Tomatoes

Girlfriend planted some tomatoes in the garden earlier this year. It was a bit too late (circumstances and whatnot) but a few of them had already ripened well. It’s now November and some serious frost has been predicted for the week ahead so we decided to take them all inside and see which ones will ripen on their own.

As far as I know there’s three different kinds; Black Russian (the ugly ones), Gemini (the regular ones) and Vinbärstomat (the small ones).

(click to embiggen)

I sense a salad in my near future.

 

Ben Ryé

I’ve been very busy with a couple of tight deadline projects which are still somewhat secret, though once the copyright issues are clear to me I’ll upload some of those details. So in the meantime here’s another wine related post.

My parents came over this week for the celebration of my Grandmothers 80^th birthday. They brought with them the last remaining (physical) souvenir from their 2001 holiday to the small Island of Pantelleria.

They went there specifically for the wine, as they were served a glass in a restaurant the year before and the stuff is apparently not for sale anywhere else. They brought home a couple of bottles, but we didn’t drink the best one until three days ago.

For a white wine it is incredibly dark and potent. Definitely not the kind of stuff you can drink by the bottle. I sort of suspect that I’ll never have another glass of this fantastic stuff ever again…

Culinary week

For some reason we ended up cooking something really nice every day for a while. To wit:

• Tuesday and earlier: damned if I can remember.
• Wednesday: Skillet fried goose-breast with rice, spring onions and steamed broccoli.
• Thursday: Goose-legs in carrots, mushrooms, peeled oranges, honey and red wine (oven dish) with oven potatoes.
• Friday: Pork sirloin in sweet ketjap-manis sauce with rice.
• Saturday: Home-made curry paste with left over pork and veal meat, bulgur, freshly baked naan and yoghurt/coriander/mint/cucumber/garlic sauce.
• Sunday: Chicken shoarma in wraps with fresh salad and the second half of the yoghurt sauce.

Halfway done with the Shoarma seasoning.

I wish I had good pictures of everything but we were too busy eating it. Now I’m going to have to talk girlfriend into making her awesome ribs again someday soon and I think I’ll try my hand at lasagna tomorrow.

Fortuna Tasting Menu: Wine

I’ve been living in Poprad, Slovakia for about 3 years now. I knew the place well since I used to visit throughout my childhood with my parents, but I’ve only ever been here while in holiday mode which is not the same as living mode. One of my main gripes about the place is that it’s difficult to get good food and good ingredients. The supermarkets sell very standard stuff and I have to frequent all of them because they specialize in different categories (Billa has good ham, Kaufland good veggies, Tesco is better at cheese and alcohol, HyperNova does good wine and ground meat etc.). The local market is rather pathetic in terms of selection. The overwhelming majority of restaurants and diners in this country are dismal as well. You’re usually fine while ordering mashed potatoes and schnitzel, but anything involving spices or good meat will almost certainly be a disappointment.

Imagine my elation when we found a fantastic place at walking distance from our home, quite by accident about a year ago. The serving staff speak decent English, the restaurateur is passionate and the chef is a genius. He has the knack of creating a dish around a key ingredient without exaggerating the taste. I know that sounds easy, but I doubt it is.

Today we attended a special tasting menu based on Slovak traditional ingredients and wines, and I was surprised to learn how many good ones there are produced here. The following list is mostly for my own reference. The wines were all selected from two native wineries; Ostrožovič and Vino Nichta. There were a total of six courses, each accompanied by two selected wines.

Sugar and Spice

And now for something completely different. With the imminent arrival of girlfriend coming to stay with me until Christmas, I figured I’d better beef up my pastry skills as she’s way better at that than I am, and we obviously can’t have that. I’ve always been partial to cinnamon (up to the point of making cinnamon sauce for tenderloin) and found an absolutely fantastic recipe. It takes a bit of preparation, but most of that is spend leaving the dough alone so as long as you start baking in the morning you can have a lovely afternoon tea. Only down-side I found is that it does tend to get stale pretty quick, so ideally make it when you have guests.

I’m not going to reproduce the recipe here as it has already been documented to the point of perfection by Joy the Baker and here’s an alternate recipe by Zoom Yummy.

These pictures were taken three days ago, since then summer has disappeared and has been replaced swiftly and without error by snow.