Tomatoes

Unlike last year - we have tomatoes!  The plants are really mangy looking - but they actually produced cherry tomatoes - a vast improvement.

Pissaladière

I was looking for a supper dish that wasn´t a quiche (we´d already had tortilla) and happened across a recipe for pissaladière - an onion tart with anchovies and black olives from Provence.

Now onion tart is a fabulous appetizer, but I wasn´t convinced it would work as a whole meal.  So I found an adaptation that had more stuff in it - and, since I´m always looking for a way to eat more vegetables, thought we´d try a deep-dish version.

From an old copy of Ann Bramson´s The Complete Family Cookbook:

2  tbsp. (30 ml.) olive oil
2 large onions, peeled and sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed with 1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (225 gr.) canned tomatoes, drained
1 tbsp (15 ml.) tomato paste
1 tbsp (5 ml.) chopped fresh basil or 1/2 (2.5 ml.)tbsp dried
1 tsp (5 ml.) sugar
Freshly ground black pepper
Pie pastry case
4 tomatoes skinned and thinly sliced
1/2  cup (115 ml.) shredded gruyère or cheddar cheese
2 oz. (50 gr.) anchovies in olive oil, drained and soaked in milk for 30 minutes
1/4 cup (60 ml.)black olives, pitted and halved

(I bumped up all the quantities of the vegetables and used mozzarella and swiss cheeses) Heat the oil in a frying pan.  Add the onions and garlic and fry gently until golden.   Stir in the canned tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, sugar and pepper to taste.  Stir well, pulping the tomatoes with a wooden spoon, and bring to the boil. 

Cool slightly then transfer to the pastry case.

Arrange tomato slices in a circle on top, sprinkle with the cheese, then arrange drained anchovies in a lattice pattern on top.  Put halved olives in each ¨window¨ of the lattice.

Bake in a fairly hot oven (190C/375F) for 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown.Remove from oven and leave to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

It was very pretty and tasty - I served at room temperature.  And V thought it was really good too.  I didn´t really enjoy the anchovies as much as I´d hoped (didn´t bother with the soaking in milk), and I think the black olives needed to have a stronger cure.  Being deep-dish style also was a little harder to serve - it tended to fall apart on the plate.

I think I may try it again - but this time in the traditional tart form, and probably for a starter and not a side or main dish.  I also think the pizza dough might stand up to the onion better.

For another version see Ina Garten´s recipe here.

A new project

We´re working on a new project for the ruin.

V found 3 sets of french doors on segundamano.es with stained glass inserts for the openings to the bedrooms and between the living room and the kitchen.  There are 2 matching sets and one that is slightly less fancy.

Unfortunately, they´ve been painted several times and have had some mysterious plaster substance dripped on them so they have to be stripped and refinished.  We are now in posession of a heat gun, some paint stripper and lots and lots of scrapers and putty knives.

Difficult to know where the line is between sanded enough and retaining ¨character¨. 

Patience is a virtue.

Water

We have a water connection.

There´s a well on the other side of the barn, but we´ll make do with city water until we´re up there.

I think we´re going to need some goats. 

Some of the weeds are taller than I am.

Fat, happy goats.

Lavandar Patchouli Goatmilk Swirl

Used the last of my alkanet infused olive oil (it´s been sitting in the window for months) and goatmilk for the liquid.  Wouldn´t you know - after a few weeks curing, the white is quite tan.  But on the other hand, the purple, which was almost black, has faded to a reasonable dark purple.  In my first experiment with alkanet, it didn´t hold the color longer than the curing period before it started turning a very unpleasant peuce color, so we´ll see.  I do have to say that the scent is holding about the best of the batches I´ve made so far - a lovely lavendar, orange, and patchouli blend.

Game of Thrones Season II

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Thoroughly enjoyed the second season of Game of Thrones on Canal +.  Fabulous casting, the locations are stunning (Iceland, Malta and Croatia, HBO interactive map here), and much better wigs.

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Five, count ´em five, candidates for King/Queen have stepped up to vie for the Iron throne and things are getting mighty complicated (HBO guide to the houses here).  We´ve got a new witchy priestess hatching supernatural murder, a conniving brother and sister from Highgarden, abducted baby dragons and creepy wizards in Quarth (the-best-city-that-ever-was-or-ever-will-be), a smuggler and his pirate friend, epic battles in Kings Landing and the grand gathering of the wildings and whitewalkers north of the wall, to add to the intrigue, backstabbing, and generally lax morals of the first season.  It´s terrific television.

