There’s nothing like summer to inspire you to cook with vegetables. There are so many fresh, green whatnots in the market! Someone asked me about finding something to do with the abundance of zucchinis this season, and I practically elbowed old ladies and little children out of my way at Trader Joe’s when I saw these winking at me:

These Zucchini Pancakes are actually Turkish in origin. Before making these, I had never heard of mucver, but because I really wanted to work with zucchini, I looked for an interesting way to use them. This recipe is based on one from The New York Times’ “Temporary Vegetarian.” These are SO good! It has pockets of yummy feta in it, and with a soft egg mixture holding it all together, the dish is awesome both warm and even cold the next day.

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

3 medium zucchini

salt and feshly ground black pepper

3 large eggs

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

It was a weekend of firsts!

I tasted a Hostess Snoball for the first time in my life. (Cream-filled chocolate cake, covered with marshmallow and rolled in coconut. I liked it. A lot. Don’t judge me.)

Took a lovely drive along Pacific Coast Highway with friends to Malibu Seafood. We ate on a patio right across the shoreline, and it was a beautiful day. It was first time there, and my calamari and fries were so yummy I’m still dreaming about them.

Also, I tried working with circular knitting needles for the first time.

Which promptly became a knitting FAIL.

Haha. I need more practice! Maybe next weekend?

Hope yours was lovely!

Ahhh, Greece. I thank you for your Spanakopita, your Moussaka and your Souvlaki. But frankly, it’s your humble Fasolakia that’s got me head over beans! (You like that? Haha!)

I first tried this green bean dish at Sofi in Los Angeles, a restaurant that’s popular for their delicious Greek fare (and their really pretty outdoor patio, but I digess). The Fasolakia was a side to my Kreatopita (a puff-pastry triangle filled with spiced ground beef and pine nuts, topped with cheese). It was quiet and unassuming, eclipsed by the crispy, meaty, cheesy main dish on my plate. But by the end of the night, I had eaten all of it, and only half of the other dish!

And I wanted more. So, the next few days were spent trolling the Internet and asking Greek friends about it. I found out that it’s a staple at the Greek table, and that it’s a stew of fresh tomatoes, green beans and parsley, cooked until the beans are soft. Their slightly sweet flavor with the natural tartness of tomatoes and the fragrance of parsley makes for one yummy dish that’s great in the summer when the freshest green beans and tomatoes are abundant.

It’s also quite uncomplicated to make, too!

WHAT YOU’LL NEED

1/4 cup olive oil

1 large onion, sliced

3 garlic cloves, rough-minced

3-6 whole peppercorns

1 1/2 pounds of tomatoes, pulsed in a food processor (you can also chop these if you don’t have one)

1 1/2 pounds of green beans with ends cut off, rinsed

1 bunch parsley, rinsed

WHAT TO DO

1) Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a stock pot or Dutch oven. Saute the onion until soft, then the garlic until fragrant, then finally drop in half of the parsley and black peppercorns. Keep cooking until the parsley is wilted.

2) Pour in your chopped tomatoes and stir. Cover and allow to simmer for a good 10-15 minutes, until the juices have sufficiently cooked together into one happy, yummy mix. The mixture will develop more liquid as it cooks, and will thicken later in the cooking. Adjust to taste with salt. It should have a good balance of tang from the tomatoes’ acidity, a herby note from the parsley and also a hint of natural sweetness from the tomatoes. (I’m getting hungry just writing this!)

3)  Set your trimmed green beans on top of the tomato stew. The liquid should come up to about halfway the amount of beans. If not, add a little stock or water. Top the beans with the rest of your parsley. You will cook the dish in these layers, trying not to disturb them by  stirring. (I’m not exactly sure why, but I followed this step in keeping with tradition.)

Cover and allow to cook on low to moderate heat for 45 minutes to an hour, or even a little longer, until the beans are good and soft but still retain their shape. Make sure to check the stew every 20 minutes or so in case you’ve cranked up the heat enough to burn the bottom of the pot.

You’ll end up with this savory hodgepodge of tomato and beans, all made from scratch from the freshest stuff. Pretty awesome, if you ask me.

