Ramsay, Spiced by Dahlia Jurgensen. Two more to go. Suggestions?
- Tried Tahitian vanilla, all thanks to orangefoodie.
- Grew herbs: lemongrass, more basil and mint! Now I just need some seeds for rosemary, thyme and oregano and I will have one happy windowsill.
- Tried two new salts: fleur de sel (should really make some fleur de sel caramels!), Anglesey sea salt. Three to go!
- And finally, I made fresh pasta!
Making fresh pasta is quite a task. And making fresh pasta without the pasta rollers is a task I grossly underestimated. After I made the dough according to the recipe in Jamie Oliver’s book, I let it rest for a while and then started to roll the dough out. What followed was a 40 minutes struggle to to transform the dough into a sheet so thin, a paper should be legible through it, well almost. Finally, at the end of my battle with the dough, I stuffed my chicken, cheese and mushroom filling into. Around that time I read about a chef extolling the virtues of hand rolled pasta in a local newspaper: because it’s not uniform, it is better suited for sauced to cling to it. Voila! And in addition to that, I saw my mom beaming as she bit into the handmade pasta tossed in my favourite hazelnut oil. That made it totally worth the effort. Although, next time I’d better invest in rollers before even thinking of making handmade pasta.
Wish you all a year full of butter, sugar, chocolate, vanilla and tonnes of cupcakes!
Thank you all for being with me through 2009, each and every one of you. 2010 is going to be wonderful.
Here is a list of some things I hope to do in 2010:
- Make macarons (successful ones with feet!)PassionFruit Macarons
- Make marshmallows, now that I finally have a bottle of corn syrup! Homemade Marshmallows
- Make verrines Breakfast verrines are the best: cinnamon and fig compote, yoghurt, muesli, honey.
- Make fresh pasta Handmade Pasta
- Make Spanish churros Cinnamon Sugar Churros
- Make soufflé (chocolate or cheese?)
- Make an elaborate birthday cake – I’ve made SO many!
- Make candied rose petals Candying oranges left me too disheartened to even bother with the rose petals, so ‘m just going to strike this off.
- Make my own cheese – mascarpone, mozzarella (where can I find rennet?)
- Make Sriracha sauce
- Read 6 chef biographies / restaurant stories Letter to a Young Chef, Comfort Me With Apples, Humble Pie, Spiced, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, Dirty Dishes
- Try wild rice Not too thrilled
- Try oysters – petrified of trying it in Bombay – Europe in Jan 2011, hopefully!
- Try Tahitian vanilla Hot vanilla milk. Mmmm!
- Try Frech lavender. Well, I did get some from Madrid instead.
- Try 5 (new) types of salts – fleur de sel, Anglesey Sea salt, Mediterranean sea salt, flaky Spanish salt with pimenton
- Buy a blow torch (and then make crème brûlée) – got the torch! Need to make the dessert
- Grow my own strawberries - Unfortunately, the herbs used up all the space.
- Grow more herbs Loads of seeds sown this season. Here is how I grew my lemongrass too!
- And best of all, make a trip to Paris! JANUARY 2011!!
Something you think, I absolutely must try? Let me know!
PS: Here is the Best of 2009 round-up!
Watching 1000 Places to Visit Before You Die on the travel channel, got me thinking about the various foods that a person must experience at least once in their life.
As I researched for foods that need to be sampled at least once, I came across quite a few interesting blogs and articles. Right from French to Cambodian to something totally random but fun to try! Some have rightly added not just a kind of food, but also the settings that finally determine the experience. What I’m talking about is a mystery meal that is eaten in pitch darkness with only touch, smell, sound and taste to guide you.
I am not at all the kind of person who’d go out and try just about anything; I am in fact, extremely wary about what I eat. Yet, watching Anthony Bourdain is always a learning experience. He eats whatever is presented to him without any prejudices. That’s one quality I ought to imbibe. I say this because BBC’s “50 things to eat before you die” include guinea pig, alligator and octopus amongst others!
All the above are a mix of international cuisines. Closer home, I feel that Hyderabadi biryani, butter chicken, palak paneer, gulab jamuns, rasgollas, ought to be sampled to get the feel of Indian cooking.
Add on what you’d think make some good eats!