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It was not all perfect.  They´ve had to make considerable changes to re-format the story for the small screen.  Rambling doesn´t even begin to describe the books, so some editing and compression were inevitable. I thought John Snow´s story line lagged (and his direwolf completely disappeared) and I´m not sure the Robb Stark´s story line with his love interest is working out like they´d hoped.  Yoren was gone entirely too quickly.  I can´t wait for Davos to have more to do and for Joffrey to get what´s coming to him. The CGI of the whitewalkers was a little odd, I think it might have been more effective if we´d not seen them so clearly.    But I was particularly impressed with Theon (terrific work from Alfie Allen) running amok in the north. Arya (Maisie Williams)  has completely won me over and she and Tywin Lannister (Charles Dance) were electric in their scenes together.  New cast member Gwendoline Christie playing Brienne of Tarth is pitch perfect.

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And last, but certainly not least, I´d like to introduce my new TV boyfriend - Jaqen H´ghar (Tom Wlaschiha).  He manages to remain mysterious and sexy while referring to himself in the third person.  A woman is impressed - very impressed.  See more of his work here.

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The bad news is we´ll have to wait until spring 2013 for Season Three.  The good news is they start shooting this month.

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There is a lot of speculation about who they´ll cast as Marjorie Tyrell´s (Natalie Dormer) politically saavy, razor-tongued, take-no-prisoners Grandmother Olenna Redwyne (nicknamed ¨The Queen of Thorns¨) in Season Three.  The usual suspects have been suggested, Maggie Smith, etc.  But I think Geraldine McEwan would be perfect - see what I mean? Unfortunately, I think she´s retired now.  Does Helen Mirren do TV anymore?

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And the opening credits  - in Legos!



For political junkies. Someone wants to see Joffrey´s birth certificate.:



You can see more from Mother Jones on YouTube

Curiouser and Curiouser - Updated Again

álvaro ballesteros

It´s been almost a year since the disappearance of the Códice Calixtino from the Cathedral at Santiago Compostela (see this post).  But never fear, the authorities are still on the case.

The police think the Codex never left Santiago, in fact, it may never have left the Cathedral.  The working theory is that the book´s disappearance is related to discrediting the Dean in charge, rather than stealing the artifact for sale on the black market.  So, some corrupt member of the .0001 % is probably not hidden away in a bunker, lovingly stroking the cover and gloating.

From La Voz de Galicia:

The Codex Calixtino is still in Galicia.  It is not in the possession of a mafia disposed to sell it to a rich collector nor was it a contracted theft.    What´s more, it never left the Santiago area and it´s possible that it´s secreted within the miles of possible hiding places in the cathedral. . .


The police are giving more weight to the hypothesis that the disappearance of the Codex was more a kidnapping (book-napping? CH) than a theft.  That is to say, whomever entered the secured Cathedral vault and took the book did not intend to benefit from the sale, but rather was motivated by a desire to damage the Dean, José María Díaz, with whom they had a personal conflict.


As such, the Police focused on the personnel working in the Cathedral itself from the beginning of their investigation, which was painstakingly searched under the suspicion that the Codex Calixtino was still hidden within it´s walls. 

In case it never reappears - you could buy your own copy here.

The article goes on to claim that the authorities are tyring to contact the suspected thief/thieves indirectly to encourage the voluntary return of the book, either in exchange for reduced charges, or perhaps in the same way that it was taken - simply reappearing without further explanation.  Some of the more cynical commentors on the article think the whole thing is a publicity stunt.

What´s clear is that the perpetrator had inside help.  Neither visitors nor pilgrims have access to the area where the book was stored.  So is the Cathedral a seething hotbed of personal animosities and backstabbing politics?  Hardly surprising, what workplace isn´t?

What with the Pope´s Butler scandal and this - I really, really hope somebody somewhere is writing a screenplay.

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UPDATE!

Headline this morning

The Accused Thief of the Codex Calixtino is an ex-employee of the Cathedral

The suspect of the theft, an electrician who worked in the Compostelan church, was arrested along with his wife and son, who may be considered accomplices

Apparently they found other objects stolen from the church when they searched the guy´s house.  He´s been under surveillance for the last year. 

FINAL UPDATE!

Headline this morning


It was in a Garage in Milladoiro! The Codex Calixitino appeared hidden inside a plastic bag, wrapped in newspaper, in one of the arrested electrician´s properties, located in the building where he lived with his family. 

Kind of anticlimactic - but there are more questions to be answered.  For example, how is it possible that the church never realized the other items in his possession were missing, not to mention the source of the huge amount of cash he had?