4) Serve your Fasolakia hot with steamed rice, or at room temperature with pita bread. As an extra treat, you can sprinkle to top with a bit of feta cheese.

Opa! Go be Greek this weekend!

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**Eat Your Vegetables is a new project on The Girl With A Curl. As a promise to eat healthier, I plan to discover new, yummy, non-gag-inducing vegetable recipes every week. They’ll be a big part of my packed lunches at work and will be an interesting way to see how many different ways vegetables can be prepared. As a meat eater, vegetables are something I haven’t paid attention to in my years in the kitchen, but that’s something I’d like to change. From Artichoke to Zucchini and everything in between, here’s to healthy eating at its most delicious!

Beautiful sugar peony on my friend Sara’s wedding cake

Pink statis from the farmer’s market in Goleta

Cupfulls of sweet summer cherries for a clafouti!

Purple baby artichokes for a healthy lunch this week

Hope you had a wonderful weekend!

We’re off to Santa Barbara today because my friends Sara and Ross are getting married!

I finished the cross-stitched wedding announcement in time and E. helped me find a mat for it and frame it. (I suck at framing things.) So happy with the way it turned out.

On to the next xxx-in!

Have a lovely weekend, all.

Little Red Riding Hood tea set from Fred Flare

And the head becomes your teacup! Aaaaah, so cute!

You guys, I’m knitting again!

The last time I knit anything I was in high school. To give you an idea of how long ago that was, Boyz II Men’s “End Of The Road” was on repeat on the radio. I wanted to marry Eddie Vedder and had a pair of chocolate brown Birkenstocks. (What? Those things have really good arch support!)

What made me take up my needles again? My friend Bona asked me to teach her how to crochet or knit for a charity that she’s interested in. I’m pretty comfortable with crochet, but I wanted to see if I had my knits and purls on straight before I could teach Bona. After a quick trip to Michael’s for some yarn, I was on the couch casting my first stitches on, my brows furrowed in concentration. After a couple of tries (and a lot of YouTube tutorials!), I was knitting and purling away! Just like riding a bike, I tell you. And it was actually the perfect thing to do while recuperating from the flu. (It’s even more awesome if you have the Stanley Cup finals on in the background!)

I chose this awesome, simple “Magic Scarf” pattern from Crazy Aunt Purl to practice with. I love the alternating textures, and the fact that it’s all just knits and purls, which are really the only two stitches I know. (But don’t tell Bona that! Haha!)

I’m enjoying myself, even if I tend to be nitpicky about my stitches and want to rip everything up and start again (which I actually did, several times, until I just gave up and let everything go!). Taking up this form of needlework again makes me remember my Lola Pin, the grandma I lost a couple of months ago, because she was the one who taught me how to knit. I got the nitpickiness from her, so I’m sure she approves of the obsession to get things just right!

So, this is what’s kept my hands busy these days. I’m hoping to get better at this so I can make scarves for some people at Christmas. But this first one goes to me—a gift to myself for learning to knit again.

By the way, the charity the Bona is learning to crochet for (she decided after all she preferred it over knitting) is Knit A Square. The group encourages crafters to send crocheted or knitted squares (size details are on the site HERE), which volunteers then all sew together to create wonderful, warm patchworked blankets for abandoned children and AIDS orphans in South Africa.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and would like to learn how to knit or crochet, leave me a comment. We can meet for tea and I’ll be happy to show you what I know. The only payment I ask is for you to make a square to send to this charity. Knit A Square’s goal for 2010 is 105,000 squares! After this scarf, I’m going to practice my stockinette for some squares of my own. (I can see my Lola smiling!)

In the meantime, it’s all about the knit-5-purl-5 for me!

I’m finally better after being sick for two weeks, the first few days of which were devoted to making and eating arroz caldo, a rice porridge that my mom and grandmothers used to make for me as a kid. Its Spanish name translated means “rice soup.” One of the best things about arroz caldo is how ubiquitous it is in Filipino cuisine: It’s eaten for breakfast, as merienda (a mid-afternoon snack) or sometimes even as a late-night meal. It’s served in homes and on street corners, and has a million and one variations. Often served with slivers of tender, flaked chicken; I prefer mine with a plain hard-boiled egg. It’s sometimes topped with crisp, deep-fried golden garlic pieces or fresh rings of green onion. Any way it’s eaten, it’s ultimate comfort in a bowl.

