The first trip to IKEA (and hopefully the only one for a long long time) is done, the boxes are unpacked and I no longer need a map to find my way to work and home again. It would be wrong to say I already feel at home in Rome but, slowly at least, Alessandro and I are finding a rhythm for this new life we are sharing in Rome. This weekend then involved our first trip to the market in Testaccio for our weekly foodshop (and my first, rather timid, conversation with the vegetable guy over what type of onion I should be using for a Soffritto – ‘le cipolle gialle’ (the yellow onions) it turns out), and, most importantly, to buy the various ingredients I needed for Sunday’s lunch. We had invited some friends over and I was keen to finally make use of the Tagine I bought in Safi on our trip to Morocco in September and
Month: November 2012
Chocolate Chip Cookies
One of our first weekends in Rome took us to Eataly, the shrine to consumerism in terms of Italian regional
Browned Butter Banana Bread with Spelt Flour
You must be thinking, what, another weekend, another banana bread recipe? And yes, shame on me for my lack of inventiveness. But, there is a point to this blog post and it has very little to do with how much I like banana bread or how we had 3 sad looking bananas lying around or how it did not occur to me that the reason why my Mapo drizzle cake did not rise the other week was that I used bicarbonate of soda (without any acid in the recipe to activate it) rather than baking powder so I wanted to stick to something familiar (although with a small twist) … The thing is though, I get excited when I try a recipe and it works, like, it really works, like it works so well that while the cake is still in the oven, Alessandro gets off the sofa and suggests we go to the gym because the toffee-like smell coming
Food photography (2)
Although time has not been on my side these last few weeks, I am trying to make a conscious effort to improve my photography skills. I finally invested in a DSLR camera (mainly because how grainy some of my food pictures came out on my trusted point and shoot) and took this with me on every walk, every outing and snapped away. Then, I ordered this book by Nicole S. Young and not only has it taught me a great deal about using my camera and different sources of light (well, it is still teaching me, I am only about half-way through the book at this stage!) it has also taught me more about composition, different textures, plating etc., basically how to make your pictures look more interesting. Yesterday my sister sent me this link to a food photography blog and while I cannot stop browsing this and absorbing all the helpful tips, I wanted to share the link to
Banana Bread
This was my first weekend in Italy and I had high hopes of sharing with you something I cooked up in my new kitchen these first few days in Italy. Alas, although I did experiment with a lemon drizzle cake recipe using a local citrus fruit called Mapo (a cross between a mandarine and a grapefruit) which is not quite ready for sharing (or I simply need to get to know my new oven a bit more), I have spent very little time in the kitchen so far. As with every move (let alone one that has taken me halfway across Europe) there was a lot of unpacking, various trips to the supermarket to buy cleaning products and stock our pantry and, quite rightly, a good time spent relaxing on the sofa after the craziness of the last few weeks and the big move. Most of the photos below (well, all those other than the ones I took on our
REAL SIMPLE FOOD 