When E. saw me make this, he said, “Wow, that looks…really Asian.” I had to laugh, because that thought never occurred to me—it was just simple arroz caldo, something I’ve cobbled together for years without even thinking about it. But to him, it’s a new, foreign thing. And this is something I’ve actually loved discovering: the many differences in how we eat. When E.’s sick, it’s usually Chicken Noodle Soup to the rescue. Our mealtimes have given me an appreciation of what each of us, literally, brings to the table.

If you’re interested, here’s my recipe for arroz caldo. It’s a really simple version (I’m a minimalist when it comes to this dish!), but big on that heavenly, almost-therapeutic flavor of ginger.

And I’m also including my foolproof way of making hard-boiled eggs to top your bowl off. I know boiling eggs should be fairly easy, but so many overeager cooks get it wrong, which means rubbery eggs with smelly, green yolks. I’ve finally gotten the perfect egg down to a science, and hopefully this means no more green yolks for you either.

ARROZ CALDO

3 teaspoons Canola oil

4 cloves garlic, mined

2-3 tablespoons ginger root, cut into small pieces

1 small onion, diced

1 cup uncooked jasmine rice, washed and drained

4 cups low-sodium chicken broth

salt

fresh-ground black pepper

fresh lemon slices

- In a saucepan, heat the canola oil over medium heat

- Saute the onion until wilted and transparent. Drop in the ginger and stir-fry for another minute or two until the ginger gives off its characteristic, herby smell. Add the garlic, cook until aromatic (but not brown).

- Stir in the drained, wet jasmine rice and cook for about two minutes, giving the grains a chance to soak in all the flavors already in the pot.

- Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil, stirring to make sure none of the rice has stuck to the bottom of the pot. Lower to a simmer.

- Cook, covered, for about 15-20 minutes or until the rice is tender. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Adjust liquid as necessary (some prefer their arroz caldo soupier than others.)

- Ladle into a bowl and top with a sliced hard-boiled egg. Enjoy with a squeeze or two of lemon.

PERFECT HARD-BOILED EGGS

- Place your eggs in a saucepan, and cover with COOL water (v.  important that you don’t start with warm water!) by about one inch.

- Slowly bring your water to a boil with medium heat.

- Upon boiling (as in a strong, rolling boil), cover your pan and remove from your heat source. Let sit for 12 minutes. This will vary, depending on how strongly your rolling boil was. This is what’s worked for me so far!

- Run eggs under cool water, peel and enjoy!

I’m not in tip-top shape yet, but I hope to get back to being creative and writing about it soon. In the meantime, I hope you’ve been well and virus-free!

Designed by the awesome folks at Team Manila

If I can’t eat them, I can just wear them.

Have a lovely long weekend, all!

I’ve always wanted to braid bread! And this took all of half an hour, from start to baked—only because of a secret shortcut.

I know, I know, I could have made my own dough. Except I…didn’t. Haha! I was making this the night before I would give it to a friend for her birthday, and it had been a long, hard day at work. I wanted to give my friend something homemade, but I didn’t have the energy to make dough, have it rise and roll it out. So I decided to compromise, something I rarely do. This one was a Pillsbury Bake-off finalist (1992), after all!

Along with the Pillsbury Pizza Crust, here are the other ingredients: Boursin cheese (one of my favorite things to eat!), Canadian bacon, pepperoni and eggs. You’ll also need some mozzarella and parmesan.

And really, this couldn’t be any easier! First, unroll the crust and press to size. Spread Boursin down the middle third of your dough rectangle, then top with the Canadian bacon and pepperoni.

Sprinkle the shredded mozzarella over the cured meats, then the parmesan. Bacon+pepperoni+cheese=how can you go wrong?

With a sharp knife, make cuts down both sides of your dough about an inch long, to about a half inch from your fillings. Start “braiding” the dough by overlapping alternating strips, making sure to cover the yummy goodness inside.

What to do with the ends? Pinch them shut the way I did here, and tuck them underneath the dough to seal.

Step back and say, “Wowza!” (It’s so simple to do yet looks so impressive!)

Mix an eggyolk with some water, brush on top of your braided wonder and sprinkle some poppy seeds on top.

Bake for 11 to 14 minutes, and this is what you get.

Slice and dip in pizza sauce to enjoy. So good and so embarrassingly easy!

Here’s the RECIPE for this quick, savory treat. I hope you try your hand at it, too!

It was good practice for me, and now I want to try my hand at making my own dough and playing  with different fillings. I’m already thinking of a mediterranean-inspired one with feta cheese, artichoke hearts, black olives and roasted red peppers. Doesn’t that sound delicious?

Sometimes, a girl just wants to stitch some neat little x’s on cloth, you know?

And sometimes, the timing’s perfect: Her friends Ross and Sara are getting married in June, and she wants to give them a handmade wedding gift.

And even more, she just happens to find the cutest Etsy cross-stitch pattern maker, who has a pattern for a bride and groom who look just like her friends! (This is one time I hope Ross and Sara don’t actually read my blog, haha.)

I’m reacquainting myself with cross stitching again. In all honesty, I haven’t stitched an X since God knows when. It was one of the very first needlepoint techniques taught to us in school, but I was taught way before that by my mom (thank you, Mama!).

I’m having a blast putting this together, because it’s bringing me back to my childhood. Just like riding a bike, I tell you! Some things I remembered from when Mama first taught me:

1) Organize your thread.

In the old days, we would take a piece of cardboard, punch holes in them with a hole punch, mark thread colors in each hole and thread the corresponding embroidery floss color through each. I found out that there are premade plastic bobbins that you can fill up with thread, mark and arrange by number to loop through a giant ring. Maybe these have been around for a while, but I certainly had no neat little plastic bobbins like these growing up! I love the obsessive-compulsiveness of it all, haha. I even made E. wind some thread for me.

2) X marks the spot.

Mama told me to always start with a stitched cross that intersects right through the middle of your Aida cloth, and right through the middle of your design. This is a handy reference point for when you’re first starting to count your stitches and place them where you want on your fabric.

3) Be mindful of your thread length.

Too short, and you’ll need to change threads more often (which is a pain in the patootie), but too long and you run into the risk of tangles. The perfect length is that from your fingers to the inside of your elbow. I usually work with two skeins, so I double up this length to work on one set of two skeins at a time.

4) Stitch in the same direction.

The first “leg” of your x’s should go in one direction, and the second leg that completes the x should all go the other. I know it seems like that shouldn’t matter, because they’re all x’s and when they’re all grouped together you can’t really tell which is going where. But when you step back, you’ll notice the difference in how the thread catches the light. Mama and I had arguments to high heavens about this—I didn’t believe her at first, but trust me, she’s right!

I’ll be sure to post the finished project—especially when I get the chance to frame it. So excited!

I think your next crafty project should be a cross stitched one, don’t you? Even if you’ve never done it before, I’ll tell you a line from a print ad I remember seeing in a magazine when I was little: If you’ve sewn a button, you can cross stitch! (I don’t know why I’ll never forget that, haha!)

Via here.

Xoxo! 

—

Further Reading Into The Art Of X-Stitching (Because nerds are awesome!)

* ANDWABISABI has the cutest cross-stitch patterns for sale on Etsy. I’m not even kidding about this cuteness. Here is solid evidence proving I do not lie about this cuteness!

…ok, seriously now. Cross-stitched punctuation marks? I’m all over THAT! Get your x-in on HERE.

* Here’s an A to Z Of Cross Stitching. Because I love A’s and Z’s and all the letters in between.

* Whaaaattt?!?! A cross-stitch pattern generator for captions? These people are geniuses!

* Subversive cross-stitch patterns. Because deep down inside, you’re a rebel. With a needle.

Amy Butler for Kalencom

Because I need another purse like I need more fabric.

Have a lovely weekend, all!

The first baking experiment I ever had as a kid was when I made a Mango Cake with a Mango Buttercream Frosting when I was 14. My nanny helped me bring all the ingredients together, but for the most part, I did all the creaming and mixing and baking by myself. It was somewhat of a major undertaking, because making buttercream in the tropical heat isn’t exactly a walk in the park. The cake wasn’t perfect, but it was my first, and for that it will always be special. After I decorated it, I stepped back with eyes wide as saucers, and said, “Wow, I made that!” And my nanny piped up and said something I will always remember, “You always could, you just didn’t know it!”

I remembered this story as I learned to make macarons last night. I attended a two-and-a-half hour baking class with Clémence Gossett of Gourmandise Desserts (at Platine Bakery in Culver City), where I learned to make these legendary little gems. They’re legendary because there’s so much myth surrounding how they’re made. And culinary myths are the worst kind. They’re spun and re-spun in kitchens, on blogs and in bakeries that they take on a life of their own. They’re shrouded in mystery and scare away the most well-intentioned home bakers; they scared this home baker for a long time.

Clémence is the kind of generous teacher who doesn’t just disseminate information. Her class wasn’t simply, “This is a pot, you put these things in it, cook it for this long and serve it this way.” We also learned about ingredients and where they come from, and being a rabid food history fan, I appreciated the lessons very much. She told us about the interesting origins of chocolate, how vanilla beans are cultivated, all the little back stories of the materials we would use to cook. And once she started telling the class about how sugar is made, I felt right at home. I grew up around sugar all my life (read this post about my childhood on a sugar mill in the Philippines). I loved hearing the story of my favorite ingredient told by someone who understood it well. Clémence was all about debunking the Great Macaron Myth, and it was refreshing to hear that my fear of these tiny things was actually quite irrational.

I’d like to think that the class was like smelling salts to the slumbering baker in me. It made me recall the pure, unadulterated joy I feel when I bake. I honestly don’t know why I forget sometimes. I guess life has a sneaky way of distracting you. For me, there’s a day job to do, things to sew, dance classes to try and get back to, blog posts to write, trips to take and people to love. But more and more, I’ve come to realize that among all my creative pursuits, I’m most confident with my baking. In my other lives, I’m still very much the hesitant quilter/crafter, the shy dancer, the tentative writer, though I try to learn as much as I can every day to become more competent in these arts. But in the kitchen, with a whisk in my hand, I’m at my most courageous. I’m most myself when I’m lost among the sounds of a busy kitchen: the steady whirring of my mixer, the cracking of eggs against the lip of a ceramic bowl, the pinging of pistachios as they’re poured into a steel bowl for shelling. These make up the soundtrack of my bravest days.

And so, if you ask: “Are macarons difficult to make?” The answer is: they are and they aren’t. They’re challenging because of the techniques you DO have to learn: how to gauge the stiffness of your meringue, how to fold your almond flour into the mixture without deflating the eggwhites, how to tell when you’ve folded enough. But at the same time, they’re easy…because I was able to make them. And I didn’t undergo training through a rigorous pastry program in culinary school. I’m just someone who loves to bake, who went to a baking class that happened to be close to my house, who watched, and listened, and learned. And I’m willing to practice.

The first thing that popped into my head when I tasted the Vanilla Macarons with Salted Caramel that we made was this: “Kanamit!” This is the word for “delicious” in Ilonggo, the dialect I grew up with. It had this crunchy shell that gave way to a delicately sweet, chewy center, that led you by your tastebuds to a rich, toe-curling caramel.

It was heavenly. And how interesting, I thought to myself, that the language of flavor in my head isn’t in English! It’s in the words of my childhood. Maybe this goes back to that very first cake, in that hot kitchen in the province, and the realization that I even as a little girl, I was capable of making delicious things with my own hands if I only set my mind to it. That memory echoes to the big girl I am today, and tells me that I CAN make macarons no matter how mysterious they may be. I could make these mouthwatering, divine treats all this time—I just hadn’t known it.

I sometimes forget how much I love baking, and then I take a class like last night and feel like going home, baking all night and not minding one bit if I fell asleep in my apron with flour on my nose and powdered sugar in my hair.

Here’s to more adventures in flour, sugar and egg whites!

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If you’re interested in exploring the world of dessert-making through a delicious class with Clémence, her website HERE, lists all her upcoming classes. If you sign up for her newsletter, she sends you recipes, too.